Another scintillating conversation on the Speculations Rumor Mill concerned the speed of light. Does it vary? If you're a speculative fiction writer and you haven't visited the Rumor Mill, you should do so right away. You don't have to subscribe to Speculations, Kent Brewster's outstanding spec fiction market magazine, to join the fun, but often, writers who do get involved in the Rumor Mill end up subscribing because Speculations is so valuable a resource.

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Message #485 left by Mark Rapacioli on Feb 11, 2000 at 10:32

Re: "The speed of light is a constant. It doesn't vary."

In theory, according to 99.9% of the scientific world, the speed of light in a vacuum is constant -- but, it's possible we're all wrong.

A former classmate and almost-a-roomate of mine at MIT (who also happens to be my wife's ex-boyfriend and former karate instructor) was working on a project at Cal-Berkeley a few years ago, which suggested that photons can travel faster than the so-called speed of light constant. Check your library for an August '93 Scientific American, for an article called "Faster Than Light?"

This was also the basis for an article in a 1995 Time or Newsweek (the only reason I remember that date is, I read about it while I was in the hospital, awaiting the birth of our daughter), after other experiments achieved the same results as the Berkeley experiments. I first scoffed at the concept of FTL light particles, until I noticed the guy's name at the end of the article. This provided all the credibility I needed -- this guy was a real physics whiz at MIT.

Message #487 left by DaveK on Feb 11, 2000 at 12:51

I recall that there was a recent article about the speed of light which purported that it isn't necessarily constant. Sorry, I don't recall the source, but I think there's a reference to it in one of the RM topics.
 

Message #488 left by Mark Rapacioli on Feb 11, 2000 at 13:02

Start at #219 and work your way down

Somehow, I missed this conversation and let it slip by me the first time.

In case anyone's wondering, the MIT alum of the Berkeley trio is Paul Kwiat. Nice guy, very bright.
 

Message #501 left by Gregory Koster on Feb 14, 2000 at 0:11

For Rebecca: from your #482:

[But I may as well be lecturing at a barn full of chickens. I feel like screaming, "I'm a scientist, sir! I know these things!" ]

(The "things" were well established scientific facts, such as the speed of light.)

Claiming you are a scientist and therefore know these things is a logical fallacy. As has already been pointed out, many people know these things who cannot claim to be a scientist be any stretch of the word. This smacks more of wounded ego and authoritarianism (a management philosophy composed of equal parts of murder and suicide) than logic.
 

From your #495:

[Ignorance I can deal with. We're all ignorant on some issue or other. I truly don't mind if someone gently corrects me. In fact, I'm glad of it. I never tried to cut anyone's knees out from under them. I hate it when that's done to me. But I would have been gratified if someone had said anything like, "oh, Alpha Centauri's a star? I didn't know that." But they ignored my comments on the science and instead lectured me about the space aliens that were going to come back in 2013 and take us all prisoner, citing such experts as Erich Von Daniken as their research sources. ]

Gently then: are you sure you don't mind being corrected gently? Remember, in the role you have described, you were not acting as a scientist, but as a teacher. Lots of non-scientists know these facts. It would take a teacher to educate the folks you were interacting with. By your own admission, you have failed, ignominiously enough to have left the board, denouncing them as "chickens in a barn." I think you give yourself away when you say that it would have been nice to have your learning acknowledged. It seldom works this way. Such an attitude is rarely rewarded the way it thinks it should be. More, the rink-stinks of this our world can sense such an attitude, and start baiting you with it (take a look at the archives of the topic "The Expert Is In," searching for poster Tom Burns for a fine example of a rink-stink, and an equally fine example of how he burned me.) It seems likely to me that this motivated several of your tormentors. I'm a bit surprised that you are astonished and dismayed to find ignorance in such great supply. Ignorance and the sloth that generates it has been around for a long time. Given the information explosion that characterizes this era, it is inevitable that there will be more and more ignoramuses in the world. (The catalogs will get ever thicker, with the entry for Koster, Gregory prominently displayed distressingly near the top in far too many categories.) The only way round it is by teaching. But to teach effectively, it is surely the student's ignorance that needs consideration, not the teacher's need to be acknowledged. Or am I wrong?

Also from your #495:

[I was in a workshop, and every single one of us tried to gently convince this one lady that you just don't jump around in PoV from one character's head to another to another to another. Her response was a shrug and "well, just get used to it cuz that's the way I write." What I wanted to tell her was "but the way you write is *wrong*! It doesn't bloody work!" But I cut my losses. We'd told her our opinion. It was up to her what to do with it.]

Your last line says what needs saying, yet it is clearly subordinate to the part about her being *wrong* and not bloody working, and cutting your losses. There are a great many stories where the point of view (it's usually a good idea to spell out abbreviation the first time they are used) jumps around merrily, putting a Mexican Jumping Bean to shame. Yet, I'll respect your judgment that it didn't bloody work, for you at least. Did you tell the subject why it didn't work? If not, why? Surely the point of a workshop is to give detailed criticism. I think it must be presumed that the participants in a workshop are ready for criticism, often blunter than a stick. If so, cutting your losses acknowledges failure to teach. Otherwise, you might as well stick to one sentence form rejections. If she does not accept your criticism, there's a finite chance she is right. Far more likely, she will never be published, a judgment far more effective, if harsh, than any criticism an outsider can give.

If you want to give up trying to teach others, all right. It will be their loss---but it will be your loss too. Your giving up in frustration is not so different from the woman in your workshop blandly denying the probable truth of your criticism. It hurts you as well. It is my experience that the best teaching comes when the teacher learns something, as well as the student. I will make you a deal: hang around the "Clarion Workshop" topic. Sooner or later, you will catch me bawling and ranting, and can quote these words back to me. They will be just as valid when they bite me as when I apply them to you. And as well deserved.

For Jay Arr: From your #491:

[Re pseudo-science. Until the scientific community grows up a little and stops making pronouncements couched as Holy Writ on subjects about which it knows nothing or very little, there are going to be lots of people who will turn away from the establishment and seek out something different. And the farther from the standard viewpoint they can get, the happier they'll be.]

How about some examples of these quotes from Holy Writ? I think you answer yourself in the last line when you say that some folks are happiest when they are farthest from the standard viewpoint. I must reject your notion that "Science should be open to all possibilities." Such a notion puts Von Daniken on a par with Charles Darwin, particularly among those who are ignorant of what is and isn't "possible." In my saner moments, I am not disturbed by the proliferation of viewpoints I am "sure" are false. I know they will fall to the ground of their own weight. Then Bradley Smith comes along "proving" that only an insignificant number of Jews were killed at Auschwitz et. al., and I too get in a lather. In the human procession, I'm the fellow blowing the trumpet (which I seem to have done at excessive length tonight) while tripping over his own feet. A common posture, I am told.

Best regards, Gregory Koster
 
 
 

Message #508 left by Jay Arr on Feb 14, 2000 at 9:37

I will now make my *third* attempt in the past hour to post to this topic. My computer keeps disconnecting from the net and taking me back to the Windows start-up page. I'm not going to try to recreate all I wrote before, but I'll try to post this much:

Gregory wrote: ""I must reject your notion that "Science should be open to all possibilities." Such a notion puts Von Daniken on a par with Charles Darwin...""

Which is exactly where he belongs, Gregory, *until* someone is open enough to look at his ideas objectively and report any errors. If we had a society in which ideas were given a fair hearing *before* they were condemned, Von Daniken would have been shown up in a hurry as having nothing really to offer. Instead he's quoted as an authority by the large percentage of our population who see the pronouncements of the scientific community as reactionary and blindly prejediced. Which they often are.
 

Message #509 left by Jay Arr on Feb 14, 2000 at 9:54

Excuse any grammatical errors; I'm speed-posting to get a comment on before my machine can sabotage me again. Gregory asked me to name la few cases in which science had pronounced on subjects it knew nothing about. We begin with the ancient Greeks and go on to ideas about what heavenly body revolves around what, the age of the earth, the preference for believing that "two Yankee professors would lie than that stones fall from the sky," the definitive proof that bumblebees cannot fly, the definitive mathematical proof that heavier-than-air aircraft cannot fly, the absolute certainty that the continents do not "drift," the neccessity for the ether, the certainty (repeated hundreds of times over the last few decades before we started to actually deduce the existence of other star systems) that planets near a sun will be small and solid, the impossibility of a life-form with an odd number of limbs (???), the necessity of water to any life form, Einsteins' reaction to quantum theory, the well-known attitude in science just before the turn of the century (the previous one, that is) that nature had been conquered and nothing was left to do but fill in the details... These are only a few examples, but we could go on like this all day repeating scientific ideas that were the thinnest conjecture but were taught, and in some cases are still being taught, as "scientific facts." In fact, you can probably think of another dozen examples in a few moments.

The fact is that science has never been slow to make learned pronouncements out of vague guesses.
 

Message #510 left by Gregory Koster on Feb 14, 2000 at 12:25

For Jay Arr: Fair enough. I must concede several of the points, such as the impossibility of continental drift, and the Greeks. But that isn't the whole story. Take Mendeleev's notion about the periodic table. He published it, and it was almost immediately accepted, particularly when it started predicting elements to be discovered. Similarly, when Linus Pauling published THE NATURE OF THE CHEMICAL BOND in 1939, it was quickly accepted as it provided the theory behind chemical bonding and superseded the rules of thumb chemists had used up to that time. As for Darwin acting as a tailor for Truth: I have no doubt that his original theory was wrong in spots. It was amusing to watch Truth's eyes bulge out because Darwin got the collar too tight. But at least Darwin made a suit for Truth. Von Daniken's mess resembles nothing more than a straightjacket (sp?) I do not deny that science has made blunders and bad ones. But there have also been great triumphs. I will go further and say that in a search for truth (as defined by Karl Popper, a philosopher of science), science and the scientific method beat any other way devised by long odds. This does not mean that great errors and outright frauds won't be committed. But the answer is to expose the errors. This also means holding Von Daniken to the same standard as Darwin. It won't be Darwin who suffers by such judgment.

Best regards, Gregory Koster
 
 
 

Message #511 left by Terry on Feb 14, 2000 at 12:56

I'm staying out of this exceedingly interesting discussion, except to say, for what it's worth, that I bought "Chariots of the Gods" way back (1971?) before I had a particle of science education (except high school biology & chemistry, which don't count) and I could not force myself to read past about page 5. Even my entirely untutored mind revolted at his ludicrous leaps of logic. It was one of the few times I've literally thrown a book across a room.
 

Message #512 left by Alan on Feb 14, 2000 at 16:34

Add in others such as: The Earth is flat, laser beams only exist in sci-fi and could never be portable, the 69 Mets, and Darwin's theory regarding evolution.

Yeah, I'm on Jay's side.

I'm not advocating the belief of crackpots, but crackpots have been known to be right (ex Galilleo). Keep an open mind but if the proof requires a "leap of faith" then throw the book at the offending crackpot.
 

Message #513 left by Jay Arr on Feb 14, 2000 at 21:14

Exactly, Alan. Except that I would say that any truly revolutionary theory requires, not a leap *of* faith, but a leap *from* faith into actual logic.

Gregory: The scientific method *is* the best method. And in its ideal form, it requires objectivity. It's when science turns its back on objectivity and strikes out blindly at "crazy" notions that some of our best and brightest turn their back on it. The biggest obstacle to the creation of an atmosphere of trust and objective inquiry is scientists. You are right that the answer is to expose the errors. But that takes work and most scientists would rather just make a blanket condemnation of new work than actually consider it objectively and refute it point for point, as they should.

Incidentally, the post that started all this was a cry of frustration from a scientist because people wouldn't take certain scientific facts as Holy Writ. It included the idea that the speed of light does not vary (actually it does, it travels more sloly through air than through vacuum and more slowly through water than through air). It also stated that Chiron is a moon. We could argue that all day, depending on how you want to define "moon" and whether you still hang onto the outmoded idea that Earth has a moon.

Obviously, these are two of the most solid, unchallengeable "facts" that this self-proclaimed scientist could come up with. One is in direct opposition to all other scientific knowledge and the other is highly arguable. So if this is scientific truth...
 

Message #522 left by Andrew on Feb 15, 2000 at 7:57

Martin, your proverb is a quote from Clarke, if memory serves.

And c does not vary in any medium.

Light appears to slow down as it passes through matter because inside matter the individual photons bounce about (highly technical explanation, can a physicist please give the simple version with quantised absorptions and emissions?) and the rate of progress is slower. The straight-line speed doesn't change, but the journey length and therefore time taken goes up.
 

Message #523 left by Mark Rapacioli on Feb 15, 2000 at 8:56

Again, as I've said before, we could all be wrong.

We can all shout about the speed of light all we want. Unless we ourselves have taken part in such experiments to measure the speed of light, then all we are doing is parrotting the stuff we were taught in school and from reading books -- much like the "earth is flat" folks of centuries before.

Has anyone here actually looked at a writeup about the Berkeley FTL experiments? If not, then how do you know that they are wrong and you are right about c being a contsant?

I myself don't know what to think about the Berkeley experiments. Physics was never my strongest subject. I do have a bit more of an open mind, though, only because I once knew one of the experimenters, and as I said, he was a very bright guy (hey, he dated my wife, that has to count for something!).
 

Message #524 left by Alan on Feb 15, 2000 at 9:25

I know that Quantum mechanics is beyond my mathematical abilities and any English translation is of questionable accuracy.

I do know that people said that a "transporter" was impossible, myet I have a newsclipping stating that photons had been successfully "transported".

Why isn't FTL possible? Is there truly a 'c'? What if you cheat a bit by compacting the distance? Do I sound like a heretic? No, I sound like a science fiction writer and a Systems Analyst asking why not? Hell, in my job I'm almost always asked to do the impossible. Someone else take a turn.
 

Message #525 left by Jay Arr on Feb 15, 2000 at 9:58

Alan, if quantum mechanics is correct, transporting is the normal method by which electrons move from one orbit to another (providing you see atoms as inhabiting space, which some physicists apparently don't... *sigh*). I'd love to see a scan of that clipping.

Rebecca: Didn't mean by the word "self-proclaimed" that there was any doubt, just that you had called yourself a scientist. I am a self-proclaimed writer. No offense intended.

Since science is an ongoing process of discovery in which all "facts" are subject to change and all theories to refinement or abandonment, much of what science says must neccessarily be wrong. That's not a bad thing. It's only bad when these so-called facts are parroted as Gospel when equally valid interpretations of the data are available. The difficulty of making definitive statements about anything is well-known. That has been the main detriment to human progress for a long time now. That's the point I was trying to get across.

And, yes, I still believe that many of our brightest and most imaginative minds turn away from science because of the inflexible attitudes regarding controversial subjects. The debates over vitamin C would be a good example.

C - the speed of light in a vacuum - is a constant as far as anyone knows. Though, as Mark said, maybe we're all wrong. The speed of light may or may not vary, as Andrew pointed out it's possible for the *speed* to remain constant while the rate of progress slows. Which brings in the idea of velocity. *sigh* You know, this could get complicated if we worked at it.
 

Message #526 left by Dave Kuzminski on Feb 15, 2000 at 10:17

Assuming that light is composed of matter particles, then the speed of light might not be constant. Couldn't there be a brief period of acceleration from a dead stop when light is created to the point of reaching what we call light speed?

Also, if light is composed of matter particles, then couldn't other forces affect its speed? Couldn't gravity cause it to first speed up and then slow down when passing close to a planetary body with significant gravitational forces?
 

Message #527 left by MWA on Feb 15, 2000 at 10:49

In quantum mechanics you don't have absolutes, you have potenials. For the most part, concrete measurements are rare and are only reference points--what we think is really going on at a sub-atomic level is only an educated guess.

Theories abound; proof is much harder to find. If you get past the live/dead cat in the box and the many worlds/all possible realities and settle on a seamless whole, the picture is still reatively muddy. Pick your favorite theory and run with it. Make the speed of light constant if it advances your story--let it vary if it doesn't. There's at least a slim chance that the quirky variation in your story will someday be proven valid.

The most anyone can do is disagree. I think being too much of a scientific purist can hinder rather than help.

And that's my two cents. Take yer best shot!
 

Message #528 left by Terry on Feb 15, 2000 at 11:09

Whew! Thought for a minute there that the villagers were going to haul out the pitchforks & torches...once again, courtesy, restraint and logic win the day at the RM! Bravo, everyone!

Lenora: Why would I want to do that?
 

Message #529 left by Alan on Feb 15, 2000 at 14:26

Jay,

Drop me an email and I'll get more info for you. I'd checked the references so it's not any more of a hoax than anything else. In fact I've seen several references to it since then.

I do know that one of the tenets is that you can determine the location, or the speed of a particle but not both. The entire experiment was based on knowing the location.
 

Dave, the answer is that light is made up of particles (never mind quantum mechanics) simple wave theory and proofs have established that. Since light has been proven to "bend" under the influence of strong gravity then by transitive property light particles are influenced by gravity. The probel is that the particles are so small and gravitational forces are so "weak" that I haven't seen a successful proof as to if the speed is affected (but it does make sense). Of course, I never really needed to look.
 

Message #539 left by Tom Williams on Feb 16, 2000 at 7:37

What happens to the speed of a light ray passing near/into a black hole. Just curious.
 
 
 

Message #540 left by Alan on Feb 16, 2000 at 8:58

Terry,

Interested in salvaging the whole SOL discussion?
 

Message #541 left by Jay Arr on Feb 16, 2000 at 17:44

The whole idea of a "black" hole is that light can't reach escape velocity in order to escape from it. So are all those photons rattling around in there at the speed of light, or are they sitting still? (The photon has a rest mass of zero, right?) And in where? Does a black hole proper (as opposed to its sphere of gravitational influence) actually occupy space? (It could. I have a teen-age son and that's all he does in his high school.)

*Any* gravitational field has some effect on light; the eclipse sightings of 1919 proved that. Photons passing through the Schwarzchild radius of a black hole might be drawn into a path around the black hole with a velocity such that they could never escape *or* be drawn farther in.

Light in orbit? (This could be more fun than *Pigs in Space*). Imagine a light-message circling forever and forever and blaring out its message to the cosmos: "Dear John, I really love you, but because of the impotence and the bed-wetting..."
 

Message #542 left by DaveK on Feb 16, 2000 at 19:12

Jay: regarding your msg #541, what an idea! Imagine Coke or Pepsi subsidizing a project to put a message in light orbiting a black hole.
 

Message #543 left by Terry on Feb 16, 2000 at 22:50

Alan: Huh?
 

Message #544 left by Tom Williams on Feb 17, 2000 at 2:53

Perhaps those pulsar/quasar thingies are someone's form of neon advertising.
 

Message #545 left by Andrew on Feb 17, 2000 at 7:40

Weeeeelll, provided you do it far enough out that tidal effects (that is gravity down at knee level is different to that at your head level) aren't a problem, you can put anything in orbit around a black hole, just like around any concentration of mass.

And if light is orbiting a black hole, it's not going anywhere it can be detected: you have to get in the way of a photon to "see" it. And that, of course, means getting close enough to a black hole for it to kill you. Some advert.

What happens to photons that fall into a black hole? According to Hawking, Mighty Cthulhu eats them. Or, rather, once they get past the event horizon (the point where the hole's gravity is high enough that not even light/information escapes) they cease to have a damned thing to do with this universe. Some of the things they think happen inside an event horizon are decidedly scary, particularly when you consider that there is a small but real probability that they can escape.
 

Message #546 left by Barry on Feb 17, 2000 at 7:46

Terry, I think Alan was refering to you salvaging the Speed Of Light discussion.
 

Message #547 left by Terry on Feb 17, 2000 at 7:57

Oh! Yes! Right. Well, then, let's shape up here, people! This is supposed to be a Speed of Light conversation! You there, with someone else's finger up your nose--give it back to them and pay attention. And you, Anon-I-Mus, wipe that wink off your face. This is a science lesson!

How's that?
 

Message #548 left by Jay Arr on Feb 17, 2000 at 9:03

You have to not only get in the way of a photon to see, you must be capable of reflecting the photon. So there's no seeing without being seen. And, yes, since photons did not reflect from *The Invisible Man,* he would have been blind.

Other types of particles at the radius of a black hole shed energy in the form of X-rays, gamma rays, alpha rays, etc. But do photons shed energy and if so, what kind? Photonettes? ("I dropped ewight bucks to see this black hole and now they want two dollars for a box of photonettes? If I want popcorn, I supose I can mortgage the house...") If photons shed energy, could the energy-loss be directed? (Quasars are actually repeating "Buy! Buy! Buy!")
 

Message #549 left by Barry on Feb 17, 2000 at 10:59

Terry, First of all, I'm laughing my ass off. Next, I think Alan meant salvage it as you salvaged the alcohol discussion. To your writing site.
 

Message #550 left by Terry on Feb 17, 2000 at 13:11

OH!!! AH!!! (Enlightenment!) Yes, Barry, Alan, you're absolutely right--with everyone's permission I'll save this entire discussion (the speed of light-relevant ones) and post them in the Light Bulb Alley on my web site, for use by future tech-needy writers.


...And so I did. The End.

Now where: The Science Fiction page? The rock'n'roll page? Or back to the Home Page?