Speed of light may have changed recently

New Scientist ^ | 6/30/04 | Eugenie Samuel Reich

[VadeRetro]

Hardly, that is the nature of science. New observations contradict old theories and lead, eventually, to new ones. The important thing is the observations.

Should have used one of my remaining </sarcasm> stickers. The people claiming that science is wrong about this and that are all over the map, seriously contradicting each other. They can hardly all be right at once.

[Shryke]

Dude, that's my line. You're screwing up the script!

[yankeedame]

Oh crap! Now I'm going to have to readjust the warp drive on my Toyota. There goes my holiday weekend.

See? That's what happens when you don't get that extended warrentee

[RightWhale]

It's also a known fact that I win the debate when you misspell "loser",

There is Webster's and there is FR. You loosers are setting off the beeber.

[PatrickHenry]

The observations that suggested this assumption were the Michelson-Morely eperiments that attempted to deduce the "true" motion of the earth through the "ether" by measuring differences in the speed of light in different directions. No difference was found.

Right. But I recall reading that Einstein said he probably wasn't aware of the MM experiment at the time he wrote his 1905 paper. It was Maxwell's work that got him going. Something about the results being the same regardless of the motion of the apparatus. I'm working off of an old memory, so I may have it wrong.

[longshadow]

this placemarker varies 4.5 parts in 10⁸

[Itzlzha]

Can we use this article as proof that the cop's Laser speedtrap was inaccurrate, and therefore unreliable?

[Shryke]

You loosers are setting off the beeber.

I read the thread - so classic. I am still snickering.

[NutCrackerBoy]

New observations contradict old theories and lead, eventually, to new ones. The important thing is the observations.

Theory is the attempt to transcend phenomena. Something is gained: the ability to make part of the world your bitch. The unexplained and uncontrollable part goes dark but may someday bite you in the butt.

[Junior]

No Year 0. It'd be 6007 years.

Loser ;^)>

[COUNTrecount]

I'll bet you'd Rather not.

[yankeedame]

"We could do the same thing with our cars if it wasn't for Big Oil..."

[El Gato]

Theory is the attempt to transcend phenomena. Something is gained: the ability to make part of the world your bitch

Engineers do that all the time, often with little or no theory, just observations, (and gut instinct) to guide them. Or they used to anyway. I'm more of an "apply the theory" guy myself, but I'm not slavish about it.

[Eastbound]

"Posted AT THE EXACT SAME TIME! (Quantum mechanics at work!)"

Now that creates a dilemma. How can two objects occupy the same space at the same time? There must have been a collision, but I didn't hear the sirens.

[VadeRetro]

I stared pretty hard at that "4.5 parts in 108" in the article before realizing it was just the familiar effect of pasting HTML with superscripts. I would not have expected an over 4 percent decrease in the speed of light to be described as a "very small change."

[highpockets]

LOL that was good , the things we dads think about...

[D Rider]

If you read down in the article the lower alpha means a faster speed of light. In other words cdk. This has been coming from a gathering and diverse group for over a decade now.

There are a couple of guys over at Berkley and a Russian Physics dude...etc. This is just one more added to the list. It'll still probably take another 10-20 years before all the empirical evidence has enough weight to make it mainstream. But cdk seems to be the gathering momentum ,(for the moment,) as the most promising solution in the quest for the mythical universal constant.

[Fidgit]

ping

[D Rider]

OOPs!

I misread it. This seems to say that c is increasing. This seems to be going against the trend. As well as empirical evidence, such as the decay of the cesmium atom as compared to orbital time. Oh well, we'll have to wait and see. For now, I am going to leave my watch set as it is.

[longtermmemmory]

global speeding?

(s)Bush's fault(/s)