In an article published today in the prestigious scientific journal "NATURE", the Australian researcher Davis says that it seems that at the time of the creation of the universe the speed of light was infinite, and since then it has been decreasing.
An Australian physicist says that the speed of light is decreasing over the years, and that in the distant past the speed of light was greater than it is today. The scientist, Paul Davis, from the Astrobiological Center at McCurry University in Sydney relies in his words on the measurement of the speed of light over billions of years as it came from the astronomical objects called quasars. The measurements were made by an astronomer at the University of New South Wales, and he discovered that the light rays coming from the quasars have properties that violate the accepted rules of physics.
In an article published today in the prestigious scientific journal "NATURE", the Australian researcher Davis says that it seems that at the time of the creation of the universe the speed of light was infinite, and since then it has been decreasing. Davis says that Albert Einstein would not have liked the new discoveries, because all his theories are based on the fact that the speed of light is constant, about 300 thousand kilometers per second.
An Australian team challenges Einstein's theory of relativity
10/08/2002
Researchers said yesterday that their calculations suggest that the speed of light is not constant, but has changed in the 14 billion years that have passed since the universe was created in the Big Bang. "Einstein would have hated it," said the head of the research team, Dr. Paul Davis from Macquarie University in Australia, to the American magazine "New Scientist." His entire theory of relativity is based on the idea that the speed of light is a universal and absolute constant," Davis added.
The claim that the speed of light is not constant is not new, but was raised for the first time about a decade ago. Some physicists, who did not participate in the study and who believe that the speed of light may not be constant, said that the theoretical reasoning offered by Davis is not one of the most successful that has been offered over the years.
The research of Dr. Davis, a physicist and author of popular science books, was published yesterday in the scientific journal "Nature." The research is based on observations reported a year ago by a team led by Prof. John Webb from the University of New South Wales in Australia. Webb and his colleagues observed the behavior of atoms of matter in gas clouds, which are present
About 12 billion years away from Earth. The observations revealed patterns of absorption of light rays, which the team members said could not be explained in any way, except by a change in one of the basic constants of nature. This is a constant known as "the constant of the fine structure",
responsible for the strength exerted by the electric force on the particles, by which they are attracted to each other.
Since the value of the fine structure depends on the electric charge and the speed of light, if the constant has indeed changed, this implies that one of the two - the electric charge or the speed of light - has also changed. In a paper published yesterday, Davis and his colleagues argued that the most likely answer is that the speed of light has changed. According to physicists who did not participate in the research, this claim is highly speculative, and the explanation offered by Davis is loose and leaves many loose ends. Webb's observation, on which is based the claim that there was a change in the constant value of the fine structure, still requires confirmation from further observations and calculations. Davis himself writes at the end of his article that his explanation is "only an allusion".
Tamara Traubman
An Australian scientist, better known as the author of popular science books, challenges Albert Einstein's "theory of relativity" and claims that he is able to prove that, contrary to what everyone knows, the speed of light changes and decreases with time. "The discovery will shock the whole of modern physics," he declared. The article published by Paul Davies from Macquarie University in Sydney in the scientific journal Nature immediately sparked a debate among scientists around the world.
Einstein's theory of relativity was based on the assertion that the speed of light is constant: 300 thousand km per second. If the speed changes over time, then the equation E=MC2 is incorrect, and this has far-reaching consequences for the entire study of physics.
In addition, if the speed of light was higher in the past, this also has significance regarding changes in the time dimension.
Prof. Hagai Netzer from the School of Physics and Astronomy at Tel Aviv University said last night: "Davis, a well-known but certainly not a leading astronomer, likes to make waves and noise. He used a controversial observation by Australian astronomers that was reported already a year ago, and based on it some beautiful ideas, the great majority of which are not acceptable to all scientists." He noted that in the past there were attempts to collapse Einstein's theory of relativity, but they failed.
Whereas Prof. Jacob Beckenstein from the Rakah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is involved in the study of black holes (and whose name is mentioned in Davis's article), said: "Paul Davis is not the first to believe that the speed of light is not constant. The current article he wrote did not convince me with his arguments."
Alex Doron
3 תגובות
Indeed, Yehuda, as he said a point, it is not the reaction that determines here.
It is not here that the fate of the patronage theory will be decided and it is not here that the matter of the dark mass or the Lesage theory will be determined.
And in the meantime, in the scientific world, the nonsense did receive attention (that is, there is actually something new).
See for example these two articles:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0208/0208093v3.pdf
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/hep-th/pdf/0209/0209249v1.pdf
By the way, the same Paul Davies is one of the only serious physicists who believes in the existence of some kind of God.
In his book - The Fifth Miracle - he wrote the following moronic sentence (I am not quoting from the scriptures but from memory):
"If the continuation of the research reveals that life is not a rare phenomenon in the universe and that in fact the laws of nature lead with a high probability to its creation, this will have a huge impact on our destiny in the universe" (a claim that includes the claim that we have a destiny and that this destiny was imposed on us by someone).
In response, I wrote him a letter in which I asked - among other things: "And if it turns out in the research that life is indeed a rare or even unique phenomenon in the universe, but, on the other hand, that the laws of nature lead with a high probability to the creation of rocks - will the discovery have a huge impact on the purpose of rocks?"
Unlike what might be implied from the above quote, the letter was completely polite and sympathetic.
I didn't get an answer.
And since then there is nothing new? This indicates that the observation was not accurate.
It's a shame that such an important article will remain unanswered for seven years.
First of all, why is it important if the aforementioned Davis is a writer of fiction? Does that make him any less credible? This is repeated several times in the scientists' reactions to his words.
Professor Hagi Netzer (ours) certainly and rightly defines him as "a well-known astronomer but definitely not a leader", but what is the conclusion from this, that this adds or subtracts from Davis's words? I am sure that the aforementioned Davis is more of a leader than some anonymous patent registrar.
It must be said that the determination that the speed of light is constant in every direction was first obtained from the well-known experiment of Michelson Morley about one hundred and twenty years ago, but that under no circumstances could such an experiment establish the claim that the speed is unchanging over the years because it was conducted at a single point in time. In order to measure the constancy of the speed of light, it was necessary to carry out an accurate test over time of the speed of light, and to compare the possible difference between at least two points in time. An absolutely not easy experiment because in my opinion the change is a reduction in the order of one cm per second per year.
Because of the small difference, I don't see the situation regarding the theory of relativity as that critical.
Nevertheless, an international committee decided in 1983 to determine the speed of light as exactly 299,792,458 meters per second (!) and based on that to determine the size of the meter as well. According to my calculations, since then the speed has decreased by about a quarter of a meter per second.
And by the way, one of the first to state that it is very possible that the speed of light is not constant was the scientist Paul Dirac already in the thirties of the last century, so I am not alone.
Please respond gently.
good week
Sabdarmish Yehuda