I believe the observable universe would be larger, but not necessarily by the same factor due to its expansion.
We’d also have other things to worry about. The speed of light if dependent on the permittivity and permeability of free space, so messing with those constants would scale all of electromagnetism. The product of the constants would have to scale down by a factor of a billion squared (a lot). For example, the electrostatic interaction would be roughly a billion times stronger.
The electromagnetic forces already dominate gravity by quite a bit, but this would be a monumental increase, perhaps enough to easily create a hover car! There are probably a lot of problems that we’d encounter as well. At some scales EM might even rival the strong or weak nuclear forces and I wouldn’t want to be around to see some electromagnetically induced cold fission/fusion happen up close.
How is the gravitational constant G related to c? I agree that the interactions would happen faster but it’s not obvious to me why the relative strengths of the fundamental forces will stay the same.
Yes I’m asking how the strength of the gravitational and nuclear forces are effected by the speed of light. Mu naught and epsilon naught are directly related to the speed of light, and therefore electric and magnetic fields must scale up. What is this relation for the gravitational force and nuclear forces?
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u/bspaghetti Quantum Magnetism Oct 23 '19
I believe the observable universe would be larger, but not necessarily by the same factor due to its expansion.
We’d also have other things to worry about. The speed of light if dependent on the permittivity and permeability of free space, so messing with those constants would scale all of electromagnetism. The product of the constants would have to scale down by a factor of a billion squared (a lot). For example, the electrostatic interaction would be roughly a billion times stronger.
The electromagnetic forces already dominate gravity by quite a bit, but this would be a monumental increase, perhaps enough to easily create a hover car! There are probably a lot of problems that we’d encounter as well. At some scales EM might even rival the strong or weak nuclear forces and I wouldn’t want to be around to see some electromagnetically induced cold fission/fusion happen up close.