Alright, for those of you who don’t know it yet, I am one of that merry group of people who love to read away messages. It just so happens that one of my classmates from UConn had an away message up today describing how Einstein’s Theory was a means that transformed the theoretical concept of time-travel into a reality. I disagreed, so naturally I had to take issue with it. Theoretical physics debates inspire great things within the brain of Sir Justin, so I decided to blog about it. What I have to say may not be revolutionary, and somebody else out there has probably already figured this one out, but I have decided of my own accord that light does not move at the speed of light! Yes, I know it sounds ludicrous on the surface, but at least I have your attention now, so hear me out.

A result of the Theory of Relativity results in time dilation: Einstein theorized that it was impossible for any matter to move at the speed of light. As any particle(s) approach the speed of light two things occur: the particle(s) increase in mass exponentially, and they slow down in time compared to the surrounding space. Once they reach the speed of light, time stops for them all together.

This means, that given any object of matter with mass, as it approaches the speed of light, it also approaches infinite mass. In order to move this infinite mass up to the speed of light, an infinite amount of energy is required. Therefore the only thing that can move at the speed of light must be massless.

The inherent flaw with this concept is that light is at times expressed as a particle (a photon). And yet light DOES move at the speed of light. To put it better: as far as we can tell, light moves at the speed that we measure it to move at. If it has mass, then in order for it to reach the speed that it is measured to move at, it must be given infinite energy, and all know that we don’t need to do that: particles can be excited into a state of creating light with something as lower in power as a AAA battery (not an infinite amount of energy, unless Energizer got a lot better since last I checked :-P). Therefore there must be a flaw in the theory.

This is where the Justin Corrollary comes in: given that light is a particle, and it appears to us to be moving at the speed of light, but cannot be, I have but one explanation: namely that it ISN’T. The photon is moving at significantly less than the speed of light. However, because of the time dilation caused by this movement, the particle appears to us to be moving at much faster than it really is: namely at the measured speed. As the photon slows down in time, we are still viewing time from our point of view: this means that relatively from our point of view the particle is moving much faster!

That’s where my brain fried for a bit, but I’ll come back to that later -_-.

Peace out and happy brain twisting.