rob was here.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
slow the fast up.
It triggered in me when I watched some Richard Feynman lectures (freely available here) recently about the subject. Through my own research and as well as a class on electromagnetism that I took whilst in University, I think have a fairly good appreciation of light (though not necessarily the nuances of the mechanical details). Yet, there is a part that I've not been able to find a satisfying answer.
The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second. For your reference, this is not far from 11 million times faster than I drive to work on the outter ring. The speed of light is the maximum limit (unattainable asymptote) that anything with mass can go.
Why this number? Why not 299,792,459 meters per second? or 299,792,457? or any other number?
This same question really applies to any physical constant, but light really brightly illuminates this puzzle. (ha)
At first I was thinking that this is something that is derived akin to how we get geometric ratio such as pi.
But physical constants don't seem to be derived, they simply are, and that's bothersome because nobody seems to know why.
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