Speed of light with their product equalling "c". In 1983 the metre was defined as "the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of a second", fixing the value of the speed of light at by definition, as described below. Consequently, accurate measurements of the speed of light yield an accurate realization of the metre rather than an accurate value of "c". Outer space is a convenient setting for measuring the speed of light because of its large scale and nearly perfect vacuum. Typically, one measures the time needed for light to traverse some reference distance
One-way speed of light in the same place only one clock is needed to measure the total time, thus this speed can be experimentally determined independently of any clock synchronization scheme. Any measurement in which the light follows a closed path is considered a two-way speed measurement. Many tests of special relativity such as the Michelson–Morley experiment and the Kennedy–Thorndike experiment have shown within tight limits that in an inertial frame the two-way speed of light is isotropic and independent of the closed path considered. Isotropy experiments of the Michelson–Morley type do not use an external clock to directly measure the speed of light,