How did scientists discover the speed of light?
sometimes the best brains make a mistake. early astronomers thought that light whisked across space in no time at all, but the great Galileo decided to check this theory. He tried to time the speed of lantern signals betWeen two hilltops and concluded that light does indeed travel instantaneously Most of Galileo’s astounding observations were accurate. But he was wrong when he decided that light whisked across space in no time at all. One of his accurate observations about the speed of light later was proved wrong. He spotted the four largest moons of Jupiter, and later observers studied the time it took them to circle the big planet. The figures varied because Jupiter’s distance from us varies. Olaus Romer; a Danish scientist working in Paris, used these variations to figure the time it takes light to reach us from the sun. His answer was 600 seconds which was about 90 ‘ seconds too slow. The job of figuring the speed of light perhaps never can be done with perfect accuracy. But after
