Remember that leds are not the same as your normal light bulbs as they do not heat up filament to produce light. LED's are diodes, light emiting diodes . Diodes restrict current flow basicly to one direction. What makes LEDs neat is that light is produced as current flows through them. Basicly LEDs are made with two types of semiconductor material. One that has some extra electrons and another that is lacking. When the electron is pushed acrossed from the donor to the recieving material a photon of light is produced. So as you can see they operate quite a bit differently than a normal incadescent bulb... and a long life is not uncommon.