Eyewitness:
"I didn't hear an explosion at first when I saw the metal fall. I heard an explosion about a minute and a half later," she said. The engine came away before the explosion
How far away was the eyewitness? Light travels faster than sound.
- Speed of light: Approximately instantaneous.
- Speed of sound: Approximately 760mph at 55 degrees F = 12 1/3 miles per minute
(depends on temperature, slower if colder).
So that if the eyewitness was 12 1/3 * 1.5 = 19 miles away, this is consistent with the explosion happening
when the engine fell off. Call it 20 miles, and the explosion could have happened a bit before.
Speed of light: Approximately instantaneous.Instantaneous is inifinite distance per second. The speed of light doesn't come anywhere near that. Of course, relative to sound, it is orders of magnitude faster.
But, considering that we measure the distance of the Sun from the Earth in terms of light years, it's not really accurate to approximate the speed of light as "instantaneous."