The Speed of Light is Not Constant

I don't think you understand what I was telling you. The light itself was traveling in an arc, and the box was changing distance from the start point, and it was changing the rate at which it traveled distance in space.

Everything has to be layed out at the same time. You can't jumble little facts here and there and try to assemble them and make it work. Doesn't work that way. It has to be EXACT, because nature is exact.

 

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Yes to the man in the box the light actually travelled at an arc. and struck the opposite wall at a lower point. But the light was always travelling in a straight line and struck the projected opposite point. Come to think of it it was in reference to Relativity. It's been a long time.

 

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The General Theory of Relativity

The Special Theory of Relativity describes the events which take place in a universe with no gravity. In 1916, Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity with the help of his friend and mathematician Marcel Grossman.

Before this theory, each object was thought to have gravitational and inertial mass. Gravitational mass was the weight, or effect of gravity on the object. Inertial mass was the measure of how much force had to be applied to the object to accelerate it a certain amount. Einstein realized that these two masses were equal, thus each object had only one value for its mass.

Einstein also saw no difference between how a gravitational field affected an object and how a moving frame of reference affected an object. For instance, if a man was in a closed box that was accelerated at a uniform rate, he could drop a ball and see it fall to the floor. His body would also be pulled toward the bottom of the box and he would assume that a gravitational field was pulling both him and the ball toward the side of the box he called the floor. In a few minutes, the box would attain an incredible speed but the man in the box would not know it. This box is illustrated in the following example.
http://library.thinkquest.org/29033/history/einsteinbox.jpg

Figure 4: The effect of a moving frame of reference on an object. To an observer outside of the box, the yellow ball looks as if it stays in the same place but the box moves. To an observer inside the box, the ball would look as it is falling, or being acted on by a gravitational field.

Close enough?

 

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No, that is your imagination at work. The light was NOT traveling in a straight line when it entered the box.

 

From a local FoR, the light travels in a straight line......
From any remote FoR, the light travels in a downward arc, along with the box/lift and whatever else is in the box/lift.
All FoR's are valid.

 

I think so. If you force two oscillators to run at the same rate, that's exactly what you do. It doesn't prove anything.

 

We need to go back a bit. People say a gravitational field is curved space when they ought to say curved spacetime. Take a look at Einstein's 1929 History of Field Theory. Down near the bottom he was talking about electromagnetic and gravitational fields. He said this:

"It can, however, scarcely be imagined that empty space has conditions or states of two essentially different kinds, and it is natural to suspect that this only appears to be so because the structure of the physical continuum is not completely described by the Riemannian metric".

Note that a field is a state of space. Now look at Einstein's 1920 Leyden Address where he's talking about gravity:

"This space-time variability of the reciprocal relations of the standards of space and time, or, perhaps, the recognition of the fact that 'empty space' in its physical relation is neither homogeneous nor isotropic, compelling us to describe its state by ten functions (the gravitation potentials gμν), has, I think, finally disposed of the view that space is physically empty".

For a gravitational field, he's saying space is inhomogeneous. Now think about space in the room you're in. Because it's inhomogeneous, your pencil falls down. The local force of gravity relates to the slope on the "bowling ball" depiction here. If space is very inhomogeneous, your pencil accelerates quickly. A long way up in space, space is less inhomogeneous so a pencil doesn't accelerate quickly. When you plot the inhomogeneity what you see is a curve, which is curved spacetime. For a gravitational field, space isn't curved, there's a curvature in your plot of the inhomogeneity of space.

 

That's what they say, Declan. But it doesn't square with what Einstein said. And more importantly it doesn't square with the evidence of optical clocks in the room you're in. Or the Shapiro delay.

 

They're clocking up some regular cyclical motion. Not the flow of time. So if one clock goes slower than the other that motion is going slower. It's that simple.

The graphic depicts parallel-mirror light clocks. The NIST optical clocks lose synchronisation when one is 30cm above the other. Parallel-mirror light clocks will too. And the metre doesn't change. There is no horizontal length contraction.

Read the OP. The motion of light is used to define the second and the metre. Which are then used to measure the motion of light. So no matter how fast the light moves you always get the same answer. It's a tautology.

 

Right. But like I said previously, you could do all this stuff on a planet that isn't rotating.

 

Well said that man. This thread follows on from a thread about time, see the OP at Time Travel is Science Fiction.

 

Thanks James. Sometimes people spoil what ought to be an interesting discussion.

 

Time going slower is a figure of speech. Things move, things like cogs and light and planets and people. When all things around us go slower we say time is going slower, but there isn't any actual thing called time that's going fast or slow or anywhere. A clock doesn't actually measure the flow of time, or the passage of time. It clocks up some kind of motion. When it goes slower it's because that motion is going slower. The rate of motion is lower. People say the coordinate speed of light is lower, but it's more than that.

The definition of length doesn't change. See the OP. When the light goes slower the second is bigger, then the slower light and the bigger second cancel each other out and the metre is unchanged.

See above. And if there was, the lower clock would run faster, not slower.

No, it's the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of radiation. The hyperfine spin-flip causes this radiation, but we aren't counting spin-flips.

It's a defined constant, but it isn't constant. Look at the gif. There's no horizontal length contraction. The lower clock goes slower.

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And that definition isn't good enough for the room you're in. because those two NIST optical clocks don't stay synchronised.

Sure thing. And it may not be measured as constant by a guy in a room.

 

Has Farsight proposed an experiment to overturn all other experiments done in nearly a hundred years of relativity, or is he just going to constantly post his evaluation of a gif?

Since his ego is tied in with his self published, non peer reviewed product for sale, I cry foul and conflict of interest. Hell, I would be adamant that drunken aliens abducted people in the Bermuda Triangle if I could make a buck.

 

Good question, in case Farsight has you on ignore:

 

If the radiation is caused by spin-flips, then it is the spin-flips that determine how many periods of radiation we count. Ie, if the spin-flips slow down, then the radiation gets redder.

The lower clock goes slower, but the graphic is wrong on the reason why. You seem to be confusing the linear speed of a photon (which is what a light clock thought experiment uses) with the photon's frequency (which is what an atomic clock uses).

Under what conditions? Define such an experiment.

And just to be clear here, your thesis is this:
Measured differences in the rate of passage of time at different elevations are an illusion caused by a varying speed of light.

Am I correct that that is your thesis?

 

If the speed of light is same in all frames of references, then why do the wavelength and frequency of light change with reference? Does this mean that only the light particle moves at C, but its wave nature, via wavelength and frequency, by not being the same in all references, is not at C?

Not being the same in all references is an artifact of inertial. Only the speed of light is the same in all references. This division between inertial and the speed of light seems clear cut by observing variable versus fixed. So if wavelength and frequency is not the same in all references it is not at speed of light since light speed of the same in all references. Does this means that the wave-particle duality of light is connected to energy existing in both the consistent speed of light (particle) reference and the variable inertial reference (wavelength and frequency) at the same time?

This would explain the intuition that light is not always at C, since wavelength/variable is variable with reference.