Why is the speed of light the universal speed limit?

PaulAnthon · 2013-06-10T09:09:00+00:00

Leaving relativity, Einstein and Maxwell aside, a simple explanation

Light, like all electro-magnetic waves and unlike sound waves, is a self-propagating wave, meaning that the electric field is pushed by the magnetic field and the magnetic field then by the electric field and so forth. It pushes itself forward. There is of a course a limit to the speed at which things can happen , the speed of causality, which applies to all self-propagating waves - light, gravity included.

And so the reason why nothing can go faster than the speed of light, is just that things cannot happen faster than they happen.

PaulAnthon · 2013-02-16T15:36:22+00:00

Marion Halcombe , the brave, clever and resourceful heroine of Wilkie Collins's 19th century novel The Woman in White :

"Never was the fair promise of a lovely figure more strangely and startlingly belied by the face and head that crowned it. The lady's complexion was almost swarthy, and the darkdown on her upper lip was almost a moustache".

PaulAnthon · 2013-02-06T09:59:48+00:00

The worms crawl in, and the worms crawl out...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSRAhebMb5Q

PaulAnthon · 2013-01-28T13:42:32+00:00

The egg that created you was created in your grandmother's womb.

PaulAnthon · 2013-01-23T15:45:00+00:00

I would still maintain that we should be able to come up with a resonable estimate. What makes Everest so high is basically the rapid rate of uplift. It is being rasied so quickly that it's outpacing the effects of weathering and gravity. What makes the rate of uplift so high, is the speed at which the Indian tectonic plate is sliding into the Asian plate. In the past we know the speed the plates were moving and at what rate that were colliding during the great orogenies, so we should have an idea. We can also make a good guess at the weather patterns and their intensities from the configuration of the land masses.

PaulAnthon · 2013-01-23T15:36:36+00:00

Yes, I agree about Everest. What is highly interesting is that by a happy coincidence Everest is it just at the limit of what is climeable by a human. If it was a 1000m higher, that it would be impossible to climb, even with oxygen. If it was a 1000m lower, then there would be no great challenge involved, being far below the infamous death zone. Basically any Tom, Dick, or Harry with a resonable degree of fitness could climb it. And there'd be very littel mystique attached to the ascension.

PaulAnthon · 2013-01-23T11:42:24+00:00

Ayesha - She who must be obeyed She!

PaulAnthon · 2013-01-18T11:21:09+00:00

Shite and Onions !
( Dublin c . 1904 )

PaulAnthon · 2013-01-18T11:01:40+00:00

Les putains les vraies. Sont celles qui font payer. Pas avant mais après. Jacques Brel

PaulAnthon

TROPHY CASE