Book description
The idea that the speed of light is a constant - at 186,000 miles per
second - is one of the few scientific facts that almost everyone
knows. That constant - c- also appears in the most famous of all
scientific equations: e=mc2- Yet over the last few years, a small
group of highly reputable young physicists have suggested that the
central dogma of modern physics may not be an absolute truth - light
may have moved faster in the earlier life of the universe, it may
still be moving at different speeds elsewhere today.
In telling the story of this heresy, and its gradual journey towards
acceptance, Joao Magueijo writes as one of the three central figures
in the story, introducing the reader to modern cosmology, to the
implications of VSL (variable speed of light) and to the world of
physicists. The initial rejection of Magueijo's ideas is beginning to
give way to a reluctant acceptance that the young men may have a point
- only the next few years will tell the final fate of this 'dangerous' idea.
Born in Portugal and educated at the universities of Lisbon and
Cambridge, Joao Magueijo (pronounced 'zhwow magwayzhoo) is Reader in
Theoretical Physics at Imperial College, London, where he was for three
years a Royal Society Research Fellow. He has been a visiting researcher
at the University of California at Berkeley and Princeton University,
and received his doctorate in Theoretical Physics at Cambridge.
Faster than the Speed of Light
is his first book.
