“Although no credible evidence exists that the speed of light can be exceeded, writers are willing to embrace the possibility that light might be outpaced somehow.”

— James Nicoll

Never underestimate the persuasive power of somehow.
2010s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 25, 2021. History

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James Nicoll 69

Canadian fiction reviewer 1961

Aberjhani (1957) author

(Angel of Mercy, p. 4).
Book Sources, The River of Winged Dreams (2010)

“An extrapolation of its present rate of growth reveals that in the not too distant future Physical Review will fill bookshelves at a speed exceeding that of light. This is not forbidden by general relativity since no information is being conveyed.”

David Mermin (1935) American physicist

quoting a joke he heard from Rudolf Peierls. [N. David Mermin, Boojums all the way through: communicating science in a prosaic age, Cambridge University Press, 1990, 0-521-38880-5, 57]

“I can transport matter — anything — at the speed of light, perfectly.”

James Clavell (1921–1994) American novelist

André Delambre (David Hedison) to his wife Hélène
The Fly (1958)
Context: I can transport matter — anything — at the speed of light, perfectly. Of course this is only a crude beginning, but I've stumbled on the most important discovery since man sawed off the end of a tree trunk and found the wheel. The disintegrator-integrator will change life as we know it. Think what it means. Anything, even humans, will go through one of these devices. No need for cars or railways or airplanes, even spaceships. We'll set up matter-receiving stations throughout the world, and later the universe. There'll never be famine. Surpluses can be sent instantaneously at almost no cost, anywhere. Humanity need never want or fear again. I'm a very fortunate man, Hélène.

“… the principle of the limiting character of the velocity of light. This statement… is not an arbitrary assumption but a physical law based on experience. In making this statement, physics does not commit the fallacy of regarding absence of knowledge as evidence for knowledge to the contrary. It is not absence of knowledge of faster signals, but positive experience which has taught us that the velocity of light cannot be exceeded. For all physical processes the velocity of light has the property of an infinite velocity. In order to accelerate a body to the velocity of light, an infinite amount of energy would be required, and it is therefore physically impossible for any object to obtain this speed. This result was confirmed by measurements performed on electrons. The kinetic energy of a mass point grows more rapidly than the square of its velocity, and would become infinite for the speed of light.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

“The speed of light sucks.”

John D. Carmack (1970) American computer programmer, engineer, and businessman

Referring to network latency limitations, Quoted in John Carmack Biography http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Carmack_John.html.

“Inflation itself proceeds at a speed faster than the measured speed of light.”

John Moffat book Reinventing Gravity

Source: Reinventing Gravity (2008), Chapter 6, Inflation And Variable Speed Of Light (VSL), p. 102

“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”

Douglas Adams book Mostly Harmless

Variant: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.
Source: Mostly Harmless

“For although in a certain sense and for light-minded persons non-existent things can be more easily and irresponsibly represented in words than existing things, for the serious and conscientious historian it is just the reverse.”

Hermann Hesse book The Glass Bead Game

Motto of the work written by Hesse, and attributed to an "Albertus Secundus"
The Glass Bead Game (1943)
Context: For although in a certain sense and for light-minded persons non-existent things can be more easily and irresponsibly represented in words than existing things, for the serious and conscientious historian it is just the reverse. Nothing is harder, yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing things brings them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.

“The refraction of light agrees with the grand principle that Nature always uses the simplest means to accomplish its effects. From this principle, can be derived whenever light passes from one medium to another, the ratio of the sine of the angle of refraction to the sine of the angle of refraction equals the inverse ratio of the speeds at which light moves in each medium.
But this "budget", this expense of action that Nature minimizes in the refraction of light, is it also minimized in the direct propagation and reflection of light? Yes, it always has the smallest possible value.”

Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters

Accord de différentes loix de la nature qui avoient jusqu’ici paru incompatibles (1744)

“Relativity distorted classical expectations in a way that Clavain still did not find entirely intuitive. Slam two objects towards each other, each with individual velocities just below light-speed, and the classical result for their closing velocity would be the sum of their individual speeds: just under twice the speed of light. Yet the true result, confirmed with numbing precision, was that the objects saw each other approach with a combined speed that was still just below the speed of light. Similarly, the relativistic closing velocity for two objects moving towards each other with individual speeds of one-half of light-speed was not light-speed itself, but eight-tenths of it. It was the way the universe was put together, and yet it was not something the human mind had evolved to accept.”

Alastair Reynolds book Redemption Ark

Source: Redemption Ark (2002), Chapter 26 (p. 463)

“Although no credible evidence exists that the speed of light can be exceeded, writers are willing to embrace the possibility that light might be outpaced somehow.”

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James Nicoll 69

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