Posted on 06/28/2014 12:14:35 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The University of Maryland physicist believes the delay could have been because the light was in fact slowed as it travelled due to something known as 'vacuum polarisation'.
During this phenomenon, photons break down to something known as positrons and electrons for a split second. before combining together again.
When they split, quantum mechanics creates a gravitational potential between the pair of virtual particles.
Dr Franson argues that the process might have a gradual impact on the speed of the photon, meaning that over 168,000 light years, the photons may have suffered a near five-hour delay.
If the physicist is correct, it means scientists have to recalculate everything from our distance to the sun to some of the most distant objects seen in other galaxies.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Great pic!
You are racing against the speed of dark.
Thanks GeronL. They're still trying to kludge their way around the problem (and solution) identified by the late Halton Arp (see the keyword).
Light and Dark Matter walk into a bar....
Oh....yeah...I was....I was just going to say...that...you know...uh....exactly that.
We see matter going faster than the speed of light every day. When Obama has a new scandal, Republicans hide under their desks, crawl into a fetal position while sucking their thumbs at 187,000 miles per second.
Gee, didn’t a “consensus” of scientists agree that Einstein was correct...the science is settled. Anyone who disagrees is an Einstein “denier”. This is how “climate science” works so why not apply it here?
Albert Einstein walks to a door that says “pull” but instead he pushes and of course it doesn’t open. His wife says “Good going Einstein, can’t you read?”
You and me both brotha. Quantum Theory is in complete disarray, requiring constant fudging and new variables to form fit itself to newly discovered data. No doubt, Einstein is rolling over in his grave.
As long as the sun keeps rising...........
You asked: “Say What?”
That’s what I first thought when I came upon this in spiritual texts:
- Form is Form, Emptiness is Emptiness
- Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form
- No Form, No Emptiness
- The universe is just “Like This”
But if you think about it, when conceiving of (or naming) God - isn’t “Say What?” the only response that indicates you ‘get it’ - or at least ‘don’t get it wrong.’ In other words, the moment you think you ‘get’ God, you are furthest away from whatever the word ‘God’ points to.
Because Quantum Mechanics and Einstein’s Physics operate at (and within) the level of Name and Form, the truth will always appear to be whatever is measured.
It’s very difficult to understand if you’re trying to conceptualize it - you can read all you want about hitting a baseball, but if you are thinking about what you read when the pitch arrives, you will not even know the ball has already passed to the catcher’s glove.
So to know God, you have to let go of all opinions, conceptions, knowledge and then this ‘Say What?’ is unproblematic. ‘Say What?’ is about as close to the true nature of Heaven that you can get while confronting it from Name and Form. (this ‘Name and Form’ world is ‘The World’ as Jesus called it, as opposed to the ‘Kingdom,’ which existed along side, as it were.)
Concepts can not hit a baseball, no matter how accurately you describe it’s mechanics.
A Zen master once said it this way: “Only you can pee for yourself.”
So to understand ‘neither zero, nor one, nor many’ ... only you can pee for yourself :-)
I know it sounds weird, but Einstein and Quantum Mechanics will never get out of their frustrating fish bowl where zero becomes one becomes infinity and returns to zero until they see something like “ahhh, the light is both a wave and a particle, at the same time, though it never is, and never was, nor will be, it was everything all along, eternal, yet never existed - neither zero times, nor one time, nor many.”
Our eyes are covered by the dust of space and time (The World), connecting dots that aren’t. With language like the verb ‘to be.’
All that is necessary is to put these things down, for even an instant. Would God really manifest in a realm constrained by ‘must be zero or one or many Gods.’
Above is not dogma. Just a way of looking at ‘The World’ that helps clear it away so what’s already there behind the illusion can manifest.
The first sentence of the article is wrong. Einstein never assigned a speed to light, he simply posited that the vacuum speed of light is invariant in all inertial reference frames. He agreed with Maxwell’s conclusion (equations) that the vacuum speed of light depended on properties of free space that could be measured.
From this simple postulate, Einstein went on to redefine physics in a way that removed inconsistencies and incompleteness in the existing laws of mechanics, and made electromagnetism consistent with mechanics. One of the conclusions of Einstein’s new mechanics was that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
I believe that the remarkable “observation” being touted in this article is that the neutrinos traveled faster than light (where have I heard that before?), since their arrival was delayed more than expected by theory.
Partly because this article is saying that one of the two radical Theories that Einstein proposed to radically change the dominant view of how the universe worked, including multiple specific predictions that could be observed might have relatively small error in one very important value. The article doesn’t say it, but this not going to be accepted in the scientific community without significant proof. If there is real work proof that light is observed moving more slowly than Enstien predicted, such as that supernova, then scientists will attempt determine whether there are other factors that slowed that light from its predicted speed, such as traveling through matter (like one poster said) or some gravitational effects. The problem is that other measurements based on the constant of speed of light in a vacuum have held up, but the speed of light in the almost vacuum of space might not be one of them. This proposed photon disintegration theory of light propagation seems to be more complicated way of explaining and observation, but we’ll see. Either way, this guy makes some predictions that can be tested, they will be tested, and we’ll move the discussion forward.
maybe I’m scared of the dark and actually turning it on every think of that Larry Lucido
I would like to see Dr. Franson’s calculation of the speed of light so as to compare it to Einstein’s.
If true, then I would expect some photons would not make this change while others would go through it multiple times, thus the wave front would be more smeared as light traveled further. In addition, higher energy photons would be more likely to make this transition and be slower on average, while radio wave photons wouldn't have enough energy to form particle-antiparticle pairs and would thus run at full speed the entire distance.
According to Einstein, this should have happened roughly three hours before a burst of optical light - and from that moment on, the pulses should have kept pace, both travelling at the speed of light. However, the optical light arrived roughly 7.7 hours after the neutrinos - or 4.7 hours late.
If Las Vegas had a line on nuclear physics, I would bet on the extra time coming from it taking photons longer than predicted to get out of the supernova rather than taking longer than expected to travel a know distance through a vacuum.
There have been far more experiments calculating the speed of light than ones comparing the time between neutrinos and light arrive from a supernova. Have any others than this had detectible neutrinos?
Depends on what your definition of “a lot” is. It might mean we are maybe a thousand or so miles closer to our sun or that alpha centauri is ten thousand miles closer.. (my numbers are just examples) either way space will remain prohibitively huge for interstellar travel.
Very nice post. Thank you.
You make a good point about the peril of being fooled by world’s dark illusion — we all need the light of God.
“Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father but is of the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.”
Fortunately, “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to testify abut the Light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.
“There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.”
God is, by his divine character, incomprehensible to humans, but He is easy to get to know. He is not far from us, ever, unless we first turn away from Him.
The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, And night to night reveals knowledge.
Many good people take this awareness of God’s greatness and seek him.
“The woman said to Him, ‘Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. ‘Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.’
“Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.
“’God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
” The woman said to Him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ); when that One comes, He will declare all things to us.’
Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am He.’”
Unfortunately, many people come to the wrong conclusions about God “because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. ”
But the way to the light is before us even today, “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have seen the light of life.’”
:-). Thank You Back.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.