One of the great mysteries of modern (the last 100 years) physics is the constancy of the speed of light. You’ve probably seen the famous E = mc^2, or Einstein equals Mr. Speed of Light squared. That’s not related to the constancy, but c is a constant in that equation. Well, the same Einstein developed Special Relativity with the assumption that c is a constant. The speed of light has been measured precisely in various circumstances, always finding the constant (except, of course, when traveling in a medium, that is, not in a vacuum, where the speed is slower… that’s something to think about).
Nowhere does physics develop why c is a constant.
My hypothesis starts with the assumption that space is quantized, the vacuum field fluctuations (which, I would say, is not an assumption), and the motion of matter through space. Since the light emitted in a vacuum from a moving object doesn’t accumulate the speed of that object (instead staying that constant value), then the speed must be intimately connected with space itself. For example, photons interact with virtual particles which are correlated with the grid of discrete space, so that the frequent absorption and reemission fixes the apparent speed of the photons.
I, then, have a prediction: the photons emitted from a moving object initially have momentum imparted to them by the moving object, but since the photon is so quickly absorbed for the first time, the extra energy is quickly transferred to the vacuum field, so that the photon quickly drops to the constant determined by the character of space. The prediction then is that the vacuum field will be slightly more energized immediately in front of the moving object.
I would think that this could be measured using the Casimir effect.
==Leonard
Category: Physics