Yeah, a bit of a ramble coming up as I am not, nor do I pretend to be a theoretical physicist. On the other hand, theoretical means that any thing goes as long as it can be proven or disproven. I remember as a youth, watching a video where the narrator mentioned that common belief was that if someone where to travel faster than 10 miles an hour, they would suffer serious trauma and perhaps even die. This was a stupid belief, and not really a theory, as people had been riding horses and other animals for years and horses can run at speeds of thirty miles an hour. So, if this was a theory, then it was busted a long time ago.
Fast forward to current times. The current thinking is that the speed of light is an unbreakable speed limit. While I don't question this, I do believe that there are circumstances where this might be (I almost wrote circumcised) circumvented. I believe the speed of light is directly tied to gravity. "So what?" you may say.
So lets look at the primordial "big bang". Actually, let's look before the big bang. All the known matter and energy, anti-matter, anti energy(? maybe, maybe not), dark matter, dark energy and whatever else may have been out there, was all drawn together into one tiny point of existence, for one tiny infinitesimal period of time. Interestingly, for that tiny period of time, it was possible to reach any part of the universe instantaneously.
This was the ultimate black hole, a gigantic gravitational force that for an instant, defied all attempts at escape. Of course, this resulted in the big bang but I believe that whatever started the the entire universal contraction is still at point zero, generating an enormous amount of gravity affecting most of the universe, I say most because this is where my uneducated theory comes in. You may laugh and scoff at my lack of understanding even a tiny amount of physics but I too can see what I see and base theories on those observations.
According to what I have read and heard, galaxies on the edge of what is currently the universe have been observed to accelerate beyond the speed of light. All kinds of theories exist, none that I understand but what I propose is this. The speed of light is determined by the most significant gravitational force affecting that light. What am I talking about?
OK, say you have a universe with only two objects in it, a five kilo mass and a one kilo mass that is orbiting the five kilo mass. As long as that occurs, the five kilo mass affects the speed of light. The one kilo mass may have some influence but it's not the most significant source of gravity.
Now, for some strange reason, the one kilo mass begins to accelerate and slowly begins to pull away from the five kilo mass. As it moves away, it begins to speed up and move away at a faster rate until it reaches escape velocity. Now it's free from the five kilo mass but if the one kilo mass stopped moving in relation to the five kilo mass, it would slowly return.
Now we place a light source on the one kilo mass. Even though it may be travelling faster than the five kilo mass, the five kilo mass is still affecting the speed of light as it's the most significant source of gravity. But then, one day it happens, the one kilo object travels to a point of where its gravitational significance is equal to the five kilo mass. Still, the light source is influence by the five kilo mass.
But then, the one kilo mass becomes significant as it moves further away, and becomes the reference for the light source. Observers on the five kilo mass will observe the light violet shifting as it begins to accelerate beyond the speed of light on the five kilo mass, but even though the observed light is moving faster than light on the five kilo mass, it is not accelerating according to the influencing gravity.
Eventually, the one kilo mass may even reach the speed of light but to any observer on the one kilo mass, the speed of light has not changed. To the observers on the five kilo mass, there is no light. This is similar to the Doppler affect but is not the same as the light beam is not being compressed or expanded. There is no change to the wavelengths of the various spectrums.
So, take it as you will, a way of looking outside the box or the ramblings of a tired, senile, old man. As most theories go, it makes no difference at all, as most likely, the sun will still rise and set tomorrow even if we don't see it.
