Speed of Light

Hi Viv,You seem to be having remarkable difficulty getting the hang of things around here.

1. One does not carry on dialogs with moderators in discussion threads, which should maintain their focus on the topic. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE.
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2. The issues you're raising are ones that should be raised over at Report discussion problems here: No.2. That is the proper place to raise issues regarding other participants, topic focus, board moderation, etc.
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3. This is not your thread. You're using it to discuss your own ideas, but as the thread's originator is no longer active I see no problem with this. But if you'd like a thread more appropriate to and more tightly focused on your topic, one where you have the opportunity in the opening post to outline the topic and highlight the issues, then you can propose one over at Proposed New Topics.
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4. It isn't your ideas that are off-topic in this thread. It is your continual resort to accusations of fear and hysteria and lack of courage and insight on the part of those you're discussing with. Getting personal in this way is off-topic in any discussion thread.
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   Since you have such a strong proclivity for these kinds of accusations I assume that you are also unable to keep them out of your books, so I presume that the publisher of your books often gives you the same cautions requesting edits. Although since I can't find any online presence for phi Philosophical Enterprises it is possible that your books are self-published.
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5. Grandiose declarations of having solved some of the most knotty problems of physics while engaging in name dropping and denigration will always appear delusional and bring derision. If you want the derision to stop then just focus on getting your ideas across and stop all the editorializing. I can't step in to defend you when you're in effect holding up a big sign saying, "Kick me."
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6. Whether you stay or go is up to you, unless you begin behaving like a troll or a spammer. Violations of the Forum Guidelines where normal cautions aren't being heeded usually bring only 24 hour suspensions, the purpose being to make clear that the Forum Guidelines are taken seriously here.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Just to clarify once again, nothing related to what is necessary for you to communicate your ideas in physics is being ruled off topic. What's off topic is discussion like this: This is an example of one of the meta-topics that you keep trying to introduce into this discussion thread, and I will continue suspending you for 24 hours each time you attempt to do so. Take such issues to the Report discussion problems here: No.2 thread, or if you'd like to more tightly focus on your issues then open a new thread over at Suggestions and Questions.This isn't rocket science, Viv. This thread is for discussing ideas in physics related to the speed of light. If you'd like to discuss other things, take them to the appropriate threads. I happened to find this over at the Bad Astronomy Forum from a couple years ago. This is precisely the kind of thing we never want to see here: EvC Forum was founded as a place where contributions like these would not be allowed, and so we don't tolerate this kind of thing here. Clear?Please, no replies to this message in this thread.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

PERCY
Wyy are you so afraid of me replying? It certainly makes my point.All I asked was: should I stay or go. It seems you say 'go'. Well, okay, so I'm gone.Best wishesViv Pope

To all,Viv Pope is permitted to discuss any and all aspects of his ideas about the speed of light and their impact on physics as a science in this thread. If he decides to discontinue his participation here at EvC Forum then that is his choice.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Percy,
You've obviously looked in all the wrong places and have not really read and understood a thing. Try Edwin Mellen Press, Nova Science. Physics Essays. Hadronic Press, Journal of Theoretics etc. Strange behaviour for someone who is not afraid! I didn’t study psychology for nothing. It’s called ‘dissonance reduction’.Anyway, as I’ve already said, , I’m out.No more of this, please.Best wishes,Viv Pope

Viv,I don't understand what you're doing. You just said you were leaving, now you post again? To a message that specifically requests you not reply to it?The proper place for these kinds of discussions, as I keep telling you over and over and over again, is Report discussion problems here: No.2. To give you the necessary time for figuring this out I'm suspending you for 24 hours.If when your suspension expires tomorrow morning you decide you would like to continue discussion then be sure your posts are in the proper thread and focus on the topic. It's that simple.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

We are here to debate. If every time someone debates you, instead of offering any refutation you just throw a tantrum and accuse people of persecuting you and threaten to take your bat and ball and go home, then guess what? You lose the debate.This part isn't rocket science, is it? You have a hypothesis, for example, that limiting yourself to integers in an equation involving exponents will work. When I insist that it doesn't work, because solving for the roots leads to irrational numbers, you call me a bonehead and claim that the result of your hypothesis is a lovely picture of the spectrum. You jump from the hypothesis, to the result, without passing through the vacuum (real experiments, explanations, specification of these "certain algebraic" thingies) in between.

Well, I thank you for your faith in my abilities to adduce the one true path to universal understanding on so few clues. However, I have failed you. None of what you say makes it obvious to me where I’m supposed to go. May I explain.The speed of light is a velocity. It may be an illusion that photons move, but it’s an illusion of velocity. If that’s the point you want to make do so. But that which follows, your ten proofs, does not conclued that.

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1. The undeniable fact that c has the dimensions of distance divided by time explains all that is known about the times taken for communications over distance. But the fact that all velocities are distances divided by time by no means entails that all distances divided by time are velocities, which would be as absurd as saying that because all bachelors are men, all men are bachelors.

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Is there another reason, and you’ve given none, for dividing distance by time unless one is describing speed or velocity? My cousin lives 347 miles away and I‘ve not seen him for 504 hours. That’s 0.688 mph or 1 fps. Ok, it’s not a velocity unless I say "I've been crawling on hands and knees underneath a net from Baltimore for the last three weeks: How fast have I gone?", but otherwise it's just a daft conjunction. Unless you introduce a Daffy Conjunction Principle (DCP) I fail to see how this fits into any argument.

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2. Herman Bondi says: ‘Any attempt to measure the velocity of light isnot an attempt at measuring the velocity of light but an attempt at ascertaining the length of the standard metre in Paris in terms of time-units.’[ ] Also, it has been proved that all the practical consequences of Einstein’s Theory, both Special and General, can be deduced much more simply by adopting Bondi’s interpretation of c as a pure ‘conversion factor’ for interconverting measures in metres into time-measures in seconds [ ].
These two above arguments were aimed to prove that c need not necessarily be a ‘velocity’. The following eight arguments contend that c cannot, logically, be a velocity.

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Yes, as the Mars Climate Orbiter attests, it is better to do the calculations keeping all of our units the same; all the girls say yeah. And c need not necessarily be a velocity. And though that doesn’t mean it isn’t, I don’t think this is were the arguments against you are coming from. From where I sit you prefere doing the calculations chock full of obvious adjustments because you come out with obvious answers.

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3. For light to be seen, photographed or detected in any possible way, it has to shine on something. In a vacuum there is, by definition, nothing on which it can shine. So, logically, light cannot be seen, photographed or in any other way be detected in the vacuum of space, which signifies a reduction to absurdity of experiments claiming to have photographed ‘light travelling in vacuo’.

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4. To be seen or otherwise detected travelling in a vacuum, light would have to give off light. And that secondary light would have to give off light; and that tertiary light would also have to give off light and so on, ad infinitum, in a logical regress to absurdity.

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6. Light is quantised in units of Planck’s constant h. These quanta have been interpreted as ‘flying photons’, claimed to have been photographed ‘in flight’ by Nils Abramson [ ]. However, since the ‘photon’ is defined as a single, irreducible light-quantum, it has no energy to spare in manifesting itself anywhere between its point of emission and point of absorption. A quantum interaction between a pair of atoms therefore has to be instantly consummated, with there being no sensible question either as to where it is or what it does between its source and sink. There are simply no parameters to describe that ‘motion’. Any attempt to photograph or otherwise detect it absorbs its whole packet of energy at that point, so that there can be no question of how it exists or travels when undetected, that is, in vacuo.

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I dragged 4 & 6 up with 3 because they’re of a piece. I would agree that the measurement of a photon is a destructive process. That a photon has been photographed in flight is such a silly statement I have a hard time believing a professor in Applied Holography said it to be interpreted as you interpret it here. It would be real nice of you to cite where Nils Abramson said this, or quote him in context so an argument can be made against it. As it stands I smell a straw man working in the quote mines. Please show me (not tell me) I’m wrong.

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5. If c is interpreted as a ‘velocity in the vacuum of space’ (as Einstein’s Second Postulate states), then in a vacuum to what can that ’velocity’ possibly be referred, constant or otherwise? So the concept of light as having a ‘velocity in space’ is just another absurdity.

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Are you raising an army of straw men to escort us down the one true path? (Add a few tin men and cowardly lions and I go just so I can battle the flying monkeys. But I ain’t wearing the dress.)I can time the emission of a photon directed into a vacuum. I can time the reception of a photon coming out of a vacuum at the intended target. I can measure the length of the supposed path of the photon through that vacuum. I can divide P by t_r-t_e, and get something that looks remarkably like a velocity. I can also insert a detector at any point along said path prematurely interrupting the photon at exactly the time one would predict the photon to be at that point; though not before or after. This is a very good illusion.

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7. In order to conform to the law of conservation of energy, the alleged ‘photon’ cannot just hang around unconsummated in limbo, waiting to be absorbed. As Tom Phipps (Jr.) put it, ‘the ‘photon’ sure don’t have a holding pattern!’[ ] So, what is a ‘photon’ when it is supposed to be travelling, say, between galaxies or, as it might be, en route to nowhere? The whole concept is meaningless.

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I’m not sure I get this one. What does a photon have to be when it is supposed to be travelling between galaxies. My guess would be that it’s a photon. We have an electron_a in galaxy_a which emits a photon of energy E, electron_a losing said energy E. An electron_b in galaxy_b absorbs said photon gaining energy E. The total energy of electron_a, electron_b, and the photon remains unchanged. I’m sure there’s some really intersting physics in here that would also go toward explaining your POAM theory.

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8. Can light be scattered by light, as some experimenters have claimed? If a powerful laser-beam is shone across the path of another, do their ‘photons’ collide or their ‘waves’ interfere? In a simple experiment devised and carried out at Brunel university, in 1980 [ ], two powerful lasers were beamed across each other’s paths and also shone head-on at each other. No blocking or interference whatever was detected. If any such interference were to take place, then that light would suffer dispersion. Considering the amount of light that is allegedly ‘criss-crossing’ around, it would be amazing if visual acuity were possible over the length of a single metre. All the light that is allegedly shooting around in all directions would be as much a barrier to vision as the densest fog that can be imagined. The fact, then, that there are photographs of the farthest galaxies that display awesome clarity militates against the validity of any such experimentalist claim.

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Who doesn’t agree that photon-photon interactions must be exceedingly rare if ever and as cavediver produced the ever with the photon→pair↔photon and his bubble chamber picture an explanation is in order for the empirical evidence being a pov illusion. Your reply seems to have been Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. So I think I can fairly settle the issue by saying Is so, from the beginning of the world to the end, padlock, no key.

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9. All velocities, properly so called, obey the rule of the composition of velocities, according to which the velocity of an object is different relative to differently moving observers. But c is, eminently, the same for all relatively moving observers, as Einstein’s Relativity requires and as experiment confirms. Therefore, logically, c cannot be a velocity.

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Where does the properly so called rule come from? Logically, the rule of the composition of velocities doesn’t apply to photons. Photon velocities accord with a different rule as they are different from objects with mass.

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10. For a velocity to be a velocity it has to be the velocity of something that is physically identifiable. In physics both ancient and modern, there is nothing that can be physically identified as light travelling in vacuo, especially in view of Heisenberg’s Indeterminacy Principle, which makes the ‘track’ of an alleged ‘photon’ absolutely indeterminate. If we think of what ‘travels in vacuo’ as ‘waves’, then what can possibly ‘wave’ in a vacuum? And if we think of what ‘travels’ as ‘photons’, then if those ‘photons’ travel at the ‘speed of light’, then their mass has to be relativistically infinite at that ‘speed’. The mass of a single photon would be as great as that of the whole universe. To escape this consequence by assuming that the ‘stationary mass’ of the photon is zero — as some physicists have claimed — then how can that ‘zero mass’ be conceived as a ‘particle’? And, anyway, when is a photon ever regarded as stationary, since its alleged ‘velocity’ is c in all observational frames, bar none?

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Maybe you should have broken this up into several points to complete your ten instead of making three points out of point 3-4-6.You seem to be saying here and in 9 that photons should behave like buses or they don’t exist. That we can not identify a photon in the middle of its flight doesn’t mean it doesn't exist. The photon’s wave/particle nature is very odd to be sure, but more than incredulous questioning is required to negate the very useful, current interpretation. For all that I can tell is that you expect the world to comply with your brand of common sense and that the reason that it seem not to is because we’re all looking at it wrong way round. Where I see a lot of You can’t see it from there., I don’t see much Stand over here.I may be all wrong. I’m wrong a lot. Tell me what a photon is if not a photon.

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

To lyx2no
I've explained it all. If you haven't the capacity to understand, then it's hardly my fault. Not all levels of intellect are the same.Anyway, I'm no longer active on this thread. So, please, DON'T SEND ME ANY MORE OF THIS .Viv PopePS (Moderator please note.)
It's remarkable that you are allowed to get away with such personal insults to which I'm not allowed to respond. That's why I'm out.(Please don't reply)ENDSVP

Hi Viv, Of course you're allowed to respond. The place to do that is over at Report discussion problems here: No.2. I keep telling you to take your complaints there, but instead you keep complaining here. Such complaints are off-topic in this thread. Because you continue to be off-topic, and because you continue to fail to follow moderator requests (rule 1 in the Forum Guidelines, check 'em out some time), and because you became personal (rule 10), and because your violations are persistent, I'm suspending you for 48 hours this time. See you Wednesday.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

No you haven't. The burden of proof is on you. Another "fact" you've yet to establish. "This" as in questioning you. You know this is a debate site, don't you?

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

Ok, I think I get it. I don't know how I missed it the first few dozen times I read that thread, maybe it was all those gyroscopes in plain brown envelopes that distracted me. But I read it again in light of what you've said, and meditated on it for a while, and now I've read it again, and I do think I get it.There isn't any information jumping from one end to another. The information is at both ends, and only at both ends. There aren't two events, in different places, happening at one time. There is only one event, happening once. Until we see this whole event, however far away the farthest part of it is, we don't know about it.

Reply to Iblis (post 407)
From Viv Pope,
Thank God for someone on this forum thread with a bit of sense. I hope others who are free-minded enough will read what you said and think hard about it. You are exactly right about the quantum source-event and sink event being observationally indistinguishable. But what a pathetic response it was for someone to reply ‘Oh yes they are!’ which sounds like the sort of stereotypical audience response to the pantomime dame in the old music hall comedies.Anyway, thanks for showing me that perhaps all is not lost on this thread. May I suggest that now that you realise that the beginning and end of a quantum interaction are one-and-the-same event, you might like to consider the next logical move which, mind-bending though it might be, is to conclude from this that it is not the interaction that takes place in space but that the space takes place in the interaction — that is, as an observational projection out of such events as directly observed. But, of course, neither distance nor anything else can be projected from a single quantum event, any more than dimensions of a video scenario can be projected by the viewer from a single screen pixel. In that same way, observational distance (space) cannot be projected relative to the observer (in relativity) other than in statistical, i.e., information-statistical numbers of these quantum pixel-events in the eye of the observer, a camera or some other similar instrument or, as I’ve said in one of my postings, in statistical numbers of purely random quantum events, as in heat-flow between bodies in accordance with the statistical Second Law of Thermodynamics.Next, in logical order, comes the dreaded bit, the mental switch from the one tradition, or paradigm, of physics into the alternative tradition, or paradigm, of phenomenalism suggested by the eminent 19th century physicist, Ernst Mach. Not everyone, it seems, can contemplate this mental switch, even if they were aware of what ‘phenomenalism’ means or how Mach relates to it. For my heinous sins so far as the forum was concerned, this was what I was trying to suggest to the forum members as, possibly, the replacement ‘New Physics’ that NASA calls for. I thought that a whole half-century’s dedicated work on developing Mach’s relativistic physics into what has become modern Normal Realism. might have been of interest to members of what is claimed to be a ‘science’ forum. So far, the results of this experiment have been far from encouraging. This was to the extent that I was fully prepared to call a day with this particular forum but now I think I’ll give it another whirl.Please don’t think I am pressurizing you in any way with what might seem like this brain dump.Best seasonal wishes,
Vv Pope (no pseudonym)TO THE MODERATOR (PERCY)
Percy, this posting by Iblis prompts me to continue with this ‘light-speed discussion for a while more. So please cancel, for the moment at least, my notice of abandoning the thread. This will be until some clown starts insulting me again, when my natural response will undoubtedly get me banned.So far as I am concerned, this issue of quantum instantaneity and observational light-speed continues, because Iblis is definitely on to something, and it might be instructive to other members of this forum thread if this sensible line of logical reason may be allowed to continue, hopefully as a model to show how it should go and should have gone from the very first instance.Viv Pope (no pseudonym).

No worries, Viv. I hope you have a long and productive stay here. We just have a few rules is all, guidelines for helping things run smoothly.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

I have been through this entire thread. While I do not have the first-hand knowledge of cavediver or Son Goku I do follow the discipline most carefully. I will not, cannot, argue the specifics you present, but will give some observations and a few questions.First you present yourself quite well. You seem accomplished in letters and philosophy and, whether Normal Realism is efficacious or not, you appear genuine in your belief.You claim, and we have no reason to disbelieve, that you know and have rubbed shoulders with some prominent members of the physics community.You further claim that Normal Realism can or has solved some of the more perplexing issues facing the discipline such as the Pioneer Anomaly and the Missing Mass Anomaly in addition to being the Unified Quantum Relativity theory they have all been chasing for decades.NASA and cosmologists would love to have a viable explanation for the anomalies. Quantum Relativity has been a Holy Grail for physicists for decades all of whom would jump on a viable candidate with great anticipation. No matter how new or paradigm-shifting, no matter from what venue it should arrive, a powerful viable hypothesis would cause much interest and debate in the physics community (think Mordehai Milgrom and MOND)Why has this not happened with Normal Realism? Why, in your view, has such an explanatory hypothesis with the powerful attributes you claim not been studied by the community of physicists? Are your peers telling you and your colleagues what they see as failings of Normal Realism? What feedback are you receiving from your peers?