Another day of being annoyed that my lifelong quest to understand why “c” is the speed it is and not some other speed ending up at the fine structure constant and physicists saying 🤷 at why the fine structure constant is what it is.
@jerry What if it's because c is what it is, and would look the same regardless, so it's just that everything else would look different, relative to c, if c were changed?
After all, we technically define the concept of "meters" and "seconds" such that it's always 300,000 of one to the other. We're all just light's dreams, passing it in a flash in the night.
@jerry lots of physicists actually set c=1 usually. The value is based on the units we use, so it's because of what we decided the length of the meter and second are.
It's very unsatisfying to say "because there's 8.5 minutes of space there" but if there were only 7 minutes of space there the orbits of Venus, Earth, and Mars only work gravitationally if the masses changed to suit.
In my (quite limited) understanding, a different value of c we would have different values of space where the stuff in the solar system worked. It measures the scale of things, we just interpret it as the speed. It's a relationship the way Pi is a relationship.
While I’ve always viewed the Anthropic Universe argument as a bit of a cop-out, it is at least (more or less) tautologically true: if it were anything different, you wouldn’t be here to be asking that question.
(I hope that there’s some sort of afterlife because if I die and never find out the answer I will be very cross in my non-existence.)
@EVDHmn to be specific, there is some fundamental aspect of the universe/spacetime that results in c being ~300000km/s, but my question is why 300000? Why not 350000? Or 100000?
@jerry@EVDHmnc is "100%", and our arbitrary measurements of km/h or mph obviously divide into c at some arbitrary ratio. From what I understand, there's a inverse non-linear relationship between speed through space and speed through time. c is 100% speed, 0% time.
You can apply a specific amount of energy towards speeds.
Speed through time.
Speed through space.
Applying 100% of your speed through space means you are traveling 0% through time. A photon doesn't see themselves moving, but everything is passing it by from their perspective.
Applying 100% of your speed through time means you are not moving through space. The same photon is not moving through space, because it's applying 100% of its energy to flying through time.
Let that conundrum sink in a bit lol
You cannot, having mass, apply 100% energy to either. You need an infinite amount of energy to do so, because you have mass.
A black hole is a singularity of infinite curvature in both space and time. You can't, even at the maximum speed allowable in existence, escape that curvature. You will meet the singularity, regardless of traveling at 100% c, once you cross close enough to the singularity. (the event horizon)
Having mass curves space, and thus time; so having more of it requires more energy and speed to escape that curvature. The more speed you have is warping space and time around you. You can never travel the speed of light.
Everything you think about goes right back to the universal constant, every time lol
@NosirrahSec@Sidneys1@EVDHmn I am well versed in these aspects of physics. My question is different. Light does not travel infinitely fast. We know, for example, it takes ~8.5 minutes for light to get from the sun to the earth. My question is why not 1 minute? Or 10 minutes? Or any other amount of time. All of my investigation into this leads back to the fine structure constant, which is basically the current end of the road for that question. Why is the fine structure constant what it is? No one knows and that is unsatisfying. I feel pretty sure that, at some point, we will understand.
@jerry@NosirrahSec@Sidneys1@EVDHmn well, considering that some physicists in EU suggest that the fine structure constant actually needs an added variable, your premise is not that far off in the ask; the problem is the variable is increasing, so that time function wouldn't shorten but only get longer.
@jerry@NosirrahSec@Sidneys1@EVDHmn no, it's accounting for rate of expansion, it only matters in extreme distances like between star systems, in our little corner of the universe it's infinitessimally negligable.
@jerry Having recently been read Max Tegmark's 2014 "Our Mathematical Universe", I strongly recommend it - not just for Max's fascinating perspective on the larger question, but for getting the reader (listener) to the point to be able to understand it. Your library system probably has a few copies.
Fifteen hours at 3× is "only" five hours.
From the frame of reference of massless particles such as the photon, there is no time. They experience every moment from the beginning to the end of their universe simultaneously. Consequently they can listen to audiobooks at any playback speed.
@mattlehrer@EVDHmn I just bought that audio book with some expiring credits. I am looking forward to reading it. I read A Brief History of Time when it first came out (while I was in high school) and honestly it was that book which put me onto this nonsense
@jerry@mattlehrer
I loved them all so much I read all of hawkings books, I had to reread them and study physics as I read tho.. I even read the graphic novel and his protégés book. I think I read general relativity and special relativity as a teenager and fell 🥰
@jerry@mattlehrer@EVDHmn that book turned me into a physics obsessed nerd. I didn't know at the time how big of an influence that book would have on me.