Upheaval in Physics: History of the Light-Speed Debate

Upheaval in Physics:
www.khouse.org...
by Helen D. Setterfield

[Ed Note: We have been following Barry Setterfield's research on the speed of light since 1993.1 It is interesting that both evolutionists and creation scientists can be blinded by their own presuppositions...]

When we walk into a dark room, flip a switch and the light is instantly on, it seems that light has no speed but is somehow infinite - instantly there - and that was the majority opinion of scientists and philosophers until September 1676, when Danish astronomer Olaf Roemer announced to the Paris Academie des Sciences that the anomalous behavior of the eclipse times of Jupiter's inner moon, Io, could be accounted for by a finite speed of light. 2 His work and his report split the scientific community in half, involving strong opinions and discussions for the next fifty years. It was Bradley's independent confirmation of the finite speed of light, published January 1, 1729, which finally ended the opposition.3 The speed of light was finite-incredibly fast, but finite.

mod edit to use "ex" tags instead of "quote" tags
Quote Reference.
Mod Edit: No Quote/Plagiarism – Please Review This Link.



[edit on 2-8-2007 by sanctum]

*ignores the whole creationism angle*

Yes, the speed of light isn’t constant, yes red shift is not distance, this is classic against mainstream science, if there is such a thing. Electric Universe theory agrees with all of this and more.

*has a nag*

Youre not supposed to quote the whole article, and you havn't given us youre opinion either. Ahh I see a Mod sorted it...

*dons tin foilhat*

The powers that be don’t want science getting too ahead of itself or else we shall discover that the solar system is actually a space born spaceship that is currently under a hostile takeover from maundering fellow space born beings.

*grins*

I think this article is constructing a strawman. I'm not aware that scientists have ever contended that light had an "infinite" speed, rather what they claimed instead was that the speed of light moving thru a vacuum was the fastest that anything in the universe could go.

Originally posted by uberarcanist
I think this article is constructing a strawman. I'm not aware that scientists have ever contended that light had an "infinite" speed, rather what they claimed instead was that the speed of light moving thru a vacuum was the fastest that anything in the universe could go.

Actually the article itself is very interesting. Its focus isn't on light having an "infinite speed" but throws a wrench into the idea that the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant. And if the speed of light isn't a constant, well then that opens up a real can of wormy uncertainty on any number of physics-related issues.

Most of it is over my head, but fascinating reading, nonetheless. Read it in its entirety at the link. It's a good 'un.

I regard this article as biased and probably guilty of "cherry picking" sources and telling only one side of the story. I think the angle this article is taking is the young earth/young universe one and while I am a Christian, I know the proponents of this theory have a history of selective presentation of available evidence.

I'm not necessarily saying this article is wrong, I would have to look at it further before I could make a determination in that regard, I'm just saying that this article has an obvious bias and that should be taken into consideration when reading it.

something interesting also is that light has been slowing down since the big bang, yet the known universe is expanding faster . also Scientists have slowed down light allegedly to the speed of a moving vehicle for use in computers.

Light slowed down

light slowing down

enjoy and thank you for a nice post

SyS

It could make sense if the speed of light was directly linked to the "density" of the universe. We know for a fact today that the universe has equally and undeniably "thinned out" and stretched to form the universe we know today. This is proven by red-shift/blue-shift measurements. So if the speed of light is linked to constants such as the "density" of space-time itself this works.

Dude it has been around for a while that light is not constant...one of the reasons general relativity is flawed.

Here's an interesting idea about light, the red shift, and the expansion of the universe.

Scientists at Harvard (Dr. Hau) managed to slow down and then effectivley stop light. They were able to slow light itself down to 38mph, and also managed to store light in a cloud of sodium going less than one mph. When a laser light was re-introduced to this cloud the original pulse escaped the cloud exactly as it had gone in.

The light was stored in the sodium cloud because about 50,000 to 100,000 atoms began spinning and moved fowards through the cloud.

What if everything in the universe had some degree of this property. Say it was only like 5 atoms. With acurate enough equipment and a long enough time you would notice things moving. Essentially everything would move away from the hightest concentration of stars, which is the center of the universe. Because of this force the universe would expand.

I dont really know if that is a plausible idea. I have not really dealt with light outside of a project I science symposium. I also do not know what happened to gravity in that model of the universe either. Its just an idea, and if anyone has counter logic it would be greatly aprieciated.

They really do not stop or slow down the original light. This is a misconception.

What happens is that the light can be "stored" in such a way as that when it is "retrieved" it is scientifically indistinguishable from the original light pulse.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, what about the speed of dark!? When the light switch is flicked off the dark moves in just as fast and possibly just as finite!!!! Why must the blackness be ignored, I will not stop untill the speed of dark is considered equally important as the speed of light!!!!

Setterfield has actually shown that not only has light slowed down, but various constants dependent on light have changed by a corresponding amount as well, if you look at some of his papers. Isn't amusing to see, however, the response of the great champions of science? Toss out the data right away. If doesn't fit our current paradigm, or worse if it might threaten our funding it must be suppressed immediately. That my friends is one reason why we are not flying around the galaxy in our starships. Real innovation in science is always vociferously opposed.

Hey you idiot that said that about the dark...your stupid. Dark is the natural state like 0K, absolute zero, it appears when there is no light. That means that when light moves there is a wake of dark. I mean I know its more technical but I am not going to write something you are not going to read.

First Off: My sincere apologies for posting in ignorance of your parameters. I will now hang my head in shame and go read the rules for posting, and while I'm at it, I will try to find the "box" for quoting. I couldn't find it. Yikes! Figures, right away, I get myself in trouble.

Thanks for your responses, I found the article very interesting, and yes, there are certainly opposing arguments against the stated facts in a biased article, which is pro-Creationist. I would be interested in links any can provide that argue against the finding of the great minds who back this pro-arguement. I have not personally posted my own perspective, yet, I will say, I find the argument I very satisfying.

whos more of an idiot, me for creating comic reliefe in the form of a analogy compared to the subject matter of the topic, or you for taking me seriously....

I'm gonna go with you, I cant believe you took time to attempt to enlighten me.

Originally posted by SevenThunders
Setterfield has actually shown that not only has light slowed down, but various constants dependent on light have changed by a corresponding amount as well, if you look at some of his papers. Isn't amusing to see, however, the response of the great champions of science? Toss out the data right away. If doesn't fit our current paradigm, or worse if it might threaten our funding it must be suppressed immediately.

Or maybe he was simply wrong. Flawed, like most creationist-sourced arguments. Just saying like...

Originally posted by melatonin

Originally posted by SevenThunders
Setterfield has actually shown that not only has light slowed down, but various constants dependent on light have changed by a corresponding amount as well, if you look at some of his papers. Isn't amusing to see, however, the response of the great champions of science? Toss out the data right away. If doesn't fit our current paradigm, or worse if it might threaten our funding it must be suppressed immediately.

Or maybe he was simply wrong. Flawed, like most creationist-sourced arguments. Just saying like...

That's about as pathetic as it gets. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. OK you want to get rid of that christian based science? All those evil dimwits who dare to believe the Bible and pretend to do science?

OK well lets start with Newton then. Who needs Newtonian physics, even though nearly all of our mechanical gadgets are based on it. After that we can toss out Maxwell. Obviously he was ignorant. The displacement current idea sucks. Let's just throw out all of our cell phones and trash our satellites, since all of our wireless technology is based on it. Do you want me to go on?

I don't even know if Setterfield is a christian for goodness sakes. I do know that some christians latched on to his work and were willing to publish it, unlike the closed minded priests of high science. Those priests are just as bad if not worse than the catholic church during Galileo's day.

Read his paper for yourself before you start mouthing off from your ignorance. It is well documented and frankly quite compelling. Your bias and satanic hatred against faith makes you just like all the other science suppressors I'm afraid.

He is a christian, which is not so important. But he made it very clear in his first works that his aim was to reconcile genesis and physics, that is important.

Science doesn't start with a conclusion. This is what creationists do, and is why they are pseudoscientists.

I have read his work, and the evidence suggests he is wrong. We have been taking measurements of c for a long time, early measurements were obviously much less accurate than we have been taking for the last 50 years.

What do you think the last 50 years worth of measurments show? Constant c. Setterfield decided that we have now reached the lowest level that c can go to, without any justifiable reason. Errm, how convenient...

We also know from many other ways of measuring geological time that he is wrong. And using the measurements for SN1987a we know he is wrong. He comes up with a value of 4040 years give or take a bit. Jeez, we have evidence of trees older than that, heh. Nevermind varves, ice cores, calcites, corals etc etc.

So, I'm really sorry to inform you, but the ignorance is all yours

[edit on 4-8-2007 by melatonin]

Originally posted by melatonin
He is a christian, which is not so important. But he made it very clear in his first works that his aim was to reconcile genesis and physics, that is important.

I didn't see any such claims in his 1997 paper
www.setterfield.org...

I have read his work, and the evidence suggests he is wrong. We have been taking measurements of c for a long time, early measurements were obviously much less accurate than we have been taking for the last 50 years.

What do you think the last 50 years worth of measurments show? Constant c. Setterfield decided that we have now reached the lowest level that c can go to, without any justifiable reason. Errm, how convenient...

Well I'm glad I have an opportunity to educate you in basic statistics. You see if the prior experiments were due to a mere statistical error then you would expect to see a variation about a mean of both high and low measurements. Unfortunately for your failing world view, the mean measurements show a clear downward trend. Also to further educate you, the plot of the decay of c, is reaching an asymptote. It is presumably still following the same decay curve. This doesn't mean the decay has stopped, but merely slowed down. Isn't math fun when you have had just a little bit of training?

We also know from many other ways of measuring geological time that he is wrong. And using the measurements for SN1987a we know he is wrong. He comes up with a value of 4040 years give or take a bit. Jeez, we have evidence of trees older than that, heh. Nevermind varves, ice cores, calcites, corals etc etc.

So, I'm really sorry to inform you, but the ignorance is all yours

[edit on 4-8-2007 by melatonin]

All the measurements of the distances of the SN1987a event depend on the assumption of the constancy of the speed of light. If light were faster back in that day, the distance to the ring of material would be larger and the distance to earth would be larger. It says nothing about the constancy of light. I am not a young earth creationist so I can't get upset by the fact the universe may be old, if that's your game.


At any rate many of those time measurements are based on the same flawed assumption. This assumption is that conditions on earth and indeed in the universe have been uniform for billions of years. Nothing could be further from the truth as even the fossil record shows. It is almost certain that the rate of carbon 14 production has been different.


If one assumes various catastrophe's such as a worldwide flood (for which there is plenty of evidence) it really puts things like using strata to measure time in grave doubt. In fact there are so many exceptions to the time estimation using geological strata that it is almost useless as a metric of time.

Having said this, as I said, I am not a young earth creationist, and I would agree with you that they are too dogmatic in their approach. (For example it is likely there are local reference frames wherein a 7 day period may take place over billions of years in earth time.) In fact I feel the jury is still out on Setterfields work. However I do assert that there are terrible biases in science right now and the blanket rejection of Setterfield and say Halton Arp (who is an atheist I believe) and others points to a tyranny of thought that is doing us a grave disservice. It is even more offensive to judge a persons work by their belief structure, or do you care to join Hitler and condemn Jewish physics too?

Originally posted by SevenThunders
I didn't see any such claims in his 1997 paper
www.setterfield.org...

In 1981, he wrote an article for Ex Nihilo, a creationist magazine. In it, he made his aims very clear.

Well I'm glad I have an opportunity to educate you in basic statistics. You see if the prior experiments were due to a mere statistical error then you would expect to see a variation about a mean of both high and low measurements. Unfortunately for your failing world view, the mean measurements show a clear downward trend. Also to further educate you, the plot of the decay of c, is reaching an asymptote. It is presumably still following the same decay curve. This doesn't mean the decay has stopped, but merely slowed down. Isn't math fun when you have had just a little bit of training?

Heh. Awww, cheers for that. I'll make sure the undergrads I teach stats & methods next year know that...I'll also make sure to tell them the difference between systematic and non-systematic errors.

I know you don't understand, but early measurements were crap for good reasons. If you really want to believe that c is decaying, then I would wait to see how the highly accurate measurements we are taking now pan out.

Do you even know he didn't use ALL early measurements? That he cherrypicked the historical measurements? Completely ignoring the measurements that cause his 'theory' problems? He also used the top extreme of the errors (i.e. the highest possible values, ignoring the lowest range). A proper assessment of Picard's & Roemer's 17th century work is quite consistent with current values:

Linky

Please note the statement that the measurements 300 years ago best fit no change in c. This paper is from 1973, well before creobots like Setterfield were mangling physics. He even managed to misinterpret this paper and use the 0.5% figure to calculate his value of c (i.e. c at +0.5%), when the paper clearly states the best fit is at no change.

So, he is guilty of intellectual dishonesty. Another L4J. So, in sum, Setterfield's numbers are dishonest and not representative of the real data. Like many creobots, he lacks scientific integrity by moulding the data to fit his already decided conclusion.

Amazingly, even other creationists see that his work is obvious piffle and not supported by the data (i.e. AIG).

www.icr.org...

Even they are not that dishonest, heh.

All the measurements of the distances of the SN1987a event depend on the assumption of the constancy of the speed of light. If light were faster back in that day, the distance to the ring of material would be larger and the distance to earth would be larger. It says nothing about the constancy of light. I am not a young earth creationist so I can't get upset by the fact the universe may be old, if that's your game.

Not at all. We have evidence from numerous sources that Setterfield is wrong. Only by mangling physics and data can he make it seem right.

SN1987A distance can be calculated by simple geometry, assuming constant c, we get a figure of 167,000 years (which is confirmed by other measures). If c was faster during the period of the supernova, it would mean that the radius would actually be larger (as it would cover more distance). For example, for c x 2, then the distance we measured would have actually been double (as you state).

That is, it would be even futher away. It doesn't help Setterfield and those who think he's on to something.

E.g. Base = radius / tan (angle).

We know angle, that is a well-determined figure (0.000224 degrees). We measure radius to be about .654 light years. Do the calculation. Now extend the radius due to faster c in past, for double c, thus .654 x 2 = 1.308 light years.

then Base = 1.308 / .00000392

Base = 333673 light years.

So, the distance measure would suggest it is even older. Thus, Setterfield is wrong, as he determines universe age to be much much much less than that (around 7000 years).

So, SN1987A is either 167,000 years or even older if c was faster in the past, heh. A constant c between then and now is not required for the calculation. Just a measure of c during the supernova. If it was similar to now we get 167,000 years, confirmed by other methods. If c was faster then, it is even older.

Either disconfirm Setterfield's methods - that is the point. Setterfield is wrong. His calculations show an age of 7000 years. So, again for clarification, he is wrong.

Now I can see you are saying you have no issue with an old universe, cool, all the evidence suggests it is a bit older than a few thousand years. But ask yourself this:

why doesn't Setterfield understand and accept this?

The maths is clear and unambiguous. That suggests he is a normal creobot - intellectually dishonest. He still thinks the universe is about 7000 years old. You know he is wrong on the age issue, so do I, but he completely ignores this.

He has no scientific integrity. He is cherrypicking data and ignoring obvious unambiguous evidence that says he is wrong. He is impervious to disconfirming evidence.

Predictions made by Panagia regarding the supernova have been validated. When all the evidence points to one answer - constant c, we can be fairly happy it is a robust finding.

At any rate many of those time measurements are based on the same flawed assumption. This assumption is that conditions on earth and indeed in the universe have been uniform for billions of years. Nothing could be further from the truth as even the fossil record shows. It is almost certain that the rate of carbon 14 production has been different.

If one assumes various catastrophe's such as a worldwide flood (for which there is plenty of evidence) it really puts things like using strata to measure time in grave doubt. In fact there are so many exceptions to the time estimation using geological strata that it is almost useless as a metric of time.

Where is the worldwide flood sedimentation layer?

You are just spouting creationist nonsense.

The jury has made its decision. Setterfield is talking rubbish. He has about 4 or 5 different models of c-decay, his crap statistics, crap maths, and the evidence clearly shows he is wrong. He's just another creobot, completely impervious to disconfirming evidence. There are good reasons why he is wrong about this stuff, and the evidence suggests constant c and other physical constants.

homepage.mac.com...

So, in sum, he has cherrypicked data, ignored articles that disconfirm his position, and deliberately misused data. Moreover, the evidence suggests he is wrong about c-decay, and wrong about the age of the universe.

[edit on 5-8-2007 by melatonin]