I’m in California and I was texting my brother in the Middle East with no delay (both using iMessage.)
How is this possible?
Concise_Pirate: They are just bits of data sent over the Internet. They arrive the same way a page of reddit arrives at your phone — which for most people happens in about a second.
dkf295: They’re traveling at roughly the speed of light (with overhead/delays at various points along the way but less than a millisecond each, generally). The circumference of the earth is 24,901 miles. Half of that is 12450.5 miles. The speed of light is 186,282 miles/second. Most of the delay generally will be on the first and last ‘hops’ along the way.
RestarttGaming: Light is really fast.
The speed of light is 300 million meters per second. The diameter of the earth is about 12.7 million meters, so the circumference of the earth is 3.14 times that. The farthest spot away from you, over the surface, is half of the circumference.
Doing the math, light travels that distance in about 0.07 seconds.
Maybe add a fraction of a second for a non straight path or routing, but you’re still at a quarter of a second or less
Whaddaya Say?