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
Speed of light (cellular automaton) is because it's impossible to build a spaceship that can move every generation. (This is not true, though, for cellular automata in general; for instance many light-speed spaceships exist in Seeds.) It is, however, possible for objects to travel at the speed of light if they move through a medium other than empty space. Such media include trails of hives, and alternating stripes of live and dead cells. Certain patterns can appear to move at a speed greater than one cell per generation, but like faster than light phenomena in physics this is illusory. An example is the "Star Gate",