There was a very minor storm today, involving a bolt of lightning and a rumble of thunder several seconds apart. I proudly informed our guests that the amount of seconds between the two indicates the proximity of the storm, thinking that nobody knew this. They all knew, and to add insult to injury, didn't believe it was true. Wikipedia is on my side, however, explaining that a 5 second gap between the two means that the lightning is one mile away. Sound takes about 5 seconds to travel one mile - in that time, light can go round the world 37 times. Just smile and nod. The very concept of light having a speed makes my head swim anyway. It's speed is, of course, fast beyond the realms of understanding - almost as fast, in fact, as Hasselhoff drives in pursuit of crooks on Knight Rider. What a guy.
The speed of light is approximately 300 million metres per second.
Now I know I have to be able to understand the facts that I put in bold and make all official, so Wikipedia has obliged by informing me that it takes light 1.5 seconds to travel from the Earth to the Moon, which in all honesty sounds disappointingly slow to me. Incidentally, with reference to the title, 'thunderbolts' are lightning and thunder together, which means that Queen effectively sang 'lightning and lightning'. It's hardly the worst thing Queen ever did, but I feel it's necessary to pull them up on it.
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