Microsoft Word Kurzweil, Ray The Singularity Is Near doc

Changing the Speed of Light.
The second conjecture is to change the speed of light itself. In chapter 3, I mentioned 
the finding that appears to indicate that the speed of light has differed by 4.5 parts out of 10
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over the past two billion 
years. 
In 2001 astronomer John Webb discovered that the so-called fine-structure constant varied when he examined 
light from sixty-eight quasars (very bright young galaxies).
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The speed of light is one of four constants that the fine-
structure constant comprises, so the result is another suggestion that varying conditions in the universe may cause the 
speed of light to change. Cambridge University physicist John Barrow and his colleagues are in the process of running 
a two-year tabletop experiment that will test the ability to engineer a small change in the speed of light.
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Suggestions that the speed of light can vary are consistent with recent theories that it was significantly higher 
during the inflationary period of the universe (an early phase in its history, when it underwent very rapid expansion). 
These experiments showing possible variation in the speed of light clearly need corroboration and are showing only 
small changes. But if confirmed, the findings would be profound, because it is the role of engineering to take a subtle 
effect and greatly amplify it. Again, the mental experiment we should perform now is not whether contemporary 
human scientists, such as we are, can perform these engineering feats but whether or not a human civilization that has 
expanded its intelligence by trillions of trillions will be able to do so. 
For now we can say that ultrahigh levels of intelligence will expand outward at the speed of light, while 
recognizing that our contemporary understanding of physics suggests that this may not be the actual limit of the speed 
of expansion or, even if the speed of light proves to be immutable, that this limit may not restrict reaching other 
locations quickly through wormholes.