[A Davis]

Quote the idea of light ageing by an unknown mechanism. There is such a mechanism, if a photon from a distant galaxy moves in a curved path it will lose energy didn't Einstien say space is curved.

[DoctorBeaver]

Some boffin has theorised that the speed of light has slowed since the Big Bang. Can't think of his name now.

[A Davis]

Why would it slow free space shouldn't change.

[DoctorBeaver]

Why would it slow free space shouldn't change.

Check it out:-
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/constant_changing_010815.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6092-speed-of-light-may-have-changed-recently.html?full=true

[A Davis]

Thinking about it, it may be true the excess radiation would change epsilon'r and mu'r and the speed of light would be faster at the beginnig and slow down after the expansion, but I don't see how this would effect the  path of a photon today the universe must have settled down by now, if not one would be able to measure a change in the background radiation the universe would get colder.

[yor_on]

Very interesting DB.

If I understand it right time don't have anything to do with photons?
Even though we measure them in 'time'

They just 'wander around' happily whistling, freed from any interaction by times arrow?
As they are 'timeless' internally.

So the photons don't have any 'speed' internally.
Spacetime does impose it though.

[Vern]

It's not complicated.
It just states that 'time' to me behaves differently QM wise:)
And that when 'isolating' forces to see them 'better' we are missing the 'picture')

and that's why I really really would like to understand what makes 'matter'.

Okey; this morning your posts about time and QM seem more clear; I don't find anything to disagree about. It may well be so that we can't isolate forces at all and must think of them as systems in which all the forces present must be considered.

[LeeE]

Quote the idea of light ageing by an unknown mechanism. There is such a mechanism, if a photon from a distant galaxy moves in a curved path it will lose energy didn't Einstien say space is curved.

Space-time, in our universe, is curved but it's not directly apparent to anything in it's own region of space-time unless it spans a such a steep gradient in the curvature such that the degree of curvature on one side of the object is significantly different to that on the other side.

We can see, for example, that space-time is curved around the Earth because the satellites we launch up there follow a curved orbit.  The satellites themselves though aren't aware of this and as far as they're concerned they're following a straight path.  I don't see, therefore, why a photon traveling through curved space should lose energy just by virtue of the curvature of space.  Have you any ideas where the 'lost' energy goes?

[Vern]

Space-time, in our universe, is curved but it's not directly apparent to anything in it's own region of space-time unless it spans a such a steep gradient in the curvature such that the degree of curvature on one side of the object is significantly different to that on the other side.

This is in accordance with current mainstream theory. However, it is very easy to describe a universe in which space-time is not curved. Here is an example. I don't agree with the example completely, but it does show a flat space-time concept.

The commanding thing about flat space-time is that the phenomena of relativity is demanded at the fundamental core of the concepts, and the thinking by the advocates is that any theory that does not demand relativity phenomena is lacking.

Any fundamental theory that fails to demand relativity phenomena at its very core, can not be what is real in nature. The reason it can not be real is that we easily observe that relativity phenomena is real and it is present in every physical reality that we know about.

So the first question about any fundamental theory should be: How does this theory demand the existence of Relativity Phenomena? Because we can know with certainty that if the theory does not demand relativity phenomena it is unnatural and does not represent reality. This is how we know that although the theory predicts reality with great precision, the most fundamental idea behind Quantum Theory is wrong.

That's why we say that QM is philosophically flawed.

[yor_on]

AD are you sure those photons traveling in curved paths lose energy.
Do you know any experiments proving that?

How can they lose any energy if freed from the arrow of time.

To me all of those phenomena comes when interacting macroscopically with matter.
Like meeting an atom, but then as I understands it the 'original' photon disappears and a new one will continue.

But the idea of that a photon 'traveling' in spacetime will follow a curved geodesic, that is due to space 'bending' under the influence of 'matter', isn't it?

And seen from the photon I would call it the path of least resistance.
So it's the straightest path that photon can take to my eyes:)

[Vern]

AD are you sure those photons traveling in curved paths lose energy.
Do you know any experiments proving that?

How can they lose any energy if freed from the arrow of time.

I have a very speculative idea about how photons would lose energy when their path is bent by gravity. It comes from the notion that electric charge develops from the bent path of photons.

If the developed charge interacts with any space debris, ions, etc, the photon must lose energy to the space debris.

[yor_on]

reasonable Vern.

Do you describe the same phenomena that i would put to the interaction with an atom in space?
But from another perspective.

But there are two perspectives here, or?
If it is a ion missing an electron, what would happen then?
Or having one to many.

Or.. It doesn't 'matter' at all:)
As the photon is a specified light quanta that just interact with a certain amount of 'force'?

[Vern]

My view is that the reaction could be with any charged particle or even the bent path of another photon. The idea came to me when I was trying to figure out just exactly what the Fine Structure Constant was, since physics seems in the dark about that. It came to me that the FSC is the ratio of the charge amplitude of an electron to the radius of the path of the photon that comprises the electron.

This was after I had completed my very speculative photon-only universe scheme.

[A Davis]

To yor-on I don't know of any experiment that has been done to prove it. I know one that will and that's during a solar eclipse the position of a star is moved if one measures the stars light at the same time a red shift should be observed. When I was taught about the Bohr atom I was told that the electron would lose energy in it's circular path and radiate EM and fall into the nucleus, quantum energy levels were invented to overcome this problem, no loss of energy..

[Vern]

To yor-on I don't know of any experiment that has been done to prove it. I know one that will and that's during a solar eclipse the position of a star is moved if one measures the stars light at the same time a red shift should be observed. When I was taught about the Bohr atom I was told that the electron would lose energy in it's circular path and radiate EM and fall into the nucleus, quantum energy levels were invented to overcome this problem, no loss of energy..

This sounds interesting but how would it prove it. What are we trying to prove? If I remember correctly it is that photons may lose energy when passing close to a massive object when charged particles are near. I don't see how your suggestion could test that.

[janardhan polanki]

AFRAID OF AN  ANTI-MIRACLE

The entire basis of man’s struggle to understand the truth is analogous to finding the “quantitative parameters” of a quality; like we have to have in cyclic symmetries or similar to trying to find a quantum particle in flux that makes beauty of a totality beautiful (individual continuum) on to the oneness of a whole which is, in oneness of its own flux!
      
      Is it then possible to find a tangible quantitative parameter for a very fundamental attribute to our universe at large?
      That is why one could even almost say that we have a model for GOD built by CERN through to energize (accelerate) protons to seven trillion electron volts making them to run around an 18 mile underground racetrack outside Geneva so as to crash them together into PREMORDIAL FIRE BALLS, ………Helpfully and also mercifully, by the grace of a superluminal, seven trillion electron volts speeding message transfers since the necessary influence would in that case have to be transmitted only with a speed faster than light obliterating the order of time once and for all.

      This,  in order to establish communication and solicit a bilateral-coordination with forces and particles that are now incommunicado but reigned supreme during the first trillionth of a second of the BigBang, like the particle twins in the EPR (THOUGHT) experiment had, A NON LOCAL CONNECTION   in a system of zero spin.

      MORALITY; the idea of physicists, Holger Bech Neilson and Masao Ninomiya that Higgs producing collider machine (LHC) would be sabotaged by its own future and the proposal to engage the people at CERN in a game of chance, such as card drawing etc. to discern the bad omen is to believe the wave function that yields (collapses into) the possible one amongst many probable results as per Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics.

      That apart it would be better to remind the people at CERN to see what has happened to the object in the experiment depends upon the context of the object’s interaction with the observer that only makes their results meaningful.      The observer’s interaction with nature and her creation would ripple backward through time’s reversible arrow of movement that communicates with the PRIMORDIAL-FIREBALLS; that were performing under the care of the primordial conscious state during the first moments of forming of our universe 15 billion years ago.

      But then, hopefully it is all a successful story by the grace of a superluminal message transfer conveyed by the observer’s state of mind in its totality of attention which remains in choiceless and noncomparetive, stoic awareness in observation of the Absolute that once split the universe in a primeval ball of 10^–27cm. in 10^-43sec. from the 4D continuum of space time into 3D plus one space and time coordinate systems of which we, the experimental devouts (empiricists) are a part and parcel there of and in,  also for mutation (splitting)of our own brain cells; only later to be called
 ‘THE GODS IN ANTHROPOMORPHISM ’…….“AMEN”.

[LeeE]

Oh dear, just the random use of capitalised words is enough to dissuade me from reading this.

[Mr. Scientist]

Some boffin has theorised that the speed of light has slowed since the Big Bang. Can't think of his name now.

Several. Maybe more.

[glovesforfoxes]

I can't even source this, but I have heard that the Universe is going through another period of inflation. How does the speed of light slowing from the start of the Big Bang allow for this?

[Vern]

I don't see so much another period of inflation as I see advocates of an expanding universe. I am not an expert on the inflation theory, but I'm not sure it is necessary if we accept the idea of constant inflation that is still going on.

The notion of expansion was developed to explain the apparent acceleration of distant galaxies. I suspect that both the notion of inflation and the notion of expansion are wrong. But I'm still waiting for a good explanation of the observations.