Slowdown Due to Changing Speed of Light

Two and a half weeks ago, a discussion about potential observations concerning the predicted apparent slowdown of objects because of a changing speed of light was interrupted by an illness and an out of the country trip. The thread in which that was being discussed has become hopelessly disjointed and so I am starting a new thread to carry forward the discussion. At the time, Helen had posted the following.

Since the post asked for two weeks, I am assuming that we are getting back into the proper timeframe to continue the discussion. I understand busy lifestyles and recognize that patience may be required before the topic can be addressed, but I look forward to it.

I will follow this post with a recap of what I had to say (long) and a short summary of where to go next.

 

My original post that brought Helen's response.

-----------------------------------

Helen

"please read what you want on the Discussions page and then feel free to ask specific questions. The points you mentioned before here are all dealt with there. Please read first and then come back with some specific objections or questions. He has a response to the idea of 'time slowdown' there. Thank you."

I went back and read much of the material again. There were some things marked "New" I had not seen before. Admittedly, if the subheading did not appear promising, I mostly scanned looking for relevent material. What I found mostly convinced me that my question is on the right track. I also found one glaring mistake.*

There is a lot of talk about the different speed that things governed by atomic processes would have had. The most relevent question was answered "Since many atomic processes are faster proportional to c, but the slow motion effect at the point of reception is also operating, the combined overall result is that everything seems to proceed at the same unchanged pace ... Therefore no astronomical evidence for a slow motion effect in atomic processes would be expected."

There is a good discussion of why under the discussion about SN1987A. As I said earlier, this slowdown effect is a critical part of what Barry has to say. But let's look as his example of a supernova occuring when the speed of light was 10 times its current value. The light curve of a supernova is mostly dependent on the decay of certain isotopes. Now the rate of decay would be ten times higher but the higher speed of light would cause a ten fold slowdown in how the process appears to run to an observer. Therefore, the light curve would look normal. But a process that was not atomic would not be affected by the changing speed of light and would therefore have been running at its normal speed. It would be subject to the same tenfold slowdown and would appear to an observer to be operating ten times too slowly. This is why I focus on non-atomic processes.

Now he also tries to say that "First of all, pulsars are not all that distant, the furthest that we can detect are in small satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way system. Second, because the curve of lightspeed is very flat at those distances compared with the very steep climb closer to the origin, the change in lightspeed is small. This means that any pulsar slowdown rate originating with the changing speed of light is also small." I assume that this logic can be applied to any objects within the Milky Way or its nearby galaxies.

Here is the problem. The curve may be flat compared to the rest of the curve, but there still must have been significant change. Think of it this way. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. For light to have traveled that distance in 6000 years, the average speed must have been at least (100000 / 6000 = 16.7) 17 times as fast as it is now. Since the speed is decaying, the initial speed must have been much, much more than 17 times the current value to get that average value. (Your charts also show meausurable change in the speed of light in the last few hundred years which should have produced observable effects in objects within a few hundred light years.) Let's use 100 for arguments sake. I think we should be able to tell that something in our galaxy is running 100 times more slowly than it should.

Again, I present the example of an eclipsing binary. We can measure their distance apart. We can use spectroscopy to determine their spectral type and therefore their masses. The distance between them and their masses leads to a direct calculation of their orbital period. Surely we should be able to tell that the period is off by a few percent and certainly that they are of by several factors or even orders of magnitude. All my reading of Barry's work says this is an obvious prediction. So why is it not seen? This a purely orbital clock and should be completely unaffected by slowing light except for the slowdown effect to the observer. The effect should be seen in every object of this type, the discrepancy should be able to be predicted in advance, and the discrepancy should increase with increasing distance in a predetermined way. Now, what have I missed?

Now specifically concerning pulsars, since I mentioned that, he attempts to get out of it by saying "The third point is that the mechanism that produces the pulses is in dispute as some theories link the pulses with magnetic effects separate from the star itself, so that the spin rate of the host star may not be involved. Until this mechanism is finally determined, the final word about the pulses and the effects of lightspeed cannot be given." Now, unless the pulse is a purely atomic process, there should be some changes in period involving cDK. Though I will grant that it could be possible the change in spin rate could swamp the changing effect from changing light speed. On the other hand, if the pulse is not a purely atomic process, the distant pulsars should still be seen going much more slowly than the nearby ones. This is not seen. In fact, I thought the fastest known pulsar was in the LMC.

Just rambling on, there should be all sorts of weird effects due to process that are mixed atomic and non-atomic. Think of a variable star, for example. Obviously, there are going to be atomic processes involved, but many other processes will also be involved. Rather than the predicability we see in ceratin types of variable stars, there should be really strange effects observed as the atomic and non-atomic processes interact to cause the periodic variability. There seems to be a lot of different types of processes for which this would be true.

*"Nevertheless, which ever option is adopted, the main effect of dropping values of c on quasars is that as c decays, the diameter of the black hole powering the quasar will progressively increase. This will allow progressive engulfment of material from the region surrounding the black hole and so should feed their axial jets of ejected matter. This is the key prediction from the cDK model on that matter."

First let's look at where the energy of a quasar comes from. The great gravity of the supermassive black hole causes material to fall towards it. As the matter falls towards the black hole, the pull of gravity will increase the speed of the material and flatten it into a flat disk, an accretion disk. The close to the black hole, the faster the material moves. This difference in velocity causes friction between adjacent areas. Tremendous friction in the case of a quasar that superheats the material and releases large quantities of radiation. This radiation is the energy we see coming from the quasar. As the material nears the black hole, it passes what is known as the event horizon. This is the point where the escape velocity from the gravitational well of the black hole equals the speed of light. Once inside this limit, neither the material nor the radiation it is emitting can escape the black hole. Though strangely, nothing special happens at the event horizon to the matter. Note that this is a non-atomic process. Just gravity.

So, with a higher speed of light the event horizon would have been closer to the black hole. This is because you would have to be deeper into the gravity well of the black hole for the escape velocity to be equal to the higher velocity. As light slowed, it is the event horizon that would expand. I have seen him mention in other places the Schwarzschild radius when discussing this topic which gives assurances that he is talking about the event horizon.

Now an expanding event horizon would gobble up no more material for the black hole. It does not affect the gravity of the system. And the material is being pulled in solely by gravity. The only effect of an expanding event horizon would be a slight dimming of the quasar as part of the accretion disk emitting the radiation is placed within the region from which its radiation cannot escape. This may not even be true as the increased energy from the inner accretion disk may have been pushing material away from the rest of the accretion disk, slightly lessening the energy thus released. The overall effect of an expanding event horizon should be minimal. The "key prediction from the cDK model on that matter" seems to be incorrect.

-----------------------

And two later posts.

-----------------------

"Regarding your other remarks concerning any slow-down effect in the speed of light discussion, the values which you are using are totally hopeless. You really are not understanding what is happening."

Then I look forward to your return. I can patiently wait a few weeks. I am not sure I am using any actual examples to be "totally hopeless" other than general assumptions for discussion. The main point I make is that the changing speed of light makes some predictions that things will appear to be in slow motion. Indeed it depends on this to make distant atomic process appear to operate at the same rate they do today. Other process should be subject to the same slowing. If they are not atomic processes, they would have been running at normal speed and the slowing would cause them to appear to be going too slowly. I choose eclipsing binaries as my example of choice because it is easy to see how they are purely a gravitational system, obviously operating on "orbital time," and their orbits cannot be affected by changes in atomic processes. Therefore we should observe a slowing effect.

When you get back, please explain to me in detail where I am misunderstanding. You have used that on me for a long time but have not explained it to remove the misunderstanding. From what you said, I can gather part of what you say I am misunderstanding. So, I will bring out my example from our previous trip down this lane. When you return, tell me at what speed a photon reaching the earth from SN1987A was traveling relative to current light speed when it left. I maintain that the average speed would have to be at least (170,000 / 6000 = 28.3) 30 times the speed of light and that the intial speed would be required to be considerably higher than that. Do the same for Sagittarius A* while you are at it, please.

--------------------

Once we have the velocity of a photon from Sagittarius A* arriving now, we can see what effect that has on observations such as the link below of stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. We have observed a star, S2, that orbits so close to the black hole as to only complete an orbit in 15 years. We know the mass of the star and its distance from the black hole over a wide part of its orbit. From this, we calculate the mass of the black hole. It is in agreement with other measurements. If faster speed of light made this star orbit much quicker than what is observed, then the calculated mass is way off and no longer agrees with other estimates. And the light must have been going faster to have reached us in less than 6000 years.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s702556.htm

 

So, where I would like to pick back up.

1a. A nice long list of observations that show both the degree of slowdown and changes in the amount of slowdown with time predicted by a changing speed of light. Preferrably different classes of objects and many different distances.

or

1b. A clear explanation of why we do not have such observations, a discussion of what it means for the hypothesis, and expectations of future observations that could support the hypothesis.

2. I would like to have the following information. The speed in terms of current c when the photon left the object, how long ago the photon left, the average speed of the photon during its journey, and the speed of a photon that left the object 5 years later for photons reaching the earth today from the following places.

SN1987A
Sagittarius A*
a star 500 light years away

Formulas for doing this myself would be fun.

3. A brief explanation why an expanding event horizon would allow a black hole to engulf more material in a way that feed more material to the black hole since it is a gravitational process.

 

BUMP for Helen.

 

"UTE, I no longer have your email address. But if you will post it to me via PM or at
[email protected]
I have a Word attachment of six tables I have collected from part of the book Barry is working on which show the measurements and methods used to measure the speed of light for about 300 years."

My email is [email protected]. *

Are these charts different than what was (may still be) Lambert's webpage? In any case, may I make a request? I went and got those charts several years ago, before I "met" you in fact. I remember there being one chart of ALL known measurements. When I took this and looked at it and plotted it and played with it, there did not seem to be any change with time or maybe a slight increase in the speed with time, but all within the experimental error. Then there was a chart that basically explained why all the lower measurments needed to be thrown out. There was also some talk about why some needed to have the value PLUS the experimantal error added to gether to get the actual value to use. Then there was the final list used for the study. If what you are talking about does not include these additional things, could you include them: The full original set, the reasons for dropping the ones that were dropped, and the reasons for changing some of the values.

I would also like to ask again for the answers above. The discussion above has also prompted me to ask for evidence from a couple of additional points that could be used to show evidence for the changing speed of light.

4. You have dismissed Paul's question on galaxy rotation. I had always made the mistake of thinking he was talking about observation of proper motion in galaxies and not given it much thought because I do not see how you could observe proper motion and those distances. But then I remembered the use of dopler effects to measure the rotation by looking at the different relative speeds of each side of the galaxy.

Now, if you assume that the galaxy is not rotating at relativistic speeds and you only consider the velocity vectors directly towards and away from you, the formula for doppler shift reduces to

(velocity of object)/(speed light) = (change in wavelength) / (wavelength)

(Barry has been very clear that it is frequency that changes with c.)

Now if you solve for the change in wavelength, you will see that it is inversely proportional to the speed of light. So if you take a given situation, plug though the change in wavelength with a higher speed of light to get the change in wavelength, then go back through with today's speed of light, you will see that your speed measured will be off by exactly how much the speed of light has changed. The exact same thing will happen if you use frequency instead of wavelength.

Take M31. It is about 2 million light years away so light would have been necessary to have been traveling at least a few thousand time faster when it left than now to get here in 6000 years. This means that the measured speeds of rotation are off by at least three orders of magnitude. And M31 is the nearest large galaxy. The problems get much worse at greater distances. We will need a lot of dark matter to hold these systems together!

5. Gravitational lensing. We can look out and see example of gravitational lensing. The most impressive are distant quasars lensed by clusters of galaxies. Already, we infer a substantial amount of dark matter to give enough gravity to provide the amount of lensing observed. (The amount of dark matter needed agrees well with the amount inferred by a seperate method using the CMB.) Now, if you consider that the light was traveling at much greater speed while being lensed, the amount of mass required goes up tremendously. At the higher speeds, much more mass would be needed to give the amount of deflection observed.

Think about it this way. You have an an object passing the earth at a given height. There is one velocity that will deflect the motion just so that it enters a (circular) orbit. A lower velocity will deflect it right into the earth. A higher velocity and the object will not be deflected enough to enter orbit.

Light travelling by a galaxy cluster will not have had enough time to be deflected by the amount seen in the lensing effects we have observed if the velocity was significantly higher.

So, in addition to the three original questions, I am now looking for observations that show doppler meansured galaxy rotations are much too slow and that the amount of lensing observed is much less than would be expected for the amount of mass involved in the lens.

* "Itis" is a nickname of mine in one circle of life. My boss where I worked as a teenager started callling me "Itis" meaning a disease derived from the medical practice of putting -itis on the end of something to indicate it is inflammed. The way some of our debates go, some of you might find some humor in that. Or not.

 

"Here's a question. Suppose the galaxies are rotating faster than we thought, and we ARE actually seeing them slowed down?"

I do not see that as a reasonable alternative here. Let me show you why. In my post above, I used the formula for calculating velocities from Doppler shift to show that a change in the sped of light will make the rotational velocity appear to be slower by the same factor. The rotational speed of M31, the largest nearby large spiral galaxy, has been measured at 275 km/s. ( http://helios.astro.lsa.umich.edu/Course/Labs/tully_fisher/tf_intro.html ) It is about 2 million light years away so let's take as a conservative (and one that makes the math easy) factor that light would have been traveling at 1000 times the current speed of light when it left Andromeda to get here by now. This means that the 275 km/s must also be multiplied by 1000 giving a speed of 275,000 km/s! This is over 90% of the speed of light! Imposssible for a variety of reasons.

Since there is not a sharp dropoff in measured rotational velocity as you look further into space, more distant galaxies would be in the position of having their stars orbiting at speeds greater than the speed of light! As it is, the measured velocites are higher than the visible matter would allow which is one of the reasons that dark matter is proposed to account for the extra mass that is needed.