I've been working alot of graveyard shifts lately, and there's not much to do but listen to the radio at some places my security company sends me. So I've been listening alot to this show on News Radio 740am (Coast to Coast AM with George Noory). That show can get really weird. Why? It's on early in the morning. Like... early, early. I think it's on between 12am and 2am. It's a very long show. The host entertains all sorts of strange paranormal and spiritual subject matters and has some pretty interesting guests (such as numerologists, and a guy who wrote a book entitled "How to build a robot army". And alot of brain dead lunatics are listening at that time of night (case in point... me. ) I guess they had so many crazy people calling in that they created special call-in lines... one night they had the "anti christ line" specially for people calling in who "thought they were the anti christ".
Last night's show was pretty interesting. They had a guy who thought that light was god. His theory was that light (the electromagnetic frequencies of radiation) were god because light is "omnipresent", and he also theorized that time does not exist for light the way "it does" for the rest of the universe (This is not a segue for my "time does not exist" ramblings, btw).
The problem with these types of characters is that they try to mix religion and science. Usually this is due to an inherent lack of understanding of both religion and science, which, though they are NOT mutually exclusive and polar opposites... they ARE probably not connected by any threads that humans have the capability of understanding.
I've said it many times. If you believe in god, it's because of faith. Any theory, no matter how much "evidence" there is to support it, can be countered. There's no way to PROVE god's existence with science. So you either have to have faith, or like me, not have it. Period. Every time I hear someone trying to "prove god's existence" it's like NAILS on a FREAKING CHALKBOARD!!!
With that being said, there were some interesting points. Background radiation (thought to be remenants of the big bang) is present throughout the known universe (supposedly... it is, at the very least, detected through out the known universe). People don't realize we're living in a "sea of light". Photons, the fundamental "particle" of light, exist all around us, in visible and invisible spectrums. In a sense, light DOES exist at all points in the universe. An interesting theory I've heard in science is that, as something approaches the speed of light, the laws of physics break down. At speed = infinity, the object would expand to fill all corners of the universe, existing at all coordinate points within the universe simultaneously. And of coarse, there is the ever annoying characteristic of light that enables it to exhibit properties of both particles, and waves. Particles are discrete, individual units, while a wave is energy expanding and radiating outward from a source in all directions. Light is the ultimate wave.
This could explain why light is so fast. With electricity, you have a wire of X length. And you have electricity moving at about an inch per minute. Why does it take only an instant for the light bulb to turn on when you flick the switch? A wire is made up of atoms packed into a thin "pipeline". As electrons enter one side of the wire, a whole line of atoms passes one of it's elctrons to the next atom. In essence, each atom advances one electron one space forward to the next atom. This is called elctric CURRENT, and it is the CURRENT itself that moves near neigh instantaneously, like stuffing a pipe to capacity with stuffed pikachus. If you stuff one more in, one pops out the other side. It almost gives the illusion the you transported a pikachu from point a to point b instantaneously.
What does this have to do with light? Well if light really is "omnipresent" through out the universe, it would mean that photons could transfer their kinetic energy, rather than travel THEMSELVES across distances, very very fast. If we, say, shoot a photon from a cannon, it would collide with another photon in the sea of light within which we exist... a whole string of photons would advance one space forward moving the beam insanely fast! Yet, the original photon would not be required to move very far at all! Further, a very strange twist in the physics of light indicates that light always approaches an object or observer at the same speed relative to that object... even if that object is moving. For instance... if I was running away from a predator at 5 miles per hour, and the predator was chasing me at 5 miles per hour, it wouldn't catch up with me because we're both moving at the same speed. However, no matter how fast you move away from a beam of light that is speeding towards you, it will always catch up with you just as fast.
It makes sense if the photons themselves aren't moving, rather a "current" of photons is moving. If you had an ever-expanding wire between point a, and point b, it wouldn't slow the electric current moving between the points. After all, no matter how many atoms exist between point a and point b, as long as there is a continuous string of atoms between the points, all electrons in a series will advance simultaneously one space forward. To further the pikachu analogy... even if the pipe kept growing longer and longer, as long as it is stuffed from side to side with pikachus, as soon as you stuff one in, one will pop out at the other side. So the same would be true of the "current of light". No matter how fast you move away from a beam of light, there will still be an omnipresent feild of light particles between you and the beam, and the "light current" will still move towards you at the same speed!
But, alas, I have talked myself to death.