Mindblowing video shows what it looks like to circle Earth at the speed of light

Unlike "Star Wars" hyperdrive, where starships zip through hyperspace faster than light, in reality, light is the fastest thing known to science. Moving at a mind-blowing 186,000 miles per second (or 300,000 kilometers per second), light can travel from Earth to the Moon in mere moments. But how long would it take for light to circle Earth’s 24,901-mile circumference? In a 2022 video, YouTuber @airplanemode101 used a simulation to show that light would take just 0.13 seconds to do so. The eye-opening video has garnered over 25 million views.

The 2-minute video begins with fast-paced dolly shots of a landscape, giving viewers a sense of how light might travel across Earth. But the creator quickly notes that even this isn't close to the true speed of light. To drive the point home, they reveal that light moves so quickly it would take just 8 frames to show it racing around the entire planet.

The artist then broke down the entire journey frame by frame. The video depicts New York as the starting point of the journey, as it moves in a southwesterly direction. The first two frames are of the Pacific Ocean, followed by Brisbane, Australia in the third frame. After this, two frames of the Indian Ocean appear, followed by one frame of Saudi Arabia and one frame of Zimbabwe before the journey comes to an end in New York. The YouTuber also shared the trajectory that the light would follow to circle planet Earth completely.

Nearly 24,000 people commented on the video. While many people came up with imaginary scenarios about how fast light travels, others pointed out various perspectives that they derived from this simulation. “The fact that the Pacific Ocean took 2 frames tells a lot about how massive that thing is,” commented @siddharthsr1. @kalemulnix7875 reflected how big the universe is, “It’s insane to imagine that even if we could travel at light speed, it would not be fast enough to explore much. In fact, it would still take over 2.5 million years to get to the closest galaxy outside of the Milky Way.”

@JohanLGT shared another theory about how the speed of light would look on Earth. “The colors,” they said, “would change.” The user said that traveling at such a speed would cause the light coming from the front to hit you with a lot more energy and cause a strong blueshift, and colors like violet and blue would become invisible. “And if you look back, you would barely see anything, because the wavelength of the light that's coming for you from behind is now way bigger and would have a deep redshift. It's just like the Doppler effect, but with light,” they explained. Reflecting on the speed of light, @gewfhrefnjkr3724 said, “When you take this into consideration. It really is crazy to think it takes approx 8 minutes for the light from the Sun to reach Earth. Space truly is uncomprehendingly massive.”