Intangible

I can't figure it out. I assume I wasn't meant to. But maybe others after me will. There are so many aspects of life that seem unreal yet they are very tangible forces within our universe and our reality. Yet here I am still pondering away at its very composition.

I don't know why or how it came upon me, but I had gotten side tracked by the thought of Faster Than Light. Faster than light...what did that mean? By its definition I assume it meant anything which moved faster than it. Anything...something...a thing. Maybe it's not a thing?

I thought about water. It is something that in its composition is a very slow moving thing but it has the potential to become very excited and become gaseous. It can become slowed further and become a solid. I thought about its amorphous nature and wondered the connection to light's own duality; if there was one at all.

I imagined light as if it were a shallow pool of water. While the pool itself is limited in its dimensions it can be imagined as a small frame of our entire universe. Imagine the water fills this infinite expanse that is in fact our pool, but instead of liquid we have light; a liquid light if you will.

We human beings are things which move faster than the contained water in the pool. Yet at the same time, a majority of our composition is made of it. It may be the case that whatever moves FTL would essentially be of its composition, yet is governed by other physics. But I digress.

Imagine a person wading through the pool. They are in essence moving faster than the water, yet at the same time interacting with it. Their passage causes molecules to move around the person's being, causing tangible distortions in its composition, but not in its nature.

This metaphor only is possible when one takes out the essential dynamics of a liquid state, as light is not ruled by the same laws. Yet water itself is not bound to its liquid or physical state and I suspect neither is light bound to its particle or wave forms. Things which are FTL are still composed of its makeup, yet that composition is in intangible force that cannot be perceived by the naked eye.

This state of etherealness is much like the fogs that wash over towns. In its entirety it is a tangible thing, yet its presence and physical being are nothing to the objects which it envelops. It flows seemingly through whatever it wishes; or rather the winds.

I'd imagine that whatever does move FTL would only be measurable through its absence; in that a negative means a positive. I assume this because things which move faster than light would in essence be invisible, as light can never reach it, or interact with it in a way we can perceive. Yet our own minds are able to perceive coldness as a tangible thing, when it is actually an absence of energy.

But then again...this is all half-baked.