Why is light so slow? The speed of light (c) is the "speed limit," but light is not even fast. It takes light over five minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth, and they are practically point blank range when you consider the size of the universe. Why is that the fastest speed? How does light speed relate to the size of the universe? I would figure the fastest speed would be traveling from one end of the universe to the other in the smallest unit of time. But it seems like the fastest speed is a lot slower than that. If you design a video game, ideally you would want the player to be able to reach anywhere on the game's map. But in real life, it's actually not possible for an object to traverse the entire universe because the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light can keep up with. Assuming we are the primary race in the universe and we are not just unimportant NPCs, it's more grim for us. Because the closest star system with planets, besides our own is Alpha Centauri. But it takes light 4.3 years to travel from our star system to Alpha Centauri. And our Sun is going to expand and annihilate itself in about 5 billion years. Even if we were going at the fastest possible speed, which we can't get anywhere near it, it would take us over 4 years just to get to Alpha Centauri. How are we even supposed to escape our solar system before the Sun kills us all at this rate? If that's the fastest we can really go? You expect us to survive on a ship for over 4 years traveling at the fastest possible speed just to reach the nearest solar system besides our own? Lol.