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Author | Topic: What Properties Might Light of Millennia Past Have that Today's Doesn't? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NoNukes Inactive Member |
Asking questions which you may never have asked yourself? Do you know me well enough to have a guess about what I may have considered? If you do some reading, you'll find that we've had any number of threads here in which we've discussed the ramifications of a changing speed of light. So no, you aren't asking any new questions. If you have an argument to make about properties in the light in the past, and how they may have been different than today, why don't you get to it? Don't worry about whether I can keep up.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison. It's not too late to register to vote. State Registration Deadlines
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16113 Joined: |
You mixed up the horizon problem and the solution. No.
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Alfred Maddenstein Member (Idle past 4217 days) Posts: 565 Joined: |
No, Limpy, the universe expanding could not be observed in principle. It's just an incoherent idea. Like velocity is getting brittle. These two notions do not make any sense together. It takes two entities to expand. The Universe is one and only. End of story.
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LimpSpider Member (Idle past 4431 days) Posts: 96 Joined: |
No, Alfy, observations are consistent with an expanding universe. http://skyserver.sdss.org/dr1/en/astro/universe/universe.asp Not only is it expanding, the expansion is also accelerating Accelerating expansion of the universe - Wikipedia
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foreveryoung Member (Idle past 833 days) Posts: 921 Joined: |
admin writes: But c is a constant because it is a function of the fine structure constant, and significant changes in that constant would have widespread effects on the nature of our universe, effects that we have not observed The fine structure constant is dimensionless and can be defined in terms of the permeability of free space, the speed of light in a vacuum, the elementary charge and the reduced plank's constant. In a scheme of things where the fabric of space itself is changing by means of the zero point energy, all of the above terms are also changing and changing in a way that keeps the fine structure constant....constant. Since it can be constant with a changing speed of light, no need to conjure up ideas about carbon life being impossible.
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Son Goku Inactive Member
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Planck's constant, the speed of light and the permeability of free space all have units. So an alien race who measured things differently might not have these constants.
For example humans traditionally measure Energy and Frequency using different units. However we know, from light for example, that Energy and frequency are really the same things and "should" be measured using the same units. A single units of frequency is "really" Joules and this is what Planck's constant records. Only dimensionless quantities have a real existence outside of our mismatch of units. Hence this whole discussion should only be about the fine-structure constant and not the speed of light, as it is the fundamental quantity. Edited by Son Goku, : Latex
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
The fine structure constant is dimensionless and can be defined in terms of the permeability of free space, the speed of light in a vacuum, the elementary charge and the reduced plank's constant. In a scheme of things where the fabric of space itself is changing by means of the zero point energy, all of the above terms are also changing and changing in a way that keeps the fine structure constant....constant. Since it can be constant with a changing speed of light, no need to conjure up ideas about carbon life being impossible. The problem, as has been pointed out repeatedly, is that changing all of those other 'constants' does have ramifications for life in the universe and life on earth. But it seems that once the discussion turns to discussing those ramifications, and the fact that those changed constants lead to results we ought to be able to observe, you lose all interest in the discussion. It's as if Devil Woman had never been written. For example, are you seriously suggesting that changing the charge on a proton will have no affect on nuclear fusion? Aren't you going to have to change even more constants to get that to work out? Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison. It's not too late to register to vote. State Registration Deadlines
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
Only dimensionless quantities have a real existence outside of our mismatch of units. Hence this whole discussion should only be about the fine-structure constant and not the speed of light, as it is the fundamental quantity. I've never really understood this argument. We might measure the speed of light in furlongs per fortnight. But we also would not expect anything regarding how the universe operates to change because we have done so. Or because we use the English system rather than the metric system, or because we use units based on the orbital rotation of Zormicron and the length of an Acron's nose. The values of those non-fundamental constants includes their units, and we can readily convert from any one set to another using well understood methods.Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison. It's not too late to register to vote. State Registration Deadlines
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Son Goku Inactive Member |
The basic point is that dimensionful constants can always be eliminated from equations of motion. Basically there is no way to distinguish, really, between a change in 'c' and a change in your units of distance. The only "real" change independent of your unit system, would be a change in the fine structure constant.
Basically any change in units that alters physics can be fundamentally reduced to a change in the fine structure constant or other dimensionless constants. However there are variations of dimensionful constants that are indistinguishable from a change in units and hence have no physical meaning.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
he basic point is that dimensionful constants can always be eliminated from equations of motion. Basically there is no way to distinguish, really, between a change in 'c' and a change in your units of distance. I appreciate your patience, but I am still struggling with this idea. I see a distinction between c being 3.0 * 10^8 in MKS units and being 6.0 * 10^8 in the same units, because that change would have an affect on matter/energy equivalency. On the other hand, the fact that c is also about 186,282 mi/sec does not have that same effect. In what sense are the two type of "changes" in the speed of light indistinguishable? Or alternatively where can I find these ideas presented?Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison. It's not too late to register to vote. State Registration Deadlines
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foreveryoung Member (Idle past 833 days) Posts: 921 Joined:
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nonukes writes: The problem, as has been pointed out repeatedly, is that changing all of those other 'constants' does have ramifications for life in the universe and life on earth. But it seems that once the discussion turns to discussing those ramifications, and the fact that those changed constants lead to results we ought to be able to observe, you lose all interest in the discussion. I don't care how many times it has been repeated; it is merely your assertion and nothing more. All of the constants are derived from a deeper reality and they don't change alone but in tandem. This tandem change keeps all the ramifications that you insist would happen from happening. I lose interest because you guys have plugs in your ears and I hate all the inenvitable sarcasm that always comes in some people's posts and there is no one that can screen out those posts from my eyes and so I will blow up and get banned. Instead of getting banned, I post until I see the usual sarcasm and condension getting posted and then I scram and don't come back or I start reading other topics.
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Percy Member Posts: 22934 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 6.8 |
foreveryoung writes: I don't care how many times it has been repeated; it is merely your assertion and nothing more. All of the constants are derived from a deeper reality and they don't change alone but in tandem. This tandem change keeps all the ramifications that you insist would happen from happening. You think you can change the fundamental constants in ways that would change just one aspect of our universe, such as c, without changing anything else. It would be best if Son Goku or Cavediver would comment, but I think what people are trying to tell you is that that can't happen. If that's correct then I see no reason why you should just accept this answer without understanding why it is true. But acquiring that understanding might represent a considerable investment in time, and unless you do that you have no excuse for rejecting the answer.
... so I will blow up and get banned. Don't get so angry that you forget about Report Discussion Problems Here 3.0. --Percy
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JonF Member (Idle past 418 days) Posts: 6174 Joined: |
I don't care how many times it has been repeated; it is merely your assertion and nothing more. All of the constants are derived from a deeper reality and they don't change alone but in tandem. This tandem change keeps all the ramifications that you insist would happen from happening. Nobody has yet been able to find a set of changes, in tandem or not, that are consistent with observations. That includes you. For some specifics, here's physicist Steve Carlip on Barry Setterfield's "theory" and stars and planets:
quote: And here he is again, on various aspects:
quote: The takeaway is that you don't just claim "in tandem" and walk away. You have to do calculations and demonstrate that the changes you propose are in accordance with our observations. This isn't a simple task (Setterfield's been trying for decades and hasn't succeeded yet). And you have to know a lot of physics just to know what observations are relevant and must be addressed (as you can see from the above, the ramifications spread into areas you might not consider without the appropriate knowledge) Oh, and here's a link to one of Steve's articles on universal constants. Well worth reading, with a link to a significantly technical paper on the subject.
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NoNukes Inactive Member |
removed to avoid dogpile
Edited by NoNukes, : Better explained by others. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal and hasten the resurrection of the dead. William Lloyd Garrison. It's not too late to register to vote. State Registration Deadlines
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Son Goku Inactive Member
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NoNukes writes:
No worries, it's an odd idea and I didn't explain it well.
I appreciate your patience, but I am still struggling with this idea. I see a distinction between c being 3.0 * 10^8 in MKS units and being 6.0 * 10^8 in the same units, because that change would have an affect on matter/energy equivalency.
Let's take two universes with these two different values of c, but with the same value of alpha, the fine structure constant. It would turn out that the laws of physics work out exactly the same, except that in the universe with those laws of physics play out twice as fast. So what takes 2 units of time in the first universe takes 1 unit of time in the second universe. Hence it's just the same universe viewed using two different measurements of time. The units of one system are worth twice the units of another system. It's only if you changed alpha that you would get a universe that couldn't be understood as the same universe sped up or slowed down. A better example might be a world where the North-South distance along the Earth is measured using furlongs and the East-West distance using meters. Then in geographical calculations you'd always have a constant D = 0.005 furlongs/meter, when computing areas. You could ask what would happen if D changed value, but it is meaningless, it would just be a redefinition of the meter or the furlong (or both).
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