Skip to comments.Was Einstein wrong all along? Controversial theory suggests the speed of light is SLOWER...
Posted on 06/28/2014 12:14:35 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The University of Maryland physicist believes the delay could have been because the light was in fact slowed as it travelled due to something known as 'vacuum polarisation'.
During this phenomenon, photons break down to something known as positrons and electrons for a split second. before combining together again.
When they split, quantum mechanics creates a gravitational potential between the pair of virtual particles.
Dr Franson argues that the process might have a gradual impact on the speed of the photon, meaning that over 168,000 light years, the photons may have suffered a near five-hour delay.
If the physicist is correct, it means scientists have to recalculate everything from our distance to the sun to some of the most distant objects seen in other galaxies.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Placing my bet on the old patent clerk.
You can go faster than the speed of light. The fact light can’t catch up with the speed of matter is not my problem.
1987a has long been studied and the difference in time between the arrival of neutrinos and light here on Earth is understood.
It should also be noted that Franson is not an astrophysicist.
Oh crap. Am I going to have to set my clocks back?
At those speeds you are neither matter or light...
you are aliens.
does this mean that stars might be a lot closer than we thought?
That’s pretty much what I’ve been thinking all along.
In some cases yes
I’m glad we figured this out before we warped right into the center of a star!
“....creates a gravitational potential between the pair of virtual particles.”
While having to pack for a bit longer trip to Alpha Centauri, I wonder if the real discovery doesn’t have something to do with being able to create an anti-gravity device.
Stephen Hawking theorized that virtual particle-antiparticle pairs could spontaneously appear just outside the event horizon of a black hole, permitting one of the pair to enter the black hole and the other to escape, thus allowing matter to effectively escape from the black hole. The uncertainty principle permits otherwise impermissible things to happen as long as they don't require too much mass-energy or last too long.
It does seem to me conceivable that a photon moving through space could possibly undergo a similar transition, subject to the same uncertainty limitations. Conservation of mass-energy and momentum could perhaps insure that the photon which results at the end of the transition would have the same momentum (that is, direction) as the original photon. Whether the observed speed of the photon would be reduced is a question beyond my ability to conjecture.
The linked article suggests a delay of 4.7 hours over a path which takes 168,000 years to cover. I calculate that that is a discrepancy of roughly 3 parts per billion. That sounds to me like a pretty large error to have escaped observation given the great accuracy of time measurements possible today.
25.67 trillion miles to Alpha Centauri.
There’s your starting point. You do the math, I’m not even going to try.
light is just an identifier of the existence of matter, it does not limit matters law of existence
how fast matter moves is matters business
What do the guys from The Big Bang Theory (except Howard) have to say about this?
Exactly, the improbability of the position of matter makes space travel impossible.
I can’t comprehend this stuff. However, it brings to mind Petr Beckman. He was a great, Hungarian mad scientist type who was a leading anti-communist writer back in the Reagan era. A real character. He took a lot of heat for questioning Einstein’s Theory. I hope this makes people take time to remember him.
Einstein was a true theoretical physicist. I have no doubt that he would welcome challenges to his theories.
It's actually not, I think, contrary to what 'God' points to. There was a time when to even say His name at all - to utter it or even to conceive it - was a spiritual mistake ('sin' when it means, as it originally did, 'to miss the mark,' since all 'name and form' occupy time and space.) It wasn't that God occupied ALL time and space, or that all time and space was within the bounds of God, it's that there really is no time, nor space, yet: what is, is. Or: "It is only, it is."
That is why, I think we will see all the Quantum work approach, but never touch, the same roadblock Einstein never touched, but approached -> Like a cleat on a sailboat, the more progress you make pulling the rope through, the tighter the cleat, until the clamp force becomes infinite before the rope is through.
It's also why the universe only appears to manifest when observed. Because that is only when it manifests. Particles only take position when paired with attention.
When St. Augustine said "Whatever is exposed to the light, itself becomes the light." ... This light was not the 'light' we think of as in a flash light, nor the 'Light of God' we may conceive-> it was 'awareness.' (Many would argue that IS the light of God - awareness itself.)
So, no distance, no speed, because no space, no time ... and the appearance of the universe only as a phenomena with neither subject nor object. No witness, nothing to witness.
Not sure that will get Obama impeached this week.
That's been bouncing around my head for a couple years, and I guess this post on Einstein made it finally bounce out.
Absurd over-sensationalistic headline. I guess if 20th century physics were arising in a context of 21st century journalistic sensationalism, we’d be treated to headlines like “Newton Wrong Speed of Light Finite!” and the like.
Everyone reasonably conversant in physics knows that both general relativity and quantum mechanics must both be “wrong” in the sense of being only approximately correct, since the real theory of physics must be both relativistic and quantum mechanical, and general relativity is a classical theory, while we are only able to do the calculations of quantum mechanics in a non-relativistic background.
I wonder how much of the anomalies the speculative surmises of “dark matter” and “dark energy” are supposed to address can be fixed just by quantum corrections to general relativity. Beyond the massive neutrinos there may be no mysterious “dark matter” at all, ditto for “dark energy” since we still need what Einstein meant by a “grand unified theory” incorporating both gravity and the other forces in one description. And a description which must be quantum mechanical. It you want an “Einstein was wrong” headline, the really important basis for one came a while ago when it was confirmed that physical reality violates Bell’s Inequalities, and therefore cannot be describe by a classical local hidden variable theory of the sort Einstein thought should underlie and replace quantum mechanics.
Me too. But it's good to see that "settled science" is being challenged (are you listening, Al Gore?).
Having said that, objections to Relativity have always followed a two-step process:
Step 1: A scientist discovers a flaw in Einstein's work.
Step 2: (weeks later) The scientist finds an error in his own work. Einstein was right after all.
Beware of the super-genius Einstein created by media as opposed to the real Einstein who occasionally made conceptual errors like everybody else.
Great. Now I have to start worrying about how close those black holes are all over again.
Well ever try beating it into bed from the wall switch
“Einstein was wrong about the speed of light being constant at least. “
Einstein is STILL right. The fact that when light interacts with matter it slows down is a common fact for every high school science student. The links talk about space being filled with ‘matter’ which light interacts with, thus slowing down.
What about the things in the passenger side mirror?
Absolutely! Beckman just offended the "settled science" Gorean crowd of the day. If I remember right, he admired Einstein, just disagreed with his TOR. He was aggressively pro-nuke in the '70s and of course, any anti-communist was trashed back then. This weenie is still bitter:
The debate is over. This is settled science. The deniers should be jailed.
Maybe the light stopped off for a Light.
It’s threads like these that remind me how much I miss the contributions of FReeper Boris (RIP).
Some galaxies may be closer than they appear
we need an improbability drive!
“there are neither zero, nor one, nor many.”
too many zeroes
Well, yeah...it tastes great.
Or is it... less filling?
You are racing against the speed of dark.
Thanks GeronL. They're still trying to kludge their way around the problem (and solution) identified by the late Halton Arp (see the keyword).
Light and Dark Matter walk into a bar....
Oh....yeah...I was....I was just going to say...that...you know...uh....exactly that.
We see matter going faster than the speed of light every day. When Obama has a new scandal, Republicans hide under their desks, crawl into a fetal position while sucking their thumbs at 187,000 miles per second.
Gee, didn’t a “consensus” of scientists agree that Einstein was correct...the science is settled. Anyone who disagrees is an Einstein “denier”. This is how “climate science” works so why not apply it here?
Albert Einstein walks to a door that says “pull” but instead he pushes and of course it doesn’t open. His wife says “Good going Einstein, can’t you read?”
You and me both brotha. Quantum Theory is in complete disarray, requiring constant fudging and new variables to form fit itself to newly discovered data. No doubt, Einstein is rolling over in his grave.
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