Rethinking relativity: Is time out of joint?

New Scientist ^ | 21 October 2009 | Rachel Courtland

[Kevmo]

Rethinking relativity: Is time out of joint?

EVER since Arthur Eddington travelled to the island of Príncipe off Africa to measure starlight bending around the sun during a 1919 eclipse, evidence for Einstein’s theory of general relativity has only become stronger. Could it now be that starlight from distant galaxies is illuminating cracks in the theory’s foundation?

....

Yet it is still not clear how well general relativity holds up over cosmic scales, at distances much larger than the span of single galaxies. Now the first, tentative hint of a deviation from general relativity has been found. While the evidence is far from watertight, if confirmed by bigger surveys, it may indicate either that Einstein’s theory is incomplete, or else that dark energy, the stuff thought to be accelerating the expansion of the universe, is much weirder than we thought (see “Not dark energy, dark fluid”).

The analysis of starlight data by cosmologist Rachel Bean of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, has generated quite a stir. Shortly after the paper was published on the pre-print physics archive, prominent physicist Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena praised Bean’s research. “This is serious work by a respected cosmologist,” he wrote on his blog Cosmic Variance. “Either the result is wrong, and we should be working hard to find out why, or it’s right, and we’re on the cusp of a revolution.”

.... At this stage, it’s hard to say what would happen if the deviation from general relativity was confirmed. Cosmologists have already considered some modifications to general relativity that could explain the universe’s acceleration (see “Not dark energy, dark fluid”).

....

[Kevmo]

Thanks to Sunken Civ for bringing this to my attention. I have often said that I think the Speed of Light is not a constant, and that evidence is slowly piling up to support that.

[djf]

You’ll get roundly rounded around here for suggesting such a thing....

I still think Einstein didn’t really tell us anything about the what, he just ended up talking about the when and the where. He described geometry, not particles.

[April Lexington]

I think we are witnessing the Timothy Leary Effect on astrophysics...

[Kevmo]

Thanks, Civ.

It turns out that New Scientist is on the excerpt/link list now also.

Along the same vein :

The Suppression of Inconvenient Facts in Physics
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2266921/posts
Sunday, June 07, 2009 7:50:26 PM · by Kevmo · 78 replies · 1,750+ views
Suppressed Science.Net ^ | 12/06/08 | http://www.suppressedscience.net/

The End of Snide Remarks Against Cold Fusion
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2265914/posts
Friday, June 05, 2009 5:56:08 PM · by Kevmo · 95 replies · 1,907+ views
Free Republic, Gravitronics.net and Intrade ^ | 6/5/09 | kevmo, et al

Re-Analysis of the Marinov Light-Speed Anisotropy Experiment
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2270920/posts
Friday, June 12, 2009 11:25:41 PM · by Kevmo · 27 replies · 1,138+ views
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/physics/pdf/0612/0612201v2.pdf ^ | Reginald T. Cahill

[allmost]

time is not a constant.

[Kevmo]

Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out?

[April Lexington]

Yep. Seems like the universe is a bit more psychedelic than we had at first suspected!

[djf]

Well, something is way out of whack.

Dark matter, used to explain something that didn’t fit.
Dark energy, used to explain something that didn’t fit.

What’s next?
Dark light used to explain something that doesn’t fit?

A suitable theory that gravity has a local component to it would clear all this up so quick it would make your head spin.
And I’ve never seen any valid rebuttals to Sakharov and Putoffs work that talks about that exact thing.

[Kevmo]

It never was.

But C, the speed of light, was postulated to be a constant by Einstein. Now it’s looking more like a decaying function.

[April Lexington]

“We all live in a Yellow Submarine...” Its all about what you think its about. None of this makes any sense. I think G-d is keeping s from knowing this stuff because its not important for us to know it. Not that we shouldn’t try, mind you. Its just that our brains aren’t big enough to figure it all out. If we knew it, we’d be G-d. And we ain’t G-d!

[Psycho_Bunny]

There is nothing in the universe more strange and bizarre than anything else.

It's just that you've gotten used to some of it.

[Kevmo]

A suitable theory that gravity has a local component to it would clear all this up so quick it would make your head spin.
***Got links? I’m not sure I’m familiar with this angle.

[allmost]

Bad idea, disrespecting einstein... you are wrong BTW...

[Lokibob]

Nothing in the theory of relativity is a constant, it is all relative to the observer. Not time, speed, distance, energy, mass, or speed of light. Speed is a measure of time vs. distance, and if time is relative or distance is relative, than the speed of light has got to be relative.

.....Bob

[djf]

http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PRA/v39/i5/p2333_1

[Kevmo]

Bad idea, disrespecting einstein... you are wrong BTW...
***It isn’t a disrespect of the man Einstein any more than Einstein was disrespecting Newton. One theory is just a correction factor for the other to allow for the newest observations.

So, I call
01100010 01110101 01101100 01101100 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101001 01110100

< http://www.paulschou.com/tools/xlate/ >

[April Lexington]

There is nothing in the universe more strange and bizarre than anything else. It's just that you've gotten used to some of it.

Brilliant! This is excellent!

[reaganaut]

I have long wondered if the redshift were actually caused by decay of photons (the speed of the particle constant, but the wavelength decreasing). If so, the universe may not be expanding at all. If neither the speed nor the wavelength of light is constant, what do we really know?

Also interesting is ‘knot theory’ physics...

[Kevmo]

So... how does that suggest that gravity has a local component?

[altair]