Riding Light
In our terrestrial view of things, the speed of light seems incredibly fast. But as soon as you view it against the vast distances of the universe, it's unfortunately very slow. This animation illustrates, in realtime, the journey of a photon of light emitted from the surface of the sun and traveling across a portion of the solar system, from a human perspective. Liberties were taken with certain things like the alignment of planets and asteroids, as well as ignoring the laws of relativity concerning what a photon actually "sees" or how time is experienced at the speed of light, but overall the size and distances of all the objects were kept as accurate as possible. It was also decided to end the animation just past Jupiter to keep the running length below an hour.
similar movies
A Brief History of Time
1991
genre:Documentary
Oscar Saa, Technician of the Stars
2010
genre:Documentary
José Maza, Sky Traveller
2010
genre:Documentary
María Teresa and the Brown Dwarf
2010
genre:Documentary
The Secret Life of the Sun
2013
genre:Documentary
Stargazing Challenges
2012
genre:Documentary
Cosmic Voyage
1996
genre:Documentary
Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege
2005
genre:Documentary
Pop! The Science of Bubbles
2013
genre:Documentary
Margherita. La voce delle stelle
2022
genre:Documentary
The Last Artifact
2020
genre:Documentary
Timelapse of the Future: A Journey to the End of Time
2019
genre:Documentary
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
1981
genre:Documentary
The World's Coolest LEGO Set!
2019
genre:Documentary
Pluto encounter
2016
genre:Documentary
TV Movie
Mythscape: Remembering The End Of The World
1996
genre:Documentary
Cosmis Flows: The Cartographers of the Universe
2019
genre:Documentary
TV Movie
The Farthest
2018
genre:Documentary
Astronomy for You
1959
genre:Documentary
Ode to the Sun: An Art History
2023
genre:Documentary
History
TV Movie