Posted on 03/25/2013 11:27:40 AM PDT by Olog-hai
Two new studies to be published in the European Physical Journal D demonstrate that the speed of light is variable in real space.
Textbook explanations of the speed of light assume that light travels in a vacuum, but space is not a vacuum.
It is not expected that the small variation in the speed of light which has been found will affect the universally accepted theories of particle physics and quantum mechanics to a large extent.
However, the studies are proof that the speed of light may be variable, and shows that the mathematical treatments that have long been used should be revised to include the speed of light as variable and not a constant in real space.
(Excerpt) Read more at clevelandleader.com ...
Misleading headline alert
This is not new, we were taught this 30 years ago.
Another old theory found again. People are desperate to find a way to make interstellar travel seem possible.
Just the other day I was driving in the desert at night and I kept outrunning my headlights. Here I thought I was nuts but now I know why.
In one of the new studies, researchers established a detailed quantum mechanism that would explain the magnetization and polarization of the vacuum, referred to as vacuum permeability and permittivity, and the finite speed of light. It suggests that there exist a limited number of ephemeral particles per unit volume in a vacuum
If they were proof, then there wouldn't be a "may" involved. Perhaps the author meant "evidence" or "suggestive".
Or is this an attempt to confirm and measure the idea that virtual particle/anti-particle pairs are constantly being created and destroyed even in a vacuum?
Old news really about the small variations, but one wonders if there may be larger variations under some circumstances and in different regions of space..............Just wondering.
It is well established that the speed of light is slower in a neutral plasma than in a vacuum. In the ionosphere (an example of a neutral plasma) the effect is proportional to the square of wavelength and something like the squareroot of the charge divided by the mass of the electron. The positive ions, being so much more massive have little effect. See: http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/315/Waves/node48.html for details and equations 593 and 596 for the exact equations.
This paper seems to be saying that the presence of short lived quantum mechanical virtual particles delays the speed of light in a vacuum (plausible) but the delay is independent of the mass of the particles. Not enough details are supplied to evaluate the claim.
Pinging my favorite cosmologists. In the past, we have had some discussions where I posited that the speed of light is not really a constant.
Pretty damn cool.
The libtard-educated techies can only regurgitate what was taught decades ago, which will fool the new strain of libtard voters and leaders. It’s perfect! These guys are good. When the listeners are stupid, they’d never know anyway. Recycle the knowledge with a liberal twist.
To quote the late Zaven Margosian:
“Constants aren’t,
and Variables don’t.”
I’m still waiting for ‘them’ to give a better definition of the zero point field.
Well yes, yes there are. Think Shwartzchild and black holes.
Thanks for the ping, dear Kevmo!
I was thinking along the lines of astronomer Halton Arp and the anomalies he discovered about red shift distance measurements in certain areas.
Quasars billions of light years in distance, according to red shift, interacting with near galaxies.
There are photographs of a quasar and a galaxy from which the quasar is draining ‘gasses’, and a star in the flow stream! Only problem is, the quasar is supposed to be many light years further away from us than the galaxy from which the stream is flowing. The size of the stream is supposedly measurable because of the star caught in the ‘stream’. That stream is not many light years in length. Truly, the Universe is stranger than we can even imagine ... yet.
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