[extropy-chat] HISTORY: Solved & Unsolved Riddles

[The Avantguardian]

Max M <maxm at mail.tele.dk> wrote:


And another one in the same family:

Why is there a limit on the speed of light?


*The physics of Special Relativity seem to suggest that it is because you, the observer, are not going the speed of light. It has to do with the higher than 3-dimensionality of space-time. Only if you are going slower than light does light seem to travel at finite speed. In other words, if you could ride along with a photon at the speed of light, from your perspective the Fitzgerald contraction would shrink the universe in your direction of travel to 0 length. More-over time would stop flowing for you. Thus you would be at all points along your vector of travel at once and not take any time to do it in. From your perspective riding along at c, you would be everywhere along the infinite path at once with no time lapse at all. Thus light travels at infinite velocity in its own inertial frame. It is only when someone outside of the photon's inertial reference frame that light has a high yet finite velocity. Unfortunately this always the case since all observers that I can be certain
 exist have mass and massive observers cannot travel at the speed of light. Then again, many theologians claim that God is eternal and omnipresent. Perhaps He is electromagnetic radiation or a massless observer traveling at c. I don't think that adequately answered your question but I know it has something to do with the percieved passage of liminal time. In other words the fact that we can observe that light takes time to cross a gap follows from the fact that we as observers are able to percieve the passage of time.*    


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The Avantguardian 


"He stands like some sort of pagan god or deposed tyrant. Staring out over the city he's sworn to . . .to stare out over and it's evident just by looking at him that he's got some pretty heavy things on his mind."

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