Arvin Ash

Why isn't the speed of light infinite? What if it was? (2021x7)

Udgivelsesdato: Mar 13, 2021

Get your SPECIAL OFFER for MagellanTV here: https://try.magellantv.com/arvinash - It's an exclusive offer for our viewers! Start your free trial today. MagellanTV is a new kind of streaming service run by filmmakers with 3,000+ documentaries! Check out our personal recommendation and MagellanTV’s exclusive playlists: https://www.magellantv.com/genres/science-and-tech Why does the universe have an upper speed limit on the speed of light? Why isn’t the top limit infinite? Or what if the speed of light was not constant but changed in different reference frames? The speed of light is dependent on two fundamental properties of space, the vacuum permittivity and permeability. These are measured constants with no theory to explain them. These constants represent the resistance of space to the propagation of electromagnetic waves. Since space exhibits a resistance to EM wave propagation, this sets a finite limit to the speed of light. If this resistance was much lower or nonexistent, then the speed of light would be much faster, or perhaps infinite. The physical significance of the speed of light is that it's the upper limit of how fast information can flow. It is linked to causality and locality. If you are separated by some distance from an object. You cannot know anything about that object instantly. If information could flow instantaneously from one part of the universe to another, it would mean that an event happening at any point in the universe could affect every other point. If there were a million hypernovae at any instant in space, this could kill us instantly because we would experience them simultaneously here on earth. There would be no locality, which is the idea that objects in the universe are directly influenced only by their immediate surroundings. Einstein’s Special relativity guarantees that there is no such thing as simultaneity. How would this break causality? Consider two events. If one observer determines that A caused B, a fi