Re: Quick Speed of Light Question

From: GoldenBoar (no_at_email.com)
Date: 09/26/04 

Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 01:46:32 GMT

On Sat, 25 Sep 2004 17:49:52 GMT, GoldenBoar <no@email.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 18:24:19 GMT, GoldenBoar <no@email.com> wrote:
>
>> If the speed of light in a vacuum is 299,792,458 m/s exactly, what is
>> the
>> speed of light in space and what factors are involved in its
>> calculation?
>>
>>
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>
> This was supposed to be a quick and easy question, but either the
> question is too dificult or you guys think it stupid. For those in the
> latter category, space is not a vacuum remember. A vacuum should have a
> temperature of 0 K, space has a temperature of 2.7 K.
>
> So i guess what I am really asking is the difference in speed caused by
> a temperature of 2.7 K.
>
> After searching the internet unsuccesfully for an answer, this speed was
> referred to as both the speed of light in a vacuum and in space.
>
> Is this a measurement of the speed of light in a vacuum, or the speed of
> light in space?
>
> Could someone please answer this question, which I thought would be easy
> for you guys.

For anyone wondering about this, I found an equation on Wikipedia:

E=kT

where E is the Energy
k is the Boltzmann Constant
and T is the Temperature

 From this, you can see that if T=0 then E=0. This tells us that the speed
of light in a vacuum is not 299,792,458 m/s, but is in fact 0, meaning
light cannot travel in a vacuum.

If light cannot travel in a vacuum, why does the universe exist?

If c is actually 0 in a vacuum, then the other vacuum properties are also
0.

What is going on here? Is the above equation wrong? Are the equations
relating Planck's constant, frequency, wavelength, and the speed of light
wrong?

Thanks for all your responses, they were so helpful to me.

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