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Why do orchestras need conductors?

There are various reasons, of course, but here at 0:26 Adam Neely suggests one I hadn't thought about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHoljbkyAEs

The speed of light is faster than the speed of sound!

For a large orchestra it can take 0.1 seconds for sound to make a round trip between two performers... and that's a huge amount of time in music. So, get them synched up using light signals instead!