[geuis]

In regards to your last question, I have had similar thoughts. I no longer like using the phrase "speed of light" because it's most commonly used to reference the maximum speed anything observed can attain. It's very clear this has nothing to do with light itself but is derived from the medium itself, space-time.

One analogy that occurrs to me is movement through a fluid. There is almost always a terminal velocity. We can transmit waves via a fluid, and particles through it as well.

I would like to know what vacuum looks like at the Planck scale. Perhaps entropy increases slower or faster based on interactions at the smallest scale between light/matter and whatever space-time is. Movement through the medium at higher speeds decreases these interactions, maybe by skipping over them. Less interactions, slower entropy, slower apparent time.

Perhaps c is the terminal velocity of space-time. The air/water analogy breaks down easily, since we can travel faster than terminal velocity in air. But it's a different way of looking at the question.

[felipemnoa]

Terminal velocity is a really good analogy. Light is just a ripple in space. The ripple will continue forever until it gets absorbed by other matter. Space-time does seem to be an actual substance. Perhaps the proponents of the Ether were right except that now we call it space time. Space-time seems to be made up of super tiny particles were all other particles ride on.

One more thing, if we were to discover that light actually accelerates to c when it is first released by an electron then that would be strong evidence that the upper limit on light velocity is just something intrinsic of space-time. Nothing is ever instantaneous and I have a feeling that neither does light go from zero to c in zero time.

[dkersten]

If we were to discover that light accelerates to c when it is first released, the next step would be to discover that c isn't actually the maximum possible velocity of light at all, but rather the maximum naturally occurring velocity (terminal velocity) and that through some as yet undiscovered means, it actually is possible for light to be artificially accelerated above the value of c.

The terminal velocity analogy makes sense to me. It would be pretty interesting is it turned out to be more than just an analogy.