zen_tom

OK, strange start to a post, and please excuse my roundabout style - either way, I'm interested in in your ideas...

Speed is a function of how far you can travel within a certain time. Apparently there is a limit on how fast you can go, but this post isn't about that (directly). The question is; What exactly is distance anyway?

Assume you are in space and you want to measure the distance between yourself and another object. How would you do it? Perhaps by shining a light at it and seeing how long it took for the light to be reflected back? Divide by speed of light and there's your distance. So distance in fact, can most simply be considered as a function of time. i.e. The length of time it takes for one object to effect or signal with another. It also suggests that distance as a concept is meaningless without matter.

So what is the 'stuff' made of that separates objects? Some people call it space-time and describe it bending in response to masses operating within it (i.e. gravity), others describe warping it to achieve faster-than-light travel, or spinning it to create time-machines - the rest of us just live in it - but what actually is it?

What if space-time was made of the same stuff as matter and energy? Matter and energy have been found to be equivalent i.e. convertable according to e = mc^2 and it always puzzled me as to why the c should be found in the equation. c describes the speed of light, or the distance traveled (space) within a set period (time) which means that spacetime is also represented in the equation.

If it's possible to use it to prove the equivalence of matter and energy, is it not also possible to show the equivalence of time, space, matter and energy too? What might that mean? I don't really know...I just thought it would be an interesting question...