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Re: Speed Of Light Slowing Down.



Robert B Zannelli wrote:

...
SYDNEY, Australia -- The crux of Einstein's theory of relativity -- that E =
mc 2 -- is under challenge, following evidence that the speed of light might
be slowing down.

...
What Davies and his team did was study a 12 billion-year-old stream of light.

Cornerstone

They discovered it did not have the properties it was expected to, and by a
process of elimination deduced that the speed of light must have been much
faster billions of years ago.
...
(and in a separate message:)
...
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/auspac/08/07/australia.lightspeed/

http://www.msnbc.com/news/791205.asp


I would love to know what expected properties are being referred to here. The
first article above doesn't give a clue. The second says:

The suggestion that the speed of light can change is based on data
collected by UNSW astronomer John Webb, who posed a conundrum when
he found that light from a distant quasar, a starlike object, had
apparently absorbed the wrong type of photons from interstellar
clouds on its 12-billion-year journey to earth.

Davies said fundamentally Webb’s observations meant that the structure
of atoms emitting quasar light was slightly but ever so significantly
different to the structure of atoms in humans.

"wrong type of photons"?

What sort of language is that? The only meaning that occurs to me is
that the spectrum may not have been what was expected. But if that's
what was meant, wouldn't they have said "wrong frequency" or even "wrong
frequency distribution"?

Ken (who only sees by means of "type A" photons)

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| Ken CAVINESS Physics at Southern Adventist University |
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