Physicist: That is such a hard question. Holy crap.
If you kept the laws of the universe the way they are, but ramped up the speed of light to infinity you’d end up with a surprising array of effects. Newton would have been right about a lot more (nicely done, old dude), there would be no magnets of any kind, the amount of energy tied up in matter would also be infinite (E=MC2) so you’d have to be extra careful not to bring it near anti-matter, but not too careful because anti-particles probably wouldn’t exist (probably). Also, all the weirdness of relativity would be out the window.
But, why is the speed of light finite? I don’t know. I think this is one of those culdesacs of science. It is what it is.
The question, as it was originally asked, was about what keeps light from going any faster. The answer to that question is that there is no faster. If you shove a stone of mass X and it goes flying off at speed V, then if you shove a stone of mass X/2 it’ll fly off at speed 2V. So, you might suspect that if you shove a stone of zero mass that it would go flying off at an infinite speed.
Well, that’s pretty much what photons (which have zero mass) do. If you think of infinite speed as how fast you’d be going if you accelerated forever, then the speed of light is exactly that. If you got into a rocket that could accelerate forever (using some kind magic fuel, such as the Schwartz), and you let it run for an eternity of two, then you’d be moving at the speed of light.
So it’s not that there’s anything slowing light down, so much as the laws of the universe are such that it doesn’t really make sense to talk about something moving faster. More here:
Q: What’s it like when you travel at the speed of light?
Q: Why is the speed of light the fastest speed? What makes light so special?
Also, if you’d like to find more “culdesacs of science” get yourself a toddler during their “Why?” phase, and try explaining something to them.
Out of the many, many questions I’ve seen on this site, that’s the best one yet, well done mate.
Such an obvious question that nobody has thought to ask it, plus a great answer.
Basically its like this..
if your body stands still in space and has no contact with gravity you will be going in the speed of light ( in time ), but as you start traveling in space you have to put that energy into your movement in space, which will lead to that you go slower in time.
The max amount of energy information has is the speed of light, therefor it is impossible for information to travel faster than the speed of light.
But there are ways inwhich noninformation can travel faster than the speed of light, and also ( if i remember the name correctly which i probably dont ) the speed of impact which you can find in a sissor is faster than the speed of light…
Linear speed of light is finite and constant, because that is the highest linear speed at which the agency that moves light (universal medium) can move it. Attempt to increase linear speed of light will increase its frequency rather than its linear speed. Attempt to lower linear speed of light will reduce its frequency rather than its linear speed. Speed of light is finite and constant for any region of space. It may vary from region to region of space.
For details; http://vixra.org/abs/1103.0026
There’s unfortunately no medium for light waves. That’s one of the major tenants of special relativity. The “Universal Medium” you’re talking about was experimentally disproven by the Michelson-Morley experiment (and a lot of follow up work).
could there be something that travels faster than light that we have not discovered yet?
Assuming that what we know about physics today is even a little accurate; no.
There are all kinds of things out there yet to be discovered, but even things we don’t know about have to obey physical laws.
From it’s own frame, does light not travel infinitely quickly? I mean, if distance decreases in the direction of motion to the point that light doesn’t experience time because it always get to wherever it’s going instantaneously. Would we not consider this infinite speed?
That’s pretty reasonable. If you’re going to define an infinite speed, the speed of light would be it!