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 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.
For all the wonderful writers contributing to this shared-world anthology, it really reads like so many extra yards of the Jerry Cornelius novels. The best writing is by Hilary Bailey, who turned a lovely sentence.