🚀 go-pugleaf

I suspect clever cosmologists now clearly see the importance of the
following question:

Given the formula:

frequency = (speed of light)/(wavelength)

is the redshift of a distant star's light due to a change in the speed
of light, or is it due to a change in wavelength?

The answer "redshift is due to change in the speed of light"
automatically converts what Einstein in 1954 characterized as
"entirely possible" into a fact:

http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=317&Itemid=81&lecture_id=3576
John Stachel: "Einstein discussed the other side of the particle-field
dualism - get rid of fields and just have particles."
Albert Einstein 1954: "I consider it entirely possible that physics
cannot be based upon the field concept, that is on continuous
structures. Then nothing will remain of my whole castle in the air,
including the theory of gravitation, but also nothing of the rest of
contemporary physics."
John Stachel's comment: "If I go down, everything goes down, ha ha,
hm, ha ha ha."

Silly old interpretations of "redshift is due to a change in
wavelength" can only make clever cosmologists sick at heart:

http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168
Stephen Hawking, "A Brief History of Time", Chapter 3:
"In the 1920s, when astronomers began to look at the spectra of stars
in other galaxies, they found something most peculiar: there were the
same characteristic sets of missing colors as for stars in our own
galaxy, but they were all shifted by the same relative amount toward
the red end of the spectrum. To understand the implications of this,
we must first understand the Doppler effect. As we have seen, visible
light consists of fluctuations, or waves, in the electromagnetic
field. The wavelength (or distance from one wave crest to the next) of
light is extremely small, ranging from four to seven ten-millionths of
a meter. The different wavelengths of light are what the human eye
sees as different colors, with the longest wavelengths appearing at
the red end of the spectrum and the shortest wavelengths at the blue
end. Now imagine a source of light at a constant distance from us,
such as a star, emitting waves of light at a constant wavelength.
Obviously the wavelength of the waves we receive will be the same as
the wavelength at which they are emitted (the gravitational field of
the galaxy will not be large enough to have a significant effect).
Suppose now that the source starts moving toward us. When the source
emits the next wave crest it will be nearer to us, so the distance
between wave crests will be smaller than when the star was stationary.
This means that the wavelength of the waves we receive is shorter than
when the star was stationary. Correspondingly, if the source is moving
away from us, the wavelength of the waves we receive will be longer.
In the case of light, therefore, means that stars moving away from us
will have their spectra shifted toward the red end of the spectrum
(red-shifted) and those moving toward us will have their spectra blue-
shifted."

The correct answer "redshift is due to change in the speed of light"
will have to be officially adopted soon:

http://www.blazelabs.com/f-g-gcont.asp
"So, faced with this evidence most readers must be wondering why we
learn about the importance of the constancy of speed of light. Did
Einstein miss this? Sometimes I find out that what's written in our
textbooks is just a biased version taken from the original work, so
after searching within the original text of the theory of GR by
Einstein, I found this quote: "In the second place our result shows
that, according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the
constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of
the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity
and to which we have already frequently referred, cannot claim any
unlimited validity. A curvature of rays of light can only take place
when the velocity of propagation of light varies with position. Now we
might think that as a consequence of this, the special theory of
relativity and with it the whole theory of relativity would be laid in
the dust. But in reality this is not the case. We can only conclude
that the special theory of relativity cannot claim an unlimited domain
of validity ; its results hold only so long as we are able to
disregard the influences of gravitational fields on the phenomena
(e.g. of light)." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955) - The General Theory
of Relativity: Chapter 22 - A Few Inferences from the General
Principle of Relativity-. Today we find that since the Special Theory
of Relativity unfortunately became part of the so called mainstream
science, it is considered a sacrilege to even suggest that the speed
of light be anything other than a constant. This is somewhat
surprising since even Einstein himself suggested in a paper "On the
Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light," Annalen der
Physik, 35, 1911, that the speed of light might vary with the
gravitational potential. Indeed, the variation of the speed of light
in a vacuum or space is explicitly shown in Einstein's calculation for
the angle at which light should bend upon the influence of gravity.
One can find his calculation in his paper. The result is c'=c(1+V/c^2)
where V is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the
measurement is taken. 1+V/c^2 is also known as the GRAVITATIONAL
REDSHIFT FACTOR."

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