The importance of light

Light is a pretty amazing thing.  It can do so much and as a civilization we have learned to harness light in so many ways.

Light is energy

The light from the sun powers quite literally everything on the surface of the Earth.  Light is absorbed by plants to create oxygen.  These plants are eaten by animals and starts that food chain.  Additionally even oil we pump from under the earth is carbon from long dead plants and animals which contains stored energy from millions of years ago from our sun.

Light is a means of seeing into the past

So light from stars travel for in many cases millions of years before they are seen and detected by our human eyes.  So when a great even such as a supernova happens it an even that has occurred millions of years ago.

Light it’s the speed limit

So based on Einstein’s theory it would require infinite amounts of energy for any mass travel at the speed of light.  Without some sort of short cut like a black hole (where it is unlikely someone could survive the trip in one piece) it simply isn’t possible to go faster.

Light can be manipulated

Photographers know this well.  But photography is completely about light, and how it can be represented.

Tags: , ,

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2011 at 1:17 am and is filed under Blogging, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply