MadSci Network: Astronomy
Query:

Re: WHY does light travel so fast?

Date: Thu Nov 8 15:48:34 2001
Posted By: Ken Rines, Grad student, Astronomy, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Area of science: Astronomy
ID: 1004828486.As
Message:

This is one of the frustrating aspects of science. Science tends to be wonderful at answering how the universe works, but is much less successful at answering why it works the way it does. There are a couple of perspectives on why light travels at 300000 km per second. One is that it is just a random accident and that the speed of light could be much faster or much slower, but was set that way in the big bang. Another is that there are fundamental physical theories which force the speed of light to have a particular value. Some scientists phrase this idea as "How much choice did God have in creating the Universe?".

Einstein figured out that the constancy of the speed of light is a fundamental property of the universe and has important consequences for the nature of space and time. This is where the theory of special relativity originated, and it produces bizarre effects when objects move close to the speed of light. Check out the two fiction books below for an entertaining discussion of how these effects would appear if the speed of light were much smaller than it is.

Gamow, George. Mr. Tompkins in Paperback
Lightman, Alan. Einstein's Dreams


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