RE: MAGNUM MYSTERIUM

[logiczombie]

We can measure the speed of light.

This is well documented and easily verifiable (radio signal delay/triangulation).

The accuracy of that measurement may vary, but nobody thinks it's anything other than "really really fast".

Please explain what you mean by "speed" and "light" if you would like to propose alternative definitions.

Comments

[oldoneeye]

I am a bit pressed for time so I will just link you to a source to consider, which I consider. It should answer.

Q: Why is the supposed limiting speed of light considered an important issue?
A: Because the whole theory of relativity rests on this idea; relativity was an attempt to reconcile the idea of light speed as a limit with what were regarded in the 19th century as the laws of physics. Consequently, if the idea proves false, the whole theory of relativity is put in doubt.

"Everyone knows, or at least believes, that nothing can travel faster than light. How did this idea originate? The point to grasp is that ordinary physical objects are subject to air resistance even at relatively quite slow velocities, for example, those of bullets. It was found at the end of the nineteenth century—when vacuum technology was good enough—that submicroscopic particles travelled much faster than any normal man-made objects. So experiments on particles were necessarily confined to electrons and other emissions believed to be small particles.

The question then is: how are such particles accelerated? In some way, energy has to be put into them; and in practice this is done electronically, typically by electromagnets, as in a cyclotron. This is the only controlled way to make the things really move.

So we have a situation in which (say) a charged electron is made to accelerate by applying a charge, which is supposed to repel or attract it, depending on whether it's negative or positive. When such experiments were carried out, and relying on estimates of the mass of an electron derived from Millikan's oil drop experiment, it was found that, as more energy was put in, the electron's speed increased, but not as much as would be expected. So it must be getting heavier! And moreover the limit was the speed of light!

Sadly, there appears to be a defect in reasoning here, pointed out by Phil Holland. [Though I don't know if this argument is original with him—RW.] The point is that electromagnetic radiation itself has a velocity, namely the speed of light in the medium it's travelling in. Since energy can be transferred to an electron, presumably, only when a wave of energy catches up with it, obviously it's impossible for the electron to ever reach the speed of the wave influencing it.

If you can't see this immediately, consider these everyday models of the situation, which I've tried to make as varied as possible to get the point across.

1. Imagine a wave-making machine in a swimming-pool, and a floating toy boat which is pushed along by the waves. However big the waves are, the boat won't go faster than these waves.
2. Or consider a boy throwing stones, every second, at the same speed, at a floating piece of wood; however heavy the stones, the piece of wood will never travel faster than the stones. (Or at any rate once it travels faster than the stones, the stones can't catch up with it). But nobody would imagine the piece of wood must be getting heavier as it picks up speed, because it moves less when it's hit.
3. Or imagine a children's roundabout, the sort turned by hand. If an adult regularly swings his arm to turn the roundabout, as it approaches the rate the arm's swinging at, will never speed up beyond the velocity of the arm.

It seems physicists, looking at electrons and measuring their speeds as they vary with energy, ignore this simple fact. They interpret the result as the particle getting heavier, with limiting speed that of light, without realising that the limit is imposed by their equipment. They assume in one part of their minds that electromagnetism travels at infinite speed."

https://www.big-lies.org/modern-physics-a-fraud/modern-physics.html

[logiczombie]

...relativity was an attempt to reconcile the idea of light speed as a limit with what were regarded in the 19th century as the laws of physics.

This is a slight oversimplification.

Nobody was trying to "set a speed limit".

SPACE = TIME = SPACETIME

Light has special properties (apparently mass-less observable particles) and it is apparently the fastest "thing" we can currently observe.

I still don't understand what point you're trying to make here.

[oldoneeye]

I still don't understand what point you're trying to make here.

Then we have reached the limit on this one.

[logiczombie]

I appreciate your herculean efforts.

[oldoneeye]

Thanks.