C was not always the symbol for the speed of light in a vacuum. Einstein, for example, only switched to this notation in 1907, abandoning the use of Maxwell’s symbol “V” (thereby freeing up that symbol for use by Hugo Weaving movies).
The thing I love most about a universal constant like C is the way it sets a perimeter for things, a kind of delimiter for the Universe itself, like bubble wrap over a new portable music player, or the plastic cover around an Italian sofa. With C you know where you stand. You can only travel so fast, and that’s that. No instantanteous buzzing about the Universe – or even the Galaxy for that matter.
Children hate limits, and in many ways all humans are children (or were, at some point). When the Universe tells us we can’t go faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, we tend to stamp our feet and feel the urge to rebel.
But of course, being human, we don’t just rebel against the Universe by making wars, or stirring up political confrontations. We rebel by making Star Trek.
We send captain Kirk and his crew, and their various Sci Fi cousins, into space and we give them Warp Drive – the ability to travel at many times the speed of light. To hell with Einstein and to hell with reality.
After all, human literature proceeds from the assumption that a single mind can imagine that which does not exist – Romeo and Juliet, Becky Sharp, Mr. Rochester, Mr. Ed. But there is something peculiarly delightful about imagining that the very limits and bounds of reality itself to not exist.
If C were not C – if the speed of light in a vacuum were somehow different – the very Universe in which we live would not exist. Atoms would not coalesce around their nuclei, our planets would not have formed from the primordeal muck, our galaxy itself would never have come into existence.
And so it takes an act of extreme hubris to suspend the limitations of the speed of light. Gene Roddenberry and his writers on Star Trek, like other authors of space operas, have had just that hubris. You can call it visionary, or you can call it chutzpah, but the decision to allow faster than light travel struck a nerve with the viewing public. The human race feels a need to escape our relativistic cage – at least in our fantasies. Even if it contradicts reality, we yearn to explore the universe around us – to boldly go where noone has gone before.
Perhaps this need to transcend our bounds, to defy what is possible, physically or otherwise, is what makes us human – our species’ very own universal constant.
another great post. Tho as a new “parent” (step-parent), I know that young kids desire rules as much as they make the show of wanting to break them. Which is essentially what your post is claiming, anyway.