Einstein Wrong, Speed of Light Slowing Down -CNN

[SagaLore]

I think the entire universe if built on Frequency - everything is a "wave". I think light still travels at a particular speed, but as it passes through regions of space where there is little gravitational objects, the frequency path is shallow, making it seem as though light is traveling faster... then when it gets into regions of space where there is more gravity then it slows down again, therefore giving the results that they see. This explains the uniformity of the universe, but at the same time reserves the constant of light.

The reason that gravity exists in the region of matter, is because matter creates a massive distortion in the spacetime frequency. It basically pulls the wave very tight. This causes tension surrounding matter, which is responsible for pulling other matter towards it. So when you have large masses like planets, the tension is very high. When you have large regions like galaxies, the tension is very high. Between galaxies there is just enough tension to keep the universe together but the spacetime wave is loose, and light follows it's path and a relatively faster speed even though the light itself is not going faster. It's just relative.

(this is my own theory though, not in the science books...)

 

[Vic]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
if the speed of light was slowing down, wouldn't your perception of time's passage slow down as well? so would anyone notice?

LMAO... the smartest post in the thread!

What those brilliant Australian scientists failed to realize (IMNSHO) was that Einstein was theorizing about the relative passage of time. When doing that, something must be a constant, by God!

 

[TNTrulez]

Originally posted by: Skyclad1uhm1

Originally posted by: Cattlegod

they didn't measure the speed of light from a 12 billion year old source, they observed the properties the light had and analyzed those.

It is hair-curling science. They looked at light from the most distant objects in the universe, quasars up to a billion times the size of our sun, which are 10 billion or 12 billion light years away.

"The light that comes to you from a quasar has been travelling for most of the age of the universe - several billion years - and it carries with it information about what happened to it along the way," Murphy says.

On its long journey, the light from those quasars has passed through gas clouds full of metals. The photons in the light - little packets of energy that make up the light itself - interact with the electrons in the gas clouds, charged particles that orbit the nuclei of the metal atoms. This leaves a fingerprint on the light as it arrives on Earth, called the fine structure constant, Murphy explains.

When they measured the fine structure constant of this 12 billion-year-old light, Webb and Murphy found it was slightly higher than it would be today. Mathematically, there were two possible reasons for this - either the electric charge of the electrons had increased, or the speed of light had fallen.

Using Stephen Hawking's formula for black hole thermodynamics, Davies, Davis and Lineweaver ruled out the electric charge possibility. By adapting Hawking's formula, they determined that an increase in electric charge would break the second law of thermodynamics, which says energy can only flow from hot spots to cold spots.

"That's illegal. It would be like a cup of coffee sitting on your desk getting hotter," Lineweaver says.

They observed 12 billion year old light.

Edit: Take a coffee cup which was made 1 year ago, and an identical one which was made only 1 month ago and has not yet been used. Make sure the first one has been used in that time, and not been cleaned. Compare the two. Now publish your conclusions on recent coffee cups being much cleaner than older ones.

Edit 2: They do not have light from Quasars which only left a few days ago and passed a gas cloud yesterday to compare it with. Photons can be altered, and this can have happened by either being in the Quasar, leaving it, passing through the gas cloud, or any other thing that may have happened on the way. They do not yet understand light, and compare uncomparable things, and draw conclusions from that.

So basically they tried to get a constant (note the word constant) of the fine structure of light from this quasar only to find that it is different than the other experimentally derived constant. I don't know a thing about these constants but it seems to me they were confused that their constant was wrong. They attributed it to light slowing down because you can't break the second law of thermodynamics (so scientists say).

So that's a correct summary I hope. The only way I can see that they would be wrong is if there were errors in their experiment that they did not account for. Don't worry, peer review will tear this stuff up.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

So this is not a case of the universe expanding, light not expanding with it, hence still going at the same speed, and just not covering the same distance, since all the distances are larger now?

 

[Alphathree33]

Originally posted by: Gonad the Barbarian
So this is not a case of the universe expanding, light not expanding with it, hence still going at the same speed, and just not covering the same distance, since all the distances are larger now?

They have correctly taken into account the distance from here to the origin of the light, if that's what you mean.

Hmm, you're right, though, there would be a discrepancy because over those 5 billion years earth and the source would have moved farther and farther apart. Again, I'm sure that PhD scientists know how to take this sort of thing into account >

 

[MadRat]

I'm figuring then that this new information suggests that the universe is younger than scientists first believed.

 

[zephyrprime]

This isn't a new idea. It was conceived of right away when einstein first proposed that the speed of light was constant. But in order to test such an idea, you have to measure the speed of light very sensitively and over a span of enough time.

But this new study uses some different sort of reasoning to arrive at its conclusion.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

It is always hard to explain these sorts of things to people not well versed in physics. This is because many fundamental principles have no good analogy in everyday life. For example, this is an excellent definition of the fine structure constant but its absolute meaning is not intuitive. I believe what they are saying is that fundamental properties of spacetime changed with the expansion of the universe. Since it is spacetime itself that limits the speed of light, it would not be too suprising if this varied as well. The question is, WHAT is different about space today. What quality of it has varied. BTW, the equasions relating time and the speed of light would be different, in fact they might be potentially independent of each other. Be interesting to see what comes of this.

 

[silverpig]

space time -> light

as

air -> sound


Change the air, you change the observed properties of the sound.



VERY chopped down.

 

[PowerEngineer]

that means as time approaches infinity, eventually light will reach 0 velocity

and maybe even negative velocity, hence it'd all go back to the center and start all over again...

My guess is that the slow down isn't actually tied to the passage of time, but to the expansion of the universe instead.

 

[MadRat]

Didn't Einsteins speed of light exist only in a PURE vaccuum (which doesn't exist) so as to make it never impeded?

 

[silverpig]

Didn't Einsteins speed of light exist only in a PURE vaccuum (which doesn't exist) so as to make it never impeaded?

[smartass]Why don't ya ask him?[/smartass]

 

[Balthazar]

Originally posted by: PowerEngineer

that means as time approaches infinity, eventually light will reach 0 velocity

and maybe even negative velocity, hence it'd all go back to the center and start all over again...

My guess is that the slow down isn't actually tied to the passage of time, but to the expansion of the universe instead.

We have a winner!
Well, as far as any of us knows

I gotta say I find this "discovery" amusing. Science is becoming more sensational than religion nowadays....

You know it's a shame people can't get in touch with their deity of choice without a corrupt religious body, and it's equally a shame that people can't just make discoveries without funding, glory-hounds and exaggerators getting in the way.

Oh well, such is life.

 

[xirtam]

Yeah, I believe that the speed of light is slowing. It makes sense. However, I don't believe that it's scientific to come up with this by a process of mere negation. I doubt all the other possibilities have been examined.

 

[rh71]

Blah. No matter the speed, I will still be able to see myself on the moon if I flew back on a ship faster than the speed of light as we know it today.

 

[Alphathree33]

Originally posted by: rh71
Blah. No matter the speed, I will still be able to see myself on the moon if I flew back on a ship faster than the speed of light as we know it today.

or you could just take a picture of yourself on the moon and print it on earth.

 

[rgwalt]

Well, if you spent the last 12 billion years zipping around the universe, you would be slowing down too.

Ryan

 

[OatMan]

I find this funny. I fail to see what this CNN article has to do with news, or reporting. It fails to give any details about what the referred to article states or what work the study is. It just jumps to conclusions and demenstrates the authors ignorance of physics. BOOGY BOOGY Einstein wrong - uhh- everythings relative right? pass the beer.

Hey anyone who saw star trek or contact or managed to stay awake in physics probably heard of occam's razor. lets see, all this time relativity is total BS - who knew? Gosh its amazing that all of our knowlede and technology based on false theory worked at all.

Here's a couple interesting links for anyone who would actually like to understand to some degree.

speed of light and an expanding universe...

faster than light? #1

learn about relativity & FTL #2

 

[virtuamike]

Interesting yes but will this score me nookie?

 

[OatMan]

so said virtuamike

Interesting yes but will this score me nookie?

Oh, no - you have to live in the geek closet. My girlfriend thinks I'm a Thesbian - hah!

Unless of course you want to fight against the 10,000 men to woman Trek convention ration. But then again, its kind of a lose, lose

 

[UCDznutz]

this thread is making my brain hurt