Well, this week has been quite a journey. I fully appreciate that there is much discussion to be had pertaining to the outcomes of ASC, and that GR may render some of this moot. I’m just focused on the ramifications of ASC to my now refuted original posts concerning the speed of light and gravitational waves, so this thread does not get too open ended.
Norton’s article was very illuminating. The pertinent take away in the context of this discussion is that I must concede Lisle is actually representing scientific thinking faithfully as concerns the speed of light in special relativity. I’m coming around to this, but there are some consolations from the article. [I will quote for those who have not read the link]. I can tent with the “relativity of simultaneity” camp which asserts that judgments of the simultaneity of distant events must change as we move between inertial frames of reference. However it presumes that within a single inertial frame there is one correct judgment to be made.
This is in contrast to the “conventionality of simultaneity” which asserts In the same frame of reference, one person may assign relations of simultaneity one way; another person may do it differently. Within some limits, neither is factually wrong, according to the conventionality thesis, for there is no unique fact of simultaneity in the world.
Neither position enjoys empirical validation, so choose by inclination.
These two positions are loosely correlated but not identical to the realist, literal account of the world view, vs antirealist view, where all that matters is what we observe.
Now this is where I still find Lisle’s ASC to be at least awkward at the premise. When Lisle states “I will show that the one-way speed of light is conventional. It is something that is stipulated by us, and is not an independent measurable property of the universe”, that statement has him appealing to the “conventionality of simultaneity”. He is careful to phrase that the Bible “uses” the ASC convention. But near the bottom of his article he transitions from ASC convention to ASC model, where he states the ”ASC model implies that all regions of the universe have aged only a few thousand years as we now see them”. There, he has advanced a realist, non-conventionalist viewpoint, namely that conventions which imply an age greater than six thousand years are to be excluded, not excepting the ESC.
How does Einstein’s famous equation E=mc^2 fit into this? If the one way speed of light is infinite, wouldn’t this mean a Sun’s energy output would become infinite? Or is the equation wrong?
I think where c shows up in scientific formulas, that its value is just taken as the average speed of light. Offhand, I can’t think of an equation that doesn’t have a relativistic formulation. I also wonder how atomic absorption and emission energies work under various transforms, but I would suppose that the same reasoning which explains frequency of light under the transform would apply here. These “c” dependencies have been around for a while, and I expect they have been all dealt with in regards to the speed of light. I’m still being schooled on moving clocks.
What does it mean that distant star light is infinite? The sun is not distant to us, but it is to another star in another galaxy, so what is the speed of light from our sun as it passes the Earth on the way to the distant galaxy?
From Lisle Under ASC, the speed of light as a function of direction relative to the observer (θ) is given by cθ = c/(1-cos(θ)), where θ = 0 indicates the direction directly toward the observer.
The average between infinite and 3E8 m/s is infinite. Therefore, the Sun should be putting out infinite amounts of energy per unit mass.
Also, c is not an average speed. It is THE speed of light in a vacuum.
If the speed of light is infinite then it will always have infinite frequency. I would assume that an atom absorbing a photon of light with infinite frequency would be obliterated.
True I expressed that a little informally. Under ASC, if you take the two way elapsed time of reflected light, and divide into the distance, that is an average of t1=zero and t2=1/2c * one way distance.
That was the position I started with, but there is no empirical measurement of the one way speed of light. Read PdotdQ posts.
Infinities are always a problem in physics, and that is a liability for Lisle. My belief is that the one and two way speed of light is identical, but that has not been proven.
As I have said in other posts, I’m a physics hobbyist at best. As far as I can see, the speed of light has to be less than infinite in order for any matter to exist in the universe. Either that, or all our equations in physics are wrong.
Not really the case. c is still c under ESC, ASC or many other conventions. Read the link below, suggested by PdotdQ. This whole issue does not lend well to a quick study, but I thought this was a pretty accessible article. The Conventionality of Simultaneity