I’ve heard this as I’ve had a look at special relativity, but I don’t get why.
In: Physics
I’m going to encourage some pretty heavy viewing of the PBS Spacetime channel on everyone’s favorite streaming short-form video platform. The constant speed of light in a vacuum (It does change speed in a material but I feel confident that isn’t what you are asking) is very closely tied to the concept of causality. As to why it is what it is, we don’t really know why it isn’t say 3% faster or slower.
We do know that in order for certain other things to work properly the speed of light has to be what is called invariant, which is a fancy way of stating that any observer needs to be able to reach the same conclusion about its speed. Since causality has to do with very important things being able to work the way they do (like atoms being able to hold together), asking what happens when you mess around with that inevitably leads do discussions of the Anthropic Principle.
TL;DR Because that is the speed of information in this universe. An unsatisfying answer, yes but you’ve got to get into the weeds a bit if you want a more satisfying one.
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