Speed of light NOT constant?

[JoeTheSaxMan]

Though some complicated photon absorbing thingy that myself, a zit faced teenage kid as Mr. Wong would say, don't understand, it has been proposed by a team of scientist in Australia that the speed of light has slowed over billions of years.
While I don't understand HOW they found this out, the implications are obviously huge. The almost dogma quality of the Theory of Relativity, E=MCsquared, and some other theories may be in question. The law that nothing can travel faster than light stems from the Theory of Relativity... if that is in question, than can hyperdrive or warp travel be more feasible than before?
I'm just generalizing in this post, to see the entire article here... http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jht ... ID=1303277

Thoughts?

[Crown]

There was also a team of Physicists from Athens university who were investigating evidence of c varring with frequency, IIRC. Anywho most of it was over my head, and thus I can't remember most of it, however I will try and find the relevant quote if anyone wants it...

[Durandal]

The discrepancy is easily explained. The second law of thermodynamics has just recently been shown to be invalid (http://physicsweb.org/article/news/6/7/11) when predicting entropic actions on the kind of scale that the astronomers were working on (the atomic scale). I think that this story came out a while ago, but it's curiously dated as today. But, I remember reading about a team of astronomers studying a differential in electron charge and citing the possibility of a different value for c in the past. That's my take, anyway.

I personally don't think that this research will lead to that conclusion, given the recent entropy revelations (entropy was shown to be consumed on small scales).

While I don't understand HOW they found this out, the implications are obviously huge. The almost dogma quality of the Theory of Relativity, E=MCsquared, and some other theories may be in question.

The postulates of the special and general theories of relativity are just as open to disproof as any other theories or laws in physics. The wide acceptance of a theory does not make it "dogma" or anywhere near such a status, and this research just goes to show that.

The law that nothing can travel faster than light stems from the Theory of Relativity...

There is no such law. There is only the postulate that the speed of light can never be attained by anything but a massless particle. It says that you cannot go exactly the speed of light. Granted, for practical purposes, this means that there is not faster-than-light, but from a theoretical standpoint, there is a difference.

if that is in question, than can hyperdrive or warp travel be more feasible than before?

Doubtful. Let me tell you something about researchers, especially physicists. They want funding. Very badly. They'll tell the press that their research could open up the possibility for faster-than-light travel, which will immediately flip the "Cool!" switch in everyone's brain. Thus, funding agencies and the government will be more interested in the research in question, and the researcher gets more money for whatever the real purpose of his research is. This guy probably doesn't care much about faster-than-light travel. He just threw it out there to get funding. Faster-than-light travel is just as impractical and unattainable today as it was yesterday.

[Gil Hamilton]

Of course, the physicist in question Paul Davies isn't exactly the most reputable person on the planet... there is just something about a guy who writes creationist physics books that gets me. I wish the Rueters would have posted more on the theory and less on how there is a new "revolutionary" theory that could debunk Einstein...

[Darth Wong]

Creationists desperately want the speed of light to be slowing down, because they believe they can rationalize their idiotic "young-Earth" theories with observation if this is the case.

Of course, lost in all this is the fact that if there were any such slowdown, it would have to be infinitesimally small in order to account for redshift from distant galaxies (which shows that it was not significantly different from today's speed of light even billions of years ago). Therefore, it would be hopelessly inadequate to support the ludicrous creationist timescale.

Also keep in mind that at the current time, some of these breaking-news discoveries hinge on differences in measurement of such vanishingly small magnitude that it is still questionable whether they represent genuine discovery or mere measurement inaccuracy. Until they are reproduced independently, closely, and repeatedly, they should be taken with a grain of salt.

[Zoink]

I think the theory has been completely debunked. I either read or saw someting on this, it mentioned how he arrived at his theory by fudging numbers, adding or subtracting the error deviation as needed to fudge numbers in his favour, taking desciptions of events thousands of years old and somehow extracting exact numbers.


On a related note....

I recently read a theory suggesting that a body's reaction to a force may vary depending on the magnitude of its acceleration.... ie "F=m*a" may not be true for bodies undergoing small acceleration.

This theory does away with the need for dark matter, explaning the formation galaxies and the unusually high orbital velocities within.

[SPOOFE]

Of course, lost in all this is the fact that if there were any such slowdown, it would have to be infinitesimally small in order to account for redshift from distant galaxies

Like Creationists would care. They'd hold to this like it were the Holy Grail, shouting "The speed of light has slowed down, which PROVES us right!" Then when you ask them to explain how it proves their silly little notion, they'll stammer and stutter, and then say, "The speed of light has slowed down, which PROVES us right!"

I remember when Creationists had a boner for the "The human eye is so complex and beautiful that it COULDN'T have been created by accident!" line of thought.

[Gil Hamilton]

Like Creationists would care. They'd hold to this like it were the Holy Grail, shouting "The speed of light has slowed down, which PROVES us right!" Then when you ask them to explain how it proves their silly little notion, they'll stammer and stutter, and then say, "The speed of light has slowed down, which PROVES us right!"

I remember when Creationists had a boner for the "The human eye is so complex and beautiful that it COULDN'T have been created by accident!" line of thought.

Yeah... I can't wait for the latest round of Creationist arguments on the SB Non-Sci-fi Forum based around this, all marching in triumphantly with the front of their pants resembling a circus tent going "Look! Look! We were RIGHT, you evolutionist HEATHENS!". Then carnage will ensue.

[JoeTheSaxMan]

Well, aside from my slighty embarrasment at having my wording carefully picked apart and my lack of basic scientific understanding painfully made obvious, cool. I like the insight into the "anything for funding" thought. Thanks for your input, guys.

[His Divine Shadow]

Creationists desperately want the speed of light to be slowing down, because they believe they can rationalize their idiotic "young-Earth" theories with observation if this is the case.

Don't I fucking know it, I was 2 years on a private christian school, because it had a good computer line, nothing else, and bible class was require twice a week, I remember that a teacher used this exact same argument for creationists, agh, I chuckled at that.

[Nick]

Also keep in mind that at the current time, some of these breaking-news discoveries hinge on differences in measurement of such vanishingly small magnitude that it is still questionable whether they represent genuine discovery or mere measurement inaccuracy. Until they are reproduced independently, closely, and repeatedly, they should be taken with a grain of salt.

Yeah, at the end of the article (at least, the one in The Age - don't know about the Reuters link) the researchers themselves point out that they want someone else to verify the findings. At the moment, they've corrected for every systematic error they can come up with and still get a result that indicates a slight reduction in the speed of light. However, they're honest about the fact that some form of error in the measurements or in their analysis is still a possible explanation.

Actually, one of the other interesting suggestions they make is that the discrepancy could be explained by a change in the nature of vacuum. (the other option, a change in the charge of the electron apparently gets ruled out by something to do with black holes *shrug* I felt I was almost holding my own until they got to that bit - at that point, I realised just how far out of my league these guys are playing. . .)

Still, something not to be forgotten is the fact that any new theory (if such a thing does happen) will pretty much match Einsteinian relativity in almost all circumstances (just the same as Einsteinian relativity matches Newtonian mechanics until you start talking about high speeds, small sizes, or odd gravitational effects).

FWIW, the relevant research page at UNSW:
http://bat.phys.unsw.edu.au/~mim/res.html

And the (much less 'gushy') Age article:
http://theage.com.au/articles/2002/08/0 ... 61167.html

[Nick]

Of course, the physicist in question Paul Davies isn't exactly the most reputable person on the planet... there is just something about a guy who writes creationist physics books that gets me. I wish the Rueters would have posted more on the theory and less on how there is a new "revolutionary" theory that could debunk Einstein...

The internet is a wonderful thing. If you want to know more look for it.

Or, go visit the links I already found

[Master of Ossus]

This is more important than just disproving Relativity. Time itself is clearly not constant, if light is not constant. That is the bigger implication of this discovery. Note that even with light "slowing down" the Earth is still much older than the few thousand years most Fundamentalists spout.

BTW, creationists do not necessarily believe in the moronic "young earth." Fundamentalists do. Call it a nitpick, but I do know creationists who are not fundamentalists.

[Antediluvian]

I think the theory has been completely debunked. I either read or saw someting on this, it mentioned how he arrived at his theory by fudging numbers, adding or subtracting the error deviation as needed to fudge numbers in his favour, taking desciptions of events thousands of years old and somehow extracting exact numbers.


On a related note....

I recently read a theory suggesting that a body's reaction to a force may vary depending on the magnitude of its acceleration.... ie "F=m*a" may not be true for bodies undergoing small acceleration.

This theory does away with the need for dark matter, explaning the formation galaxies and the unusually high orbital velocities within.

Do you know where you saw this (the debunking of Davies' theory)?

I would really appreciate the link.

[Durandal]

Has anyone read what I said? Davies made it clear that the only way to explain his discrepancy was to either conclude that the value of c is not constant or that entropy had been consumed. He didn't like the second option, so he chose the first, but the link I posted clearly shows that entropy can be consumed on smaller scales, or the exact scales Davies was working with. Therefore, the simplest explanation is that entropy was consumed.

[Nick]

Has anyone read what I said? Davies made it clear that the only way to explain his discrepancy was to either conclude that the value of c is not constant or that entropy had been consumed. He didn't like the second option, so he chose the first, but the link I posted clearly shows that entropy can be consumed on smaller scales, or the exact scales Davies was working with. Therefore, the simplest explanation is that entropy was consumed.

Or rather, given that we don't know if the chemist's results are applicable to electrodynamics in the vicinity of a black hole (or whatever it was they used to rule out a change in the electron charge), the matter is still open to question.

Either there has been an increase in the electron charge over time, or there has been a decrease in the speed of light in vacuum over time (with said decrease possibly being due to a change in the structure of vacuum). 'Simpler' is not something which can be easily judged in this case - a fully developed theory which allows for changes in one or the other would be needed before a judgment on simplicity could be made (and, of course, this would assume that there was no empirical way of eliminating one option or the other).

No matter which one turns out to be true (if, indeed, the measured changes in the fine structure constant are actually real, and not the result of some systematic measurement error), something which has been assumed to be constant, has, in fact, changed its value slightly over an extremely long period of time.

No doubt, it is a question which will keep the boffins amused for years to come (not to mention well-financed if they keep throwing the possibility of FTL out there as a carrot).