We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe by Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson

Author:Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson [Cham, Jorge]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2017-05-16T04:00:00+00:00

Right now we have no idea why the speed limit is what it is. But we can speculate about different possibilities.

It could be that this is the only possible value and that the speed of light reveals something deep about the nature of the universe and space-time. For example, if space-time is actually quantized, then maybe the speed of light comes out of the way that information is transmitted between adjacent nodes of space-time. In the strings of a guitar, the speed of the waves along the string is determined by the thickness of the wire and the tension on the string. Something similar to that could be what determines the speed of light.

Or perhaps one day we’ll come up with a unified theory of space-time that makes it obvious why light and information have to propagate at a certain speed, and all questions will be answered. But right now that seems about as likely as your pets preparing dinner for you.

On the other hand, it could be that the universe can have any value of the speed of light between (but not including) zero and infinity. Zero would correspond to a noninteracting universe and infinity to a nonlocal universe. If the universe could have had any value for the speed limit, how did this one get chosen? We seriously have no idea, and anyone who tells you that they do is either a time-traveling physicist from the future or has serious delusions of grandeur. Either way, do not ask them to watch your pets for you.

Maybe the speed of light is a local law of physics, not a universal one, which is valid in our part of the universe because of the way space-time congealed after the Big Bang ended. Perhaps in each region of the universe the speed of light is determined by random quantum mechanical processes. That would suggest that there are other parts of the universe with widely varying values of the speed of light. None of this even meets the standard of a complete idea, not to mention a testable scientific hypothesis. But it’s fun to think about.

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