Speed of light medium (but still slower than "c"). When a charged particle does that in a dielectric material, the electromagnetic equivalent of a shock wave, known as Cherenkov radiation, is emitted. The speed of light is of relevance to communications: the one-way and round-trip delay time are greater than zero. This applies from small to astronomical scales. On the other hand, some techniques depend on the finite speed of light, for example in distance measurements. In supercomputers, the speed of light imposes a limit on how quickly data can be sent between processors. If a processor operates at 1 gigahertz, a signal
Speed of light Speed of light The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted , is a universal physical constant important in many areas of physics. Its exact value is (approximately ). It is exact because by international agreement a metre is defined to be the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 second. According to special relativity, is the maximum speed at which all conventional matter and hence all known forms of information in the universe can travel. Though this speed is most commonly associated with light, it is in fact the speed at