I began to think in the influence of our perceptions on how we look at what we see, including scientific evidence. Then, because I started unbelieving may things, I decided to look at explanations that may either be bizarre or lead to bizarre explanations (space being some sort of rubber deformed by gravity fields, for example). I got interested in light because in my chemistry blog I argue that distortions in spectrophotometric readings come from asymmetric distributions of chemicals between the surface and bulk of a solution. And then I started to muse....
Fact 1: strong gravitational fields (such as the Sun's) can alter the trajectories of photons.
Therefore, however small and undetectable with our means, photons must have some mass. That's why their trajectories change. Being unable to detect a property of something known to exist does not mean the value of this property is zero, it means that it is below the detection limit. Inability to detect the mass of a photon is no excuse to ignore the fact that a gravitational field influences it.
Fact 2: (again) strong graviational fields (such as the Sun's)......(you get it...)
Therefore, the photon must have accelerated as it approaches the star and decelerated as it moves away. As a consequence, the speed of an individual photon is non-constant and therefore there is no reason ALL photons travel at the same peed.
EINSTEIN said that.... Not good enough. Einstein also said that the viscosity V of a suspension/ dispersion is equal to the viscosity V0 of the liquid in which the dispersion is made over 1 minus the volume fraction (between 0 and 1) of dispersed substance. Except for some simple cases, the equation is no good at all. If he got this equation wrong through oversimplification and overlooking of relevant cases, he could have been wrong in other instances (for example, ones in which he could not actually make any measures to confirm his hypotheses).
Fact 3. There is a detection limit to the speed of light.
There was the recent "superluminic neutrinos" fiasco, when it was first reported that some neutrinos with speeds of roughly 300,010 km/s had been detected, only to report later that it was an error due to the detection method. This means that there is a window gap between around 299,990 km/s and 300,010 km/s where IT CANNOT BE SAID IF ALL PHOTONS ARE TRAVELLING AT THE SAME SPEED. There is no previous effort to try to find out what could be the influence of variable speed, so there is no way to know if such differences (299,996 km/s vs 300,004 km/s) could be meaningful from an application (photochemistry, optics) point of view.
Fact 4. Photons are generated by electrons as they discharge energy from high energy to low energy states.
Most of the light is generated in the stars, under conditions that are different from the ones in our environment. Therefore, we cannot replicate every possible photon that can be generated. We cannot say either that they are shot at the same speed.
Fact 5. Photons are detected by electrons causing them to charge from low energy to high energy states.
This means that if we do not have a suitable electron, we cannot detect a given type of photon. We cannot assure that we can "see" all photons.
By the way, what for us is primarily "light" for an earthworm would be only "heat". And, if for some bizarre evolutionary twist we had developed, instead of eyes, photo voltaic cells connected to our brain to cause us an orgasm when light hits us, to make sure we stay in the sun for photosynthesis to occur in our skins, we would call the radiation "pleasure".
RECAP 1.
What we have until now is that there is no guarantee that we have a material available to detect any possible photon generating at a star, that they look like having some mass and being susceptible to acceleration and deceleration under strong gravitational fields (the Earth's does not feel like a particularly strong one, so making an experiment shooting photons high up and horizontally, checking that the speeds are the same (see error in measure above) and extrapolating that gravity has no effect on light speed anywhere in the universe is a bit too much).
HYPOTHESES 1.
Here I propose some postulates about light speed.
Postulate 1. There is a range of "start" speeds of light, with which photons are fired up from electrons or atoms.
Postulate 2. A photon's "energy" is somehow a manifestation of its speed and the intensity of its electromagnatic "je ne sais quoi", which combine to yield its ability to change the energetic state of certain electrons. To an extent, different pairs of said values may yield the same "energy".
Postulate 3. To be able to interact with a given type (energy level) of electron (and irrespective of interaction rules like being of the appropriate "energy" etc) a photon must be above a certain energy/speed threshold.
Postulate 4. In order to interact, the photon must "stay with a particular electron" for long enough: i.e., there is a maximum detectable speed for a given photon.
Fact 6. Giant stars are blue, dwarf stars are red.
The only argument for the life cycle of stars is that they emit different light spectra. What if this is simply the consequence of smaller stars firing away faster photons than larger stars because of lesser gravitational pull? If "red" photons are slower, and they are more slowed down in a blue giant star, we will perceive a blue shift because the blue photons will still be within the "detectable speed" window of our sensors. In a red dwarf, blue photons may be too fast for detection, while "red photons" will be faster than in larger stars, and keep within the detection window (and dominate it). Intermediate mass stars would have more balanced spectra.
Fact 7. The relative speeds of detector and photon depend on trajectories.
If we are moving towards a source of light, the photon is reaching the sensor at a faster speed than if we are moving away from the source of light. Therefore, for a photon travelling at a given absolute velocity, the detection windows would be different depending on the relative speeds. The net effect of the speed interplay is that, because the materials available are what they are, we will always see the same speed segment, whatever it in there. Combining this and the lack of resolution of the methods for measure of speed, no wonder the speed of light seems constant!
Fact 8. Stars rotate and displace.
No two photons from a star coming into a detector arrive from the same atom. It does not make sense to assume that all atoms from a star are synchronized to emit as if they were the same. If does not make sense to talk about a wavelength compression or extension as the source travels towards or away. Individual photons are individual. The only thing that the source can do if moving towards is being brighter, if moving away being duller.
Fact 9. Ditto for galaxies.
Ditto.
RECAP 2.
As shown, there are a few problems in embracing variable speed of light. It creates an uncertainty that makes mathematically impossible to ascertain certain things: a star is of a given color because it has some size and we are keeping distance, or because it has some other size and we are moving away or towards? Worse than that, if black holes are just stopping photons dead in their tracks without resort to time-space warps etc, there is no chance for wormholes, and then what is the whole point about looking for stars 30 light years away?
Let us not forget that, the more convoluted an explanation is, the more likely is to be wrong. Currently, accepted teaching by the wise requires us to believe that space folds, instead of being emptiness; tha they are some strange strings that may be open or close, and cannot be seen; that energy shifts forward and backward in time, that there are infinite universes in some of which we exist motionless at different "times" of our existence (why do I need hand-eye co-ordination, then?) and that all matter in the universe turned up at some point in a superatom and blew up. Oddly enough, it seems we should think all this more believable than the existence of an invisible (like the strings) God saying "let there be light" (the superatom). I do not say we should believe in God. I believe we should believe in the simplest logical explanation that is consistent with empirical observation.
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