Tuesday, 24 July 2018

special relativity - Light cone argument for speed of light


Using light cones to state that nothing can travel faster than light to me seems like a flawed argument. (I understand other reasons why the speed of light cannot be broken.) However, it seems to me as if this light cone argument, i.e where nothing can travel faster than light otherwise it would be able to affect past events, doesn't make sense because it operates on the assumption that light is the fastest thing, doesn't it? That's essentially saying nothing can travel faster than light, because light is the fastest thing. Apologies if I'm misunderstanding the argument of light cones, but in short my question is: is this argument not flawed?


See what I'm saying is: if something could travel faster than light, called "x", surely we would then call them x-cones.




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