alleryStart learning →How fast does light travel through empty space?
AAbout 300,000 kilometers per second
BAbout 300,000 kilometers per hour
CAbout 30,000 kilometers per second
DAbout 3,000 kilometers per second
Answer & Solution
Correct answer: A. About 300,000 kilometers per second
1. Light covers a fixed distance in each second of travel.
2. That distance is about 300,000 kilometers, so the speed is 300,000 kilometers per second.
3. Even at this speed light needs more than 4 years to reach us from the nearest star.
_Source: OpenStax Astronomy (CC BY 4.0), Ch 4 "Earth, Moon, and Sky" and Ch 5 "Radiation and Spectra", section 5.1 The Behavior of Light_
Keep practising Radiation and Spectra
Browse all Radiation and Spectra questions for NY Regents Earth and Space Sciences, or explore more Science topics.
Related questions
Sort light by what gets throughPick the longer wavelengthExcited atoms give back the very light they absorbed, yet dark absorption lines still survDark lines cross the spectrum of the Sun. Where do the atoms that remove those colors sit?Two stars are the same size and the same distance away, but star B is three times as hot aWien's law uses a constant of 3 million nanometer kelvins. A star radiates most strongly aA star is moved to ten times its present distance from us. How much fainter does it look?What name is given to a single self-contained packet of electromagnetic energy?