Another attempt to clarify the situation...
Hi Tom,
"If the speed of light is constant, in which frame of reference would the speed of light be c???? The answer is the absolute frame of reference."
Wrong answer, the correct answer is: in ALL possible frames of reference. The direction the light is moving in is irrelevant, we're not talking about a vector component here, but the total size of the velocity vector.
"As I explained before, the light clock measures the vertical velocity of the light between it's mirrors, and NOT the total velocity of the light."
This is not correct. For the observer standing next to the clock, the light has no horizontal component. Since the speed of light is constant in every frame of reference, the speed would have a vertical component equal to c, which in this case happens to be the size of the velocity vector.
For an observer watching the lightclock passing by, the vertical component would indeed be different, and this is exactly the reason why that external observer would perceive the clock of the moving observer tick slower.
For you this seems to be a convincing argument for an absolute frame of reference. I don't have the slightest clue where that could possible ever fit in.
But there's even more. Assume we have two lightclocks that move relative to eachother. Each one will conclude that the other clock is ticking slower because the light will follow a triangular path from one clock's point of view. Both clocks are right: there is no experiment you can perform that shows that one clock should be preferred over the other, because they both undergo the same effects when moving relative to eachother. In fact, for ANY observer with a light clock this is true. This means that all frames of references are equal, or in other words: there is no prefered frame of reference.
Light cannot be used as a frame of reference: any frame of reference is bound to travel at a speed smaller than lightspeed, since in a frame of reference travelling at lightspeed, all laws of physics break down (all distances become zero, everything takes an infinite amount of time to happen - not quite an interesting frame of reference to observe reality in).
"What you can't face is the fact that light came along and crapped on Einsteins theory of relativity. I guess everything was going fine for Einsein until he found that the speed of light doesn't care what frame of reference it's in. "
Have you ever read any of the posts on frames of reference ? It was exactly Einstein who postulated that the speed of light was invariant for all frames of reference, and he started to work on his theory from there.
"If a stupid physicist would assume that the light clock measures the total velocity of the light, he/she would come to the conclusion that time slows down the faster the clock is traveling. This could be one of the many errors associated with atomic clocks. "
No, it is not the observer standing next to the lightclock that will see time slow down, but an external observer. For the observer standing next to the lightclock, nothing will change, regardless of the speed he is moving at (from the point of view from the external observer).
Bye!
Crisp