Can Light travel faster than Light?

Thinking, possibly you meant "variable" - not trying to correct you, but not highly educated in "Carl Sagan" type stuff - just kind of thought in context!! Any way, if 'c' as in "e=mc squared" - then I am definitely lost! I thought 'c' meant speed of light. I think I learned that it is 186,000 MILES per SECOND. If MILES/SECONDS were longer or shorter - would seem to me that the 186,000 number would not be same!!??!! So I guess I too "find that concept hard to grasp". There again-note my moniker!! When I was in grade school (9 or 10 years old), I was kinda tripped out by our Sun being 93,000,000 miles away and speed of light being 186,000 miles per second. Kind of like if the Earth was 100,000,000 miles from the Sun, would the speed of light be 200,000 miles per second?!! Anyway, always remember my moniker! Hey "KilljoyKlown" thanks for welcoming me - I read a lot of different "forums" on the internet, but I only hunt and peck type so I do not write much. Maybe I do not seem to be dumbest man on earth, but if I wrote more or you read me more - you would probably begin to agree with my moniker!!

 

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Yeah about that.

Lights speed increases in direct proportion to the expansion of the universe.

Everything expands, so everything stays proportionate. It would not be noticeable, except that a galaxy moving faster away from earth with expansion will appear redder (redshift). The light travelling above stretches itself into a redder wavelength to compensate for the expansion of the universe.

@ dumb (meaning guy with name),
Welcome.

 

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I don't know if this helps the discussion at all, but I think of light as a Newtons Cradle. The ball size determines the speed. The speed is propagated through balls to create a wave. This isn't an atomic Newtons Cradle however, it's a fundamental version, and this fundamental Cradle passes the message along very evenly. Inside each bump a new photon is produced, so photons are strobed along a path.

So now imagine a car headlights. The car travels forwards, but the newtons cradle effect is still the same as it is propagated by ball size.

The thing that would need to change to change speed would be the ball size. If the ball size changes, the wave changes, it red shifts. The wave is bigger because the balls are bigger.

The final pattern that I visualize is the stacking of the balls. Balls stack in icosahedrons mostly. Icosahedrons have a natural wave formation. Balls stack 1-3,1-3,1-3. Which would generate 3 dimensions, 3 colours R,G,B. But the most important thing for this topic is that they generate fractal waves.

My space-time is this.. the arrangement of grain, stacked in Icosahedrons. The grain size can change, has been observed larger in one direction than the other. Therefore in my analysis the speed of light can change.

That's how I visualize light. If it helps, it helps. If it doesn't, I have no other useful information to add.

 

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If you were to start a new member topic we could explore your dumbest man on earth claim, but I'm sure we could find dumber humans. Have you ever watched a 1000 ways to die?

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Q. If everything is expanding proportionate and light still takes the same amount of time to travel from A to B. How would you be able to tell that anything has changed?

 

Exactly the right question. Nobody could tell anything changed. Even Einstein thought he made a mistake.

I'll show this quote again.

Einstein later told Hubble this was the biggest mistake he ever made.

So you are correct. Astronomers for thousands of years, and Albert Einstein himself could not tell anything was different.

It was not until Hubble came along and realized that the faster a galaxy/stars were travelling away the redder they appeared from a telescope. This was called redshift, and has to do with light waves expanding .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift

Redshift is a topic on its own really, a product of light going faster than light. lol

Anyways; that was the absolute correct question.

 

The redshift only tells us that galaxies are moving away from us. It doesn't tell us how this is happening. I believe there is still some controversy on this subject.

 

The big bang theory is widely accepted as fact, but there are some who doubt it yes.

You certainly come up with the right questions in the right order.

Killjoyklown -

[ALL]

Redshift made ALL galaxies/stars seem to be receding. There is only 2 possible explanations for this.

a) Earth is the center of the universe and everything is moving away.

b) We are in an expanding space. Like marks on a balloon blowing up we all uniformly move away from each other.

Scientists seem to think B is more likely. Is the just of it.

 

Spatial expansion does NOT mean that everything is expanding.

The strong nuclear force, the electromagnetic force and gravity are all many, many times stronger than the force driving expansions. The effects of spatial expansion do not show up until you are about 200 million lys from any mass concentrations. This is the reason why we don't see the other galaxies forming our Local galactic groups moving away from each other. They are gravitationally bound to each other, and although the cumulative gravitational force is very weak, the force driving expansion is weaker still.

Thus the space between atoms, between planets, between stars and between 'nearby' galaxies does not expand. Light speed does not change
because of expansion, or for any other reason.

 

I think the questions involved are a little more complex than your either A or B choice. I'm thinking we need to know more before we claim to know for sure what the real history of the universe is. But that's just me not being ready to jump on the consensus band wagon.

 

@ Alex G,
I agree that atoms do not move apart equally because of gravity and such, however that is confusing the issue. 1 concept at a time. This was an underlying theme of the first link I gave on this topic.
http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1120
The above link goes into details about gravity affects, but it is an additional concept that can confuse the question.

I think you are also portraying light speed in a confusing manner as well, and think I did a better job of explaining it.

Read what I wrote and then see how what you wrote is not being helpful to anyone.

@ KilljoyKlown,

I thought the A and B choices were enough to show how he knew. There is much more on the subject, but choice A or B is basically how it was established (Honest).
Look at this quote from Wikipedia on The Big Bang

wikipedia link to that quote. Pay attention to underlined phrases there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang

 

I read what you wrote and have seen that it is almost totally incorrect.

You simply don't know what you're talking about.

 

@ Alex G,
I will say it is you that just cannot understand this. I can see where it can be confusing for some. I know my grasp of this is very good. Find one thing I have stated that is incorrect and I will listen to your arguments.

Once again you are the one who cannot grasp this. Arguing that the universe is not locally expanding because of gravity then that point is moot as I have stated I left it out to "simplify" the topic. It does not mean my own understanding is not there.

Anyone who reads my posts can see how the expanding universe exists, and was not noticed, and how it came to be noticed. Anyone that reads your posts can only see a troll. Back up your ignorant claims that I am teaching wrong here.

I honestly believe you are not smart enough to understand this Alex G. It does help if you've actually studied the subject at all.

But then, they say ignorance is bliss, so who am I to deny you that good feeling.

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Kwhilborn, one thing you consistently demonstrate is at best a vague and superficial of knowledge of physics.

How about this little piece of misinformation? Or this one?

My degree in physics might be 35 years old, but some things don't change.

When did you get your degree in physics?

 

The light speed remains constant only because our measuring devices also change. Honestly; I said all this before, and do not think you are reading.

I grew up interested in electricity and attended Queens University where I got my Engineering Degree, and have been licensed as a soil engineer in Ontario, Canada, but do not work in that field now. Neither did I get into Electrical Engineering which was my original goal.

So I never got a physics degree, but I understand Hawking, and I understand this easily. It is pretty basic stuff.

My education and job require more reading and adhering to policies than math however so I am weaker in some areas. Even my samples are submitted to the lab. I have also been a known and well paid psychic researcher, and hold beliefs that are not commonly accepted on Sciforums. I run a member supported paranormal website. I am currently writing and collecting income from my websites.

@ Alex G,
I honestly do not think you read my posts, or you would not be using the above as a poor example that I am giving misinformation. You either have not read them fully, or you cannot grasp them.

You are misquoting me. I gave qualifying statements to both of those examples.

You obviously have forgotten or never understood this subject. You claim a physics degree? Really? I thought your favourite threads were bible bashing. Didn't know you liked real science at all.

I think you think you are the only person who can understand this basic concept out of some arrogance. You probably don't even look at what is written.

This thread was moving along fine, and I believe I was getting the points across well. But you just had to troll in without looking at what was being said.

Totally uncalled for and rude.

 

I know you said it before. Repeating it does not make it right.

You seem to be thinking of the expansion as everything getting larger. That's not what's happening. Atoms do not get any larger. Molecules do not take up more room. Our measuring devices do not change and the speed of light remains constant because it is. Nor do the atoms move away from each other. Nothing changes due to expansion until you're deep in intergalactic space where the gravity field is practically non-existent.

So you couldn't make it as an EE, and you couldn't make it working in dirt, so now you exploit P.T. Barnum'x maxim, 'there's a sucker born every minute, and two to take him' by running a paranormal website.

My degree in physics was from the Cooper Union School of Engineering, one of the top 5 schools in the United States. I don't claim to be a physicist because I've never worked in the field, nor gone on to advanced degrees. Computer programming paid way too much money.

 

:fart:

 

I also have been involved with programming. You are right. a zillion ways to make a buck by copy/pasting if/then statements (which is basically what all programming is).

I am licensed to work in the dirt. I am currently mildly disabled and could not handle all the travelling, and I actually feel sorry for people who do not believe in psychic phenomenon as I feel they have missed out on some wonderful observations, and are forced to limit their belief systems. I was a skeptic and atheist. Now; I have to entertain ideas I never before would have considered based on what I have seen experimentally. One of which is that maybe we are all connected, and without shooting far are possibly "god" ourselves.

I run a few other websites as well.

Atoms do not grow bigger, and I never said they did, however the space between them does increase.
STOP: Before you say it; except where gravity reigns things in.

Think of this:
If the universe is expanding and everything is growing apart (except gravity blah blah), then it would stand to reason that our measuring devices also increase. measurement is really just a system of comparing an object to a set standard. But what if the standard were also expanding?

 

And the strong force, and the electromagnetic force. In fact, everywhere except out in intergalactic space.

So

is not correct.

Except it's not. And they don't.

You also said that

. So if atoms don't grow bigger, but the space between them increases, you soon have a fog of monoatomic particles. In fact, there would be nothing except primordial hydrogen.

But we don't have that kind of universe, do we?

 

...and the measuring devices would expand to eliminate the red shift. You need to have a travelling wave of particle expansion for your idea to work, because the red shift is measured.