I know that nothing with mass can go as fast as light. I think that “there is a universal speed limit” and that :light achieves that limit” are two different statements. So, I am curious about the first one. Is it just an axiom?
In: 13
It is less that there is a speed limit and more that we normally think of speed wrong.
It is a bit like asking why is the north-pool the farthest north you can go or why is -460°F as cold as you can go?
We normally think of speed as open ended an open ended scale where you can always add an extra mile per hour to get a mile per hour more.
It doesn’t really work like this at all.
The faster you go the less the whole adding a mile per hour to increase you speed by a mile per hour works.
There are no velocities that you can add together that come out to more than the speed of light.
In many ways our way of thinking about speed and distance and time in everyday life is wrong or at least just a simplified approximation of how the world really works. This approximation works at small normal human scales, but breaks down if you go to too big a scale.
You may compare that like we normally approximate the world as flat when drawing a map of a small place like a city, but how that works less and less the bigger you go.
The universal speed limit is a limit in the same way that you are limited to arriving at a destination after you started.
Light is just one of the things that go that fast. Gravity might be another and causality itself is thought to happen at that rate.
Latest Answers