Which is faster? The  speed of sound or light?
82335
Sound travels at approximately 720 miles per hour. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second.
729791
the speed of light, c, is measured to be the speed in vacuum......\nall other mediums (or media?) have greater index of refraction n, (for all other meduims n>1), thus, slower speed of light...\n(for vacuum n=1, for air n=1.003, for water n=1.33 )\nthere can not be a medium where n<1....\n\nif, however, there is a discovered medium such that n of the medium is less than the n of vacuum, the speed of light known to be c is not anymore valid...there will be a new speed of light measured....
220668
Actually, sound travels FASTER in cooler air.\n\nThe speed of sound in a medium (air, water, etc.) is faster when the medium is denser.  Water is denser than air, and sound travels faster in water than in air.\n\nCold air is denser than hot air, so the sound is transmitted faster.  Since the density difference is small, so is the speed difference.  Sound is faster in colder air, but not MUCH faster.
43761
The speed of light in a vacuum is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second (or 1,079,252,848.8 km/h, which is approximately 186,282.397 miles per second, or 670,616,629.4 miles per hour; sometimes roughly 300,000 km per second). This value is denoted by the letter c, reputedly from the Latin celeritas, "speed", and also known as Einstein's constant. Note that this speed is a definition, not a measurement, in that the fundamental SI unit of distance, the metre, is defined in terms of the speed of light: one metre is the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. The speed of light through a transparent medium (that is, not in vacuum) is less than c; the ratio of c to this speed is called the refractive index of the medium.
550989
Sound travels fastest through solids. This is because molecules in a solid medium are much closer together than those in a liquid or gas, allowing sound waves to travel more quickly through it. In fact, sound waves travel over 17 times faster through steel than through air. The exact speed of sound in steel is 5,960 meters per second (13,332 mph)! But, this is only for the majority of solids. The speed of sound in all solids are not faster than in all liquids.
544479
The speed of sound: 340.29 m / s
596319
There is a big difference between predictions that the speed of sound could not be broken and that the speed of light cannot. It was always known that *some* things can go faster than sound. Bullets for example. The question was whether we would have the technology to get people to that speed.\n\nThe speed of light is very different since we haven't seen *anything* go faster than light in a vacuum. Nothing. Ever. Furthermore, the predictions of special relativity have been verified in particle accelerators when the particles are going to within a hundred thousandth of the speed of light.\n\nAs an example, at Fermilab protons are accelerated to energies of 2TeV. This is over 2000 times the rest mass of those protons. To accelerate something the mass of a *gram* to an equivalent speed would take about the energy of the largest hydrogen bomb ever exploded. This amount of energy would be needed for each gram to get to that speed, so multiply it by 75000 for a medium sized human. And that doesn't count the spaceship they would have to travel in!\n\nNow, this is how much energy is needed to get to speed we *know* about. To go faster would require even more. Unfortunately, we have never seen a wormhole of any type. But the predictions are that the energy requirements would be even more prohibitive than what I just described.
418308
The speed of light in a vacuum is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second (or 1,079,252,848.8  km·h-1, which is approximately 186,282.397 miles per second, or 670,616,629.4 miles per hour).
523357
*\nThe time-honored phrase "faster than the speed of light" might have to be reworked, thanks to the work of a Danish physicist.\n\nBy shooting a laser beam of light through a super-cooled glob of a kind of optical molasses, Lene Vestergaard Hau and her team at the Rowland Institute for Science in Cambridge, Massachusetts, were able to slow the speed of light down to just 38 miles per hour -- not even fast enough for the slow lane of a freeway.\n\nBy contrast, the normal speed of light in a vacuum is about 186,000 miles per second -- 20 million times as fast.\n\n"I would probably not call it God-like, but I would probably say ... we are tampering with nature in a very peculiar, very bizarre way," Hau says.\nlight maze\nHau points to an intricate maze of mirrors, part of the slowing process  \n\nThe research, conducted at the Rowland Institute and Harvard University, was reported in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature.\n\nThe substance that slows the light, called Bose-Einstein condensate, is a microscopic glob of atoms slowed to almost absolute zero -- 459.67 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, the lowest temperature theoretically possible.\n\nResearchers believe that it may be possible to slow the speed of light even further, by a factor of 1,000.\n\n"A human could move faster than that" says Stanford University's Steve Harris, who participated in the project. "But a human couldn't move through a Bose-Einstein condensate, I'll tell you that."\n\nResearchers believe learning how to slow light could eventually have a number of practical applications -- improving computers and communications devices, making television displays and laser light shows more vivid and creating better night-vision goggles.
279774
Light and sound both travel through waves, though light travels fatser than sound. Light does not require any medium for transport, so it is called an electromagnetic wave. Sound however needs a medium as it is transmitted through the vibrations of the particles of the medium. It is called a mechanical wave.
64217
to answer your question it is possible to go faster the the speed of light. The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second.\n\nIf zooming beyond the local speed limit is punishable by law, then some scientists may have a gargantuan speeding ticket to pay. \n\nIn a controversial experiment reported in this weeks journal Nature, scientists at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey claim to have broken the ultimate speed limit -- the speed of light. Though hotly contested, some say this achievement could dramatically increase the speeds at which we can send and receive information. \n\nTaught in physics classes the world over, Albert Einsteins theory of special relativity holds that no object or information can move faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, or 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) per second. But NECs Lijun Wang says he created an experiment in which a light beam raced through a gas-filled chamber so quickly, it exceeded the speed of light by a factor of 300. Whats more, the light pulse appears to have left the confines of the chamber before it even entered a seemingly impossible occurrence according to theories of causality, which predict that causes must always precede their effects. \n\n"It sounds crazy, but this can actually occur," said Raymond Chiao, a physicist at the University of California at Berkeley. Chiao, one of a group of researchers who have been working to break the speed-of-light limit, explained that although a common object such as a baseball could never be flung faster than the speed of light, pulses of energy with certain complex properties have been known to bend the rules. \n\n\n\n"It sounds crazy, but it actually can occur." \n\n\n\n\nIn fact, several recent experiments, including one done by Chiao earlier this year, have pointed to energy pulses zooming faster than light speed. Yet each of these experiments has been encumbered by severe limitations on measurement or observation of the energy pulses. In contrast, this latest experiment is being touted by some as the most dramatic example yet of light breaking its own speed barrier. \n\n"The effects are much larger and more spectacular" than previous observations, said Chiao. \n\nIn Wangs experiment, a pulse of light passed through a small chamber filled with atoms of elemental cesium. A light beam traveling through such a medium has two different velocities a velocity for the individual light waves in the beam and a group velocity for the entire beam. Oddly, some light waves in the beam can actually travel backward for miniscule amounts of time, creating a sort of "tail" behind forward-moving waves. As such, a light wave and its tail can leave the gas cavity at different times, creating the effect that the light beam has left the cavity before its even entered. \n\nConfused? Youre not alone. In fact, even scientists who are familiar with this area of study are unsure about the details of Wangs experiment. And many scientists said the experiments results are still open to interpretation. \n\nWilliam Happer, a physicist at Princeton University argued that several specific problems exist with the experiment, including the fact that pulses get distorted when passed through any media other than a vacuum, or empty space. In addition, he said Wang and his colleagues performed the experiment in a way that doesnt tell the whole story, and that it can be interpreted incorrectly. "This is anything but dramatic," said Happer. "If you look at the data, theres essentially no evidence that [the beam] is going faster than the speed of light." \n\nWhats more, most scientists agree that even if such a beam can be proved speedier than light, it would probably not be able to carry any information. Such a feat could conceivably allow data to be sent back in time, thus violating laws of causality and sending quantum physics into disrepair. \n\nOthers are more optimistic as to the possible
195305
Auditory reflexes are faster.  From the link:\n\n"For about 120 years, the accepted figures for mean simple reaction times for college-age individuals have been about 190 ms (0.19 sec) for light stimuli and about 160 ms for sound stimuli (Galton, 1899; Fieandt et al., 1956; Welford, 1980; Brebner and Welford, 1980)."\n\nThere's a lot of other good info on the link.\n\nThe first two answers look at the speeds of sound and light, which are not related to the speeds at which you brain processes a stimulus upon the arrival of the stimulus to the sensory organ.  The previous answer (from evilfiremonk) which states that neurons are all the same is dead wrong.  The speed of impulse propagation depends on the size of the neuron, the myelination (or lack thereof), the number of synapses and the types of synapses between the source and endpoint, and the directness of the pathway to the decision centers of the brain, and over-all path length will result affect the total time for a signal to reach its destination.
911033
No.  Nothing goes faster than the speed of light.
340667
Again, the speed of light is a constant!  It does not increase in speed of the flashlight is moving really fast.  Its' like sound, sound goes 700mph in air at sea level.  If the plane goes faster than that it catches the sound, the sound doesn't go faster in front of the plane.  Same with light. Same with the opposite direction.
871688
Sound travels faster than light. Many people believe the opposite is true, citing as evidence the fact that there is a delay between when you see something far away and when you hear the sound it produces (fireworks, someone hitting a baseball, etc.). Though the sound reaches your ears before the light reaches your eyes, it takes your brain longer to process aural input, while it can process visual input almost instantaneously.
690272
You will find the formula you need just over half way down the page:\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound\n\nI get speed of sound is 4 x faster in oxygen than hydrogen (1/sqrt16)
38745
I'm pretty sure that the red light would go faster than the blue.\n\nThe speed of light is NOT constant.  It is only constant in a vacuum.  In other media, the speed is retarded.  The refractive index is a measure of the degree to which light is slowed when it enters a non-vacuum medium.  The more light is refracted, the more it is being slowed by the medium.  Since red light is refracted the least, I think that's indicative of red light being least slowed by the medium transition.