How fast to go around the world in 1 second?

A Second Around the World: The Speed of Light and Earth’s Circumference

Imagine the Earth shrinking to the size of a basketball. Now picture a tiny speck circling that basketball. That speck, traveling at light speed, would complete seven full circles in just one second. That’s the sheer power of light, the fastest thing in the universe.

At a mind-boggling 300,000 kilometers per second, light can traverse the Earth’s circumference, roughly 40,075 kilometers, seven times within a single blink. To put it in perspective, that’s roughly 2.1 million kilometers per second.

While we can’t currently travel at light speed, understanding this concept helps us grasp the immense scale of the universe and the limitations of our current technology. Even the fastest spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe, travels at a mere 0.064% the speed of light, a fraction of the speed needed to complete a single lap around the Earth in a second.

The idea of circumnavigating the Earth at light speed is purely theoretical, yet it illustrates the staggering power of light and how our perception of time and distance is profoundly altered at such speeds. As we continue to explore the cosmos, perhaps one day we’ll develop technologies that can harness this speed and unlock the secrets of the universe.