Re: Why is the speed of light what it is?

From: David Evens (devens_at_technologist.com)
Date: 10/04/04 

Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 05:59:55 -0400

On 3 Oct 2004 20:06:10 -0700, wrongaddress@att.net (Bill Bowden)
wrote:

>Why is the speed of light 186,000 miles per second?
>Why not 187,000 miles per second, or 185,000 miles per second,
>or some other number?

The speed of light is a fundamental property of the universe, and to
understand why it needs to be what it is, you have to use, at some
point, the Anthropic Principle.

The Anthropic Principle is often abused by pseudoscientific frauds
like Creationists as if it could be used to support their theological
ravings instead of what it actually means, which is more or less this:

(Quoting Hawking here, as near as I can recall his wording:)

"The Anthropic Principle states that in a universe that is large or
infinite in space and/or time, the conditions required for the
development of intelligent beings are met only in certain regions that
are limited in space and time. The beings in these regions should,
therefore, not find it surprising that their region of the universe
fulfils the requirements for there existence.....If the universe had
been different, we wouldn't be here."

The value of the speed of light is one of a system of parameters, some
of which are intimately related to each other in specific ways, so if
you were to suppose it was different, you have to suppose other
constants would be different too, and this quickly gets you into
looking at universes where conditions are incompatible with life as we
know it, so you don't get to consider what humans living in those
universe would see because you couldn't HAVE humans in those universe
(whatever it means to talk about other universes, which is not
comething you can answer inside physics).

Relevant Pages

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