Treading the light fantastic: Einstein challenged

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Treading the light fantastic: Einstein challenged

SOME things never change. But now one of science’s most cherished constants is being challenged by a controversial young cosmologist and a crack team of Sydney researchers.

According to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, enunciated a century ago, the speed of light - the “c” in his famous equation e=mc 2 - has been a constant 299,792,458 metres a second since the universe began with the Big Bang. Dr Joao Magueijo thinks Einstein, who did have second thoughts but never pursued them, got it wrong. He believes that not long after the Big Bang light hit a “speed bump” and is, in fact, slowing down.

His theory - published first in the scientific press and then in a popular book, Faster than the Speed of Light - The Story of a Scientific Speculation, was initially greeted with derision.

more…
 
Isn’t this settled science? How dare someone challenge it. Next thing you know they’ll be challenging evolution theory!

buffalo said:
Treading the light fantastic: Einstein challenged

SOME things never change. But now one of science’s most cherished constants is being challenged by a controversial young cosmologist and a crack team of Sydney researchers.

According to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, enunciated a century ago, the speed of light - the “c” in his famous equation e=mc 2 - has been a constant 299,792,458 metres a second since the universe began with the Big Bang. Dr Joao Magueijo thinks Einstein, who did have second thoughts but never pursued them, got it wrong. He believes that not long after the Big Bang light hit a “speed bump” and is, in fact, slowing down.

His theory - published first in the scientific press and then in a popular book, Faster than the Speed of Light - The Story of a Scientific Speculation, was initially greeted with derision.

more…
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Actually, I believe that Dr. Magueijo first proposed his theory in order to postulate a much faster than c light speed in the early universe. He saw superfast light shortly after the big bang as an alternative to the currently proposed super-inflation shortly after the big bang.

With inflation, the cosmos expanded at a much higher rate for a period, then slowed down. Faster than light speed during that same period would eliminate the need for inflation.
 
I read about this the other day - though it’s not the first such thing I’ve read.
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rlg94086:
Isn’t this settled science?
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Err, no, it isn’t. There is nothing in science that demands the speed of light is constant over time. We presume it is constant, by Occam’s razor and the fact there isn’t evidence to the contrary (until, perhaps, now).
How dare someone challenge it. Next thing you know they’ll be challenging evolution theory!
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Which is fine, as long as you offer a scientific alternative that fits the evidence.

Mike
 
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JimG:
Actually, I believe that Dr. Magueijo first proposed his theory in order to postulate a much faster than c light speed in the early universe. He saw superfast light shortly after the big bang as an alternative to the currently proposed super-inflation shortly after the big bang.

With inflation, the cosmos expanded at a much higher rate for a period, then slowed down. Faster than light speed during that same period would eliminate the need for inflation.
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I’ve never thought much of inflation theory, so I’m interested to see an alternative.

Mike
 
Just having fun Mike…forgot the smilies again. :o 😃 😛
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MikeWM:
I read about this the other day - though it’s not the first such thing I’ve read.

Err, no, it isn’t. There is nothing in science that demands the speed of light is constant over time. We presume it is constant, by Occam’s razor and the fact there isn’t evidence to the contrary (until, perhaps, now).

Which is fine, as long as you offer a scientific alternative that fits the evidence.

Mike
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rlg94086:
Just having fun Mike…forgot the smilies again. :o 😃 😛
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Oh, that’s alright - I’m up for a discussion on this - but perhaps I should go find a cosmology board 😛

Mike
 
If light speed has been decreasing it has implications to red shifting.

I wonder how this effects the measurement of time and how time would be compressed in the past.
 
Disclaimer: I’m a tax accountant not a physicist so don’t expect much from me in terms of my science knowledge.

This thought came “screaming” into my mind… When we talk about the speed of light aren’t we talking about the velocity at which photons travel? On previous threads the subject of photons came up and if I remember correctly since photons are always moving they have zero mass, if it is possible for photons to stop moving then they would have infinite mass. If the speed of light decreases would not photonic mass become measurable? Wouldn’t the effect be like firing a shotgun at a butter sculpture of the universe?
 
Wildgraywolf said:
Disclaimer: I’m a tax accountant not a physicist so don’t expect much from me in terms of my science knowledge.

This thought came “screaming” into my mind… When we talk about the speed of light aren’t we talking about the velocity at which photons travel? On previous threads the subject of photons came up and if I remember correctly since photons are always moving they have zero mass, if it is possible for photons to stop moving then they would have infinite mass. If the speed of light decreases would not photonic mass become measurable? Wouldn’t the effect be like firing a shotgun at a butter sculpture of the universe?
Click to expand...

They theorize that more photons would be released per second carrying less energy per photon.

The implication is that at the beginnings the atomic clock clicked off more time per year, as high as 11 million years per orbital year.
 
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buffalo:
They theorize that more photons would be released per second carrying less energy per photon…
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Okay, so you’re saying that a slower moving photon will have less energy meaning that it won’t “aquire” mass by traveling less than the speed of light as we know it today? How do you measure the energy of a photon anyway? Aren’t all photons created equally?

Wouldn’t this change in velocity and energy have to happen to all photons in the universe simultaneously?
 
Hmmm… I thought that a photon had a rest mass of zero. Since they are never at rest, I presume they have *some * mass. But if it stopped, it’s mass would be zero.
 
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JimG:
Hmmm… I thought that a photon had a rest mass of zero. Since they are never at rest, I presume they have *some * mass. But if it stopped, it’s mass would be zero.
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Rest mass =0

They do have energy thus they have mass.
 
Actually, creationists who believe the universe is only about 6,000 years old, subscribe the notion of a changing speed of light. They believe it was much faster earlier in the creation process, which explains how we see starlight that is millions of light-years away only few thousand years after creation.
 
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shockerfan:
Actually, creationists who believe the universe is only about 6,000 years old, subscribe the notion of a changing speed of light. They believe it was much faster earlier in the creation process, which explains how we see starlight that is millions of light-years away only few thousand years after creation.
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There are so many flaws with that position I don’t know where to begin - and actually I don’t think it is worth the effort, as creationists don’t want to listen to scientific argument.

Mike
 
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buffalo:
Rest mass =0

They do have energy thus they have mass.
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Simply, yes. Technically no. If a photon were to have REAL mass, it would not be able to travel at the speed of light. As one approaches the speed of light, mass increases toward infinity and length decreased toward zero. It is an ASYMTOTIC curve. A photon is able to travel at the sped of light because it has ZERO mass, and seems to be “exempt” from the mass increase demonstrated by the equations. Infinity times zero=zero.

in the early universe, a HIGHER speed of light means that there are simply HIGHER energies and frequencies of photons. E (energy)= H (plank’s constant) x V (frequency). rearranging the equation to include C (speed of light), would demonstrate a higher energy caused by a faster speed of light.

there have been arguments for photons having IMAGINARY mass, that is they contain only imaginary mass of the total mass vector. meaning there is no REAL component of the quantitative vector, and the only component is essentially indescribable by our mathematical system. “i” = square root of -1. it EXISTS, but is considered imaginary.
 
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