You're quite right about "a debate now ranging among physicists over the constancy of the speed of light." I would actually say the debate is raging. It still remains to be seen whether the correction factor will be a couple of thousand years added to the billions of years already postulated or a complete re-structuring of the radiometric process.
Here is a Q & A regarding speed of light re-thinking versus
radiometric dating:
http://www.ldolphin.org/cdkconseq.html
Implications of a Non-Constant Velocity of Light
collected by Lambert Dolphin
Ongoing Discussion: Barry Setterfield's web site now features a Discussion section where the following issues, and many more, are currently being posted and discussed. You may email Barry at
barry@setterfield.org. (March 9, 2003)
Question: Has anyone done the calculations, based on your theory of changing speed of light, to see if the radiometric dating of fossils and rocks goes from the current value of billions of years down to thousands of years? Is it available on the Internet? Can you please give me a summary? Thank you.
Response: Thank you for your request for information. Yes, the calculations have been done to convert radiometric and other atomic dates to actual orbital years. This is done on the basis outlined in our Report of 1987 and the new paper just undergoing peer review. Basically, when light-speed is 10 times its current value, all atomic clocks ticked 10 times faster. As a consequence they registered an age of 10 atomic years when only one orbital year had passed. For all practical purposes there is no change in the rate of the orbital clocks with changing light speed. The earth still took a year to go around the sun.
Now the redshift of light from distant galaxies carries a signature in it that tells us what the value of c was at the time of emission. The redshift data then give us c values right back to the earliest days of the cosmos. Knowing the distances of these astronomical objects to a good approximation, then allows us to determine the behaviour of light speed with time. It is then a simple matter to correct the atomic clock to read actual orbital time. Light speed was exceedingly fast in the early days of the cosmos, but dropped dramatically. At a distance of 20 billion light years, for example, the value of c was about 87 million times its current value. At that point in time the atomic clocks were ticking off 87 million years in just one ordinary year. When the process is integrated over the redshift/cDK curve the following approximate figures apply.
1 million years before present (BP) atomically is actually 2826 BC with c about 70,000 times c now.
63 million atomic years BP is an actual date of 3005 BC with c about 615,000 times c now.
230 million atomic years BP is an actual date of 3301 BC with c about 1.1 million times c now.
600 million atomic years BP is an actual date of 3536 BC with c about 2.6 million times c now.
2.5 billion atomic years BP is an actual date of 4136 BC with c about 10.8 million times c now.
4.5 billion atomic years BP is an actual date of 4505 BC with c about 19.6 million times c now.
15 billion atomic years BP is an actual date near 5650 BC with c about 65.3 million times c now.
20 billion atomic years BP is an actual date near 5800 BC with c about 87 million times c now.
I'm not a physicist, so this is as far as I'm going into this debate. I'll have to wade through hundreds of pages of material before I can make get my arms around it intellectually, and by that time this debate will have moved on. Thank you for addressing this topic, at least from your perspective.
I will say that I find this whole topic fascinating. It suggests a wide open universe of physics topics that are ready to be explored, it must be an exciting time. The phrase comes to my mind, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy", which would be something one could direct at physicists who do not want to see the current understanding of physics undermined. And BTW, it does not appear to me that Setterfield acts in a manner of the typical head-in-the-sand creationist who is "woefully mistaken." This is real science being discussed.
Dolphin was the Stanford reviewer who first allowed Setterfield's work to be published, after which Stanford retracted its authorization, including the denial of access to its research facilities to Setterfield. I regard the Dolphin and Setterfield sites as not presenting the debate at the level in which true physicists are dealing with it. To track that debate you must follow the way Davies and Barrow, who are the two physicists who found merit in Setterfield's observations, have dealt with it. Setterfield and Dolphin are failing to present two key aspects relating to the data -- and yes I reviewed those pages before responding to you in my previous posts. The first is just what is the variance that is implied from the preliminary findings. The second is how that variance impacts uses of the
c constant. Notice what you just posted:
"
. . . when light-speed is 10 times its current value, all atomic clocks ticked 10 times faster. As a consequence they registered an age of 10 atomic years when only one orbital year had passed. . . ."
Excuse me?
TEN times faster? That is an interesting hypothetical but
if it is presented in any way as a representation of the impact of the findings relating to a variation in the speed of light it is an outright lie. The real impact is as presented by Davies and Barrow who, even though their opinions are not supported by the majority of the scientific community, remain respected physicists within it. Their estimation of the variance was as I posted in
the first link I displayed in my response to your initial inquiry. It's as follows, I'll quote it again:
"
. . . The apparent change in the fine structure constant, also called alpha, was very small, amounting to 1 part in 100,000. . . ."
If you or anyone else wants to challenge the impact of this new theory about the inconstancy of the speed of light you must present some evidence, not a hypothetical discussion of something that is not supported in the data revealed by the observations, that challenges the above figures that Davies and Barrow, who support the theory that the speed of light is not constant through time, use as the basis for their argument. If you will read carefully, the actual words presented in the "10 times faster" quote do not argue that the change in the constancy of the speed of light will move radiometric dating in the direction indicated by the results posted. And I regard that kind of deception as typical of "creationist science," which really acts as a support group for those adhering to its tenets, rather than presenting any valid scientific evidence to support their claims.