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Italy Scholarship/Erudition

Jupiter, Io, and the Speed of Light

Ole Rømer first demonstrated in 1676 that light does not travel instantaneously by studying the apparent motion of Jupiter’s moon Io. The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted c, is a universal physical constant that is exactly equal to 299,792,458 meters per second. It is exact because, by a 1983 international agreement, a meter […]