On 28/08/2011 2:18 PM, Ollie B Bimmol wrote:
On a sunny day (Sun, 28 Aug 2011 11:23:31 -0400) it happened Yousuf Khan
wrote :

On 28/08/2011 7:45 AM, Ollie B Bimmol wrote:
If E=m.c^2
then can we say that if lightspeed was to decrease,
and energy in the universe was neither added nor removed, so constant,
that then mass HAS to be created?

I don't see how a decrease in light speed would lead to mass being
created. What has one got to do with the other?

In the above formula, for E is constant, and m increasing, then c must decrease.

That's not what the formula means. The formula simply shows that mass
and energy are the same things. Specifically, mass is a very special
form of energy. Think of all of the particles that make up your body and
keep it together. Each one of those particles is actually a form of
locked up energy. Each particle is really a knot or a string of energy
trapped into the shape of that particle, endlessly flowing around inside
that knot unable to escape. On the other hand free-flowing energy is
what we traditionally think of as energy, it is what flows from particle
to particle across distances of space. The most common form of
free-flowing energy we think of is the electromagnetic energy, which is
represented by the photons.

So if we were able to completely dismantle the particles in your body,
and let all of their energy flow out freely, then that's how much energy
you'd have released.

A decrease (or an increase for that matter) cannot be detected by us.
The speed of light is what determines both time and distance for us. If
light speed was changing, then time and distance would change equally
for us, and it would look like the exact same speed to us all over
again. We cannot detect light speed changing while we're inside the
universe itself, we could only detect it if we were outside of the
universe looking in somehow.

Could you elaborate a bit on why that is so?

Don't think of the speed of light in terms of miles/second or km/sec.
Another way to look at the speed of light is that it represents the time
it takes energy to flow within the smallest unit of space in universe,
within the smallest unit of time in the universe. The smallest unit of
space is called a Planck Length, and the smallest unit of time is called
a Planck Time. There is no length smaller than a Planck Length, or a
time shorter than a Planck Time. The speed of light is 1 Planck
Length/Planck Time. When you look at it this way, you notice that the
speed of light is equal to exactly 1! Nothing can be simpler. And when
you look at it this way, you understand why the speed of light is what
it is.

Yousuf Khan