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Post Info TOPIC: Varying speed of light


L

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Ephemeral vacuum particles induce speed-of-light fluctuations

New research shows that the speed of light may not be fixed after all, but rather fluctuates
Two forthcoming EPJ D papers challenge established wisdom about the nature of vacuum. In one paper, Marcel Urban from the University of Paris-Sud, located in Orsay, France and his colleagues identified a quantum level mechanism for interpreting vacuum as being filled with pairs of virtual particles with fluctuating energy values. As a result, the inherent characteristics of vacuum, like the speed of light, may not be a constant after all, but fluctuate. Meanwhile, in another study, Gerd Leuchs and Luis L. Sįnchez-Soto, from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Light in Erlangen, Germany, suggest that physical constants, such as the speed of light and the so-called impedance of free space, are indications of the total number of elementary particles in nature.

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The varying speed of light cosmology has been proposed independently by Jean-Pierre Petit from 1988 and then John Moffat in 1992 and the two-man team of Andreas Albrecht and Joćo Magueijo in 1998 to explain the horizon problem of cosmology and propose an alternative to cosmic inflation.
In Petit's VSL model, the variation of c accompanies the joint variations of all physical constants combined to space and time scale factors changes, so that all equations and measurements of these constants remain unchanged through the evolution of the universe. The Einstein field equations remain invariant through convenient joint variations of c and G in Einstein's constant. Late-model restricts the variation of constants to the higher energy density of the early universe, at the very beginning of the Radiation-Dominated Era where spacetime is identified to space-entropy with a metric conformally flat. However it should be noted that while this was the first VSL model to be published, and the sole to date where an evolution law is given relating the joint variations of constants through time while leaving the physics unchanged, these papers received few citations in the later VSL literature.

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A brilliant young physicist Joćo Magueijo  asks the heretical question: What if the speed of light - now accepted as one of the unchanging foundations of modern physics - were not constant?
Magueijo, a 40-year old native of Portugal, puts forth the heretical idea that in the very early days of the universe light travelled faster - an idea that if proven could dethrone Einstein and forever change our understanding of the universe. He is a pioneer of the varying speed of light (VSL) theory of cosmology -an alternative to the more mainstream theory of cosmic inflation- which proposes that the speed of light in the early universe was of 60 orders of magnitude faster than its present value.

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