Photons and The Constant

The speed of Light is all very well. As a measurement, it's useful in gauging distance between stars and galaxies. But to say that nothing in the Universe can travel faster is a statement reminiscent of the age when the Earth was said to be the centre of the Galaxy, or the Solar System, or even at one point the centre of the Universe.

​We have a tendency to adopt a hugely inflated opinion of ourselves.

When that opinion comes crashing down to earth we don't much like the effects, so tend to avoid inviting such catastrophes. Sometimes, though, a catastrophe is unavoidable, much as the Ultraviolet Catastrophe was unavoidable in physics. When something absorbs/emits every frequency of everything that Is, something has to give. Constants might well be first in line.

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We are constantly bemoaning things. The state of the planet, its governance, our failures in husbandry. Our lot, our position, our responsibility. We bemoan our health, potential, direction of progress and lack thereof. All we do, really, is moan. Perhaps we've been trained this way. Perhaps we're so accustomed to negativity in the news that the new normal is really not very far away from the old one, and we're kidding ourselves that things have changed.

Physics has the same problem. Look at any paper describing an equation and you'll see text that says something like, "If X equals Y then Z can be A, and B will be equivalent to C." Everything the maths tells us is coming from a place of safety, where symbols are sacred and the numbers don't really matter because it's all relative anyway, the solution a product of its own device.

This video slashes the speed of light into silos for further management, asking questions of the constant that even Max Planck might approve of. Where there's light, there are things to be seen. The trouble is, we can only ever see a tiny slice of the bigger picture.

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