"And if you feel that you can't go on
 And your will's sinkin' low
 Just believe, and you can't go wrong
 In the light, you will find the road"
— Led Zeppelin

I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I thought I'd cover the exhibit elements, one at a time, over the next few months. I started small and am working my way up.

10¹⁰ MAGNITUDE
10,000,000,000 m
10 Million Kilometers

Distance Light Travels in 34 Seconds

10 Million Kilometers

In the time it takes you to read this (about half a minute), light will have traveled around 10 million kilometers. Makes you sound like a really slow reader. The speed of light in a vacuum (c in E=mc²) is 299,792,458 meters per second.

While light seems to move instantaneously, its speed is noticeable when dealing with huge distances. It can take anywhere from minutes to hours for messages to get from Earth to a distant spacecraft or vice versa. The light we see from stars today left them years ago (in some cases thousands of years or more), allowing us to study the universe’s history by looking at distant objects.

"The night is clear
 When the stars appear
 I recite their names
 The farthest lights
 Only now arrive
 Wonder how they've changed?

 The stars appeared
 But they're always there
 Up above the day
 The farthest lights
 Take us back in time
 Wonder how they've changed?"
— Freedy Johnson

"Light, light, light. In the light. Everybody needs the light." — Led Zeppelin

Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.

Previous posts on this topic include:

• 10^-15 Protons and Neutrons
• 10^-14 Atomic Nucleus of a Uranium Atom
• 10^-13 Nada, Zilch, Zero, Zip
• 10^-12 Gamma Rays
• 10^-11 Fluorine Ion
• 10^-10 Wavelength of Hard X-Rays
• 10^-9 Carbon Nanotubes
• 10^-8 Molecular Transport Nano Robot
• 10^-7 HIV Virus
• 10^-6 Red Blood Cells
• 10^-5 Sand
• 10^-4 Microelectromechanical Systems
• 10^-3 Sonata Silicium Watch Components
• 10^-2 Lego
• 10^-1 Prosthetic Fairing
• 10⁰ Biome Concept Car
• 10¹ Ma'erkang Housing Reconstruction
• 10² Shanghai Tower
• 10³ Bay Bridge
• 10⁴ Masdar City
• 10⁵ Palm Islands
• 10⁶ The Moon
• 10⁷ Earth
• 10⁸ Jupiter
• 10⁹ The Sun

Future blog posts will cover:

• 10¹¹ Distance from Jupiter to the Sun
• 10¹² Distance from Pluto to the Sun
• 10¹³ Voyager 2
• 10¹⁴ The Solar System
• 10¹⁵ Cat's Eye Nebula
• 10¹⁶ Pillars of Creation
• 10¹⁷ Great Orion Nebula
• 10¹⁸ M15 Globular Cluster
• 10¹⁹ Sagitarius Dwarf Galaxy
• 10²⁰ Trangulum Galaxy
• 10²¹ The Milky Way
• 10²² IC 1101
• 10²³ Local Group of Galaxies
• 10²⁴ The Local Supercluster
• 10²⁵ 3C 273
• 10²⁶ Outer Limit of the Universe

Measurement is alive in the lab.