I recall an instance where Frieza trapped Goku in a Ball of light and Goku was quick enough to escape it the instant it exploded.

Is this a Light speed feat?

Kind of.

Well, Piccolo mentioned that he escaped the "paralyzing light" the instant it exploded, so I would say yes to some degree since he escaped it after it exploded and not before.

@beast_mode999: it's not. he escaped the explosion which only means that after he was released from the light but yet it is very impressive since he escaped after the explosion went off and i would like to compare it to a nuclear explosion that can travel 100 feet in 0.001 second and goku is trapped in a 1 meter ball or 3.2 feet. and a nuke's speed decreases 25x every time the explosion triples so if we reverse it and putting the idea that goku outran the explosion in 1 meter. so going by this logic the blast would have covered the 1m radius in about 0.89 Microsecond of speed close to 1,156,250 m/s or mach 3,400 or 0.4% the speed of light.

Goku was consistently faster than light as a kid. If anything Freeza's light ball even being a threat is a low-end showing.

@zoldycklogic: why are you using a nuclear explosion as a base for comparison?

Escaping an explosion =/= light speed.

Would you mind elaborating?

@skrskr: well for starters the explosion resembles that of a nuke a little and Goku told frieza that he should be more careful with other people's planets so i guess it's at least a really dangerous nuke. although we have no idea how fast are DBZ explosions but i am saying that it is at least as fast as a nuke and can be much faster so 0.4% of speed of light is the minimum speed that goku could have used.

@zoldycklogic: fair enough

If this were a nuke, Goku would have had to have escaped the 20 million kelvin heat in the form of electromagnetic radiation, and the gamma rays. This would definitely have been a FTL feat.

But Goku only escapes the explosion. I think comparing it to the power of a nuke is a good comparison because it doesn't explode like a conventional explosive. This is what a nuke looks like before it's heat causes a fireball and mushroom cloud:

Remarkably similar to Ki blast explosions like Frieza's light ball of death:

There are pictures around the internet that show pictures of various nuke tests after 0.001s with a camera that has a 10 nanosecond exposure. From the pictures, and the size of the explosion after 1 millisecond compared against the known height of the tower holding the nuke, the explosions were measured to have a 100ft diameter (15.24m radius) at 0.001s, and later a 300ft diameter (45.72m radius) at 0.026s after ignition. These times and distances suggest that the speed of the explosive ball does not drop linearly and must follow some kind of inverse square law.

I've not been able to figure it out what the speed of the blast would be at the moment of ignition from what appears to be something like a 1m radius ball, given that Goku is 1.75m tall, and I've not been able to find a detonation speed anywhere either, except for one comment on a question site stating that they are all over 50,000m/s (111,847mph) and depends on yield.

Ignoring the radiation, fireball, mushroom cloud and shockwave of a nuke, when you take the actual nuclear explosion itself, the energy it has, how it appears and how it vaporises matter and ignore all the aforementioned by-products, a nuclear and ki blast explosion are both very similar. So I think it's a good idea to compare the two.

If you look at 15.24m radius in 0.001 seconds and 45.72m radius in 0.026s, you could suggest that every time the time increases by 26x, the radius increases by 3x. This is a very rough approximation, but it suggests that the blast reaches 5.08m in 0.000038s and 1.69m in 0.00000148s.

If you adapt this to this blast and assume a 1m radius ball, that means Frieza's blast could have travelled its first 0.69m in 1.48micro-seconds, a speed of 466,440m/s, which is 1,043,399mph.

So if you were to accept this comparison between ki and nuclear explosions, Goku's speed burst to get out of this situation exceeds a value probably between 111,847mph and 1,043,399mph.

LOL hope that helps

It just means he can go faster than an explosion.