The Rate Constant of Sequencing: On the Physical Identity of c
The Rate Constant of Sequencing On the Physical Identity of c Juliet Zhong Independent Researcher, London, United Kingdom ORCID: 0009-0006-5099-3671 Abstract The constant c enters modern physics as "the speed of light in vacuum"—a description that was accurate in 1865, and has been progressively inaccurate ever since. By 1905, c governed the invariant structure of spacetime; by 1915, it regulated the coupling between geometry and energy-momentum; by 1983, it had become the definitional basis from which the unit of length is derived, having ceased to be a measured quantity of any kind. Across this trajectory, the entity to which c is nominally attached—light—is a contingent occupant of the class of massless fields, all of which propagate at c for reasons that have nothing to do with light in particular. This paper identifies what c is, across the full breadth of its theoretical role. The argument proceeds from a feature ...