Is the speed of light a constant? Or can it vary? If so, in what kinds of situations, or how much?

sjastro said:

Skepticism is healthy but the poster in question has made it perfectly clear he is not interested in the responses given and has used this thread as a veiled support for YEC because science apparently cannot address the issue of one way speed of light which is more of a philosophical question.
AIG frequently uses this tactic of whatever science doesn't know automatically defaults to a support for a 6000 year old Earth which is a logical fallacy.
I have no issues in you believing in the scriptures over the science, believe or not I happen to be a Christian myself, but unfortunately there are some here that are so anti-science they see it as an attack on their faith and the root of all evil.

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Btw I was not using it as evidence of YEC. I’ve never made claims to that. What I said was a common argument against creation 6000 years ago is science guy say the distance stars are from earth and how long it would take for the light to reach us. My ONLY point was that’s not a valid argument against Creation since that has not been tested and is an assumption. That’s all I was saying. I’m not saying light is any different speed. I’m just saying it has not been proven to be used as a fact.

Aldebaran said:

View attachment 352388

PLEASE TRY TO AVOID MAKING PERSONALLY FLAMING POSTS
THANK YOU!​

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So why is the offending post which I reported still there?
Do I need to report the post again to get it removed?

Neogaia777 said:

But about whatever is in motion, how does time slow down for it, and only it, etc? ... So, how does that happen? Does it just slow down for the people? The whole ship? Anything outside of the ship, etc? Or does it slow down time for only for the particles that have mass that are in that motion, etc?

I think in reality, it is the latter, or that time slows down for all the particles that have mass that are in motion, etc. Or that it happens always on that level always, etc. And that everything else, or all particles that are not it, or is not invloved in that motion, is pretty much unaffected, etc.

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The theory that makes the most sense to me is the one being worked on by Stephen Wolfram, with extensions by me.

Think about Conway's game of life, which is a 2D grid of pixels in which figures can be propagated across the screen. Each pixel follows some very simple rules, but when the entire system runs, it produces amazing results. Now extend and expand this model such that it fills the entire universe, and each "pixel" is the smallest possible element comprising the quantum fields. All matter in motion is really a wave of excitation (energy) moving through one of the quantum fields.

Wolfram disagrees with the bundling of time with space into "spacetime". He thinks this was a mathematically convenient technique introduced before Einstein, but that it doesn't accurately describe reality. "Space" is the ability of something to move between the "pixels" of the quantum fields. He calls the "pixels" and the connections between them to be a "graph". Time, on the other hand, is something completely different. It is result of the computational power of the graph itself, applying the rules at each node (pixel) of the graph.

And to get to your question about motion and time, Wolfram says that mathematically, each node can either pass on a signal to the next node, or it can apply the computational changes that allows, for example, a radioactive atom 'decide' or not if it is going to decay into daughter products. So time progression OR motion OR a combination of the two in a way that satisfies Einstein's equations of relativity.

Neogaia777 said:

Now, if say, it was a ship, etc, would that mean you'd have to increase the thrust of the engines to go faster, or maintain current speed? If it literally slows down all the particles, then would more energy need to be applied to keep them going, and/or in motion? And if so, wouldn't it eventually need to be infinite, according to Einstein’s theories?

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I'm not completely following you here. A spaceship out in space does not have to have thrust to maintain current speed. It will continue to coast for every until it encounters something to slow itself down. From the view of the captain in the spaceship, he can continue to apply thrust as long as he has fuel. He will think he is going every faster and faster, with no apparent speed limits. But from the view of the planets that he is zipping by, it will seem that he is simply approaching the speed of light, and all the figures on the ship seem to be moving in slow motion.

Neogaia777 said:

What do you think about all of this?

Take Care/God Bless.

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This stuff is a lifelong interest of mine. The universe that God has made is mind blowing!

Best wishes,

Kevin

Neogaia777 said:

I am wondering that if time slows down for the ship, if it will also slow down his motion, or speed, requiring him to maybe apply more thrust in order to keep or maintain that speed or continue to accelerate through space?

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As the ship gets faster, and that motion "interferes" with the usual ability of the ship's atoms to act like 'stationary' atoms, and instead become sluggish atoms, the ship will need energy to continue to accelerate. From the perspective of the planets watching the ship zip by, outsiders might see the ship appearing to burn through 1 unit of fuel every planet-based second. But as the captain of the ship sees it, the time is different. ....

Actually, as I write this, I'm carried back to my college physics class on relativity, and I remember the frustration of trying to get everything straight and to account for the different frames of reference. So I'm going to bail out of trying to come up with an exact illustration -- for fear that I will get the details wrong and cause confusion. I remember that I actually didn't believe relativity was real for awhile, and thought that it was all just an optical illusion. This was especially true for the paradox where a car is both too long and too short to fit into a barn with front and back doors at are opened and closed at key times. But I then learned that atomic clocks, which are famously accurate, have been taken up in planes (see details here) and flown around the world, only to be found to be "off" when brought back to home base. I realized that this is a real effect of the universe we live in.

KT

KevinT said:

The theory that makes the most sense to me is the one being worked on by Stephen Wolfram, with extensions by me.

Think about Conway's game of life, which is a 2D grid of pixels in which figures can be propagated across the screen. Each pixel follows some very simple rules, but when the entire system runs, it produces amazing results. Now extend and expand this model such that it fills the entire universe, and each "pixel" is the smallest possible element comprising the quantum fields. All matter in motion is really a wave of excitation (energy) moving through one of the quantum fields.

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What's that got to do with reality?

KevinT said:

Wolfram disagrees with the bundling of time with space into "spacetime". He thinks this was a mathematically convenient technique introduced before Einstein, but that it doesn't accurately describe reality. "Space" is the ability of something to move between the "pixels" of the quantum fields. He calls the "pixels" and the connections between them to be a "graph". Time, on the other hand, is something completely different. It is result of the computational power of the graph itself, applying the rules at each node (pixel) of the graph.

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So he's some sort of physics crank, then?

KevinT said:

And to get to your question about motion and time, Wolfram says that mathematically, each node can either pass on a signal to the next node, or it can apply the computational changes that allows, for example, a radioactive atom 'decide' or not if it is going to decay into daughter products. So time progression OR motion OR a combination of the two in a way that satisfies Einstein's equations of relativity.

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Oh, good grief.

KevinT said:

I'm not completely following you here. A spaceship out in space does not have to have thrust to maintain current speed. It will continue to coast for every until it encounters something to slow itself down. From the view of the captain in the spaceship, he can continue to apply thrust as long as he has fuel. He will think he is going every faster and faster, with no apparent speed limits. But from the view of the planets that he is zipping by, it will seem that he is simply approaching the speed of light, and all the figures on the ship seem to be moving in slow motion.

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We have actual physics that explains these things. No need for Mr. Wolfram to make stuff up.

KevinT said:

This stuff is a lifelong interest of mine. The universe that God has made is mind blowing!

Best wishes,

Kevin

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Neogaia777 said:

I've wondered about all of that "infinite mass/infinite energy/time completely stopping at the speed of light" theory, etc, and wonder if Einstein didn't already solve it with his famous/infamous "total energy equals mass times the speed of light squared" equation, etc?

What if the mass, or energy required to continue to accelerate mass at or very near the speed of light, or time slowing down or completely stopping in or at or very near the speed of light, etc, is all only at "times the speed of light squared" at the speed of light, and is not truly infinite, etc? Astronomical increase maybe, but not truly infinite, etc.

I've thought about this for a while now, but don't know if it's correct, and it might not be correct at all, but I also wanted to know what the rest of you might think, etc?

Take Care/God Bless.

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This has been discussed in the past.
While most people have heard of Einstein's "famous/infamous "total energy equals mass times the speed of light squared" equation" only a small percentage of the population are aware of the complete equation.



mₒ is the rest mass and as v → c, E → ∞ (as velocity v approaches the the speed of light , the energy E approaches infinity).
We don't need spaceships, particle accelerators confirm particles with mass cannot be accelerated to the speed of light let alone exceed it.

There is the law of diminishing returns as particle accelerators become increasing more powerful, the gains in particle speed progressively decrease.
The LHC can accelerate protons up to 99.9999991% of the speed of light c.

Neogaia777 said:

What happens/happened to it's mass? Did it ever become infinite yet? Or did it exceed "times the speed of light squared" yet?

I also have the same questions about time slowing down for it, and the energy required to propel it, or keeping it sustained at the speed/rate at which it is being propelled, etc?

Take Care.

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The issue is about the momentum p =MV.



Does the relativistic mass M increase with velocity?



Or is it the relativistic velocity V which increases?



Using particle accelerators as the evidence the modern consensus is the relativistic effects apply to velocity and not mass.
Hence the increase in relativistic energy is due to the relativistic velocity, nothing happens to the mass.

Neogaia777 said:

I'm not really talking about exceeding it right now, but was just wondering if anyone for sure can confirm it's (the effects we are talking about here @ c) are truly infinite yet?

Have we been able to for sure confirm that with anything yet, etc?

Or I would at least like to know if those effects have exceeded times the speed of light squared yet in anything we have been able to confirm yet, etc?

Or if they have maybe come very close to it in anything we have been able to confirm yet maybe, etc?

Take Care.

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Look at the bar graph in post#151, you can't get more definitive evidence that to accelerate particles with mass to the speed of light an infinite amount of energy is required.
Mathematically the speed of light defined by the horizontal line in the graph is an asymptote, it can never be reached since an infinite amount of energy is required which by definition is impossible to obtain.