Why not variable speed of light?

Z

Zeno

Registered Senior Member
I've thought about this and maybe somebody can explain...
http://calgary.rasc.ca/algol_minima.htm

You will notice that when the Earth is moving away from Algol, the eclipses come
further apart in time, likewise when the Earth is moving towards Algol the
eclipses are closer together in time. If you have cars moving past
you at constant speed and equally spaced apart and you start running in the
same direction the cars are moving, then there will be an increase in time between
cars and they will be passing you more slowly.
So, why doesn't this analogy apply to light?
 
The speed of light being constant might be analogous to the freezing of water. If we freeze water, it will remain at 0C until all the water freezes. Parts of the ice-water mixture will not drop below 0C, until all the water is frozen, then all can go below 0C. In the case of the speed of light, going above C would not be possible until all the matter of the universe is converted to energy, which has a constant space-time freeze velocity of the speed of light.

Although with water, it is possible to supercool liquid water below 0C, but it still be liquid but not solid. This could be analogous to theoretical ways to generate greater than C but this is different from freezing at C and is unstable.

I like the idea of C being the ground state of the universe, with departure from C, containing potential energy. This is backwards from the way we think in terms of velocity and kinetic energy and inertial reference. But it is a simple way to combine everything on one assumption. Because C is the ground state, the direction of matter is to lower potential by moving back to C, whether by mass burn, GR, SR, speed of force, etc. The freezing stays constant at C.
 
wellwisher said:
In the case of the speed of light, going above C would not be possible until all the matter of the universe is converted to energy, which has a constant space-time freeze velocity of the speed of light.
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And you know this how?

wellwisher said:
I like the idea of C being the ground state of the universe, with departure from C, containing potential energy. This is backwards from the way we think in terms of velocity and kinetic energy and inertial reference. But it is a simple way to combine everything on one assumption. Because C is the ground state, the direction of matter is to lower potential by moving back to C, whether by mass burn, GR, SR, speed of force, etc. The freezing stays constant at C.
Click to expand...
You're misusing the term 'ground state'. The sentence 'The speed of light is the ground state of the universe' is meaningless.
 
Tach said:
the other way around, remember the Lorentz transforms
Click to expand...

Sorry, but am not familiar with the Lorentz transforms. The one aspect about light that is troublesome is the energy imparted at the time of emission has nothing to do with the speed of the photon, but only the frequency of it. But with particles like protons that is not true, energy does determine speed. Also protons can be accelerated, but not true with photons. Photons always move at the speed of light from the very instant they are emitted, no acceleration needed. As far as I know only light behaves this way.
 
KilljoyKlown said:
That being true, do we know why light speed is constant?
Click to expand...
With a little reasoning, we can figure out why c is constant. You start by figuring out what kind of medium can beat Lorentz invariance. Take the speed of light $$c=\lambda f$$ and calculate frequency/wavelength pairs $$(f=\frac{c}{\lambda},\lambda)$$ across a range of distances from $$\lambda $$ = 2*13.7 billion light years to $$\lambda = L_p $$, the Planck length. Calculate about 10^500 evenly spaced pairs. For each wavelength, calculate all of the k-vectors so you have a sphere in k-space. For every frequency/wavelength pair, there exists a wave. This is you medium. Light is just an excitation of a wave in this medium. So how can light ever be anything but c?
 
Mazulu said:
With a little reasoning, we can figure out why c is constant. You start by figuring out what kind of medium can beat Lorentz invariance. Take the speed of light $$c=\lambda f$$ and calculate frequency/wavelength pairs $$(f=\frac{c}{\lambda},\lambda)$$ across a range of distances from $$\lambda $$ = 2*13.7 billion light years to $$\lambda = L_p $$, the Planck length. Calculate about 10^500 evenly spaced pairs. For each wavelength, calculate all of the k-vectors so you have a sphere in k-space. For every frequency/wavelength pair, there exists a wave. This is you medium. Light is just an excitation of a wave in this medium. So how can light ever be anything but c?
Click to expand...

This is total nonsense.
 
Mazulu said:
With a little reasoning, we can figure out why c is constant. You start by figuring out what kind of medium can beat Lorentz invariance. Take the speed of light $$c=\lambda f$$ and calculate frequency/wavelength pairs $$(f=\frac{c}{\lambda},\lambda)$$ across a range of distances from $$\lambda $$ = 2*13.7 billion light years to $$\lambda = L_p $$, the Planck length. Calculate about 10^500 evenly spaced pairs. For each wavelength, calculate all of the k-vectors so you have a sphere in k-space. For every frequency/wavelength pair, there exists a wave. This is you medium. Light is just an excitation of a wave in this medium. So how can light ever be anything but c?
Click to expand...

Let me fix this for you:

Take the speed of light $$c=\lambda f$$. *snip*
So how can (the speed of) light ever be anything but c?

All that space alien nonsense in between was not needed.
 
Tach said:
This is total nonsense.
Click to expand...
I'll do the first one. For $$\lambda$$=13.7*2 billion light years = 8.22x10^18 meters, $$f = \frac{c}{\lambda}=3.65x10^{-11}Hz$$. So the first pair is (1.4x10^-9 Hz, 8.2x10^17 meters). That should multiply to equal 300,000,000 m/s, the speed of light. So the smallest EM frequency in the universe is 3.65x10^-11 Hz. and the largest wavelength in the universe is 8.22x10^18 meters.

The photon can travel in any direction. For example, it could have a momentum $$\vec p = \frac{h}{\lambda}\hat x + 0 \hat y + 0 \hat z$$.
 
Cheezle said:
Let me fix this for you:

Take the speed of light $$c=\lambda f$$. *snip*
So how can (the speed of) light ever be anything but c?

All that space alien nonsense in between was not needed.
Click to expand...
The medium is a set of waves that obey $$c=\lambda f$$. You couldn't figure that out, so I gave you some help.

Oh, and then the waves of the medium have some additional characteristics needed for the existence of lepton, hadrons, etc... That's why characteristics of light show up in everything. :)
 
prometheus said:
A decent thread ruined by crackpots - moved to pseudoscience.
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I'm not sure I want to disagree with you, but I will say you seem to be a bit faster on the trigger than all the other moderators, when it comes to moving or pulling the plug on a topic. I personally don't have the math background to understand and evaluate all the technical responses, but then by asking questions, I sometimes find understanding that curious non-math majors can understand. By moving this to pseudoscience, you are killing my incentive to probe this topic any further.
 
Mazulu said:
The medium is a set of waves that obey $$c=\lambda f$$. You couldn't figure that out, so I gave you some help.
Click to expand...

Thanks! To you and your space alien friends for that helpful information but it was really not needed. You see in your first statement you proclaim that c is the speed of light and then at the end you conclude that c is the speed of light. It is like saying: Let n=1 (mumbo jumbo) therefore n has to be 1. It is called tautology. Tautology: "using different words to say the same thing, or a series of self-reinforcing statements that cannot be disproved because they depend on the assumption that they are already correct."
 
Well it's kind of obvious that a medium made of waves exists. But it's not obvious for the physics community. Can you grasp that there is a medium made of waves?

You have to realize that your reference frames are made of waves too.
 
Mazulu said:
Well it's kind of obvious that a medium made of waves exists. But it's not obvious for the physics community. Can you grasp that there is a medium made of waves?

You have to realize that your reference frames are made of waves too.
Click to expand...

Hmmm, so the medium for electromagnetic waves is aether waves. What is the medium for the aether waves? You basic assumption is that waves require a medium correct?
 
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