“I have often made the hypothesis that ultimately physics will not require a mathematical statement, that in the end the machinery will be revealed and the laws will turn out to be simple.”
Richard Feynman (1965)
The classic analogy Einstein uses in his Relativity thought experiments is the rail carriage and the embankment. Either can be thought of stationary, pre Einstein relativity makes this a valid viewpoint. What’s important is the relative difference in the speed of the carriage and the embankment, Einstein’s K and K’ reference-body (co-ordinate system).
There is no known V = 0, Newton’s much debated ether, that provides an absolute that any velocity can be relative to. We can assign a relative V = 0 to any body for convenience but there is no absolute stationary reference. In the case of light it’s more likely to be that the difference of the sum of relative speeds of matter and energy, is C, always C.
What if C is the speed we are traveling and EMR is still, V=0?
Using the train analogy, let’s consider C = 0. Let C be the velocity of the embankment as seen from the railcar. So we, matter, the train, are travelling at C and the embankment is V=0. The embankment as the ether provides a definite speed and direction for light.
The embankment represents Light and all things that go C, existing all or in part in another dimension. Interaction of our three dimensions (train) with a C dimension (embankment), moving relatively at the speed of light, could be the source of all electromagnetic radiation. Picture a hole in the floor of the train and the embankment rushing past. I remember as a child traveling on the train and when you flushed the toilet a hole would open and you had a glimpse of the ties and gravel blurring past beneath the train. It was surprising because even though you could feel the railcar moving a little, the embankment seemed to be going very fast. The embankment had a definite speed and direction.
We don’t need an extra energy dimension for the embankment, we can use our newly embraced time dimension. If we consider the embankment to be the time dimension, our train is travelling at the speed of light in a positive time direction towards tomorrow.
The train’s relative motion could be a source of energy if you could somehow tap in to the embankment rushing by. From earlier we had:
a = V2 / r
F = ma
Fc = m V2 / r
For the train let’s again let V = C
Fc = mC2 / r
(Fc)r = mC2
E = mC2
The mass of the train is related to the energy of the embankment by Einstein’s familiar equation.
At C there is an equivalence of mass and energy. At this specific speed mass and energy become interchangeable.
Towards Unification 