Posted on 11/28/2016 8:22:13 AM PST by MtnClimber
It’s supposed to be the most fundamental constant in physics, but the speed of light may not always have been the same. This twist on a controversial idea could overturn our standard cosmological wisdom.
In 1998, Joao Magueijo at Imperial College London, proposed that the speed of light might vary, to solve what cosmologists call the horizon problem. This says that the universe reached a uniform temperature long before heat-carrying photons, which travel at the speed of light, had time to reach all corners of the universe.
The standard way to explain this conundrum is an idea called inflation, which suggests that the universe went through a short period of rapid expansion early on – so the temperature evented out when the cosmos was smaller, then it suddenly grew. But we don’t know why inflation started, or stopped. So Magueijo has been looking for alternatives.
Now, in a paper to be published 28 November in Physical Review, he and Niayesh Afshordi at the Perimeter Institute in Canada have laid out a new version of the idea – and this one is testable. They suggest that in the early universe, light and gravity propagated at different speeds.
If photons moved faster than gravity just after the big bang, that would have let them get far enough for the universe to reach an equilibrium temperature much more quickly, the team say.
A testable theory What really excites Magueijo about the idea is that it makes a specific prediction about the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This radiation, which fills the universe, was created shortly after the big bang and contains a “fossilised” imprint of the conditions of the universe.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
It will be interesting to see how this stands up to peer review.
Peer review is overrated. If there is a political standard at risk, the peers will protect their own hides.
So The Traveler was right! (/ST Geek reference)
It seems the only “settled” science is man made global warming!
I’m going with “God did it”.
I’ve chased gravity many times in my life.
....supposed to be......may not always have been.......controversial idea.....proposed ........might vary.........
SCIENCE !!!
The physical constant "c" is often referred to as "the speed of light" but it's actually the speed of propagation of gravity, and other massless particles, too.
It doesn't make sense that it would be faster for light than gravity, as proposed in this hypothesis...
Gravity is a heavy subject to discuss.
I don’t buy it. Gravity doesn’t really travel, but changes in it do. And the speed of light basically reflects how fast any effect—including changes in gravity—can travel.
It is good to read about researchers who are investigating “settled science”. Al Gore would disagree, but that’s how knowledge advances.
Anyway, these sorts of challenges to the consistency of the speed of light have always failed in the past. The announcement is followed (weeks or months later) by a retraction, and an experimental or a math error is usually cited.
The “Big Al” of science is not Al Gore. It’s Albert Einstein.
>>I’ve chased gravity many times in my life.<<
And caught it a few times I am sure! (as have we all)
I believe the difference in speed would have only happened for an extremely tiny fraction of a second. Something like the first .00000000000000000000000000000000000036 of a second, give or take a couple of zeroes.
“I’ve chased gravity many times in my life.”
Lately, it’s been chasing me. Or is that entropy?
.
As always, anything but reality!
.
You betcha. Here's an interesting article about how computer-generated gibberish papers passed peer review and got published in a prestigious scientific journal.
http://phys.org/news/2014-02-science-publisher-gibberish-papers.html
And here's the actual program that generated those gibberish papers. You can generate your own gibberish paper there. Use it and perhaps some lib college will award you a PhD.
https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/
...or maybe the speed of gravity hasn’t always been the same...
How does knowing this help me in any way? How does studying this help humanity?
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