Map Monday, speed limits across the globe

Speed limits seem to be the universal constraint to modern life.  Despite medical advances that have extended life into an eighth decade in the most developed countries there’s never enough time to do what must be done.  As a consequence everything must be done faster and faster so you can do it all.  If we could only do something faster we would be happier.  Want to improve your life online, get a guaranteed 6 megabit internet connection.  Can’t wait three days for your retailer to deliver products pay more for next day service.  As a recently certified old man I can remember when 64 Kilobytes was a fast internet connection and waiting weeks for catalog orders to arrive.

While the online world features the greatest changes, other aspects of our lives are accelerating as well.  Want to watch more TV?  DVR shows and skip those time-wasting commercials.  Don’t have time to prepare a home-cooked meal?  Buy a ready-to-cook one from Wegmans.  With more distributed families personal contact time (as opposed to digital time) requires more travel.  No aspect of travel escapes the need for speed.  Airports strive to streamline the check-in process.  Advocates for passenger rail are pressing for high-speed rail corridors.  In a previous Map Monday post I blogged about the promise of Elon Musk’s hyperloop technology.  Even the old stand-by of driving is getting faster.

Safer more fuel-efficient vehicles have encouraged states to raise their speed limits.  Every state in the US allows speeds of at least 65 miles/hour (105 kph) on major highways. After more than 30 years, Sammy Hagar can finally get his car out of second gear.  Warning clicking the previous link will send you to a classic (cheesy?) 1980s music video.

Now here’s today’s map which features the speed limits around the world (courtesy Wikipedia).

One speed limit that can’t be raised is the speed of light.  In a vacuum it’s 186,282 miles/second (299,792.458 Km/sec).

Interesting facts about the speed of light (courtesy Wikipedia)

1. It takes sunlight 8 minutes and 19 seconds to reach the Earth
2. In air light travels slower by approximately 56 miles/second (90 Km/s)
3. Light reaches geostationary satellites in ~119 milliseconds
4. The moon is ~1.3 light seconds from the Earth
5. The speed of light in optical fibers is ~35% slower than in a vacuum
6. The round trip communication time from Earth to Mars varies from 10 to 40 minutes
7. Light from the closest discovered exoplanet orbiting Proxima Centauri takes 4.2 years to travel ~24.692 Trillion miles
8. Ole Christensen Romer was the first to calculate a finite value for the speed of light.  He was ~26% too slow.
9. The speed limit of light impacts the placement of processors in supercomputers
10. As objects approach the speed of light time slows down and they become shorter in the direction of movement

As always thanks for reading.

Armen