Dice Doesn’t Play With God: an article by GF Willmetts.
There’s a reason why I reversed Einstein’s phrase, ‘God does not play dice with the universe,’ in the title.
The science rules that govern our reality have specific tasks. Some components have more than one purpose, but hardly surprising. Why should we constantly create new solutions? Occam’s Razor advocates for simplicity. Unless nature is highly literate in all languages, these scientific laws simply occur as they are. We define them, proving they are predictive; if we know some components, they always turn out the same. We still don’t understand how the 26 science constants work that way, but they keep the universe going. Until someone discovers their true composition, they remain a mystery. Even if we do, I doubt it would have much effect on the mathematical function we use them for. All of them contain multiple numbers after the decimal point, and I doubt that this will change. Calculations often reduce numbers to a few decimal places, unless we aim for extreme precision.
If we want to focus on the speed of light and stay in Einstein’s world, we can have it in two flavours: The speed of light can be expressed as either 670,616,629 mph or in metric units, 299,792,458 m/s. Whatever, it’s still the same number in different scales. If we came up with something better than metric, we would probably use that instead. It’s all used in the Einstein formula: E=MC2. Energy = Mass * Speed of Light². Because of that, the speed of light is constant. We know the mass of an object, so we can determine how much energy is created. It’s how we were able to gauge the blast power of a nuclear bomb. It also determines we can’t exceed the speed of light. The same structure captures everything, meaning energy travels at the speed of light.
That is, until we come to relativity, special relativity, and why we can’t go faster than the speed of light. Would you be interested in delving into the intricate mathematics involved, simply to understand how the speed of light limits the calculation of time? Actually, the only things known to go at the speed of light are photons and their hypothetical gluons. The light from distant stars and galaxies is bunched-up photons. If they lose any, then it tends to be inconsequential. Quite how they evade singularities where they can be affected by gravity is still unknown. They probably don’t, but I doubt we can keep track of all the stars coming in our direction. About the only other subatomic particle that has an equal speed is the elusive neutrino.
As far as we know, famous last words, there is no matter at our scale capable of going faster than the speed of light. Quite rightly, you’re going to ask how we could spot them. Only at long distance would you see something approach and then fade into the distance. It is likely that the moving away from us would last longer before changing direction or fading into a dot. Visually, it’ll be a few split seconds, so our instruments would have to do the watching.
Sounds easy? It’s not. Don’t forget, as objects approach the speed of light, the mass expands. As photons are energy, not matter, they won’t change. You won’t know if you’re inside the craft, all things being relative. It’s possible that you won’t notice them as they pass by. I doubt if even a mass detector would spot it. Remember, if it can grow that large and choose a location for reduction, it could potentially reach any point in the universe. This implies that it could reach any location in the universe within a single time frame, including the Big Bang. It brings an interesting dilemma that our universe is the result of such an action. I’ve even done a couple of stories based on the idea, both from inside the spacecraft and out. If we could do it, we could create another universe…and probably destroy our own.
I bet Einstein never went that far, but he did say time travel was possible, but only into the future. In terms of relativity, a spacecraft approaching the speed of light will be going faster than the time outside of its own bubble. The twin who stays at home will be of pensionable age by the time they arrive at Proxima Centauri, 4 light years away. On a return trip to Earth, it will still be in its bubble but not fast enough to go back in time because Earth will be travelling the same speed. The twin who gets back will probably be meeting his brother’s great-great-grandchildren. There is no way he could go fast enough to meet his own great-great-grandfather.
I did have an idle thought a couple of days ago as to whether some science laws might have a subclause to prevent some things from happening. With two objects travelling at independent speeds, such as a spacecraft and our planet, it doesn’t look like that’s possible. Even if a spacecraft could exceed the speed of light, there would be a time for this to build up, and in that time, normal time would still go on, and it still wouldn’t allow you to go back any further than time advanced.
If nature allowed time travel, then I think we would see examples of it, far more with objects than with people. Ghostly appearances wouldn’t be exclusive to castles, nor would they be at any disaster or warfront. That would defeat repetitiveness in the laws of science. There would have to be some other factor involved that we haven’t spotted yet.
If time travel to the past were possible, we would see more physical evidence. It may have changed things without us knowing, or it may have only affected alternative realities. The rules of science are tidy and don’t depend on chance or a roll of a die.
© GF Willmetts 2025
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Ask before borrowing
My thanks to Rosie Oliver for
some insights even if I through
doubt on them.
