🚀 go-pugleaf

On Apr 19, 10:30 am, Pentcho Valev <pva...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Usually Einsteinians avoid any discussion of the implications of the
> formula:
>
> frequency = (speed of light)/(wavelength)
>
> but still from time to time they extract career and money from an
> idiotic interpretation of the fact that the frequency and the speed of
> light change while the wavelength remains constant:
>
> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/02/010212075309.htm
> "Einstein In Need Of Update? Calculations Show The Speed Of Light
> Might Change.....Dimitri Nanopoulos, who holds the rank of
> Distinguished Professor of Physics at Texas A&M University and heads
> the Houston Advanced Research Center's Group for Astroparticle
> Physics, established, along with other physicists, that the speed of
> light, instead of being the constant value of 186,282 miles per
> second, might change. In 1905, Einstein established that light was the
> only object to have a constant speed in all reference frames. This
> idea was the cornerstone to his theory of relativity, and later to
> laws of physics. "If the speed of light proves not to be constant any
> more, even by a very small changeable amount, laws of physics - the
> theory of relativity included - will have to undergo significant
> changes," says Nanopoulos. Nanopoulos, who chairs the Theoretical
> Physics Division of the Academy of Athens, is among the many
> physicists who are trying to establish the basis of quantum gravity, a
> theory that has been dreamed of by physicists since the
> 1920s...."Through our calculations, we found that the speed of light
> is frequency-dependent," says Nanopoulos. "But a change in the usual
> speed of light value of 186,282 miles per second is noticeable only
> for light coming from astronomical objects situated very far from
> Earth, which is why this frequency dependence has not been noticed so
> far."....Nanopoulos says that if the frequency-dependence of the speed
> of light is further confirmed by other experiments, the theory of
> relativity would still be valid under certain circumstances. "There is
> nothing wrong with Einstein's theory of relativity. If the energy of
> an object is much smaller than 1019 proton masses or if the distance
> between two objects is smaller than millions of light-years,
> Einstein's equations are still valid," he says."

The fact that it is the speed of light, not the wavelength, that
varies with frequency suggests that a universal principle called the
Redshift Law might be valid:

f'/f = c'/c

where f' is the shifted frequency of light (at the moment of
reception), f is the original frequency (at the moment of emission),
c' is the speed of light relative to the observer (at the moment of
reception), c is the speed of light relative to the emitter (at the
moment of emission).

The variability of the speed of light and the constancy of the
wavelength also imply that one should look for another reason
(different from Big Bang ones) why the more distant galaxies are, the
more redshifted light coming from them is. If, as it travels, the
photon regularly bumps into something and so gradually loses its speed
(this assumption has a lot to do with the tired light hypothesis), its
speed will decrease proportionally to the distance (this reconciles
Hubble's law with the idea of a static universe). One can also assume
that the effect is virtually zero at small distances so, in the Pound-
Rebka experiment for instance, the outcome is consistent with
Einstein's 1911 equation c'=c(1+V/c^2) given by Newton's emission
theory of light.

The speed-of-light-changes-over-the-vast-stretches-of-the-universe
idea seems to be seriously considered by the Establishment (ordinary
mortals are still to sing "Yes we all believe in relativity,
relativity, relativity"):

http://www.sciscoop.com/story/2008/10/30/41323/484
"Does the apparently constant speed of light change over the vast
stretches of the universe? Would our understanding of black holes,
ancient supernovae, dark matter, dark energy, the origins of the
universe and its ultimate fate be different if the speed of light were
not constant?.....Couldn't it be that the supposed vacuum of space is
acting as an interstellar medium to lower the speed of light like some
cosmic swimming pool? If so, wouldn't a stick plunged into the pool
appear bent as the light is refracted and won't that affect all our
observations about the universe. I asked theoretical physicist Leonard
Susskind, author of The Black Hole War, recently reviewed in Science
Books to explain this apparent anomaly....."You are entirely right,"
he told me, "there are all sorts of effects on the propagation of
light that astronomers and astrophysicists must account for. The point
of course is that they (not me) do take these effects into account and
correct for them." "In a way this work is very heroic but unheralded,"
adds Susskind, "An immense amount of extremely brilliant analysis has
gone into the detailed corrections that are needed to eliminate these
'spurious' effects so that people like me can just say 'light travels
with the speed of light.' So, there you have it. My concern about
cosmic swimming pools and bent sticks does indeed apply, but
physicists have taken the deviations into account so that other
physicists, such as Susskind, who once proved Stephen Hawking wrong,
can battle their way to a better understanding of the universe."

Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com