I’m so burnt. I was trying to craft a facetious post done in the spirit of Poe’s Law. I agree with you and find the entire argument that the universe could have somehow had super fast interactions given a faster speed of light but left no trace such that when we look out it only appears to be 13.8 billion years old rather ridiculous.
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A good reference about experimental evidence for variable speed of light is Antoine Bret’s blogpost: No, the speed of light (in vacuum) hasn’t changed lately – Antoine's Blog
which also quotes this very useful review article by Uzan: Varying Constants, Gravitation, and Cosmology.
I’m not an expert in this area at all, but nowadays people tend to not talk about varying speed of light, given that in modern physics it is a dimensionfull number. This is in fact mentioned in the Wikipedia article about VSL. In fact, contemporary definitions of units are pegged to the speed of light: for example, the SI definition of a meter is the distance that light travels in 1/299 792 458 of second. One might even say that a change in the speed of light would result in no noticeable change in the universe, as the speed of everything else would be accordingly scaled down (necessary according to SR).
A more meaningful form of new physics would be variation in a dimensionless quantity, such as the fine structure constant, \alpha. For example, the SI definition of a second is pegged to a transition frequency of cesium. I don’t know the details, but I’m willing to bet that the transition frequency of cesium is a function of \alpha. Thus, we can look for variations in \alpha by say, comparing the frequencies of two different transitions in cesium (or another atom) for which the variation in \alpha is supposed to apply differently.
Does this mean that Magueijo’s theory is meaningless? Not necessarily. One can adopt different conventions for defining units such that the speed of light is a dimensionless quantity, which is covered in chapter 1 of the Uzan article above. (For example, theorists usually adopt the definition that c = 1.) But talking about varying speed of light feels anachronistic, as most people (experimentalists at least) talk way more often about variation in \alpha or other dimensionless physical constants. Far from being a “heresy”, looking for variations in \alpha, proton charge-to-mass ratio and other constants is a very active area of research nowadays, as there are now several theories which predict those variations. For example, axions (a candidate for dark matter), if they exist, are thought to cause oscillations in various fundamental quantities. Of course, so far we haven’t found anything. To test Mageijo’s theory, one would probably try to look for variations in \alpha from distant astrophysical sources (or something like that).
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It seems to me that if the Scriptures are meant to be revelation to humanity, then the earth’s frame of reference would be in view when it speaks of distance and time units. From our scientific frame of reference, the universe is 13.8 BYO and the earth is 4.5 BYO. To me, that is dispositive when speaking about what we learn from natural revelation vis-a-vis what we learn from supernatural intervention. I will leave the esoteric stuff to the physicists.
Best,
Chris
I know about these measirements of light speed. Yet how is this evidence that light is being measured as opposed to a introduced force that moves through a light stationary field?
If the light field existed it would also just be, in this case, another measurement of the force.
Its presumed the light is moving but what is the evidence its the light. Not instead a pebble in the pond called light.
if space/time is what light is going through and so gravity waves go the same speed then why is it said there is a speed of light instead of a speed of gravity waves?
Indeed saying space/time is THE only reason for light speed means the light itself speed is unknown aside from the space/time thing.
In fact you could have 23 forces going that fast. Thats fine with me. i think indeed thee is no speed of light but only the fORCE is speeding at this speed. The provocation is speeding and burning a path which is called light.
Something is not adding up here.
It seems that you’ve taken a bunch of words and phrases from Physics and strung them together in a random way. Where exactly do you learn these things from?
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I don’t understand you. I’m not well studied on this butI have seen youtube videos, well viewed, that say there is not a speed of light but instead a vacumeish or maybe this time/space idea.
so i’m still vague about whether light has a speed if its going the same speed as gravity waves. Suggesting its not the light speed but a one-speed-fits-all. Anyways I’m seriously doubting that light moves but instead, as Genesis suggests, is the settled field. so whats moving is not light but some thing poking a energy in the light field like a pebble in a pond.
Do you have any conclusions??
is light speeding along and if so what is the speed and is that unique to the light or just a general vacume that includes light???
The luminiferous ether was disproven over a century ago by Michelson and Morley. You can read about their experiment here:
Further experiments have been done with various other experiments, and none have seen a change in the speed of light as the Earth changes speeds through its orbit around the Earth.
Because those waves have a speed.
How else is speed measured other than distance/time?
Force is measured in m/s^2 in SI units. Notice how those units are directly related to speed.
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Not really.
It was discredited, but not disproven. The ether was no longer a useful explanation, so it was unneeded. But it was not the kind of thing that could be shown to be false.
So it’s not even wrong? 
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I know about all the measurements. i’m not saying ether as it was used in the old days. Instead just a light ‘ether’ at least.
I understand NOW they don’t say there is a speed of light but instead a speed within which light, and gravity waves, do move. It seems they say this.
As i said I need evidence that light moves from here to there. I think instead a force or provocation just moves within a light field. yet light does not move.
Thats why I bring up about gravity waves and youtube videos.
Have you heard of photons, Robert?
Best,
Chris
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Michelson and Morley-type experiments have continued to be performed since the original one with greater precision. Here’s an example of a contemporary one (2014), made using trapped calcium ions: [1412.2194] A Michelson-Morley Test of Lorentz Symmetry for Electrons.
The reason people are interested is because 1) some theories of quantum gravity predict a tiny violation of Lorentz invariance at some level, and 2) in general, physicists are interested to check if our most deeply held assumptions about nature are actually true, contrary to the perception in some circles that it would be “heresy” to suggest such a thing. The difference is that a violation of Local Lorentz Invariance in one of these contemporary experiments would not violate previous decades of similar tests, as we are probing with greater and greater precision.
These experiments are conceptually simple: the idea is to test the isotropy of space, so basically you rotate an experiment to point in different directions in space, monitoring it very closely to see if anything changes. At the simplest level, you don’t even need to rotate the experiment, since the Earth already rotates: by simply running your experiment for 24 hours, you have already set some upper bounds on the influence of the aether. As an undergraduate I also worked on such an experiment where we closely monitored the precession of atoms in a cell while rotating the experiment between two opposite orientations, and seeing if there were any difference between them.
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Exactly. In fact, I am sure physicists are somewhat bummed each time GR and the standard model are confirmed in new experiments. They are probably proud of how precisely and confidently they are able to measure things, but new physics would be absolutely exciting.
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Fabulous experimental work. It’s inspiring.
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Technically kg m/s^2. m/s^2 is acceleration.
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What I hear you saying is that at the scale of light transmission at astronomical distances, Lorentz Invariance holds. Or at least it has, so far. At the quantum scale, the invariance may or may not hold.
Am I understanding this correctly?
Thanks,
Chris
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This might be off topic, but I was wondering if this would have any application to this discussion?
III: Experimental Vindications of the Neo-Lorentzian Interpretation
The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is left-over radiation from the Big Bang explosion. It is taken as one of the best pieces of evidence that the Big Bang really happened [3]. The existence of the CMBR confirms Lorentz’s idea that there is an ether. The book Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity describes how the CMBR serves as an ether: ‘’The cosmic microwave background radiation fills all of space and is remarkably isotropic for any observer at rest with respect to the expansion of space. The radiation background will be anisotropic for any observer in motion with respect to an observer whose spatial coordinates remain fixed. It is therefore a sort of ether, serving to distinguish physically a fundamental universal reference frame.’’ As the theoretical physicist Lee Smolin writes in Time Reborn, ‘’Another way to fix a preferred family of observers is to use the cosmic microwave background. These preferred observers see the CMBR coming at them at the same temperature from all directions in the sky.’’ [4] It should be remembered that this is not merely theoretical, but that the motion of bodies has actually been measured relative to the CMBR. The following experiment is mentioned in Einstein, Relativity, and Absolute Simultaneity: ‘‘’Smoot, Gorenstein, and Muller discovered that the Earth is moving relative to the radiation background with a velocity of 390+60 km/sec in the direction of the constellation Leo. They comment, ‘’The cosine anisotropy is most readily interpreted as being due to the motion of the Earth relative to the rest frame of the cosmic blackbody radiation-what Peebles calls the ‘new aether drift’’’.’’’[5]
Alain Aspect’s experiments with Bell’s Inequalities also serve as experimental vindication of the NL interpretation. Alain Aspect’s experiments with Bell’s inequalities demonstrate simultaneous causation with spatially distant photons. The measurement of one photon causes the other photon to instantaneously take on an anti-correlated spin [6]. A measurement of particle A causes an instantaneous change at particle B, which requires absolute simultaneity. The implications of this experiment on the Minkowski interpretation are huge, and some physicists and philosophers of physics take it as empirical falsification of the MI, and proof of the NL interpretation.
‘’To describe how the correlations are established, a hidden variables theory must embrace one observer’s definition of simultaneity [italics are not mine].’’[7] -Lee Smolin, physicist, who once thought that time was an illusion.
‘’The notion of non-local causality, discussed by Bell, requires a criterion of absolute simultaneity which has some absolute significance: it is seem that a cosmological basis for a universal measure of cosmic time resolves this problem…’’- S. J. Prokhovnik, physicist [8]
‘’[But] I would say that the cheapest resolution is something like going back to relativity as it was before Einstein, when people like Lorentz and Poincare thought that there was an aether-a preferred frame of reference…’’ -John Bell, physicist, talking about Alain Aspect’s experiment [9]
‘’We have to give up Einstein’s interpretation of special relativity and return to Lorentz’s interpretation and with it to…absolute space and time…’’ - Karl Popper, philosopher of science [10]
Further findings about the nature of empty space further demonstrate the truth of the NL interpretation. Einstein once said in a 1924 speech in Berlin that “to deny the aether is ultimately to assume that empty space has no physical qualities whatever. “ [11] Modern day quantum physics directly and explicitly contradicts the idea that empty space has no physical qualities. Empty space, or rather, a quantum vacuum, does have physical qualities… [12] The evidence for these particles is extraordinary, so a serious scientists has to accept their existence. But, if virtual particles do exist, then empty space has physical qualities, …
Did you just copy this from:
https://www.debate.org/debates/A-Neo-Lorentzian-Ether-Exists/1/
You’ll have to ask @dga471 to comment though for me I’m never particularly impressed without claims being critiques by other experts in their fields and with excessive select quotes from various scientists and (even worse in my opinion) philosophers. Just like physicist can have bad philosophy philosophers can have atrocious physics.
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Yes. OK. Does seem there is some substance to the claim though.
I haven’t really dug into this much, but you can formulate SR as if an ether exists: Lorentz Ether Theory (LET). Since the mathematics is the same, there is no experimental way to distinguish between LET and the conventional interpretation of SR. However, as far as I know no one has formulated a version of GR and QFT that is consistent with LET, though it’s not clear to me whether that’s because of a fundamental incompatibility or just because not enough people have tried. We have discussed this topic in the past: Science and the Metaphysics of Time. @PdotdQ might be able to say more, since he’s actually a theorist.
Secondly, there might be philosophical arguments for having a preferred frame of reference. LET in particular has been championed by William Lane Craig because he prefers an A-theory of time (where there is an absolute “now”, instead of past, present, and future being equally “real”). That being said, LET is not the only way to argue for A-theory, for example Edward Feser in his book Aristotle’s Revenge for example lists up to four possible ways to philosophically interpret SR such that one still retains a preferred reference frame.
Needless to say, the majority of physicists don’t care much about philosophical arguments for preferring LET over conventional SR, because physicists usually only care about the observables, and SR is more practical and elegant compared to LET.
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