Mas rapido que la velocidad de la luz es la cronica de una idea "insensata" que ha provocado apasionadas polemicas pues cuestiona la regla fundamental de la fisica moderna enunciada por Einstein en su teoria de la relatividad: que la velocidad de la luz en el vacio es constante. Joao Magueijo -cosmologo y fisico teorico doctorado en la Universidad de Cambridge y profesor en el Imperial College de Londres- presenta una teoria que postula la variacion de la velocidad de la luz y plantea que en los primeros momentos del universo la velocidad de la luz era mayor. Su teoria se propone resolver algunos de los problemas cruciales de la cosmologia y tiene enormes implicancias para diferentes cuestiones de la fisica actual, desde los viajes espaciales y los agujeros negros hasta la dilatacion del tiempo y la teoria de las cuerdas.

The speed of light in a vacuum is supposed to be constant in all time frames. That is the basis of the theory of relativity. Joao Magueijo is a theoretical physicist that supports the Variable Speed of Light (VSL) theory in this book. While the book is not about the theory itself, he does talk a lot about various aspects of cosmology to provide some background.

So if the book is not about the theory itself, then what is it about? Faster Than the Speed of Light focuses on the bias of scientists and how difficult it is to introduce a dissenting theory. I imagine it would help if there was an experiment that a scientist could conduct to verify this theory, but if he mentions it in the book, I didn’t get that far.

Basically, scientists have evidence that the Big Bang was the founding event of the universe as we know it. This is something that we all agree on, there is the Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation to back it up and there is the redshifting of the galaxies in the sky. So the idea is that space itself is expanding. However, in the early years of the universe, it is thought that the universe was opaque while the particles and matter cooled down to a state that light could travel through. So it was theorized that the universe underwent a period of rapid expansion. So Magueijo postulates that his VSL theory would solve some intractable problems in physics, and bring about a Grand Unified Theory.

Even when I picked up this book, I didn’t expect this to be covered. From the title, I assumed it was going to talk about a theoretical method of time travel or maybe it would cover the Tachyon. I didn’t particularly like this book. It isn’t that the book isn’t charming, or that it doesn’t have any British Wit. No, the main problem is that he talks about how this theory is supposed to solve everything but doesn’t show what he’s talking about. It is more of a memoir than anything else since it mainly focuses on the history of the VSL theory. It sort of gets into science by talking about a dream that Einstein had about cows.

I do understand in one sense; even though Einstein has become a household name and everyone is familiar with him, he was still a human being prone to making mistakes. So if this theory does hold water in some ways, then what is the problem? Maybe it is a generation too early. I mean, how much energy are we talking about when we need to see light have a different value for c? So in that sense, the book was frustrating. He never gets to the point and I couldn’t get into it. ( )

"Lee [Smolin] and I discussed these paradoxes at great length for many months, starting in January 2001. We would meet in cafés in South Kensington or Holland Park to mull over the problem. THE ROOT OF ALL THE EVIL WAS CLEARLY SPECIAL RELATIVITY. All these paradoxes resulted from well-known effects such as length contraction, time dilation, or E=mc², all basic predictions of special relativity. And all denied the possibility of establishing a well-defined border, common to all observers, capable of containing new quantum gravitational effects."

In “Faster Than the Speed of Light” (p. 250) by João Magueijo.

There was no “cause and effect axiom” in 1905. The two axioms from which Einstein deduced special relativity were the principle of relativity and the constancy of the speed of light. The falsehood of the second axiom killed physics, as suggested in the above quotation. Uhm…Come again?

This reminds me of the sad fact that the proponents of the hidden variable idea despite their failure managed to win popularizations claiming that all the problems of their project are actually some "weirdness" of the quantum theory. Tale about ridiculousness of the quantum theory sells better it seems. Sells so good that even if you don't support the hidden variables it's possible to present a trivial work as some novel fundamental research of cosmic importance by the following recipe. You add enough clichés into introduction of your paper, invent loud names for mundane stuff, and claim that it's relevant for some problematic topic without experimental data like quantum gravity. I'm sorry but you can't derive axioms within theory itself because they are, well, axioms. You can't reformulate your theory or call some objects with different names so that equivalent set of axioms becomes more fundamental or more "justified".

And they say quantum theory is an "ad-hoc patchwork, lacking any obvious physical interpretation or justification"? Seriously? You know, that's exactly the "criticism" used by all those anti-Einstein unrecognized geniuses like Magueijo. They use it for the special relativity they seem not to have any problems with. They use it because they failed to understand it, hearsay seems strange and they want to stop at the preceding level.

One of my favorite interpretations of QM is relational quantum mechanics, which also tries to use only a few axioms and information ideas to deduce QM. (Check it out on wikipedia or the arxiv (Rovelli 1996).) RQM posits that observation is interaction, which creates correlation between the observed and the observer -- yielding some relational notion of a state vector -- and that such an interaction/observation is also in principle given by an interaction Hamiltonian which another system (another observer) might be able to write down. In RQM, instead of trying to rationalize a classical universe with quantum mechanics (by supposing such a thing as wavefunction collapse), we have to give up our notions of the classical universe and suppose it's all interconnected in a quantum way. Great theories (like relativity) trade our "intuitive" or "classical" understanding of the universe for some beautiful (simple yet powerful) axioms. i hope to see space-time emerging along with QM from some concise set of principles, principles like those behind relativity and RQM, which leave us feeling quite wonderfully adrift in this strange universe. Interesting how we may have to give up "time" (causality) to do it :).

I am limited by my own sense of knowledge. Hence, I keep reading, looking, and am forced to keep thinking. I am the dash runner, and am always seeing myself from that sense of gravity I was born with. That keeps me grounded, yet I keep moving. My intention is to keep searching for knowledge. Where that came from is a fact that I picked up on when I became conscious. The thoughts in all of our brains are the universe(s) that surround us, and will be the decaying plasma we will leave behind. While I'm in this conscious state, I feast on. It's a strange custom and habit to carry around an equal sign that I removed and place it at my will and pleasure for selfish satisfaction, or to help where I can. I didn't damage or hurt anything because that equal sign is always where it was. That's not spooky at all when you think about it.

As Josh Billings quipped over a century ago: “The trouble with people is not that they don’t know but that they know so much that ain’t so.” ( )

This book definitely gives an interesting glimpse into the actual world of scientific research. I recognize much of the process from my own brief time working on computational geometry. The problem is that every few pages the author bitterly rants about how stupid everyone else is, in increasingly crude terms. Ignore that, however, and you get an overview of the theory of the varying speed of light, minus the mathematical details. The best part of this book was the author’s description of the relativity of time using Einstein’s dream of cows. Thanks for that. ( )

Great science book, about the path to get to the VSL theory! ( )