Variable Speed of Light Theories

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1

This was a nice review of variable speed of light theories.

Some parts were mathematically impenetrable for me starting with equation 3.

The rest of the paper had lots of order-2 tensors? Is that right?

It’s been ages since I worked with things like Christoffel symbols and the Ricci Curvature tensor buried implicilty in Eqn 1. I’ve forgotten like everything!

Some of it that looked marginally comprehensible motivated me to get my General Relativity textbook and review the tensor notation.

There was passing mention of variable electron charge theories. First I ever heard of that!

As Dirac’s quote shows, this question is far from new, and several “constants” of nature have been stripped off their status in theories proposed in the past. Physicists have long entertained the possibility of a varying gravitational constant G [8, 9, 10], a varying electron charge e [11], and more generally varying coupling constants. Indeed with the advent of string theory (and the prediction of the dilaton), to “vary” these “constants” seems to be fashionable.

In sharp contrast, the constancy of the speed of light has remain sacred, and the term
“heresy” is occasionally used in relation to “varying speed of light theories” [12]. T

The paper had some very readable and insightful parts.

2

I can see this is going to be challenging to re-learn what I’ve forgotten, and that starts with equation 1.

First off, the form Maguiejo uses has the indexes lowered, with the cosmological constant thrown in.

My intro text, uses a \Lambda = 0

I jokingly call this the “anti-gravity” term. So, just for pedagogical purposes, I will state the equation with no anti-gravity.

So mercifully equation 1, \Lambda = 0

G_{\mu\nu} - g_{\mu\nu}\Lambda = G_{\mu\nu} = \frac{8\pi G}{c^4}T_{\mu\nu}

But in the text by Shutz, he uses

c = 1 in dimensionless units and G = 1 dimensionless for the gravitational constant

also he uses the indexes differently! Grr! So Shutz’s version of Einsteins equation is

G^{\alpha\beta}= 8 \pi T^ {\alpha\beta}

so Maguijo’s version of equation 1 uses a \binom{0}{2} tensor and Shutz uses a \binom{2}{0} tensor. Is that right? They can be shown as equivalent through index lowering or raising, but I forgot how to do that.

One thing that bothered me in Maguijo’s version is the G on the left is a tensor and the G on the right is the Gravitational constant! UGH!

Ok, that’s just trying to connect some of the conventions in papers and textbooks out there.

3

In Shutz,

G^{\alpha\beta} \equiv R^{\alpha\beta} - \frac{1}{2}g^{\alpha\beta}R = G^{\beta\alpha}

Where the first term R^{\alpha\beta} is the Ricci tensor and the second term R is the Ricci scalar. Right?

4

@stcordova you may be on the right track for a personal career thrust for your cosmology. I think you need one. I don’t have a lot of problems with controversy of VSL or Jo˜ao Magueijo.

I have culled some of the things which strike me. I don’t really have a problem with any of it until he gets to a varying h bar. That concerns me somewhat. Eq (23) is especially interesting.

"It describes a world where not only the matter content of the universe, but also the laws of physics evolve in time.

There is still a metric, a connection, and curvature and Einstein “tensors”, to be evaluated in a given frame at constant c (no extra terms in gradients of c, e.g. in the expression for the connection in terms of the metric). But they are tied to a preferred frame

The basic dynamical postulate is that Einstein’s field equations are valid, with minimal coupling (i.e. with c replaced by a field in the relevant equations) in this particular frame:

the comoving horizon is given by rh = c/a˙, so that a solution to the horizon problem requires that in our past rh must have decreased in order to causally connect the large region we can see nowadays. Thus

image
that is, either we have accelerated expansion (inflation), or a decreasing speed of light, or a combination of both.

Physicists don’t like preferred frames, but they often ignore the very obvious fact that we have a great candidate for a preferred frame: the cosmological frame

For the Friedmann metric, the equations in Section 3.1 reduce to the familiar

image
One area in which not much work has been done is the relation between VSL and quantum mechanics. Right from the start (e.g. [30]) it was obvious that a varying c implied a varying h¯. This connection has clear physical implications,"

Question: do you think it is possible to find a young universe in this approach? Eq 23 seems to indicate a varying light speed over the entire evolution of the universe. Is that new for Magueijo or did I misunderstand? I had him proposing it at the opening moments of the big bang.

I think you need to stay on this and see how far these ideas can take you in your YEC views. Write them up and submit a cosmology. See if it can stand up to scrutiny.

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5

Thanks for the kind words.

I’d probably have to spend about 5 hours a week for the next year to feel comfortable again with the basics. I find it more personally fulfilling than getting into some of arguments I’ve gotten into on the internet.

Right now biology has been my focus because it is ripe for the harvest in terms of creation models, but cosmology is the final frontier.

What is obvious is so many of the VSL cosmologies are designed to solve the Big Bang problems like Dark Matter, and Inflation! And there are so many VSL cosmologies, and like the YEC/YCC cosmologies, they all can’t be right as a matter of principle! So all the investment in all the hard math, at least 90% (figuratively speaking) is all for naught.

I remember the professor authorizing us to use Wolram Mathematica, and it was comical all the profound looking,multi-page equations it would churn out that would have take years to solve in the pre-computer era.

Magueijo did actually mention in passing and interesting data point regarding the pioneer anomaly. That one is worth pursuing more because it is an actual physical data point decoupled from the Big Bang.

Also some of the VSL cosmologies are Universal/Cosmological/Isotropic changes to c. I’m interested in LOCALized changes to c, and there may or may not be Earth-bound examples of that – that’s why I’ve both studied and tried to reconstruct interferometers. I’ve gone back and looked also at Ron Hatch’s work – very interesting.

I’m not comforatable with changes to h (Planck’s constant), and that will immediately break YEC/YCC cosmologies as that affects chemistry and the atomic “radius” – Not Good. :astonished: Isotropically variable c affects stellar fusion rates, that could blow up the stars. Not good either. So the best variable c would be one that is spatially variable at long distances from gravitational sources like stars and the sun.

Dewitte’s Belgacon experiment did suggest a direction dependent light speed. Cahill re-built several interferometers which claim success, but I’m skeptical, but Dewitte’s experiment and reconstructed Michelson interferometers by other researchers look promising.

Hatch claims his filter shows the Einsteinian relativity is flawed, and that some sort of neo-Lorentzian relativity might be better. The problem for me is uncoiling all the math and literature, but I’m having to re-learn some of the basics of Einstein’s GR, much less some of the VSL and neo-Lorentzian variants!

I’ll post some of the data on neo-Lorentzian theories, the best starting with Hatch.

Also, I’m going have to shop around for physics discussion boards where I can post equations and get some help understanding them, starting with equation (1). I once had a good handle on it, but that was years ago before I started studying biology.

6

Can you vary c without affecting h over the history of the universe? If c varies then what other units must vary to keep h constant?

Just get someone like Hartnett on-board with your idea right from the start and keep him in the loop the whole way through. No surprises. At that point I can’t see that he could justifiably oppose you or he would be opposing himself since you were transparent about everything. (Of course, that does not mean that both of you could not be wrong and the whole thing a can of worms.)

I understand. But do keep it on the back burner and one day you may have the space to dive in. It might be interesting to see the outcome.

7

Well, there is one way to find out – experiments! The experiments have been done, starting with Micheson-Morely with AIR as a refractive media. BUT, there have been issues with the interpretation of the results.

A later Michelson-Morely type interferometer was built also with AIR as the refractive media by Dayton Miller. It was presumed the vacuum would be the best test, and it may be refractive media like air might be the best test.

This document reviews relevant experiments, and then details the first interferometer I tried to reconstruct, but was unable to because the parts used were no longer manufactured! I ended up reconstructing another of Cahill’s interferometers that used lasers and optical fibers instead of radio waves, but got inconclusive resutls:

Sign in to CERN

Data from a new experiment measuring the anisotropy of the one-way speed of
EM waves in a coaxial cable, gives the speed of light as 300,000 ±400 ±20km/s
in a measured direction RA=5.5 ±2 hrs, Dec=70 ±10◦S, is shown to be in excellent agreement with the results from seven previous anisotropy experiments,
particularly those of Miller (1925/26), and even those of Michelson and Morley (1887). The Miller gas-mode interferometer results, and those from the
RF coaxial cable experiments of Torr and Kolen (1983), De Witte (1991) and
the new experiment all reveal the presence of gravitational waves, as indicated
by the last ± variations above, but of a kind different from those supposedly predicted by General Relativity. Miller repeated the Michelson-Morley
1887 gas-mode interferometer experiment and again detected the anisotropy
of the speed of light, primarily in the years 1925/1926 atop Mt.Wilson, California. The understanding of the operation of the Michelson interferometer in
gas-mode was only achieved in 2002 and involved a calibration for the interferometer that necessarily involved Special Relativity effects and the refractive
index of the gas in the light paths. The results demonstrate the reality of
the Fitzgerald-Lorentz contraction as an observer independent relativistic effect. A common misunderstanding is that the anisotropy of the speed of light
is necessarily in conflict with Special Relativity and Lorentz symmetry —
this is explained. All eight experiments and theory show that we have both
anisotropy of the speed of light and relativistic effects, and that a dynamical
3-space exists — that absolute motion through that space has been repeatedly observed since 1887. These developments completely change fundamental
physics and our understanding of reality. “Modern” vacuum-mode Michelson
interferometers, particularly the long baseline terrestrial versions, are, by design flaw, incapable of detecting the anisotropy effect and the gravitational
waves.

I can personally vouch Cahill generally gives adequate descriptions of how to construct his interferometers as my second attempt was successful in constructing an laser-based interferometer, but I didn’t get the desired results. The parts and vendors were at least legitimate and the components hooked perfectly together as he described. I now have a nice laser from Thor Labs just sitting unused in my basement – bummer.

5 Conclusions
We now have eight experiments that independently and consistently demonstrated (i) the anisotropy of the speed of light, and where the anisotropy is quite large, namely 300,000 ± 400 km/s, depending on the See [1] for a possible generalisation to include vorticity effects and matter related relativistic effects. direction of measurement relative to the Milky Way, (ii) that the direction, given by the Right Ascension and Declination, is now known, being established by the Miller, De Witte and Flinders experiments . The reality of the cosmological meaning of the speed was confirmed by detecting the sidereal time shift over 6 months and more, (iii) that the relativistic Fitzgerald-Lorentz length contraction is a real effect, for otherwise the results from the gas-mode interferometers would have not agreed with those from the coaxial cable experiments, (iv) that Newtonian physics gives the wrong calibration for the Michelson interferometer, which of course is not surprising, (v) that the observed anisotropy means that these eight experiments have detected the existence of a 3-space, (vi) that the motion of that 3-space past the Earth displays wave effects at the level of ±20km/s, as confirmed by three experiments, and possibly present even in the Michelson-Morley data. The Miller experiment was one of the most significant experiments of the 20th century. It meant that a substructure to reality deeper than spacetime had been revealed, that spacetime was merely a mathematical construct and not an aspect of reality. It meant that the Einstein postulate regarding the invariance of the speed of light was incorrect — in disagreement with experiment, and had been so from the beginning. This meant that the Special Relativity effects required a different explanation, and indeed Lorentz had supplied that some 100 years ago: in this it is the absolute motion of systems through the dynamical 3-space that causes SR effects, and which is diametrically opposite to the Einstein formalism. This has required the generalisation of the Maxwell equations, as first proposed by Hertz in 1888 [26]), and of the Schr¨odinger and Dirac equations [25, 8]

Unfortunately, I’m skeptical of Cahills’ experiments having reconstructed one of them, and having 1 negative result from another independent lab that tried to reconstruct another of Cahill’s experiments.

For right now the projects are somewhat off the shelf, but at least now I’m looking into the issues since I’ll be teaching on them in church. I think it’s fair to say there is no universal agreement about much of anything regarding cosmology and relativity – lots of speculation, too little data. I mean, we really don’t have experimental data on dark matter, dark energy and expanding space, it follows from a train of inferences that are based on assumptions of how reality actually works. We could be in for some surprises in the future. That’s what I’m counting on!

8

Some researcher in Russia apparently tried to reconstruct a Michelson-type interferometer – possibily for historical research, it led to an interesting twist reported in 2001 of detecting the aether:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0103103.pdf

In the first version of this paper (arXiv: 1003.2899v1, 15.03.2010) there is described first, traditional method of measuring the non-zero shift of interference fringe in the Michelson interferometer, operating on the effects of second order with respect to υ/c, and are revealed hidden causes of the failure to measure the shift of interference fringe in the period from 1881 till 1960. It is shown that at the latitude of Obninsk within a 24-hour observation period the horizontal projection of aether wind velocity varies from 140 km/s to 480 km/s. The second version of this paper (arXiv: 1003.2899v2, 15.04.2010) is supplemented with a second method of finding the velocity of the aether wind − through measuring the largest seasonal decrease in the ratio of the summer shift of the interference fringe to the winter one (equaled ∼ 12%). It gave the same interval of values of the projections of the aether wind velocity as the first method. Below the third method of measuring the aether wind is described that appears to be in agreement with the first two methods. More than hundred years there persists a belief that Michelson-type interferometer can not be adjusted such as to detect effects of the first order with respect to υ/c. Below I show that it is possible to measure the interference fringe shift (and thus the ”aether wind”) on the first order Michelson interferometer, and more successfully than on the interferometer of the second order. In contrast to the traditional approach, in the interferometer of the first order the light after splitting on a semi-transparent plate propagates in both arms to the reflecting mirrors in one optical medium (with dielectric permittivity ε1), and returns after reflection from the mirrors through another optical medium (with dielectric permittivity ε2). The shift of the interference fringe is reliably detected in the experiment when turning the interferometer by 90◦ . It was found to be proportional to ε1 − ε2. Experimental data are interpreted in the bounds of the Fresnel drag of light by a moving optical medium neglecting terms quadratic in υ/c. The horizontal projection υ of the Earth’s velocity relative to luminiferous aether thus found lies in the range 140 km/s < υ < 480 km/s depending on the time of the day and night at the latitude of Obninsk. This is the third method of measuring the speed of aether wind. It gives the same range of values as two earlier described methods operating at second order with respect to υ/c.

9

Alright. See if this works. I summon @PdotdQ to look at this idea and shoot it down from the outset.

So all of this may infer that light has a preferred direction. Maybe instead of a preferred spacetime frame, there is a preferred direction. So start with the Friedmann metric and add a zeroeth spacetime frame to the equation. Do this by adding a subtle time dimension with zero time value along each spatial dimension. In this manner, light travels toward us in two ways - one, the usually understood canonical value of c and two, the imperceptible value of infinity. This of course would happen along all spatial dimensions, so No, this is absolutely not Jason Lisle’s ASC.

10

Now, say that in the beginning when God created the earth and light, he anchored earth to distant cosmic sources. Say he anchored earth to quasars. In this manner, the light we receive from our cosmic anchors travels to us with infinite value only. So light from those sources would not be perceived as time dilated.

11

Please forgive my diversion. I have to admit that most if not all YEC cosmologies - including the ideas I have developed - are ad hoc constructions to solve what currently seems to be an intractable problem - namely, to get light to earth from a vast universe in a short span of time.

But back on track, it seems that you like an anisotropic speed of light. I think you should continue your experiments if possible, also hook onto credible researchers like Maguiejo, and keep high profile creationists like Sanford, Hartnett updated along the way of your research. Then someday, present your material in a full package to the YEC community.

12

Yes, I like it.

Thanks for the kind words. I worked with Barry Setterfield’s isotropic changes, and we collaborated for brief season. I remember him calling me on Christmas Day once and we had some nice times together. I just couldn’t get his ideas to work and had to go another route. That was in 2007. So it’s now 2019 and the distant starlight problem is still an open issue, whereas the argument against abiogenesis and evolutionary theory and the old fossil record is moving along quite easily because of the explosion of knowledge in these fields.

The Distant Starlight project will be on and off the shelf, but our discussions here have at least gotten me to revisit the issue plus the fact I’ll have to make comment about it to fellow believers now that I’m teaching the issue in church and on my buffet style ID/Creation online course.

I also think alternative models of nucleosynthesis and radioactive decay are close to getting better characterized because of the work of the Proton-21 lab and many other experiments on electrically induced nuclear transmutation that are published, accepted but fell into obscurity! This will solve a lot of radiometric problems for YEC/YCC.

13

Where can I find details of this? If you already sent a link I missed it I apologize. Can you please repost that? Thanks in advance.

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I’ll start another discussion on the topic as it’s too important.

15

This was another interesting experiment with Geostationary satellites:

https://bourabai.ru/shtyrkov/shtyrkov.pdf

The ether drift due to motion of the Earth has been discovered in the process of tracking of a geostationary satellite. The average annual velocity of the orbital component of the ether drift found to be 29.45km/s that almost coincides with the known value of orbital velocity of the Earth (29.765km/s). Parameters of galactic motion of the solar system were also measured, and the values for the Sun apex right ascension (270o) and declination (89.5 o) are also in a close agreement with data accepted in observational astronomy. Such results are direct
evidence that the velocity of a uniformly moving system can be measured with a device having the source of radiation (geostationary satellite) and detector (antenna of the telescope) fixed with respect to each other and the system itself. Evidently, this fact is reason for the hypotheses of light speed constancy with respect to the observer to be revised.

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I’m curious to know if you can explain why all this revolutionary new physics is found only in fringe sources and not in any mainstream physics journals.

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Because mainstream physics is very close to the truth for most applications, close enough that anomalies could usually be dismissed.

HOWEVER, in the case of deWitte and Hatch working with applications where the difference might matter in applications of high precision clocks, it began to get notice by people who were, until they reported anomalies, not particularly pre-disposed toward being outliers.

VSL in general is obviously gaining some traction, and Lisa Randall at Harvard is certainly as mainstream as it gets (though I think her brane VSL theory needs some experimental evidence).

18

Sorry, not an explanation, and all the name-dropping in the world won’t make an explanation either.

19

Ether drift??? Is there any discarded notion Sal won’t resort to?

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Give us an update on your feelings toward how the VSL paper might have impacted your disagreement with Setterfield’s CDK. I know there was a point that you seemed to discard his ideas as relevant. I keep looking at Eq. (23) in the paper you posted above

image
It really does seems to support Setterfield - maybe not in the details he publishes, but certainly at a high level of observation.

Are you perhaps rethinking your discarding of his model?