# Yeah, but WHY is c the speed limit of the universe? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Tags:** science-math\ **Created:** [October 15, 2024, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837 "2024-10-15T17:03:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2024, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/141 "2024-10-23T00:45:08Z")
I gather that although development was troubled anyway, launch delays added to JWST’s cost significantly. How much was that? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2024, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/142 "2024-10-23T01:17:30Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > But if I remember right, there was already doubts that it would find any of those things, and hearing such doubts voiced after a project has been greenlit is unusual. I’m not a particle physicist, but I was surprised it didn’t find anything new. Any particular one was a longshot, but there were enough candidates (including the ever-popular “something completely unexpected”) that I thought something would pan out. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2024, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/143 "2024-10-24T00:31:58Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I was surprised it didn’t find anything new. Any particular one was a longshot, but there were enough candidates (including the ever-popular “something completely unexpected”) that I thought something would pan out. The Standard Model is joining General Relativity in the category of “theories so successful that nothing disproves them, despite their known gaps”. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2024, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/144 "2024-10-24T00:48:23Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’m not a particle physicist, but I was surprised it didn’t find anything new. Any particular one was a longshot, but there were enough candidates (including the ever-popular “something completely unexpected”) that I thought something would pan out. Honestly this poster who ended his physics training in high school is fine with this unexpected result. I’m also glad we cancelled the Texas collider, since I think the world should build these things one at a time. I hope we have a pause in collider planning and construction while physicists regroup, reorient, and redirect themselves. Unless China wants to build one. They can go ahead. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2024, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/145 "2024-10-24T01:10:14Z")
And thus were the _three-body_ aliens summoned. Be careful what you wish for. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2024, 1:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/146 "2024-10-24T01:10:36Z")
I do think we’ve reached the point where the money would be better spent on efforts to find ways to scale up alternate accelerator methods like laser-plasma, which in theory could replicate the energies of LHC over meters instead of kilometers. In engineering as well as biological evolution, gigantism reaches a point of diminishing returns. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2024, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/147 "2024-10-24T01:26:40Z")
> [@Measure\_for\_Measure](#): > > I’m also glad we cancelled the Texas collider, since I think the world should build these things one at a time. “These things” are not all the same thing. Different particle accelerators have different strengths. The LHC had the highest total energies, but it did that by using high-mass particles (typically gold nuclei, I think) composed of many constituent particles. The Texas SSC, which was canceled after most of the money was already spent, would have had lower total energy, but in individual electrons and positrons, hence higher energy per fundamental particle, which probes different things. The Fermilab collider can’t compete with either on raw energy, but has much higher total luminosity, which is useful for studying neutrinos, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2024, 1:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/148 "2024-10-24T01:35:28Z")
It seems a little harsh to say that the LHC has discovered **nothing** other than the Higgs. **[It’s actually found lots of new stuff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Findings_and_discoveries)**, but some of it doesn’t yet meet the statistical 5 sigma level of certainty, and others just aren’t as spectacular or understandable to the general public as the famous Higgs boson. For instance, it’s returned results showing evidence of supersymmetry consistent with Standard Model predictions, an unexplained anomaly in B-meson decay, and discovered both a tentraquark and a pentaquark and 59 previously unknown hadrons. From what I can tell, CERN to date has published 112,433 scholarly articles on its particle physics research. That’s a lot of knowledge, even if it’s mostly very esoteric. I must admit that looking at the vastness of the LHC and its exotic science-fiction-y appearance, one almost expects it to open a portal into another dimension, so to the layman its discoveries probably seem pretty mundane. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2024, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/149 "2024-10-24T01:49:00Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > and 59 previously unknown hadrons. I presume that means 59 previously unobserved but expected to exist hadrons based on various combinations of quarks in different states. ---
**Author:** ![Pasta](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@Pasta](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pasta)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2024, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/150 "2024-10-24T02:04:33Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The Texas SSC, which was canceled after most of the money was already spent, would have had lower total energy, but in individual electrons and positrons The SSC was to be a higher energy machine than the LHC is, and it was also to be a proton collider not an electron/positron collider. ---
**Author:** ![Measure\_for\_Measure](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/measure_for_measure/32/557_2.png) [@Measure\_for\_Measure](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Measure_for_Measure)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2024, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/151 "2024-10-24T04:21:28Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > The Texas SSC, which was canceled after most of the money was already spent Thank you for the comments: I thought the overlap was higher. It was sold at the time as a way to keep up with the Europeans, an argument I found unpersuasive. According to wiki, $2 billion was spent on the project, while estimated total costs kept spiraling upwards from the initial $4.4 billion estimate, first to $8.4 billion, then to $12.0 billion. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2024, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/152 "2024-10-24T22:18:44Z")
The second 90% of the work always costs the most. Until it’s time to start on the third 90%. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2024, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/153 "2024-10-30T15:20:07Z")
Now that Professor Dave has recently made a video criticizing Sabine, I thought this tangent merited its own thread: > [@Sabine Hossenfelder - anti-science?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sabine-hossenfelder-anti-science/1009449): > > Professor Dave has made a video criticizing Sabine for increasingly publishing anti-science and anti-establishment rhetoric, on her site, and in her articles for The Guardian and in her book. It starts out very civil but later he points out ways he thinks she is being dishonest and even lacking integrity. The reason for making this thread is two-fold: We were discussing Sabine as a tangent in [this thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe), so it seems this tangent now merits its own thread. Both professor dave and Sabine are … ---
**Author:** ![EnolaStraight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/41988e/32.png) [@EnolaStraight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EnolaStraight)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2024, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837/154 "2024-11-08T11:05:26Z")
An old thread of mine: [speed of light - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/speed-of-light/56251) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yeah-but-why-is-c-the-speed-limit-of-the-universe/1008837.md?page=7)