What if the Speed of Light Decreased?

Photos don't have motion...so 'slo mo' isn't relevant.
Anything moving faster than 1-2m/s will suffer a huge delay in being observed.
Thus we would need to move very slowly and carefully or rely on feel. Driving would be impossible.
Back to you photo...you would have no trouble seeing it, but only a few seconds after it was placed in front of you.
Head/eye movement may be problematic.

Fortunately, Bill Gates could capitalise on it by making an even slower OS
Del

More problem with brain.

With the speed of light decreased, the lights on the rods and cone from the same object will reach at different times (ane same thing will happen with the nerve signals and the processing inside brain)

So you are never going to see what is infront of you.

Never mind that photo, didn't you see that red light you just ran?

Anyway the cop will never catch me, I am faster than light. .

You might end up kissing the wrong place if your lady friend were to move too quickly!

Her smell, her voice would never reach you at the right time either. I suppose you could still feel her.

Hi, charsley99!

There's a wrong place?

Mark

What wrong place is there?

It would be possible to see what Einstein had in mind.(moving alongside of light).

The effect of gravity on light will be much much higher. You may have the effect of light orbiting earth and see yourselves in the distance.

Here is something of interest, When Hydrogen is converted to a super fluid a beam of light passing through it is slowed down considerably.

This is the new frontier of quantum mechanics which has all sorts of strange effects it is very interesting.

See if you can find Jorrie. It's up his alley.

The end of the universe as we know it! and as "nothing" can go faster than light then cars could not go faster then 3.6-7.2km/hour.

As Del said the picture is static so as long as nothing moves it would not be a problem but as soon as something moves, i guess dizziness and motion sickness.

not to speak that our whole biological system would go haywire

Funny questions get funny answers

My digital camera and webcam do this! Viewing the world through a slow updating image will give a fair idea of the human problems created. Though that does not simulate the fact that items further away would be more delayed.

A sudden change in the speed of light would undoubtedly create a lot of problems - dizzyness etc. - but if it had always been like that then evolution would ensure our systems were matched to it.

Interesting item on radio news yesterday about a UK military development of 2 back-to-back sensors with 180 degree fisheye lenses, creating a ball shaped object with complete 360 degrees coverage. The plan is to throw it into hazardous areas, such as hostage situations, and use software to knit together sensible images from the data gathered while it is in flight, and not particularly worry about what it can see after it comes to rest. The reporter noted the moving image was beyond human comprehension, but once the software worked on it the disposition of people and objects in the room was clear.

JayGeeBSE

Wow , this question has enough ambiguity and uncertainty that I thought that it was a challenge question. To attempt an answer several assumptions must be made. Depending on the assumption, different results will occur.

1. Only the speed of of photons suddenly get reduced. All speed of other physical phenomena remain the same.

Then if the observer remains perfectly motionless, the image perceived on the retina would suddenly go dark. For the flux rate impacting the retina would suddenly drop many orders of magnitude below the sensitivity of the retina previously use to many more photons per second. Moving towards the image will capture more photons per second but still well below the threshold. All irises will suddenly open but to no avail, darkness will dominate.

The world's food supply will suddenly become finite and limited as all manner of beasts stumble in the dark.

The heat and energy residing in our sun will no longer dissipate at the previous rate. Higher pressures will suddenly occur inside the sun. (Presumably this is a universal change and not a local change.) Calculations beyond the scope of this forum will need to be done to determine if the resulting shockwave causes Helium and other heavy elements in the sun to fuse possibly casing a super nova or if the unbalanced higher internal solar pressures just cause a rapid expansion of the sun.

2. All physical phenomena dependent on the speed of light also scale with this precipitous change.

My initial guess would be that nothing would be perceived to have happened. For all of the chemical reactions in the retina that convert photons to electrochemical signals will have a scaled reduction. Our perception of time will now move at the new time scale. Our ability to move in space will scale down similarly so no difference will be perceived.

3. Some physical phenomena change at a non-linear scale as the speed of light changes.

Anything could happen depending on which physical phenomena do scale and which don't.

So for my final answer to the question, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" I say "As many as want to dance on the head of a pin."

A few years ago I had the opportunity to visit a facility in Kanata Ontario (part of Ottawa) where they manufacture nuclear medical products, and as such, they keep their source materials in a 40 foot deep pool of water. (which comes from Chalk River ON)..

Anyway, it only looks to be 10 feet deep, due to the diffraction.. and there is what appears to be paint cans full of stuff in the bottom all glowing a fabulous blue color. This is Cerenkov Radiation, and it is a result of the emitted particles moving 'faster than light' in water. What this really means is that light slows down in water, while the particles are not affected initially.. when they do become aware of the water, they are absorbed and give up their energy as a specific frequency of light.. (which is also red shifted)... completely fascinating.

Chris

Hi, sb!

Don't blame the speed of light's inability to detect certain things on light. Blame it on the eye's detection mechanisms and the brain's rational interpretive facilities: congnizance, pattern recognition, motion retention, blah blah blah.

We can't hear a bullet either, but in this case, it is because it travels faster than the speed of sound, so by the time we could have heard it, we'd be dead. (One reason why gun hunting is more humane than any other kind of hunting...one moment the game animal is prancing around in the forest enjoying its life; and the next instant, it's meat for the table. Never knew what happened to it.)

But if we hear gunfire, and the bullets don't hit us, we can drop to the ground almost the instant we hear them, and thus (hopefully) avoid them; so long as we aren't preoccupied in our minds with something else.

However, if the speed of light were slowed down, might the bullet also be slowed down? The expansion of gases in the bullet might be slower.

Mark

It's a nonsense question amenable only to nonsense answers, see?

Hi Guest!

Or, it's a question designed to stretch your brain by opening it up to new possibilites.

Take your pick.

Mark

If the speed of light is constant in whatever universe you live in, then all is the same.

Say the Satellite gets sucked into a Wormhole and ends up in another universe, intact. This is not likely, but once it did, then that would mean viewer and photo were in the same light, and same constant of the process, so that there would be no difference, and it would be the same difference, only working on a different constant, different from the constant that regulates what we know.

I am interested in Jorries opinion on this subject.

Excellent, that's the kind of "brain opening" I was attemting to allude to.

Hi, Jorrie!

Good to see you. You're a rarity anymore in the posts I've been reading lately.

The slow glass story was previously recommended by Chrisq288 as well.

What's your take on the OP's question? Aso, on the point raised by Transcendian re beginning in a place where light normally travels at a different speed?

Mark

[I'm awarding a 'Digg' in retrospect to Rizwan for his engaging and unusual OP ]

Hi Mark. I think the issue is that if you change only the speed of light, while all other constants of nature remain the same, the universe as we know it could not exist. For one thing, many equations have a c² above or below the line. With a 10^-9 times change in c, can you think about the consequences?

If one ignore such nasty complications and ask rizwan's question: "How would our eyes percieve surrounding objects?", I think you would have seen nothing differently.

If all other constants chanced in step with c, I think it would have boiled down to a simple change in units, with no consequences at all, as Transcendian has implied.

-J

Weird events have taken place. I tried to rate Jorries answer, but all attempts ended up in a complaint, report box.

I was forced to return to the beginning.

Dragged Jorrie into it.

He and Chisg288 refer to the same story.

I tried to read the story but was more interested in John Galt.

Then I thought about the BlackHoleFlashlight, and the Death Defeating Camera with the Plasma Ether Lens.

After that I thought it was time to go to bed.

My answer is our meter scale will shrink by 50% and we will be not able to see if speed is deceased or not, as measuring standard is of half length.

I was just wondering, if the scientists have created or intend to create a special test room where the speed of light can be controlled to really small values, so that humans can experience what it would be like at really slow light speeds??

That's a clever question....dealing with light transmission as opposed to innate light velocity as part of a universe. Would there be some light transmission speed at which...?...opaqueness results? Jorrie?

ExTex