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Doppler Effect
(xkcd.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2024
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Red is the fastest color in the visible light spectrum, and violet is the slowest. A cool use of this phenomenon is lightning strike camera triggers. It senses the invisible infra-red light, which hits the sensor before visible light, and takes the picture just in time to capture the lightning strike.
Edit: This is only true when traveling through atmosphere. As pointed out below, light travels at uniform speed through a vacuum.
Also, the comic is referring to the Doppler Effect, which is caused by an object in motion, having nothing to do with light spectrum speed through atmosphere. My bad.
This does not seem correct at all… as the comic states, it’s caused by the Doppler effect, not because red is the “fastest” light wavelength—it’s light it all travels at the same speed in a vacuum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift
I don’t know about lightning photography, I suppose it’s possible that different wavelengths have different speeds in air, so I can’t comment on that.
Could this be because space isn't a true vacuum? There's pockets of gas and crap, which could affect the speed of the light as it travels to us?