Posted on 06/30/2004 1:35:28 PM PDT by NukeMan
So the Bible is right again?
In this you are already proven right. I wouldn't bet on the rest of your post.
It was right after "Drink More Ovaltine" on the decoder ring message.
From the Article:
Horizon problem
Some physicists would happily accept a variable alpha. For example, if it had been lower in the past, meaning a higher speed of light, it would solve the "horizon problem".
Cosmologists have struggled to explain why far-flung regions of the universe are at roughly the same temperature. It implies that these regions were once close enough to exchange energy and even out the temperature, yet current models of the early universe prevent this from happening, unless they assume an ultra-fast expansion right after the big bang.
However, a higher speed of light early in the history of the universe would allow energy to pass between these areas in the form of light.
IOW, a faster light-speed (lower alpha) would be useful in the very earliest (pre-inflation) nanoseconds of the universe, yes. Useful in explaining the large-scale uniformity of the universe we see now. However, this does not help what some people are trying to do with this story.
Other things being held equal, a change in the speed of light would change the frequency of arrival of the peaks and valleys in the waveform.
Other things are not exactly equal, however, as it appears space and the light waveforms within have been stretched over time. Assuming the speed of light to be constant, that would red-shift light in transit so that objects appear redder the farther away they are. Since we indeed see a correlation between distance and redshift, it appears the universe has been expanding.
The speed of enlightment has changed....
I have not read it. What does it discuss?
Ah ha! This would explain why I am having greater difficulty driving at night. I just need faster headlights. And all this time I thought I needed glasses or something. hmmm . . . and maybe all this time has not really been that much time.
Must be global warming... Oh, yeah, caused by the Bush Administration. (hee hee)
Actually, it was Heaviside who first calculated the distortion of the electromagnetic fields of a moving charge.
One good thing about the General Theory of Relativity is that it provided an explanation for gravity. It was always a challenge to conventional physics to explain action at at distance without an interaction phenomenon. How does the earth know the sun is over there pulling on us? And how does the sun manage to grab the earth and yank it around without a string between the two?
Heaviside published the first serious post-Newtonian gravitational theory in 1893, his "A Gravitational and Electromagnetic Analogy" in Electromagnetic Theory Vol I. He introduced the concept of mass currents, gravitomagnetic fields, and gravity waves. Not coincidentally, Einstein's GR reduces to Heaviside's theory in the weak field limit.
I think the point of the article and what we need to take away from it is that there is evidence that the speed of light itself is relative and variable. There is evidence that it at one time was faster and at another time was slower than it is now. So the real possibility exists that it was, at one time in the history of this universe, infinitely faster than it is now and that at another point, the brakes could have been put on it and it could have slowed to a level perhaps significantly if not infintely slower than it is now. But at all times the speed of light was the speed of light.
Now if the speed of light was at one time faster than it is now, what would that do to time? If the speed of light is variable, as is suggested by this article, then what, if anything, is constant?
My understanding is very different. Light moves at the speed of light (in a vacuum), and this is true regardless of its color. The color we see is the result of the wavelength, and that's determined by whether the source of the light is moving away from us (stretched out, thus red) or moving toward us (compressed, thus blue).
If light has been speeding up, but not the rate of expansion of the universe, then the degree of redshifting (or blueshifting) probably wouldn't change (I'm winging it here). There is also the independent line of evidence provided by the brightness of Cepheid variables. This always corresponds with observed redshifts, and it was Hubble's big clue that redshift and distance were related. Yet another line of evidence is the absorption of light as it passes through the Lyman alpha forest, which I don't fully understand, but I'm told it independently confirms all the other observations about the distance of stars and the rate of expansion of the universe.
I think it would depend on how the observer is affected by the changed speed of light. Put yourself in the position of a omniscient being who is unaffected by the change. To you, the speed of light has changed and you could measure the difference in light travel time from point A to point B. But to the non-omniscient who are affected by the light speed change, their concept of distance would change with the speed of light. I think the change in distance would be proportional to the change in the speed of light: ie. no net change in measured frequency. Think of the Doppler Effect where only relative motion can be detected (to the first order).
I think a far more interesting concept is the idea of an anisotropic speed of light. Local differences could be measured.
I wish to clear something up that may be confusing, which is my fault. I am a firm believer in evolution. On earlier posts I was simply joshing some of the regular posters on these threads - spicing things up if you will. If I have misled you, forgive me.
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