the plankmeister's interweblet

(Here comes the science part)

I'm a bit of an armchair physicist... By that I mean that I don't really know what I'mtalking about, but I've read enough and researched enough (well... Wikipedia'd enough) to give myself a sound understanding of current theories.

On the way to work today, I was thinking why the speed of light in a vacuum is so slow. I mean... slow in comparison to the size of the universe. Approximately 300,000km per second. It's obviously (well - to me anyway) because of the medium it's propagating through; the quantum vacuum.

In the quantum realm (the realm in which EM radiation exists) there's no such thing as a traditional vacuum. The fabric of spacetime itself is a gently boiling yet stupendously well balanced potential of vacuum energy. I try to think of the quantum realm as a sponge-like structure.

Now... all the evidence seems to point to the fact that the universe came into being from the big-bang, at which point the entire universe was smaller than a single sub-atomic particle, and from which it expanded to its current size.

In my mind, the quantum sponge contains the same amount of quantum... stuff as it did at the moment of the big bang, it's just been stretched. A lot.

Now, with all other models of the propagation of waves through a medium, the denser the medium, the faster the propagation. (Well... group velocity, as it's properly termed.) This implies to my thinking that the speed of light at the moment of the big bang was much greater than it is today, directly proportional to the vacuum sponge density.

This also implies that as the universe is in its continuing expansion (well... there's still a debate about that) the speed of light is slowing down as its medium becomes less dense.

Think about that... the speed of light is slowing down! Not by much... but over the course of a few billion years, if the universe continues to expand, maybe it'd be possible to RUN faster than the speed of light!

This raises a strange notion... If the speed of light is defined as the maximum velocity of the propagation of mass or energy through the quantum vacuum energy, and the universe is expanding, and as I mentioned above it was possible to run that fast, would it actually be possible?

Einsten's General Theory of Relativity shows that accelerating mass to the speed of light requires more energy than is available in the entire universe. So what would happen when you tried to run?

Hmmmmm. Well... tachyons have a lot to answer for. Let's hope the LHC finds evidence of them, and sparticles. This will be very strong evidence for M-theory, which would also confirm the presence of the quantum vacuum, and maybe even my theorised quantum sponge, pervading every point in space, including every atom in your body. 

Isn't that just insanely interesting?!?!?!?