Based on my reading, the particle physics explanation/theory is precisely the current consensus. And, given my research into electrodynamics in order to understand the propagation of EM wave fronts in antenna design, I also think the article has some merit (which is, at its core, a call for some experiments).
Given that "light" is fundamentally a electromagnetic wave and its propagation in spacetime is constant, and this results in time slowing down when you go faster to maintain this property, it isn't unreasonable to hypothesize a more fundamental basis here.
Personally, I think adding in the time component will be essential to completing this puzzle but all in all it makes for an avenue of investigation which is interesting.
Note that light isn't particularly special in this context, what is special (very special) is the speed of light. Other things travel at the speed of light, indeed everything massless is forced to travel at the speed of light. Other things that travel at the speed of light include gravitational waves and gluons*.
Basically "the speed of light" should be called "the speed of massless things" or possibly "the speed of causality" or something. We just call it "the speed of light" because light is the first thing we discovered that travels at this special speed.
*the star is because everything about quantum-chromodynamics is terrible so gluons don't really ever exist as particles themselves. If they did they would travel at the speed of light.
>Personally, I think adding in the time component will be essential to completing this puzzle but all in all it makes for an avenue of investigation which is interesting.
Not a physicist, but I've often wondered if the basis of QFT got off on the wrong foot by making time a privileged coordinate instead of a quantum operator like it does for position.
While I sympathize with your unease about making time a privileged coordinate, even in conventional quantum mechanics an operator for time seems difficult. What would that operator measure? The time at which a given object "is"? The whole point of physics is to describe the dynamic nature of reality, parametrized by time.
Speaking of which, time(-of-arrival) measurements in quantum mechanics have recently attracted quite some interest: The classic Copenhagen formalism doesn't seem to give an answer here (or at least not a unique one – it depends on how you perform the calculation). Meanwhile, Bohmian mechanics does seem to make a precise prediction. It will be interesting to see what experiments will yield.
You just get into a twist of not being able to renormalize if you create a dependency chain like that. The same reason quantum gravity is such a problem - gravitons emit gravitons..
Given that "light" is fundamentally a electromagnetic wave and its propagation in spacetime is constant, and this results in time slowing down when you go faster to maintain this property, it isn't unreasonable to hypothesize a more fundamental basis here.
Personally, I think adding in the time component will be essential to completing this puzzle but all in all it makes for an avenue of investigation which is interesting.