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To help compare different orders of magnitude, the following list describes various speed levels between approximately 2.2 × 10 −18 m/s and 3.0 × 10 8 m/s (the speed of light). Values in bold are exact.
The fastest possible speed at which energy or information can travel, according to special relativity, is the speed of light in vacuum c = 299 792 458 metres per second (approximately 1 079 000 000 km/h or 671 000 000 mph).
The formula defines the energy E of a particle in its rest frame as the product of mass (m) with the speed of light squared (c 2). Because the speed of light is a large number in everyday units (approximately 300 000 km/s or 186 000 mi/s), the formula implies that a small amount of mass corresponds to an enormous amount of energy.
Calculating the Minkowski norm squared of the four-momentum gives a Lorentz invariant quantity equal (up to factors of the speed of light c) to the square of the particle's proper mass: = = = + | | = where = is the metric tensor of special relativity with metric signature for definiteness chosen to be (–1, 1, 1, 1).
The speed of light in vacuum, commonly denoted c, is a universal physical constant that is exactly equal to 299,792,458 metres per second (approximately 300,000 kilometres per second; 186,000 miles per second; 671 million miles per hour).
The SI has special names for 22 of these coherent derived units (for example, hertz, the SI unit of measurement of frequency), but the rest merely reflect their derivation: for example, the square metre (m 2), the SI derived unit of area; and the kilogram per cubic metre (kg/m 3 or kg⋅m −3), the SI derived unit of density.
V⋅m kg⋅m 3 ⋅s −3 ⋅A −1: E electric field strength volt per metre: V/m = N/C kg⋅m⋅A −1 ⋅s −3: D electric displacement field: coulomb per square metre: C/m 2: A⋅s⋅m −2: ε permittivity: farad per metre: F/m kg −1 ⋅m −3 ⋅A 2 ⋅s 4: χ e electric susceptibility (dimensionless) 1 1 p electric dipole moment ...
M 2 is useful because it reflects how well a collimated laser beam can be focused to a small spot, or how well a divergent laser source can be collimated. It is a better guide to beam quality than Gaussian appearance because there are many cases in which a beam can look Gaussian, yet have an M 2 value far from unity. [1]