I’m not a scientist, so dumb down your answers, if you choose to humor me with your genius:
I heard you can’t exceed the speed of light because something happens. Is this still the belief? If you can’t exceed it, can you match it? Why is light such an arbiter of such things in the world of physics? Light is not such a big deal if you’re blind, so what happens if a blind person tries to exceed the speed of light? I know, I know, light exists independent of it’s corner stone to vision (i.e. vision came to light, light didn’t come to vision) but the question highlights the first question of why light is such an arbiter of speed. To hell with light. Let’s come up with something faster. We come up with 10 other dimensions to make string theory work. What happens when we blow light away?
If light tries, but fails to escape from a black hole, is it still in there, not moving, but pulling at the end of a gravitational leash trying to get out? Or is it going back against itself, or in another direction (toward the center), and if so, at what speed is it moving? Could light in a black hole be pulled back toward the center at a speed greater than the speed of light? If so, does that mean gravity itself has speed?
Or does light stop in a black hole just like it does when it hits a brick wall? Or does it even stop then? Isn’t it just reflected, or does it absorb, turn into heat and die or change form?
I was reading about Andrameda coming at us a 217,000 miles per hour and it won’t be here for millions (billions?) of years. And it’s close! This whole lightspeed/universe size thing is really hard for me to wrap my brain around. Do physists just understand it conceptually, for working purposes, like Congress understands $500 billion dollars, or do they actually “get” how big it really is? I mean, you can’t count that high, so. . .?
Yeah, I know: I need to go back to school and pay attention this time. But hey, I’m just asking.