Speed of light may have changed recently

New Scientist ^ | 6/30/04 | Eugenie Samuel Reich

[GrandEagle]

Here is a link to a bit of info about the book. (If it works).
(Annals of the World)

[GrandEagle]

If I have misled you, forgive me.
LOL! I did miss the (/sarcasm) context. I guess trying to mix Freeping with work doesn't work out at times huh?
The book may not be of much interest to you then.
Forgive me for butting in!

Regards,
GE

[DannyTN]

"Not exactly a big help for the Young Earth Creationists, is it? "

It doesn't prove a young earth, but it does demonstrate that some of the things that Science THINKS it knows, it doesn't really.

[GrandEagle]

My understanding is very different.
As I read the responses to my understanding I realize just how much I have forgotten. Thanks for the link.

[DannyTN]

If light slows to a stop, I hope I'm looking at someone attractive.

[RightWhale]

If there is to be a wave, there must be something to wave!

It's just a mathematical method. Also, since it involves imaginary numbers there may be no physical correlation. Might be that nothing is waving except a century of PhD sheepskins.

[RightWhale]

Speed of light, frequency, and wavelength are the three quantities that are so related that it is hard to tell them apart. What if changing c changes lambda but not nu?

[RightWhale]

Frequency or wavelength. Since they are so closely related either is used to represent color. Einstein invented photons as a mathematical device to explain several physics problems, and all in a few years a century ago. Photons are just a device.

[RightWhale]

The laws of the universe are uniform in all directions, or else!

[longshadow]

You know what my vote is...as for the rest, it is much easier to pretend to understand Velikovski, than real science.

Exactly. What is mythology, other than a simplistic belief used in lieu of reason?

[RadioAstronomer]

Arrrggg! I should have pinged my ping list to the live thread. However, I got on the thread very late last night myself.

WHOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO! :-)

Cassini SOI was PERFECT :-)

[GrandEagle]

If light slows to a stop, I hope I'm looking at someone attractive.
LOL! My luck, I'll be looking in a mirror. Perpetual nightmare!

[RadioAstronomer]

And it works well enough for us to "get from one planet to another".

Yuppers!

Isaac Newton in the drivers seat for much of the way. :-)

[djf]

Correct. It was supposed to be faster. Consistent readings of the speed show a slight but continuing decrease.

As measurements are refined, over a few more years, we will have an absolute answer about whether it is occurring, but there is still afaik atheoretical basis for it.

This site has a good summation.

http://www.ldolphin.org/constc.shtml

It may be a consequence of the new theory (discovered by me in 94, and by Sima and Sukenik of Slovakia in '89) of the Expansive Non-decelerative Universe.

[null and void]

Sounds kewl. I'll wait until it's in paperback.

[ngc6656]

The laws of the universe are uniform in all directions, or else!

Speaking of uniformity, Right Whale, your post seems better than most as the point to inject these questions for consideration:

1)If the speed of light has indeed changed has it changed uniformly over time, or has it changed in leaps or jumps?

2)If the speed of light has changed, were the changes universally instantaneous, i.e., did all photons in the Universe change their velocity at the same instant?

2a) If the answer to 2) is instantaneous, then >something< travels faster than the speed of light to deliver the message to all of the photons: "alright guys, lets jump it up (down) a notch or two."

[RightWhale]

did all photons in the Universe change their velocity at the same instant?

We must at least have uniformity of definitions. The most powerful method of formulating definitions follows Bridgman. This might be a good time to review Bridgman procedures.

[Gorjus]

many dogmatic assumptions of cosmology.

Y'know, 'dogmatic' is one of those words that inherently amount to name-calling. Whoever is 'dogmatic' is automatically close-minded, stubborn, whatever. So I'm strongly spring-loaded to discount any opinions or discussion by someone who calls any other position 'dogmatic' in the same way I discount the opinions of someone who introduces any other ad hominem attack. You might consider that when trying to make a point, because - at least for me - it completely undermines anything else you might want to say. (The same applies if you quote or excerpt the position of someone who calls other positions 'dogmatic' if you expect that quoted position to be convincing.)

It was never an issue on whether the speed of light differs when it's not in a vacuum. I recognized that caveat in my original posting, which was already long enough that I didn't feel the need to go through the topic of non-vacuum conditions. The basic theory starts from that condition in the same sense that we talk about the speed of an aircraft in still air when discussing its performance. True, when flying into a headwind, the speed over the ground varies, but the performance in still air is a valid reference point from which additional variables can be introduced. In this case, the variable of interest is the speed of light as measured by observers with differing absolute velocities. Having one of those observers measure it in a vacuum while the other measures it in a transparent medium of higher index of refraction does not address the matter at hand. If, regardless of their own intrinsic velocities, differing observers measure the speed of light in the same conditions (i.e. vacuum) and get the same value to the limits of measurement, that's an important datum for theories to address. The point of bringing up some of the seminal experiments that demonstrated that datum was to address the specific issue of whether Einstein 'assumed' the speed of light was constant, or based his theory on the data that indicated it was constant. That's a key factor in evaluating the strength of his theory.

It may indeed be true that neutrinos preclude the very possibility of a vacuum - which does not absolutely undermine the theory. There is still a lot of discussion on whether neutrinos have any rest mass or charge, and while if they do they provide some convenient explanations for dark matter, convenience alone is not proof. Part of Einstein's theory is an explanation for why - at the speed of light - a travelling electromagnetic field can be self-sustaining without electrical charges to 'wave' around. It may be wrong, but the argument that there must be something to 'wave' begs the question. It does not prove Einstein is wrong - it assumes it as a given. Sorry, not convinced.

For Southack: I did read the article, and there are some subtleties that even the article mentions that make their success in part semantics. Here's another explanation for their results. The light pulse is absorbed by the sodium medium at one end, and then it is transmitted through the condensate to the other end not as 'light' (meaning an electromagnetic wave) but as a physical motion of the atoms on the condensate - which would be much slower than the speed of light - and then reradiated on the other end. This is analogous to capturing a sound wave in a microphone, transmitting it in a taut string, and then reradiating it at the other end. The original sound does indeed provide the energy that is transmitted in the string, but to say that the wave of alternate compression and expansion of air molecules is the same thing as the lateral vibrations of a string becomes as much semantics as fact. I'm not arguing with their results. In fact, their findings require an expansion of the very language we use and I honor their advance in science. But the key is how their results relate to the General Theory of Relativity as it relates to the speed of light through free space. That relationship is not clear from the article. In particular, I didn't find anything that declared the 'light' pulses in the condensate were not subject to gravity while in the condensate. The fact the light pulses were 'trapped' in a physical array of atoms which were themselves prevented from reacting to gravity by the levitation fields no more proves that the light pulses were unaffected by gravity than a car supported by a bridge proves the car is unaffected by gravity.

Once again, my attempt in replying to the original post by <1/1,000,000th% (among others) was to explain in a few paragraphs a very complex subject that can't be explained accurately in words anyway. (Take two courses in Tensor mathematics and call me in the morning.) Nothing in my post insisted that the speed of light (even in a vacuum) is constant, only that the available data say so - or at least, the data available to Einstein. Perhaps it's not. If so, it would explain some troublesome cosmological data, just as it makes inexplicable other data currently explained by the General Theory. Frankly, I don't have any personal stake one way or the other. If you don't find my explanation interesting, fine. Have a nice day.

[Gorjus]

Not coincidentally, Einstein's GR reduces to Heaviside's theory in the weak field limit.

No argument. Trying to explain a complex subject in a few paragraphs and without any real math inherently leaves a lot of things out. And indeed, just as Newton said of himself, Einstein was standing on the shoulders of giants.

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

...it does demonstrate that some of the things that Science THINKS it knows, it doesn't really.

Agreed! Lot's of puzzles to figure out still. Like this one:

Scientists Find That Saturn's Rotation Period is a Puzzle