Speed of light may have changed recently [New Scientist]
(Julius is about to prove that a little learning is a dangerous thing. Be nice).
The article says in passing that a varying speed of light contradicts Einstein's theory of relativity, but I'm not sure that this is strictly true. My understanding is that relativity theory requires a value of c that is the same (for all observers regardless of their state of motion) everywhere in the Universe.
In other words, the theory requires no gradients in c in
the three spacial dimentions we walk around in. The theory has no
particular preference for any specific value of the constant c - its value comes from measurement, not from any predictions of relativity theory itself.
If c does change, but without
any spacial gradient, - i.e. any change in c has to happen
simultaneously throughout the Universe, it would imply that any cause
of that change would have to be related to a process occuring in some
dimention other than the four dealt with by relativity theory, as any
local change would not be able to propogate from a particular location
in 4d space-time without creating gradients in c.
I would guess that the information content of such a change would be
zero, but if not, we could transmit information at much faster than
light speed by manipulating something in one of the higher dimentions.
Which would be nice.
It would be interesting to conjecture that changes in c may be quantized, but I'll leave that to others who have a clue what they are talking about.
Alternatively, you may just want to look at pictures of kittens.
(Corrections, additions, clarifications, insults etc. in the comments, please).
1:07:22 PM
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