Hi TB,
Concerning the decay in c, I thought you may be interested in an interview with John Webb appearing in Astronomy Now magazine, October 2002, page 31. Some parts of the interview for your consideration:
"I don't know for sure if anything is changing with time, but the observational results we've got are both statistically significant and consistant with a change to the fine structure constant. However, it is still possible that there is some kind of systematic problem with the data that we haven't yet spotted."
"There are several reasons to suspect that the speed of light might be the culprit, but I have to say at the moment it is just theoretical speculation."
"If you interpret the varying fine structure constant in terms of a varying speed of light and a constant electron charge and Planck constant, then yes the speed of light is falling as the Universe grows older. Whether it continues to drop at the same rate today as it did in the past is not clear. Looking at the data, my suspicion would be that the rate of change was more rapid in the past. But the data are not really good enough to tie that down. That is for us to do in the future."
"So far, all the quasar data have come from the same instrument, mounted on the same telescope. Obviously we have to be quite careful as to whether there could be a particular problem with the data, which is particular to that instrument, or that telescope. So the next step is to analyse data from a different telescope and a different instrument."
Seems to me there is more work to do. The article mentions that data collected by the ESO VLT would be next to be examined.
I've looked for this interview on line but could not find it.
Frank
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