• Question: What is the speed of darkness, and can it be calculated?

    Asked by iamsatan to Amanda, Ben, Dan, Gary, Samer on 24 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Ben Drumm

      Ben Drumm answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      I’m not a physicist, I could end up looking stupid here… this is my understanding…!

      Darkness is the absence of light (i.e. there’s no ‘darkness’ particle, whereas there is a light one – a photon).

      As such darkness doesn’t really have a ‘speed’ – it’s just what’s left behind in the absence of light…!

      :s

    • Photo: Dan Weatherill

      Dan Weatherill answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      “darkness” is just the absence of light. So the speeds must be equal, in a vacuum: 3×10^8 m s^-1,
      imagine if that weren’t the case:
      there would have to be some in-between stage of dark and light where one hadn’t caught up the other yet.

    • Photo: Gary Boorman

      Gary Boorman answered on 24 Jun 2013:

      As light is travelling forward, then the darkness must be travelling backwards at the same rate. Therefore I would say that the speed of darkness is -3×10^8 m/s.
      Has anybody asked Justin Hawkins how fast the Darkness is?

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