How Far Does Light Travel In One Second?

Light travels at a speed of 299,792,458 meters per second in vacuum. Although some may refer to it as the 'velocity of light', the term velocity is generally used to describe vector quantities, those which possess a certain direction.

Many physicists have attempted, both successfully and ineffectually, to measure the speed of light. Even though Galileo tried to measure it in the 16th century, the closest measurement obtained in the continent of Europe was that of Ole Romer, a physicist from Denmark, in the year 1676.

However the very first triumphant attempt to properly record the speed of light was made by Hippolyte Fizeau in the year 1849. What he basically did was to aim a beam of light to a mirror which was positioned many thousand meters away, and positioned a rotating cog in the way of the beam from the light source to the mirror and back again.