Speed of Light or the Speed of Space :puz:

I just had a funky thought.

Now, I'm just another guy out there, and know very little about the high-sciences, but wanted to throw this out there.

What if what we perceive as a constant and label the speed of light, is really just an indication of the speed of space expanding all the way back from the big bang

I mean that light is the phenomena with the least, or zero resistance to this speed of expansion in space, and everything else has more resistance, so travels slower.

Will wait for someone to show me how this just can't be so, but for some reason it popped out as something that at least needed to be asked.

the speed of light is a constant value and as such has been measured but the problem with the expansion of the universe as a whole whould mean we'd need to see it to be able to measure its movement to be able to see it moving away from us which would require us to have faster than light sensers so that we could measure the movement which to us non having access to marvin the martians super gear is out of our league at the moment

reply to post by Maxatoria


So...you're saying it's possible, but not (yet) possible to confirm?

reply to post by unityemissions


well unless you know a way to get to a point at the edge of the universe faster than the speed of light to be ready to measure it and see how far its moved we can never be truely sure of what the universe is

reply to post by Maxatoria


Well I'm just not sure about that. We can theorize, test, and prove the hypothesis. We may never know the ultimate, but our systems can be fine tuned to explain more "anomalies".

Einstein said that massive objects create a disruption in the fabric of space, but what if they just meet a certain pre-existing groove that fits the mass of the object in question What if these ripples overlap through space, and you need a certain physical property...mass or lack there of, to fit the groove. That the frequency is not to the object, per se, but to the ability to ride the certain waves of space.

reply to post by unityemissions


i'm sure everything creates a bump in time and space its just the level of the distortion and is ability to affect the surrounding area

reply to post by Maxatoria


So the more dense someone is being, the more they are able to distort makes sense.

I guess what I'm pondering here is the interplay between space-time and matter. I'm attempting to point the arrow of causality in the opposite direction and see if I can get a hit...

I think Einstein covers this in his theory of relativity.

Read it, then come back and post your thoughts.

reply to post by phantomjack


I can't read...only type = proly not bright enough to understand what he is describing.

reply to post by unityemissions


I am not completely sure what you mean, so correct me if I misunderstood. From what I understand you are saying that photons are in fact motionless but just appear to move due to expansion of space? If so, how can any photon ever reach your eye? Everything photon would be moving apart with light speed.

reply to post by -PLB-


Nah, not quite.

I'm saying that space may be what causes the motion we perceive, not the object on it's own right. I'm saying that space might be much, much more bombastic in shape than we imagine....think of how quantum physicists describe space at the really, really small level....what if that's really how it is all over the place, but we just aren't noticing.

Okay, so I'm saying that just as a melody can have notes interwoven and overlapping to create an awesome sound, what if what we see is just the result of matter hooking into various waves of expansion in space?! You have a string and you shake it violently with between two hands, and it ripples and creates waves of all different orders. so these objects resonate with these waves, slide into and out of various grooves, or not, depending on the stability or not of it's mass.

So this would be different for large objects, as opposed to singular particles. Large objects slip and slide in and out of grooves. Particles stay in a constant expanding groove, riding a ripple....a wave just before it's crest.

So in your example, differing objects are riding different waves, and expanding at different rates. Because of this, they have the potential to collide....for us to preceive these photons after they hit our retina.

I'm a bit cracked out today...too much physical training this week...maybe I just need rest.

reply to post by unityemissions


If objects are reacting to grooves in space, shouldn't we be able to observe this? Up until now we can explain the movement of celestial (or earthly) bodies with extreme accuracy only using gravity. So there does not seem to be something else acting on them.

Originally posted by unityemissions
reply to post by phantomjack

 

I can't read...only type = proly not bright enough to understand what he is describing.

edit on 15-4-2012 by unityemissions because: (no reason given)

Well, get a copy of the Audio version of "Einsteins Universe..." It is a great book.

I'm sure in physics class, that still have 2nd semester optics, light travels
at different speeds in different materials such that the index of refraction is
determined showing light angels off at the interface. If you get the idea from
one medium of travel to another medium as air to glass surface something
happens that can be measured and a number calculated.

As you indicated in space there is no loss in the transmission of light which was
found out in optic class if the teacher related the information. This might get into
more questions and the whole matter dropped as this seems to approach free
energy in the medium of space by some people.

Light is a very high frequency generated by atoms with electron jumping voltage
shells. The Big Bang speeds light into Red and Blue shifts now if not mistaken
but the creation of electrical forces might be at work as well.

The speed of light is relative. Plus it varies with bandwidth. There most certainly is a correlation to its relativity, and time though.

I wonder when they say a star is 10 light years away?

If light can be a wave or a particle,
then the wave could take 10 light years to get here for us to see,
BUT,

if it is a particle, could it be instantly be seen?
Meaning the particles could just bump a neighbour and so on...

eg;
Like that toy with the 5 steel balls suspended on wire, the one on the right (the light-source) hits the ball beside it, and the ball at the other end flies out (and we see it).

Anyone help?

reply to post by Maxatoria

would require us to have faster than light sensers so that we could measure the movement which to us non having access to marvin the martians super gear is out of our league at the moment

In fact, we can measure the expansion of space quite easily.

Most people interested in this subject have heard of 'redshift', the downward shift in the frequency of any electromagnetic radiation being emitted by an astronomical body moving away from us. There are two kinds of redshift, known as Doppler redshift and cosmological redshift. The former is caused by the relative motion of object and observer through space and is the main component of the redshift we observe in relatively nearby bodies (those in our galaxy and neighbouring ones).

The latter, however, is caused by very distant objects being carried away from the observer by the expansion of space itself. At such distances, cosmological redshift completely overwhelms the Doppler component unless the source is moving at quite close to the speed of light.

By measuring the cosmological reshift at different distances we can work out not only the present but also the past expansion of space.

To answer the OP question, the expansion of space has no effect on the speed of light, only on its preceived frequency.

*

reply to post by CitizenNum287119327

If light can be a wave or a particle, then the wave could take 10 light years to get here for us to see, BUT, if it is a particle, could it be instantly be seen? Meaning the particles could just bump a neighbour and so on...

The impulse would still travel from particle to particle at a finite speed, just as it travels through the steel balls in the executive toy you mentioned. This speed would be much, much lower than the speed of light.

A photon is a light 'particle'. You see light when this particle strikes your retina and the impact causes a chemical change in your retina, which in turn sends an electric current into your brain, which interprets the signal it receives as light. You don't see a photon; you see light.

To see a particle (or anything else) that is not a photon, you need to shine a light on it. A light is a stream of photons. Some of these bounce off the particle and enter your eye, causing you to see it. You then see the particle or object, more or less brightly.

Another way to look at this is that light waves reflected off the object reach your retina and excite the electrons in the atoms of its cells through a reverse photoelectric effect, causing some of them to come unbound from their parent atomic nuclei and travel along the conducting wire of your optic nerve to your brain so that you see the object.

In other words, you can use either particle language or wave language to describe the phenomenon. Light waves and light particles are the same thing, you see; it's not an either/or situation until the light interacts with some device designed to interpret it as one or the other.

All the time it's travelling through space between the object that emitted it and your eye, the light is both a particle and a wave. The wave is the particle, the particle is the wave, and both travel at the same speed.

reply to post by unityemissions

Einstein said that massive objects create a disruption in the fabric of space, but what if they just meet a certain pre-existing groove that fits the mass of the object in question. What if these ripples overlap through space, and you need a certain physical property...mass or lack there of, to fit the groove.

There is no disruption, merely a distortion of spacetime. You are asking whether this is pre-existing, and objects have mass depending on where they are located in a complex topography of spacetime. They may – but then, what gives spacetime this topography if not the objects contained in it?

Also, what determines the distribution of these objects?

If your suggestion is correct, objects must arise out of the metric spacetime itself instead of merely being present in it. This is not implausible, but there has to be some mechanism proposed to show how that happens. This is the domain of 'quantum gravity' theories. Do you favour any particular one, or do you have one of your own?

Fish live in a liquid called water.
Electrical energy exists in a liquid called space.

The light producing voltage jumps in illuminating atoms send out light in all
directions in the space liquid. Any space body has to deal with the electrical
qualities involved.

With all matter pretty much involved in electrical charges the linear forces would
be maintained and in conflict with gravitational curvature of space. Non linear math
and phenomena are anomalies like iron hysteresis and are unsolvable even for
Einstein.

reply to post by Astyanax

thanks for that!

cheers