Time and the Speed of Light

[MindForgedManacle]

Does anyone actually know what a photon or time is? That may sound like a stupid question but I can't seem to get a satisfying answer looking it up.

Hard to say. Ontology is, as ancient thinkers repeatedly discovered, utterly mysterious. Our fundamental concepts like time and space are notions which just break down at the level of language. It's sort of like a mathematician trying to explain more complex parts of number theory through natural language alone. At some point, we just conclude we need a better way of talking about certain things without the bother (at least in strictly science) of discerning what, if anything is "actually" the case, what things really are in themselves. In the case of mathematics and quantum mechanics, it's often good recourse to follow the advice of "Just do the math." Of course, trying to "really" understand things could have benefit, but it is by no means the sole (or most efficient) path.

...Now that I've likely bored you, a partial answer is that time can be conceptualized as really being the same as space, in that the universe tends to be thought of as an unbounded 4-dimensional "block" of spacetime. There is no "present" moment under this B-theory of time, events are simply earlier than or later than another.

Time, gravity, photons, magnetism, dark matter, dark energy, ect. We haven't got a clue what they are only the effects they have on things.

Imagine what things will be like when someone figures this shit out.

Well, saying we haven't got ANY clue about ANY of those things might be pushing it a little. Though, I'm not convinced that things will necessarily be radically different if we ever do "really" understand those things. We humans have a nasty habit of normalizing to our conditions and resurrecting (or worsening) problems we'd hope to have vanquished.

/occasional pessimist