Bye Bye, Speed of Light

[Truth_Seeker]

**Perhaps it could be looked at as though the fundamental constants were changing… i.e. speed of light. I haven’t sat down and done the modelling, but it could be that there is direct symmetry between the two interpretations.

**
Great paper!! This has “Nature” written all over it if you could get it to work out. I want my own footnote!

All kidding aside, it would make an excellent paper, even if the measurments showing c changing turn out to be errors. If those measurements turn out to be correct, well, let’s just say I think you’ll find Sweden quite charming!

**For these reasons, it’s probably best not to dismiss [inflation] entirely.

** Of course not! As you say, however, inflation is pretty weird and is not very satisfying as theories go. It’s excellent at explaining certain attributes of the observable universe but it has always struck me as being a bit arbitrary.

[JS_Princeton]

The arbitrariness of inflation is its whole point. I would say nearly 70% of cosmologists today are convinced inflation occurred because it ties together so many loose ends. Another 10% or so have their own pet ideas and the rest just balk at all these attempts as too grandiose and non-physical to mean anything. Nevertheless, inflation remains a falsifiable theory, so we don’t dismiss it out-of-hand.

A paper in Nature probably isn’t a good idea because there are just too many assumptions to make. First of all, though the speed of light may or may not be “changing”, there are no models that quantify it. This, in principle, isn’t a problem with time-dependent constants but since inflation comes directly out of quantified measurements the best we can do is put assymptotic upper limits on the changing of the speed of light which will necessarily be ridiculously higher than argument that are truly physical (such as supernova shockwave measurements) since inflation was such an enormous event. So it really doesn’t add anything to our way of looking at the universe. I simply am positing that one possible solution to the two seemingly disparate theories is that they actually are the same.

[Truth_Seeker]

**First of all, though the speed of light may or may not be “changing”, there are no models that quantify it.

**
Well, I dunno. Let’s assume, for purposes of argument, that the observations are accurate. Now you’ve got two data points, the speed of light now and the speed of light 13 billion years ago. You’ve also got some lower bounds on what c would have had to be in the very early universe.

I don’t recall if anyone’s mentioned this in this thread but a changing c would have quite interesting implications for the conservation of energy – much weirder than those for relativity. Since I did so well with my previous WAG, I’ll make another. Actually, it’s less of a WAG than a WAS. Assume that c were near infinite. Therefore, an elementary particle will have a near infinite rest mass. If the speed of light drops 60 orders of magnitude, what happens to the now excess energy that used to be in the rest mass?

So to go even farther out on the twig, suppose you have an empty universe with a near, but not quite, infinite speed of light. This in turn, implies that there are hardly any quantum fluctuations to slow things down. Eventually, there is a quantum fluctuation and c, in that region of space, goes down. which causes more quantum fluctuations, which reduces c more, etc.

As c decreases, these high-rest mass virtual particles end up having too much energy rather than not enough and the “excess” energy boils off as still more particles.

If you could demonstrate that a change in c was, even theoretically, a valid interpretation of inflation, it would be a very important, and possibly fundamental, contribution. It would also be extremely elegant.

Somebody should look!

[JS_Princeton]

Oh no, Truth, you aren’t dragging me down this road

Okay, so you are going to drag me down it.

Well, the observations themselves don’t say one thing or another about the speed of light. They are simply saying something about the fine-structure constant. According to Davies, he would like to alter the speed of light due to certain parts of physics he feels are more vital than others (including the conservation of energy, interestingly enough). Actually, there are a few folks I’ve talked to that aren’t exactly sure he has to appeal to this argument at all. In effect, the fine structure constant may have some other influence on it that would not require a changing c. A WAG (or WAS) to be sure, but it’s not like Davies is really basing his speculation on very much more than the wild asses of the wilderness (well, maybe a little bit more).

Now I’m going to take you to task, if you’ll excuse me…

Assume that c were near infinite.

In a finite universe, this doesn’t make much sense lest the universe be larger than itself. Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by near infinite? Perhaps you mean that the potential barrier is infinite in extent and there is not initial expansion. If this were the case, then you can kiss goodbye to quantum fluctuations as an infinite potential puts the kibosh on any tunneling. So fine, you say near… but this doesn’t cut it. Your idea depends upon strict limits and massive changes of things that are not much more than speculation at this point. This is something akin to arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

If the speed of light drops 60 orders of magnitude, what happens to the now excess energy that used to be in the rest mass?

Presumably it has gone into the “phase transition”. Again, this is assuming that there is symmetry between the two models (which I’m not sure of).

This in turn, implies that there are hardly any quantum fluctuations to slow things down.

It’s worse than that… there’s no universe at all if you look at current origin speculation (which assumes tunnelling as a primal cause).

In short, if I understand you correctly, we want c decreasing drastically to be the source of large-scale structure. I’m afraid you’re going to have to contend with a number of prominent stop signs along the way which aren’t evident (to me, at least) how you will get around.

But be my guest, submit to Physical Review Letters and see what they say.