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From: GogoJF on 18 May 2010 16:18
What is the meaning of c? Whether one believes that light is finite
and constant and travels at c- or whether light is to be believed to
be instant- is regardless- because the reason why the speed of light c
travels at 300,000 km/s and not 200,000 km/s, or 100,000 km/s is a
separate issue.

Why this particular speed of c?

1) Is this merely the limit of man's measurably?
2) Is there some indication of c on a planetary or stellar scale, in
terms of our inertia?
3) Is this speed human friendly? In other words, would we as humans
be different if c were a different constant speed? Would we be the
same if c were not constant?

From: BURT on 18 May 2010 16:20
C is the speed limit. There is nothing faster to measure.

Mitch Raemsch
From: GogoJF on 18 May 2010 16:37
On May 18, 3:20 pm, BURT <macromi...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> C is the speed limit. There is nothing faster to measure.
>
> Mitch Raemsch

Burt, my question was hypothetical. What if phenomena were faster
than c. Would we be able to measure it? What is the limit of our
measure ability?
From: GogoJF on 18 May 2010 16:40
On May 18, 3:37 pm, GogoJF <jfgog...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> On May 18, 3:20 pm, BURT <macromi...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > C is the speed limit. There is nothing faster to measure.
>
> > Mitch Raemsch
>
> Burt, my question was hypothetical.  What if phenomena were faster
> than c.  Would we be able to measure it?  What is the limit of our
> measure ability?

For instance, what about a sweeping searchlight?
From: dlzc on 18 May 2010 17:34
Dear GogoJF:

On May 18, 1:18 pm, GogoJF <jfgog...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> What is the meaning of c?  Whether one believes
> that light is finite and constant and travels at
> c- or whether light is to be believed to be
> instant- is regardless- because the reason why
> the speed of light c travels at 300,000 km/s and
> not 200,000 km/s, or 100,000 km/s is a separate
> issue.
>
> Why this particular speed of c?

299,792,458.6 m/sec was the last measured value by the US-NBS, and had
been "honing in" on such a value for nearly 20 years, once they had
moved from a physical rod (some fraction of the assumed equatorial
circumference of Earth) to characteristic wavelengths of light.

> 1)  Is this merely the limit of man's measurably?

No, we could measure "incredibly close to infinite", or "inclusive of
zero".

> 2)  Is there some indication of c on a
> planetary or stellar scale, in terms of our
> inertia?

Correlates well with the conversion of rest mass to energy:
E = mc^2.

> 3)  Is this speed human friendly?  In other
> words, would we as humans be different if c
> were a different constant speed?   Would we
> be the same if c were not constant?

c is tied up in the fine structure constant, and it has been observed
to have changed by about 1 part in 10^8 in the displayed history of
the Universe (about 13 billion years or so).

Since our size is tied to c, and our atoms' sizes are tied to c (and
nucleus, and rulers), then if c changed *exclusive of the other
physical constants in the fine structure constant*, we'd know it. If
the balance is maintained and changes slowly (as it has in the past),
we wouldn't. And said change in c cannot explain Universal expansion,
nor acceleration of expansion (and agree with observation).

David A. Smith
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