Velocity of Light: Part 1

Frank asks:

• Why the red shift? Isn't c a supposedly fixed constant regardless of the relative velocities of the producers of electromagnetic radiation and its observers? I like your explanation: c changes due to some interaction with a medium between distant galaxies and our telescopes.
• If c is some fixed constant, why should light have different velocities in different media, like water, air, hot air v. cold air, the vacuum of space, etc.?

Good questions Frank. 

Before answering this, one must first state one’s assumptions about what light is.  In UD, of course, a phenomenon is either matter or motion.  Unlike Einstein, we consider light to be motion.  For that to be possible, light must have a universal medium, commonly referred to as the aether, as was finally admitted by Einstein in 1920.   Modern physicists nevertheless continue to use Einstein’s initial conception of light as matter—a particle that travels through completely empty space at a constant velocity, c.  This particle, the photon, has mysterious, unprecedented properties. 

First of all, it must be massless.  This is because Einstein’s own equation for relativistic mass ( m_rel) forbids it to have rest mass (m_o):

                                                  m_rel  = m_o /(1-v²/c²)^1/2

If the rest mass, m_o, were anything at all, then m_rel would be infinite.  This is because v in the equation always is assumed to be c.  Then, c²/c² equals 1.  The square root of 1-1 is zero.  Then, m_rel = m_o/0 equals infinity.  How a thing can have no mass and still be a thing remains unexplained.

Second of all, the photon was next conceived as a “wave packet” imagined to contain the vibrations we call light.  This conception was not so bad for short wave lengths, but really fell apart when it was extrapolated to all electromagnetic radiation.  Some EM waves are over 10 km long.  That one must be some photon!

Even if, like modern physicists and cosmogonists, you were able to swallow the above without breaking a sweat, you would also have to believe that space was perfectly empty.  Then, your mysterious photon could travel at c with nothing at all to slow it down.  I can’t imagine at all how such a creature could arrive from a distant galaxy with the waves within its packet having been red-shifted as the result of having been ejected from a receding object.  The red shifts that I am familiar with are a result of the Doppler Effect, which in my view, can only occur in a medium.  The red shift could not occur in completely empty space, and it certainly could not be the property of a single photon.

The upshot of all this is that I do not trust the purveyors of this illogical, obsolete view of light to tell me anything useful about the galactic redshift.  The galactic redshifts are a fact.  They need to be explained, but the aether, not the photon, is absolutely required for them to make any sense.  If the aether is required, then the velocity of light is dependent on the characteristics of the aether.  Would the density of the aether be the same throughout the universe?  No.  Would the velocity of light be independent of the density of the aether?  No.  Would c ever be constant?  No.  Would wave motion through the aether be affected by the Doppler Effect? Yes.  Stay tuned for what the real cause of the galactic red shift could be.      

    

The True Significance of “Multiverses” and “Parallel Universes”

Frank writes:

“When reading the cosmology literature, I'm always left wondering.”  “Parallel universes, plus the theory of our own splitting constantly into an infinity of universes, are just too weird to believe.”

Frank:

Thanks for the comment.  It is always good to know the concerns of readers.  You have hit upon one of the major ways in which systems philosophy evolves.  When we draw an imaginary boundary around any portion of the infinite universe and study it to the exclusion of all else, we invariably make microcosmic errors.  That is, we tend to overemphasize the microcosm and deemphasize the macrocosm.  Nevertheless, our inevitably increasing experience with the macrocosm forces us to consider things that exist outside of whatever “system” we have chosen.  We do this timidly, with the language following along in retarded fashion.  Thus, when galaxies were first discovered, they were given the oxymoronic name “island universes.”  We have long since abandoned that terminology, even though we tend to use the same approach on a grander scale.

Although equally oxymoronic, today’s multiverse and parallel universe theories are signs that the Big Bang Theory (BBT) is now in its declining years as the archetype of systems philosophy.  Even conventional folks are thinking “outside the box” once again.  This is analogous to what is happening in “systems ecology,” which likewise indicates that ecologists have learned that it is not enough to study a “system.”  One must include its environment as well.  So now, the observed universe is getting an environment—the first few toddling steps toward the realization that the universe actually is infinite.  Through the back door, multiverse and parallel universe theories undermine the BBT.  As weird as those conceptions are, we should see them as precursors to a grander vision: the demise of cosmogony and the ultimate acceptance of Infinite Universe Theory.