Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Speed of Light and Does Anyone Really Know What Time It Is

The speed of light is an expression based on the International standard for time and the result is about 300,000 kilometers per second.

E=MC

That's the original Big Bang Theory because it's Mass times the Speed of Light Squared or, loosely, 300,000 km/s with five more zeroes for an astonishingly large number.  That sum is the Energy of the Big, Big Bang of an atomic explosion.


Time is fundamental to the Physicist's Atheism because that view, generally, is Time began with the Big Bang for the Universe and, through complex gyrations in mathematics, Time loops back to itself so there is no actual beginning nor end.  That's an extremely loose view of it but that's not important because we will shred it anyway.


There are multiple research teams studying galactic motion in the Universe and have come to the conclusion of external influences on this Universe, presumably from other Universes.  This is not to say they are correct as we don't presume to have the qualification to make that judgment but we observe the hypothesis exists.


If other Universes exist then there's a bit of a cramp in the Physicist's Atheism because that makes Time continuous even if not all Universes are there to present it any given moment.  For example, Universe A begins, grows, and blows up.  Somewhere during that evolution, Universe B got into it and, relative to A, it starts later and blows up later.

If there are C, D, ... Z Universes, that presents a continuum rather than a self-contained, localized thing with any given Universe.

It seems the only other option is for the speed of light to vary from one Universe to the other and good science demands that consideration ... except it makes most of Physics fall apart.


So, what will you do, Grand Philosophical Wizard of the Ages.

Perhaps you postulate the good Lord creating Universes much like throwing another shrimp on the barbie or everything is predictable with a reasonably good knowledge of statistics and probability.


Of one thing we're sure, if you come away from the idea with a question then most likely you're on the best track because the revelation of ignorance is always the best outcome of knowledge.

Above all, we don't rule out anything.  Maybe we could believe this Universe 'just happened' and that's the way of it.  Perhaps but the existence of multiple Universes doesn't seem to serve that idea well unless there's some causal relationship between the Universes.  We suspect but do not know whether any idea of a causal relationship would stretch the mathematics beyond all reason.

So, what will you do, Grand Philosophical Wizard?

Note:  we don't expect an answer because we can get lectures on a social network but we are much more interested in questions.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dude its 11:18

Unknown said...

Whoa, dude. You must be in another Universe because it's 11:42 in this one.

Anonymous said...

Or it is just you have a fast clock

Unknown said...

Or you have a really slow Universe ... or is it the other way around ... it's so confusing

Apmel said...

The speed of light c is just the conversion factor between time and space, we say that one second of time is 299,792,457 meters of distance. Of course we could use other metrics and set the speed of light to 1 instead!

And speaking of wanting questions WTF does this mean: "If other Universes exist then there's a bit of a cramp in the Physicist's Atheism because that makes Time continuous even if not all Universes are there to present it any given moment." ????

It is the kind of philosophy that has lost touch with both logic and physics (we know since Einstein there is no given moment even within ONE universe) and probably is best suited for religiously crappy thinking.

Unknown said...

That's the kind of thinking which makes things interesting. Speed of Light is specifically based on Time as per the International Standard and your exact specification is from that definition. The distance changed, albeit minimally, based on that specification.

Either way, it's not clear how that obviates Einstein's specification since the point was the magnitude of the number and not so much the specifics of its measurement.

As to multiple Universes and multiple times versus one, you're back to relativity ... all over again. It's easily conceivable, if you wish, there's an overall clock and the Universes exist within that timeframe and their localized observations are not much more than colonial amusements ... or not.

Whether physics is crappy due to religion or due to physics doesn't make much difference when the product is the same.