Was the Speed of Light Much Faster Billions of Years Ago? Is "c" Not Constant?

"Team leader Paul Davies, of Sydney's Macquarie University, says that
if the speed of light has slowed over billions of years, physicists
will have to rethink many of their basic ideas about the laws of the
universe."

"What Davies and his team did was study a 12 billion-year-old stream of
light."

"They discovered it did not have the properties it was expected to, and
by a process of elimination deduced that the speed of light must have
been much faster billions of years ago."

""When one of the cornerstones of physics collapses, it's not obvious
what you hang onto and what you discard," Davies told Reuters."


http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/a...eed/index.html


Double-A

From AA, exerpting:
"Team leader Paul Davies, of Sydney's
Macquarie University, says that if the
speed of light has slowed over billions of years, physicists will have
to rethink
many of their basic ideas about the laws
of the universe."

Well, DOH.
oc

Reality is the speed of light can never go faster or slower. To think
otherwise you would have to trade in the whole universe for one that
would fit with this changing speed of light. Go figure bert

From AA, excerpting:
"'When one of the cornerstones of
physics collapses, it's not obvious what
you hang onto and what you discard',
Davies told Reuters."

This is so compelling. The CBB model does not require that any
cornerstone of physics "collapse", any more than relativity required
Newtonian physics to collapse. It simply builds on relativity jsut as
Einstein built upon Newton.

"...It's not obvious what you hang onto
and what you discard."

The very FIRST thing you discard is the 'no medium' / 'space-as-void'
paradigm. That's numero uno.

Davies obviously has been collaborating with Dr.Joao Magueijo et al on
the VSL (varying speed of light) model. They intuitively recognize there
_must_ be a precipitous lightspeed drop across the 'inflation' spike at
the instant of the BB. But being Void-Spacers, they have no concept of
the mechanism causing the drop, namely, a severe density gradient in the
spatial medium across that instant, such as depicted here-
http://community-2.webtv.net/oldcoot...ang/page2.html

Davies' position on the Lorentz invariance is not stated in the article,
but Magueijo is willing to violate the L.invariance (one of the biggest
no-nos in physics) to have his lightspeed drop. But when the _density
gradient in the spatial medium_ is recognized and factored in, there is
no need to violate the L.invariance. You don't have to give up ANY
'cornerstone of physics'. That's the beauty of the CBB model.
oc

G=EMC^2 Glazier wrote:
Reality is the speed of light can never go faster or slower. To think
otherwise you would have to trade in the whole universe for one that
would fit with this changing speed of light. Go figure bert


Then let's trade it in.

I don't make my living off of textbook physics.

Double-A

Double-A Once you fool with 'c;' you will end up in a very dark tunnel
and no light at the end. Bert

"Double-A" wrote in
ups.com:


"Team leader Paul Davies, of Sydney's Macquarie University, says that
if the speed of light has slowed over billions of years, physicists
will have to rethink many of their basic ideas about the laws of the
universe."

"What Davies and his team did was study a 12 billion-year-old stream of
light."

"They discovered it did not have the properties it was expected to, and
by a process of elimination deduced that the speed of light must have
been much faster billions of years ago."

""When one of the cornerstones of physics collapses, it's not obvious
what you hang onto and what you discard," Davies told Reuters."


http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/a...tralia.lightsp
eed/index.html


Double-A


Not in the speed of light BTW but in the fine structure constant. The
result has been challenged by Chand et al which found no variation:

H. Chand et al., Astron. Astrophys. 417, 853 (2004)

There is currently an effort underway to get a definitive result.

Klazmon.

From Bert:
Once you fool with 'c;' you will end up in
a very dark tunnel and no light at the
end.

Bert, what you say is true under the sitting paradigm. The cadre of
'maverik' mainstreamers current messing with c-variability are
Void-Spacers and as such, they are forced to violate some cherished
constants (like the Lorentz invariance and the fine structure constant).
And such a path is dark and fraught with peril.:-)
But the CBB model, because it recognizes the spatial
medium and _density gradients_ therein, does not "mess with" c at all.
Rather it holds c constant in all _density frames_ just as SR holds it
constant in all inertial frames. So c is always constant *locally*
anywhere you go in the universe.
But to visualize 'c-dilation' you have to mentally
transpose to a vantage point 'outside' the universe. Only from this
external frame is lightspeed seen to drop across the expansion of the
universe, concomitant with the drop in pressure/density/'Temp'(PDT) of
the spatial medium. This drop in lightspeed, visualized from 'outside'
and ONLY from outside, is what Wolter called 'c-dilation'.
From our restricted frame here 'inside', we still see
*artifacts* of the expansion in deep-past lookback such as noted by
Davies et al, and in 1a supernovae appearing 'dimmer than they should
be'. Also, 'tiny' PDT gradients are present locally, in the gravity
wells of stars (witness the Pioneer spacecraft anomalous acceleration).
oc

"G=EMC^2 Glazier" wrote in message
...
Reality is the speed of light can never go faster or slower. To think
otherwise you would have to trade in the whole universe for one that
would fit with this changing speed of light. Go figure bert


Herbie,

You're the wrong person to use the word "Reality".

oc The photons from the BB are still out there.(no speed change) denser
might make the photon appear to slow down but this is an illusion..
Make the photon go slower,or faster only creates more problems. Leaving
them at a constant set speed(natures constant) creates no problems.
Dimmer light does not mean slower photons. It means less photons or
photons with a very long wave(such as radio) Well oc one could
come up with a theory that space is inflating at a rate that makes
photons appear to be going slower(I just did) I like the distance from
A to B growing larger than having light go slower. It even fits Bert