Faster Than the Speed of Light

What Hacker News says

1. sp332Dec 2021
   It's still an exotic model, but if there's an extra dimension that light can fit into - even a tiny loop that it just spirals around as it propagates - then it's possible that at higher energy densities, it spirals at a shallower angle. That would make it appear to propagate through the three normal spatial dimensions faster even if it has the same speed across all four dimensions.

   João Magueijo wrote an approachable book on this called "Faster than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation".

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2. alexophileDec 2010
   The class of theories is hardly even new. Dirac suggested the possibility of variation in universal constants in the 30s. In the 80s and 90s, at least three different instantiations of VSL popped up and have been getting varying amounts of press ever since.

   From John Barrow:

   "[An] important lesson we learn from the way that pure numbers like α define the world is what it really means for worlds to be different. The pure number we call the fine structure constant and denote by α is a combination of the electron charge, e, the speed of light, c, and Planck's constant, h. At first we might be tempted to think that a world in which the speed of light was slower would be a different world. But this would be a mistake. If c, h, and e were all changed so that the values they have in metric (or any other) units were different when we looked them up in our tables of physical constants, but the value of α remained the same, this new world would be observationally indistinguishable from our world. The only thing that counts in the definition of worlds are the values of the dimensionless constants of Nature. If all masses were doubled in value [including the Planck mass mP] you cannot tell because all the pure numbers defined by the ratios of any pair of masses are unchanged."

   Quick plug: Probably the most public proponent of VSL is João Magueijo who wrote a really interesting book on the process of challenging the scientific orthodoxy, called "Faster Than the Speed of Light." It's an interesting (and often scathing) view of the process of academic science.

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3. amohrFeb 2008
   Joao Magueijo has an interesting look into this problem (specifically referring to Nature, too) in his book Faster than the Speed of Light. I read it when I was studying physics and it really intrigued me to see how difficult it is to challenge the status quo in a science that is defined by its fundamental revolutions.
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4. roscopcoletraneJul 2017
   Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation

   Blurb from Amazon: "Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, and light travels at one fixed speed. This idea is considered a foundation of modern physics, but what if it is wrong? Theoretical physicist Magueijo presents the idea that light traveled faster in the early universe than it does today. The varying speed of light theory solves some of the most intractable problems in cosmology, and could have major implications for the study of physics."

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