* Mach number: Represents the ratio of an object's speed to the speed of sound in a specific medium (usually air).
* Speed of light: A fundamental constant in physics, approximately 299,792,458 meters per second.
The problem: The speed of light is vastly greater than the speed of sound. Even at the highest Mach numbers attainable, the speed of sound is still a tiny fraction of the speed of light.
Think of it this way:
* Mach 1 is the speed of sound, around 343 meters per second.
* The speed of light is roughly 874,000 times faster than Mach 1.
Therefore, expressing the speed of light in Mach numbers would require an extremely large and impractical number.
