cavediver writes:
In this view, does it fall out directly from the hyperbolic relationship between spatial coordinates and time coordinates?
Exactly... as to its value:
Very short answer: it just is
Short answer: if it was much different to 3x10^8m/s you wouldn't be here to ask the question
It's one of the constants that you hope will drop out of whatever TOE happens to be your favourite.
Just one point:
light travels such that the vector has no time component
Be careful here. A photon's 4-velocity certainly has a time component, but it also has an "equal" space component. It's the magnitude of the vector that is zero.
There is this Indian guy- Ashish Sirohi who is anti-relativist but like some anti-relativists he has good ideas about relativity.
He suggests that the constant is best understood as an infinity with the actual value being arbitrary and irrelevant.
I must agree with that. I can add that the speed of light can't be exceeded simply because it's the speed of universal motion at rest. The speed of time itself, if you like. The actual speed at which cause passes into effect universally. Causality, change, motion and time are just different ways to express or measure that essential aspect of existence. So it is the existential constant, if you like. Since being an infinity it's the infinite motion and infinite rest at once while all the perceived motion and rest can exist only relative to each other, mass and gravity differentials are acting as both brakes and accelerators creating the dialectical opposition needed for the impression of either being in motion or at rest.
The speed of time at rest is mirrored in the constancy of the now. All the changes travel past the now at rest, so to speak.
Mind is none else than thinking light being naturally caused at that rate all cause is passing into all effect at. Like the light is the bridge linking space and time, the mind ties the now and the here into the tightest knot there is. The totality of space, after all, is all the distance that can be lit in time. Just as mind is thinking light, light is shining mind and the visible causality.
All these are the deep reasons why that natural limit cannot be exceeded. Superluminal velocities imply jumping ahead of time which is as easy as jumping out of one's skin or breaking the prison of here and now thus are precluded in any way, shape or form.
Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Add blank lines.