/sci/ - Science & Math

Its the speed of massless particles. Particles with some mass move at some speed. This requires some energy for them to move. Then you have some particles with no mass that obviously can move a lot faster. This is super fast speed.

Say you have particle A that is 10kg moving at 5m/s and partcle B that is 20kg moving at 2.5m/s. If you reduced particle B’s mass it would move faster now, if given the same energy. But if you have particle C and particle D both with 0 mass, how can one particle move faster than the other given the same energy?

The speed of light is simply the speed of massless particles. Its just how fast you happen to go when you cant go any faster by getting lighter, but cant have infinite speed because that would require infinite momentum (i think). So youre left with some finite speed that is really fast. Why that speed happens to be 3e8 m/s is just chance, it has no meaning its just what we observe