Posted on 08/08/2002 9:06:23 AM PDT by Momaw Nadon
SYDNEY (Reuters) - A team of Australian scientists has proposed that the speed of light may not be a constant, a revolutionary idea that could unseat one of the most cherished laws of modern physics -- Einstein's theory of relativity.
The team, led by theoretical physicist Paul Davies of Sydney's Macquarie University, say it is possible that the speed of light has slowed over billions of years.
If so, physicists will have to rethink many of their basic ideas about the laws of the universe.
"That means giving up the theory of relativity and E=mc squared and all that sort of stuff," Davies told Reuters.
"But of course it doesn't mean we just throw the books in the bin, because it's in the nature of scientific revolution that the old theories become incorporated in the new ones."
Davies, and astrophysicists Tamara Davis and Charles Lineweaver from the University of New South Wales published the proposal in the August 8 edition of scientific journal Nature.
The suggestion that the speed of light can change is based on data collected by UNSW astronomer John Webb, who posed a conundrum when he found that light from a distant quasar, a star-like object, had absorbed the wrong type of photons from interstellar clouds on its 12 billion year journey to earth.
Davies said fundamentally Webb's observations meant that the structure of atoms emitting quasar light was slightly but ever so significantly different to the structure of atoms in humans.
The discrepancy could only be explained if either the electron charge, or the speed of light, had changed.
IN TROUBLE EITHER WAY
"But two of the cherished laws of the universe are the law that electron charge shall not change and that the speed of light shall not change, so whichever way you look at it we're in trouble," Davies said.
To establish which of the two constants might not be that constant after all, Davies' team resorted to the study of black holes, mysterious astronomical bodies that suck in stars and other galactic features.
They also applied another dogma of physics, the second law of thermodynamics, which Davies summarizes as "you can't get something for nothing."
After considering that a change in the electron charge over time would violate the sacrosanct second law of thermodynamics, they concluded that the only option was to challenge the constancy of the speed of light.
More study of quasar light is needed in order to validate Webb's observations, and to back up the proposal that light speed may vary, a theory Davies stresses represents only the first chink in the armor of the theory of relativity.
In the meantime, the implications are as unclear as the unexplored depths of the universe themselves.
"When one of the cornerstones of physics collapses, it's not obvious what you hang onto and what you discard," Davies said.
"If what we're seeing is the beginnings of a paradigm shift in physics like what happened 100 years ago with the theory of relativity and quantum theory, it is very hard to know what sort of reasoning to bring to bear."
It could be that the possible change in light speed will only matter in the study of the large scale structure of the universe, its origins and evolution.
For example, varying light speed could explain why two distant and causally unconnected parts of the universe can be so similar even if, according to conventional thought, there has not been enough time for light or other forces to pass between them.
It may only matter when scientists are studying effects over billions of years or billions of light years.
Or there may be startling implications that could change not only the way cosmologists view the universe but also its potential for human exploitation.
"For example there's a cherished law that says nothing can go faster than light and that follows from the theory of relativity," Davies said. The accepted speed of light is 300,000 km (186,300 miles) per second.
"Maybe it's possible to get around that restriction, in which case it would enthrall Star Trek fans because at the moment even at the speed of light it would take 100,000 years to cross the galaxy. It's a bit of a bore really and if the speed of light limit could go, then who knows? All bets are off," Davies said.
I believe that Adam and Eve were real people, possibly survivors of some previous catastrophe like the flood, possibly the first two people in the sense of "first such as us", as opposed to neanderthals or hominids. There's some sort of a story there but there's too little information to really know much about it. The story of the flood at the time of Noah is real as the article above describes; nonetheless the idea of God visiting the flood upon the Earth as retribution for man's sins is not credible and is clearly an invention of a later age. The flood was a cosmic disaster which we simply got in the way of and which nobody, including anybody in the spirit world, was able to prevent.
We have one example of a fairly new planet (Venus) in our system and we know what it looks like and, since neither our own planet nor Mars looks like that at all I assume our planet is considerably older than the 6000 years once deduced from biblical chronologies; nonetheless I know of no reason to buy into the kinds of time frames which evolutionists and astronomers are so fond of. In particular, American Indian petroglyphs and oral traditions strongly indicate that Indian ancestors dealt with dinosaurs on a regular basis, and that the 70 million years which supposedly separates our age from that of dinosaurs is a white-man's fairytale. Literature (midrashim) indicates that there were a handful of leftover dinosaurs kicking around just prior to the flood, and the real hayday of dinosaurs was probably 10,000 or 30,000 years back, but not 65 million.
None, but some young earth creationists, trying to explain away the problem of stars that are both visible and estimated to be over 6000 light years away, try to use early, less accurate estimates of the speed of light to argue that light used to travel a lot faster than it did now.
I take it that someone has proposed that the speed of light may have changed over time, and hence young earth creationists will try to seize upon this as vindication of their ad hoc explaining away of visible stars farther away than is possible assuming Bishop Ussher's famous date for the creation of the universe, much as Velikovskians crowed that the finding that Venus is hot "proved" Velikovsky's crackpot theories of planetary billiards as "explanations" of ancient mythology.
Well, they'll be quick to find ways to distinguish Setterfield's theory so they return to the jeers and the catcalls.
I don't know if Setterfield is right. I haven't paid much attention to his theory. But I am amused by the reaction of the atheist materialists. They have a vested interest in their prejudices and will defend them with all the zeal of Holy Crusaders battling the Turks.
As I see it, it's more than most people could do to try to completely run to ground more than a handful of lines of evidences involved in the Velikovsky controversies and see where they lead, particularly for people who still have to work for a living and have limited resources for hobbies.
Nonetheless, I have made the effort to do that in a few cases and, in every instance in which I have, the raw evidence unequivocably supports Velikovsky and damns Sagan and pretty much all of Velikovsky's later-day critics.
One such case is the question of thermal balance on Venus and the various infrared flux meters and measurements of Albedo which were taken around 1978 - 1980 by the Pioneer Venus probe.
There are two possible explainations for the 900 F surface temperature of Venus: Velikovsky's, which is that Venus is in a process of cooling either from a recent creation or from heat generated during recent catastrophic events (i.e. is natively hot), and Carl Sagan's "super greenhouse" theory, which is standard doctrine amongst astronomers, despite being ridiculous.
Sagan in fact is also noted for another super greenhouse theory, i.e. the one which says we should all be dead from the Kuwaiti oil fires in 91. Far as I know, I'm still here and Sagan is still dead. In fact, people living in Kuwait are still alive, and Sagan is still dead...
Sagan's theory would require that Venus' atmosphere be in thermal balance, i.e. since all the heat would be derived from the sun, heat taken in and given out should equal eachother.
I have noted that this is in sharp disagreement with with actual findings, and that astronomers have made a habit of doctoring the findings and have actually found themselves in the position of having to explain AWAY 100% of the raw data. All of the probes which carried infra-red flux (upward vs. downward readings) meters to the surface measured a sharp upward ir flux, which is in keeping with Velikovsky's version, but not that of Sagan.
Astronomers have posted oficial position papers (Revercomb/Suomi et. al) explaining the manner in which each and every such probe "failed", without bothering to try to explain why they should not all be summarily shitcanned for failing to oversee the proper manufacture of so simple an instrument in even one case out of at least four (instruments were not all the same).
In other words, they are claiming the instruments all failed because all instrument readings said Velikovsky was right.
And then there is the question of F.W. Taylor's description of massive thermal imbalance as measured from outside the atmosphere (from the article on thermal balance by F.W. Taylor in "VENUS", Hunton, Colin, Donahue, Moroz, Univ. of Ariz. Press, 1983, ISBN 0-8165-0788-0, pp 657-658).
"Measurements of albedo are more difficult to calibrate than those of thermal flux, because of the problem of obtaining an accurate reference source. Using earth-based measurements, Irvine (1968) calculated a value for A [albedo] of 0.77 ñ 0.07, which was later revised upward to 0.80 ñ 0.07 by Travis (1975). The Pioneer Venus infrared radiometer had a 0.4 to 4.0 m channel calibrated by a lamp from which Tomasko et al. (1980b) obtained a preliminary albedo for Venus of 0.80 ñ 0.02.
"Another approach to determining the albedo is simply to assume that the atmosphere is in net radiative balance, whence the equation:
(1-A)E
4 0
sigma * theta = ---------
b a^2
should apply. Here E is the solar constant, and a the distance
0
from the sun. This expression allows the albedo to be calculated from thermal measurements alone."
"In this way, a value of 0.79 + 0.02 - 0.01 has been obtained from Venera radiometry (Ksanfomality, 1977, 1980b) and [a value] of 0.76 ñ 0.006 [has been obtained] from Pioneer Venus emission measurements (Schofield et al., 1982).
"Clearly the Pioneer measurements of emission and reflection are not consistent with each other if net radiative balance applies. A source inside Venus equal in magnitude to 20% of the solar input (i.e., accounting for the difference between A = 0.76 and A = 0.80) is very unlikely, since Venus is thought to have an Earth-like makeup, which would imply internal heat sources several orders of magnitude less than this. Also, even if such sources were postulated, it is difficult to construct a model in which these fairly large amounts of heat can be transported from the core to the atmosphere via a rocky crust without the latter becoming sufficiently plastic to collapse the observed surface relief. This could be avoided if the transport was very localized, i.e., via a relatively small number of giant volcanoes. Although large, fresh-looking volcanoes do appear to exist on Venus...and the composition of the atmosphere is consistent with vigorous output from these, a simple comparison with terrestrial volcanism shows that the volcanic activity on Venus would have to be on an awesome scale to account for the missing 5 X 1015 W [watts], or so, of power. A more acceptable alternative is that the preliminary estimate of 0.80 ñ 0.2 for the albedo from the P. V. [Pioneer Venus] measurements is too high, since the uncertainty limit is now known from further work to be too conservative. (J. V. Martonchik, personal communication.) A fuller analysis of the P. V. [Pioneer Venus] albedo data--still the best, in terms of wavelength, spacial and phase coverage, and radiometric precision, which is likely to be obtained for the foreseeable future--is likely to resolve this puzzle. In conclusion, then, the best thermal measurements of Venus WITH THE ASSUMPTION OF GLOBAL ENERGY BALANCE yield a value for the albedo of 0.76 ñ 0.1; this is the most probable value."
Let's examine what Taylor is saying. The term "albedo", stripped of the four-syllable adjectives, is a measure of reflectivity, the percentage of light which bounces back from something.
Taylor is saying that there are two ways to measure this albedo, a direct method, and an indirect method involving a formula which relates albedo to thermal emissions, assuming thermal balance holds. The direct method:
"The Pioneer Venus infrared radiometer had a 0.4 to 4.0 m channel calibrated by a lamp from which Tomasko et al. (1980b) obtained a preliminary albedo for Venus of 0.80 ñ 0.02."
doesn't go into detail, but makes it clear that they either did one of the following things, or something entirely like one of them:
a. Brought the satellite to the dark side of Venus, beamed a light towards Venus, and measured how much of that light returned.
b. Brought the satellite to the light side of Venus, and simply turned the instrument towards the sun, and then towards Venus, and computed a ratio of the light intensities.
Taylor also mentions the indirect method:
"Another approach to determining the albedo is simply to assume that the atmosphere is in net radiative balance, whence the equation:
(1-A)E
4 0
sigma * theta = ---------
b a^2
should apply. Here E-zero is the solar constant, and a the distance from the sun. This expression allows the albedo to be calculated from thermal measurements alone.
He notes that, if thermal balance does hold, the two techniques should produce the same number, but that they don't, and that the difference is so great, that a massive heat source on Venus would be needed to explain it, entirely in keeping with Velikovsky's version of the entire thing.
He notes that further study is needed, since he sees no way for Venus to have such a heat source given standard versions of solar-system history, and that the .76 value derived for albedo is therefore the "most probable" value.
He notes that the Pioneer Venus readings are the best we've had and the best we're likely to get for a long time:
A fuller analysis of the P. V. [Pioneer Venus] albedo data--still the best, in terms of wavelength, spacial and phase coverage, and radiometric precision, which is likely to be obtained for the foreseeable future--is likely to resolve this puzzle.
Thus between the infra-red flux meters of the descender probes and the phenomena Taylor describes, all of the raw data flatly contradict Sagan and "super-greenhouse", and scientists are left having to explain away 100% of the raw data. That's no way to do science.
These guys 'splain it better than I can:
'why are there no transitional forms between species?' There are many.No there aren't. If there were I would still believe in evolution. Name one.
Just one? There are zillions. See here:
Transitional Vertebrate Fossils
NASA was shocked to find rings around Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune, because they were not thought to be stable.
That's pretty meaningless, innit? I mean, just because they thought the rings were unstable doesn't mean it's so. In any case, your answer is non-responsive. The guy pointed out that the rings are stable, and you essentially said no, they're not stable because NASA originally didn't think they were. Huh?
Regards,
Snidely
Evolutionists have been combing the world frantically for intermediate form fossils for over 100 years now, and that's all they've got; that's nothing. Evolution requires that the vast bulk of all fossils should be intermediate forms. Every intelligent statement I have ever read on the subject refers to the lack of intermediate fossils as a major problem for evolution. The only esception to this I have ever seen is the talk.origins FAQ.
Stephen Gould, Eldredge, Mayr, and others have all been quoted to the effect that there are no real intermediate forms. Alexander Mebane (of Tampa Bay skeptics) notes wrt Gould's explaination for this:
But it may be questioned, on obvious probability grounds, whether this way of accounting for the observed absence of intermediates will really wash. Admitting that every intermediate stage "must have" a small population, we may nevertheless observe that there must have been a far greater number of them than of the stable, " finished" species known to us, since (according to the Darwinist picture) every species-transition must necessarily pass through several intermediate stages. That greater number would increase the likelihood that some intermediate forms, here and there, would chance to be preserved as fossils. And the dogma further requires that the larger transitions - between different genera, families, orders, classes, and even different phyla, must all have come about in just the same gradual and continuous manner, simply by a long- continued succession of normal species-transitions! We have all seen "genealogical trees" drawn by evolutionists, to show the order in which these taxonomic groups have all come into existence over a long period, by successive "branchings from a common root".Mebane's statement wrt the platypus thatBut it must be asked: Where are all the fossils that should have been left by the many millions of species that this tree requires to have once existed on its trunk, boughs, and branches, before its final branchings took place? Why are none of these seen in the fossil record of the period during which the evolutionists' tree requires them to have lived? (That this perhaps surprising charge does not exaggerate the real situation will be seen under "First Taxonomic Disconfirmation", where the explicitly contradicts Darwinian testimony of the "transformed cladists" will be presented.)
Moreover, why have none of this great multitude of Darwinian intermediate species chanced to survive unchanged to our own time, among the considerable number of ancient life-forms that, as we know, have had the luck to do so? You may perhaps have read that that actually ts the case: the lungfishes, the monotremes (platypus) and the hoatzin, among others, were at one time said to show us "living fossils" of "primitive" life at a stage that was still intermediate to two different later forms, and ancestral to both of them. But those claims are no longer heard; for, on closer investigation, all of these creatures turned out to be curious "mosaic" constructions of a kind that could not rationally be seen as representing the real historical transitions between one group and another. (See Denton's book for a detailed exposition of these cases.) The recent discovery' of that living fossil par excellence, the coelacanth, was an exciting event for evolutionists, because these "lobe-finned" fish were supposed to have already begun to "evolve toward amphi- bians"; but when a well-preserved specimen was obtained, examination of its fins and its internal organs (previously unknown and only guessed-at) quashed that fond hope for some real confirmation of Darwin's ideas, and I think that you will no longer find coelacanths called "pre-amphibians".
should obviously be amended to read something like "...are no longer being heard from intelligent or honest people. Kathleen Hunt's intermediate fossil faq reads:"those claims are no longer heard; for, on closer investigation, all of these creatures turned out to be curious "mosaic" constructions of a kind that could not rationally be seen as representing the real historical transitions between one group and another. (See Denton's book for a detailed exposition of these cases.)"
This is what I mean in saying that the stuff you read in the talk.origins FAQ system is only being put out by lesser lights and dead wood; nobody with brains or talent who follows this stuff any more believes any of it."Those wondering how egg-laying reptiles could make the transition to placental mammals may wish to study the reproductive biology of the monotremes (egg-laying mammals) and the marsupials. The monotremes in particular could almost be considered "living transitional fossils". [see Peter Lamb's suggested marsupial references at end]
Mebane writes of the Cenozoic mammals:
The most recent episode of great changes, the advent of the modern (Cenozoic) mammals after the death of the dinosaurs, is the one that we should expect to have left the best-preserved fossils of intermediate species. At the catastrophic end of the Cretaceous, 65 Myr ago, mammals were small nocturnal "tree-shrew"-like animals, none larger than cats; roughly ten million years later, we find essentially "modern" bats*, bears, and lions18. "All modern orders of mammals seem to have arisen independently and at about the same time": Wesson, p. 40, quoting Bonner 1988 and Carroll 1988.Mebane notes the recent ambulatory "whale ancestor" finds which, whatever they do turn out to be, will certainly not turn out to be thousands of missing cenazoic links which evolution requires.If these vast changes really proceeded in the manner prescribed by Darwin, surely many hundreds (at the least!) of intermediate species in each lineage must once have lived during that protracted period of radical transmogrification. None of them have ever showed up in the fossil record.
And not only are all traces of intermediate species' missing, but anyone who seriously tries to imagine a believable sequence of viable intermediate animals between a tree-shrew and a bat-every one of which, according to Darwin, supplanted its predecessor by virtue of being "better adapted"! -wiII very soon be convinced that such a sequence is simply inconceivable: "What use is half a wing?" as everyone since Mivart (including even Gould) has asked. The reason we have found no trace of them is simply that they never existed, and the reason they never existed is that it would be impossible for them to have done so. It was this unavoidable conclusion that led Simpson in 1944 20 to publicly acknowledge his heretical conviction that these megaevolutionary" transformations, at least, must have occurred in some rapid and entirely non-Darwinian way. For this he was censured, and forced to recant, but it is safe to assert that no one has ever been able to sketch out, with even the slightest semblance of credibility, any Darwinian route to the already-" modern" bats that appear-twice over! in the early Cenozoic, roughly 55 million years ago.
There are in fact two distinct suborders of bats, the Microchiroptera and Megachiroptera, so pervasively different in structure that everyone agrees that they must have "evolved" quite independenty: Wesson, p.i82.
Moreover, in Oct 1975 Scientific American, (pp 120), C.L. Strong questioned the constancy of of the speed of light "as science has failed to get a consistently accurate value."
"Now we see but a poor reflection, as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully..."
1 Corinthians 13:12
So far, the distinguishing feature is that Setterfield's lastest version has light slowing by a factor of 11 million over the last 6000 years, whereas Davies's observation hints at a factor of one part in 100,000 about 12 billion years ago. (Setterfield used to have light going 1060 times faster about 6K years ago, but he apparently decided that was ridiculous.) Anyway, there's about 110 million times difference between what Davies observes and Setterfield predicts.
Historical measurements of the speed of light have converged inexorably on the modern value. They were sometimes lower, often higher, but the modern value has always been well within the error bars of the measurements.
At first, Setterfield drew an inverse-exponential curve through selected measurements and announced the speed of light had followed the curve. Denounced for rejecting all the points that don't fit, he drew a squiggly line through all the measurements and announced that he sees a damped oscillation, the inverse-exponential decline having bottomed just before historical measurements began.
Yeah! Right!
Ditto for the whale fossils in Egypt. They weren't dug out of the sand; they were dug out of sedimentary rock. I can't tell how much of this stuff he believes, but his frame of reference is just loopy.
That would be his lastest and bestest. "Latest" was meant.
This recalls a Mark Twain essay, which I excerpt here:
"In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. ... There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesome returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."My goodness! If the earth really were 4.5 billion years old, the Mississippi had to start out over 6 billion miles long! It would have wrapped around the earth nearly a quarter million times!!!! Nobody but a fool could believe such nonsense.
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