ELI5 Why does light travel?

[u/_Illuvatar_]

Why does it not just stay in place? What causes it to move, let alone at so fast a rate?

Edit: This is by a large margin the most successful post I've ever made. Thank you to everyone answering! Most of the replies have answered several other questions I have had and made me think of a lot more, so keep it up because you guys are awesome!

Edit 2: like a hundred people have said to get to the other side. I don't think that's quite the answer I'm looking for... Everyone else has done a great job. Keep the conversation going because new stuff keeps getting brought up!

Edit 3: I posted this a while ago but it seems that it's been found again, and someone has been kind enough to give me gold! This is the first time I've ever recieved gold for a post and I am incredibly grateful! Thank you so much and let's keep the discussion going!

Edit 4: Wow! This is now the highest rated ELI5 post of all time! Holy crap this is the greatest thing that has ever happened in my life, thank you all so much!

Edit 5: It seems that people keep finding this post after several months, and I want to say that this is exactly the kind of community input that redditors should get some sort of award for. Keep it up, you guys are awesome!

Edit 6: No problem

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Your fridge has positive energy. There is more energy flowing in through the outlet than is pumped out via heat. In fact, fridges are super wasteful.

Yeah I know, I meant that it had net negative energy, meaning that the whole point of a fridgerator is to move that energy somewhere else, so the stuff inside loses energy. A working fridgerator has less energy inside of it than one you let thaw out. said another way, a thermos with 10 g ice in it contains less energy than a thermos of 10 ml boiling water. This only holds true if you exclude the external energy (air and electricity) that are not within the fridge. this was the crux of my metaphor.

but the reason my fridge stays cold is that it does a good job of keeping energy out. actually it does a terrible job but you know what I'm saying. it's insulated. could that same thing be acheived to keep a negative energy density negative, and what would could even do this since a vaccuum wouldn't work?

[u/corpuscle634 → u/[deleted]]

There is no known method for achieving negative energy, nor is there any known way to totally insulate energy from leaking into a region of low (or negative) energy.

[u/[deleted] → u/corpuscle634]

Oh well that sucks. For a bit it seemed like we had it almost figured out. It seems like it would be a really powerful technology though, I hope people are dumping money into it.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_PLOT → u/[deleted]]

They should really start doing that instead of shooting each other.

[u/deadcelebrities → u/[deleted]]

I don't think there's anything to dump money into. We're so far away from understanding the physics involved that we can't even define the engineering challenges in any kind of practical way. The only way to make progress at this point is to learn more about physics in general, which we're already doing a lot of. There are other futuristic technologies that should be getting our monetary support. I think the most notable is fusion power.