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Variable speed of light (was: Relativity conundrum)



I was only able to imagine a paradigm-experiment: The
lightning flash reaches the back end of the train, stops a clock there, part
of the light passes through a hole and goes to the front end where it stops
another clock. The clocks were initially synchronized. For the moment I am
not able to imagine an experiment essentially different from this paradigm.

There is a version which could be a thought experiment and which unequivocally
shows that the speed of light is not constant. In the rest (railway) frame the
beam approaches the train at a right angle so that, in the train frame, it moves
obliquely. Consider two events - the beam entering the train and the beam
leaving the train - registered in both frames. Obviously x < x', where x is the
distance the beam travels between the two events in the rest frame and x' is the
respective distance in the moving frame. The time measured in the rest frame for
the travel x is t, and that measured in the moving frame for the travel x' is
t'. If there is time dilation, t' < t and, accordingly,

c = x/t < x'/t' = c'

If there is no time dilation (the above result supports this assumption),

c = x/t < x'/t = c'

Pentcho Valev