Setterfield and the variable speed of light model

[mdkluge]

Helen wrote (after consulting with Setterfield???):

Mark, if you draw a line between two points, you have a perfect fit for those two points. The more points you have, the less likely you are to have a perfect fit for a line or a curve or any function you like. It was a simple logical statement. Please don't take it to be something it was not meant to be.

No, Helen. While it is true that if you have exactly two distinct points there is a unique line fitting them, and that if you add a third point you will not in general be able to fit a line to all three points, it is not true that if you have three points and you add a fourth that the line fitting the four points will fit less well than the line fitting the three. Nor is it true that if you have a line fitting (imperfectly) through n points and you add m more points, that the line of best fit through the n + m points will in general fit the m + n points more poorly than the line fitting the n points.

And the latter is a fair statement of Setterfield's situation as you describe it in 1981. He had n data points, where n < 163 that he has had since 1987. Also, in 1981 his n >> 2! It is true that if it were given that you had n (n > 2) points fitting a curve perfectly, and you added m more points, then the probability of those m + n points fitting the curve perfectly is very small (unless the m points were chosen in advance to perfectly fit the curve.)

However, one seldom, if ever, has n (n > 2) EXPERIMENTAL points that perfectly or near perfectly fit a curve. EVERY scientist knows this--good, bad, and ugly. But Setterfield didn't. He had some large number of experimental measurements of c (2 << n < 163) in 1981, he KNEW that they didn't all lie on the same curve, and yet he believed his computer when it told him that their r value was .99999999+. That was unreasonable. That was his blunder. With many more than two points which he KNEW did not all lie upon his fitting curve, he still failed to immediately see that his r value could not possibly be .99999999+.

Sure, any programmer could have made the programming mistake that caused his computer to calculate r at the wrong place in his analysis algorithm. It is Setterfield's unique shame to have failed to cach such egregious an error prior to its publication. The only pre-publication pressure that might justify such a blunder might be that of standing in front of a firing squad with the alternatives "publish or perish!"

 

[Helen]

Enjoy chewing on that bone, Mark. We have better things to do. By the way, Maxwell's equations do not necessarily presume the speed of light is constant. That presumption has come with Einstein's relativity and the approach to Maxwell's equations that that has engendered.

The two have become muddied together in the minds of many students, but they needn't be.

 

[mdkluge]

Helen wrote:

You already know that permeability used to be defined in terms of the speed of light.

I know no such thing, and it isn't true, nor has any reputable physicist said so. Permeability is just an arbitrary unit conversion factor. It's a number. If you say the permeability of free space is changing with time it makes about as much sense as saying that the number 5 changes with time.

I know that explaining electromagnetism can be a little bit subtle. Remember your earlier concern that the speed of light was suddenly "defined" to be constant, so why can't mu be so "undefined"? Well the reason is that it is possible to define fundamental units of measurement so that c is or is not defined to be constant. One cannot do so with mu. While it is possible, given fundamental units of length, time and mass, to measure c in terms of those quantities, it is NOT possible so to measure mu in terms of those fundamental units plus electrical charge. .

But if Setterfield thinks that it is meaningful to talk about time-vary8ing mu (for the vacuum--time-varying relative permeabilities within matter are perfectly OK), then it is incumbent upon HIM to define his putative time-variation in a physically-meaningful way.

As for you, Helen, I want to say this as politely as I can. You are out of your league here. You are employing verbal arguments and verbal analogies (comparing constant permeability, constant speed of light) without taking into account or even understanding the essential physical differences.

Thus permeability is also defined as a constant now, and not only that, its definition (for safety's sake?) has been separated from the speed of light. (Note, please, that such texts as Physics by S.G. Starling and A. J. Woodall, 1958, Longmans, Green and Co., London, p. 1262 was still defining permeability in terms of light speed.)

Without that text I cannot say what those authors were trying to do or what pedagogical purpose they may have had in doing it. However, as the term "permeability of free space" is used, and has been used by physicists for about a century, permeability is a defined constant. If Setterfield wishes to use it otherwise, then let him carefully define its use.

 

[Helen]

Mark, Barry referenced a Physics text for you. A very reputable one. Are you calling him a liar? Or are you claiming that the physics text is not presenting the truth?

When we can't even reference something for you out of a reputed physics text, it's time the discussion stopped.

 

[mdkluge]

Helen wrote:

By the way, Maxwell's equations do not necessarily presume the speed of light is constant.

That is correct. One is allowed a time-dependent permitivity, although for Lorentz invariance (for Special Relativity to hold) one would also need spatial variation of permitivity (and the speed of light) in all except possibly one inertial frame of reference.

It is meaningful to have time-dependent permitivity because there is such a thing as electrical charge. If you have isolated charges, which you either can presume to have fixed charges, or else have some previously accepted time=dependence, thenif the force between two such charges separated by a fixed distance were to change with time, then since permitivity is a proportionality constant between that force between them and the products of the two charges, and the inverse of the square of the distance separating them, a change in that force would, in principle, allow us to infer a change in permitivity. There is no analogous experiment for permeability.

That presumption has come with Einstein's relativity and the approach to Maxwell's equations that that has engendered.

The two have become muddied together in the minds of many students, but they needn't be.

Duh. I don't know of a physicist who thinks SPACE-TIME variation of c could be reasonable. It's a little bit more dicey for just time-variation, since that implies a perferred frame of reference where c depends only upon time. In general for c(x,y,z,t), the 4-gradient of c will not lie along a time-like vector, so 3-surfaces of constant c cannot be 3-surfaces of constant t globally.

Really, Helen, if you ask a typical physicist whether or not special relativity can be simply augmented to accomodate nonconstant c, few will intuitively think it a difficult problem, although few have actually tried to work out details. If you or Setterfield have been finding yourselves confronting physicists raising that objection, that should tell you something about the quality of physicists with whome you've beem smoozing. (Although physicists talking about special relativity do speak about the speed of light being a constant in all frames of reference, they mean that it is the same for all local observers in inertial frames. Most physicists also think that the speed of light is everywhere and always invariant, but there is not confusion among the experienced concerning the two senses of "constant."

 

[Peter101]

>>>>>>>Mark, if you draw a line between two points, you have a perfect fit for those two points. The more points you have, the less likely you are to have a perfect fit for a line or a curve or any function you like. It was a simple logical statement. Please don't take it to be something it was not meant to be. <<<<<<<<<<
.......................................
No, your thinking is wrong. If there is reason for a strong correlation between two parameters, then a larger number of points will not lead to a worse fit. It is the underlying relationship that will determine the goodness of fit, not the number of points. For instance if income of individuals is plotted against taxes paid to the government by those same individuals, there would be a reasonably good correlation and the line would likely fit the points better than for example, personal income plotted against shoe size of the taxpayer.

[ May 02, 2003, 02:24 AM: Message edited by: Peter101 ]

 

[mdkluge]

Helen wrote:

Mark, Barry referenced a Physics text for you. A very reputable one. Are you calling him a liar?

It is inappropriate for you on this Christian formum (or any other forum for that matter) to baselessly insinuate that I have or may have called someone a liar. Please stop and think. I'm sure you did so only because you're frustrated and it's late at night.

Or are you claiming that the physics text is not presenting the truth?

Without the book in front of me I cannot be absolutely sure, but dollars to donuts the author writes one of Maxwell's Equations something like:

curl B = (4*pi/c)J + 1/(4*Pi)(dE/dt)?

The key is the factor of 1/c in front of J. For a long wire carrying a steady current this eventually becomes B = (4*pi/c)I/(2*pi*r), where I is the total current in the wire, and r is distance from the wire, and B is magnetic induction.

The point is that the definition of B is a bit loosey-goosey. It is physically defined only up to a multiplicative parameter. One can choose whatever value one wants here, provided one adjusts a parameter in Faraday's Law of Induction. One can even give the parameter the value of 4*pi/c or 4*pi/c(t), provided the proportionality parameter in Faraday's law is also suitably adjusted. The physical requirement (and I suspect this is where you think that permeability is defined in terms of c) is that the product of the two parameters must be equal to 1/c^2 (so that the wave wquation gives the right velocity!)

The only thing you are doing, however, is defining the scale for magnetic field. If you want a time-dependent scale, then you can have time-dependent parameters. You can even call one of them the permeability of free space if you want to. It doesn't matter because your choice of parameter has no physical meaning.

Perhaps I should have been clearer at the outset. The problem isn't with having or defining a time-dependent permeability of free space per se. The problem is that there is no physical different between a physics having a time-dependent permeability and one with constant permeability. such a definition has no physical meaning.

To put it more simply, yes, in Maxwell's electrodynamics it is possible for the speed of electromagnetic radiation to be time-dependent. That speed is equal to the product of two parameters of the theory (c^2 = 1/(mu * epsilon)). You can have either or both mu and epsilon time-dependent, but it turns out that you get no new physics from going from one of them being time-dependent to both of them being time-dependent, provided that their product comes out right. Underline that, Helen. Make it bold. PROVIDED THEIR PRODUCT IS RIGHT.

To make that clearer, recall the time-rescaling we did a few of my posts ago? Well, in that case both mu and epsilon had proportional time-dependences, so we could rescale time to make both constants. In general, however, if epsilon and mu had different time dependences (subject to their product always being equal to the inverse square of c(t)), then time-rescaling can remove either of them, but not both. So there is no new physics in Maxwell's Equations with time-varyng permitivity and permeability than in the case where only one of them is time-varying. (And in the case where they both have the same time-variation, there is no new physics introduced above the case of constant permitivity and permeability.)

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by Helen:
all Barry and I can do is laugh now. If you folks have to go back 20 years to an incomplete data set, and start hollering about that material, and if Paul is consistently choosing to misunderstand what Barry is saying today, then Barry is doing fine!

Helen, in my post of April 30th at 5:10 p.m. in this thread I only assume two things about Barry's position:

a) That he holds the earth to have orbited the sun about 8000 times since creation in accordance with laws of gravity and orbits that applied universally the same at any given time - and

b) We observe the Andromeda Galaxy today by means of light that traveled very much faster in earlier years than today, which is why we can see it now even though it is 2.8 million light years away.

I then sought to show these two notions are inconsistent with astronomical observation.

What is it about Barry's theory that I have misstated here? Are these statements as I have them considered true or false by Barry? Please don't ask me to just read his material again, that's what I did to form this impression you say shows misunderstanding of his theory. Just tell me which one of these is considered false by Barry. If you could say why he considers it false, also, that would be even better, but just saying which one would be a start.

 

[Peter101]

Paul of Eugene says this about Setterfield's theory:

>>>>>>>a) That he holds the earth to have orbited the sun about 8000 times since
creation in accordance with laws of gravity and orbits that applied universally
the same at any given time <<<

And of course there is much evidence that the 8,000 orbits of the sun is far too low. For instance the Greenland ice cores show more than 110,000 reliable, annual layers. And of course many other objects from the earth have been reliably dated beyond 10,000 years, hundreds in fact. The ancient age of the earth has been proven beyond reasonable doubt, even by non-radiometric dates.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

In another thread, Helen posted this comment:

Paul, I dropped the Setterfield thread because you consistently (and purposely?) are mis-stating or misunderstanding -- or both -- his material. You are not interested in understanding it from everything I can see of your posts; you are simply trying to dog me with objections which have been responded to over and over again. I'm not interested. Barry has a discussion section on his board with an email address to ask him questions if you truly want answers.

I have a theory that light has always been the same speed for that past 10 billion years. You have constantly posted to the contrary over and over again. I remain interested in why you think your contrary theory is scientifically sustainable. Your have given words in reply at times, but nothing that shows any understanding of the issues I raised. I suspect that in fact I do understand these basic idea of Setterfield theory; that Barry seeks to show light has traveled at extremely high speeds in the past as measured by such clocks as the earth orbiting the sun. It's hard to see how Barry or you could say this is false, but you say I've misunderstood and then refuse to share where.

Unfortunately, in my own mind, I cannot help but wonder if the real reason you present no cogent defense of Barry's theory relative to the thought experiment I suggested above is that there is no defense.

 

[Helen]

I don't have to present it. You can read Barry's presentation and response to questions, including some like yours, at his website

www.setterfield.org

The fact that you refuse to accept anything he says or to contact him personally shows me that you are not really interested in what he is saying, but only with trying to put him down in a venue where few have read his material. Feel free. I don't have to defend my husband. He presents his own material quite well and adequately and is faithful to answer questions when they are emailed to him. Many of those questions and the responses are put up on his site as well.

If you are actually interested in any of this, contact him, don't spout your nonsense to me.

 

[mdkluge]

Since this Setterfield thread has been neglected as of late, and since this is the Memorial Day weekend in the USA, I thought that we might celebrate the holiday with a brief look at an aspect of his work that has not received much attention.

I direct your attention to his paper “ATOMIC QUANTUM STATES, LIGHT, AND THE REDSHIFT” at http://www.setterfield.org/quantumredshift.htm#stellarlumin. In the section entitled “Stellar Luminosities”, equation (72) Setterfield gives a formula of Chandrasekhar for stellar luminosity in terms of various properties of the star, and the some physical parameters including c and something called “G*”, which is detined elsewhere in the paper (Equation (59)), whose c-dependence is also given elsewhere (Equation (64)). (You’ll have to look them up. We don’t have typographic facilities up to the task of reproducing those equations here.)

Unsurprisingly the calculated c-dependence of stellar luminosities turn out to be just what is required. Unfortunately Equations (59) and (64) are both in a section highlighted in yellow, meaning, according to a note prior to the paper’s title, that they have been “superceded by current work”. It therefore follows that Equation (72) must also be “superceded by current work”. (Its conclusion isn’t necessarily wrong; it’s just baseless.)

(I regard this as a relatively minor flaw in Setterfield’s work. There are other bigger problems, some of which have been discussed here before, while others have not. I brought up only this trifling problem now both because it is a holiday and because I have a toothache, in consequence of which I’m feeling ornery enough not to trust my self restraint in discussing really important matters. Anyway I’m sure that this matter will be speedily resolved. All Helen has to do to improve Setterfield’s paper is to apply her yellow highlighting to the material around Equation (72). Anticipating this makes me burst out in song (to the tune of “Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round That Old Oak Tree”):

Write your yellow highlight
Round that old E. Q.
Number seventy-two
Do it for me and you
Write your yellow highlight
Round that old E. Q.

 

[Helen]

Hope you feel better, Mark. I have poison oak, courtesy of a gift from my son. If you wish to contact Barry about this, please feel free at
barry@setterfield.org

Thanks.

 

[mdkluge]

Thirteen must be Barry Setterfield's unlucky number. In his magnum opus ATOMIC QUANTUM STATES, LIGHT, AND THE REDSHIFT at http://www.setterfield.org/quantumredshift.htm he notes (correctly) in his Equation (4) that the energy of an electron in a hydrogen atom has magnitude
E = hc/lambda, where
h is Planck's constant, c the speed of light, and lambda the wavelength of light that would be emitted by an electron falling from rest at infinity into the given electron orbit.

So far so good. Unfortunately in Equation (13) Setterfield mistakenly claims that (since hc = constant)
Delta E = hc/(Delta lambda), where
Delta means "change in". Unfortunately that is wrong, wrong, wrong. He should have written:
Delta E = hc Delta (1/lambda).

As anyone with amn mathematical experience knows, Delta (1/x) is not equal to 1/ (Delta x)!

For those of you without mathematics, you can still verify this numerically. Suppose x changes from 8 to 9. Then the change in x, Delta X is equal to 9 - 8 = 1. Therefore 1/(Delta X) = 1/1 = 1.

But Delta (1/X) is the change in 1/X = (1/9 - 1/8) = (8/72 - 9/72) = - 1/72.

Obviously this is not equal to 1 as Setterfield would have you believe from his Equation (13)!

 

[Helen]

Hi Mark! Thank you so much for asking about the poison oak! I am getting better, thank you. Worked outside some today and the sun really helped it.

Barry wants you to know that G*M will remain constant no matter what. He'll check the rest of the stuff later. He's working on an article right now -- dealing with mass and gravity, which he knows will be just what you have required to be able to see his theory as a complete one.

 

[mdkluge]

Helen wrote:

Hi Mark! Thank you so much for asking about the poison oak! I am getting better, thank you.

Oops! I AM sorry for the omission, especially after your gracious wishes for my own recovery. I do wish you a speedy recovery, and wish I had said so in my previous post. This is a bit of a war zone, which ought to make it all the more imperabive that opportunities for civil exchanges be taken. I would like to think if I had been a soldier in World War I that I would have joined in the Christmas carroling of 1914 and 1915.

Barry wants you to know that G*M will remain constant no matter what. He'll check the rest of the stuff later. He's working on an article right now -- dealing with mass and gravity, which he knows will be just what you have required to be able to see his theory as a complete one.

Thank you.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Greetings to Helen to whom I am responding from her comments in another thread and to all who read these words. May the Lord grant us wisdom and discernment as we consider His truths.

Regarding radiometric dating -- it falls flat on its face in terms of accurately describing orbital time if there have been changes in the atomic constants such as Planck's 'constant' or the speed of light. And these changes have been measured. Radio decay rates were much faster in the past.

For every expert Helen has been able to quote saying speed of light measurements are seen to have changed, there are an equal number or more of experts who say the data are inconclusive and easily explained as being a result of increasing precision with time. The earliest measurements, after all, are from the very dawn of modern science. None of us want to be guilty of picking the expert testimony we like and ignoring all the rest, do we? Don't we want to consider all the evidence?

Astronomical observations establish two things: (a) Radioactive decay rates are directly tied to the speed of light as far as we can observe, which (in the standard interpretation of things) goes back in time for billions of years AND (b) light speed has not changed to any measureable extent IN RELATION TO GRAVITY for all that time.

Here is my reasoning for that. Radioactive decay rates are seen to occur directly in supernova decay rates, for the afterglow of supernova is due to radioactive decay of highly radiactive material created in the explosion. It is the same as we see it across the universe, once corrections are made for the red shift in distant galaxies. In the standard interpretation, the decay rates have not changed as light speed has not changed. If light speed has changed, then the decay rates would by necessity have changed in lock step with the light speed, and the fact that we see it at current rates today is proof of the link.

Now concerning the relationship between light speed and gravity: It is a very basic and straightforward thing to measure the rotation of galaxies. We compare the doppler shift between the approaching part and the receding part and we have the rate.

Now if the speed of light were very much greater in the past, and yet the grand orbits of the stars that make up the galactic rotation were not any greater, then the speed of rotation in relation to the speed of light becomes a much smaller percentage. Where it was once .05 percent of the speed of light, it becomes .000000000005 percent of the speed of light. This will of necessity reduce the doppler shift to practically nothing. Unless, in lock step with the speed of light, the galaxies also rotate faster! The only reason they would do that would be if gravity were stronger as light gets faster.

Setterfield will never accept that gravity effects become stronger and thereby provide for faster orbits when light was faster. The whole point, after all, is to be able to say that the earth only orbited the sun about 8000 times in "dynamic orbital" time while "atomic light speed" time registered several billion years. These simple, well known galactic observations show his theory can't be true.

In Genesis 1:14, God gave us orbital time to keep our clocks by, as this is stable regardless of changes on the atomic level.

Lets take a look:

Gen 1:14-19
4 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. 16 God made two great lights--the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning--the fourth day.
NIV

Does anybody see anything here referring to orbital time? Yet another example of the ability of some to add to God's word without warning us it is only their interpretation.

I stated in an earlier post: "In addition, Setterfield theory requires that energy conservation be abandoned, that Einstein's theory of Relativity cannot apply, and besides he hasn't reconciled gravity with it yet anyway." Here is Helen's reply:

The conservation of energy is primary to Barry's material; Einstein's work is upheld on the atomic level; he is working on the gravity and mass paper right now. Please, Paul, do not make untrue statements about his work.

Note the odd use of the phrase "atomic level" here. One might pass it over, thinking he's being inclusive here. One would be wrong. In Setterfield theory he makes a distinction between atomic level and macro levels of mass, and has made the incorrect claim that atomic levels of mass do not always manifest macroscopically. Mass is a big problem for Setterfield, he must dispose of that problem somehow.

We are all familiar with e = mc^2. If C changes drastically, E changes also. Its that simple. Why doesn't Helen realize this implies non-conservation of energy? There is nothing else in the equation. Nothing about other constants. Nothing about Planck's constant. Nothing about the magnetic permeability of space. Nothing about size, whether macroscopic or microscopic. Just simple plain e=mc^2.

It is true that in some of the incarnations of Setterfield theory - he changes it often enough its hard to keep track - mass going back to the days of Adam was a little bit less. But not enough to overcome the tremendous INCREASE in energy caused by his HUGE increase in the speed of light for that time. At one time he made the decrease in mass under Adamic conditions extreme enough to allow energy to be conserved. Unfortunately, this decrease in mass also resulted in an inability to keep Adam on the planet and he had to abandon that tack. A virtually massless Adam is far to easy to accelerate to the escape velocity.

As a parenthetical note, Setterfield adamic physics will always leave Adam flying off the planet when he takes a step. Whether due to Adam's very low mass or due to Adams increasing unbounded energy or a combination of the two. He tries to get rid of the e=mc^2 problem in various ways, but never successfully. The one way to achieve success would be to INCREASE the strength of gravity, but doing that would cause earth's annual orbits of the sun to go back to the same number as real science suggests and that is the one thing Setterfield is loath to do, because then he's got the billions of years back again.

In past incarnations of his theory, Setterfield attempted to relegate the mass changes and the loss of energy conservation to the changes between his quantum leaps of universal light speed change. Bear that in mind as you read his material. You'll see things like "within a quantum interval" or "for atomic mass" . . . he's trying to leave room for the places where he HAS to violate conservation of energy. I don't know how far he'll try to carry this false distinction between atomic and macro mass but it remains a false distinction.

 

[Meatros]

That's very disturbing Paul. How many times has Setterfield changed his theory?

Helen, how many times will he change his theory before he gives up? (Presuming he will give up).

 

[Helen]

Meatros, Barry's model is pretty firmly established by the data. Unless the data change, the model won't either....

Originally posted by Paul of Eugene:
For every expert Helen has been able to quote saying speed of light measurements are seen to have changed, there are an equal number or more of experts who say the data are inconclusive and easily explained as being a result of increasing precision with time. The earliest measurements, after all, are from the very dawn of modern science. None of us want to be guilty of picking the expert testimony we like and ignoring all the rest, do we? Don't we want to consider all the evidence?

Oh yes, I wish you would! If the earlier measurements were only due to observational errors, then the errors should be on BOTH sides of the current speed of light, but they are not. They are ALL higher. That's quite a coincidence, don't you think? Why do you think this subject was discussed so much before 1941?

AN OBSERVED DECLINE IN LIGHT-SPEED

The question then arises as to whether or not any other observational evidence exists that the speed of light has diminished with time. Surprisingly, some 40 articles about this very matter appeared in the scientific literature from 1926 to 1944 [55]. Some important points emerge from this literature. In 1944, despite a strong preference for the constancy of atomic quantities, N. E. Dorsey [56] was reluctantly forced to admit: "As is well known to those acquainted with the several determinations of the velocity of light, the definitive values successively reported have, in general, decreased monotonously from Cornu's 300.4 megametres per second in 1874 to Anderson's 299.776 in 1940 " Even Dorsey's own re-working of the data could not avoid that conclusion.

However, the decline in the measured value of 'c' was noticed much earlier. In 1886, Simon Newcomb reluctantly concluded that the older results obtained around 1740 were in agreement with each other, but they indicated 'c' was about 1% higher than in his own time [57], the early 1880's. In 1941 history repeated itself when Birge made a parallel statement while writing about the 'c' values obtained by Newcomb, Michelson, and others around 1880. Birge was forced to concede that "these older results are entirely consistent among themselves, but their average is nearly 100 km/s greater than that given by the eight more recent results" [58]. Each of these three eminent scientists held to a belief in the absolute constancy of 'c'. This makes their careful admissions about the experimentally declining values of measured light speed more significant.

http://www.setterfield.org/vacuum.html

back to Paul:

Astronomical observations establish two things: (a) Radioactive decay rates are directly tied to the speed of light as far as we can observe, which (in the standard interpretation of things) goes back in time for billions of years AND (b) light speed has not changed to any measureable extent IN RELATION TO GRAVITY for all that time.

The speed of light is related to atomic processes. Gravity is not. There is no reason to connect the two. God gave us gravitational time to set our calendars by in Genesis 1:14. He did this for a reason. Gravitational time is constant. Atomic time is not. The two were measured as ticking at different rates by Van Flandern:

COMPARING ATOMIC AND DYNAMIC CLOCKS

However, this problem with frequencies and atomic clocks can actually supply additional data to work with. It is possible in principle to obtain evidence for speed of light variation by comparing the run-rate of atomic clocks with that of dynamical clocks. When this is done, a difference in run-rate is noted. Over a number of years up to 1980, Dr. Thomas Van Flandern of the US Naval Observatory in Washington examined data from lunar laser ranging using atomic clocks, and compared their data with data from dynamical, or orbital, clocks. From this comparison of data, he concluded that "the number of atomic seconds in a dynamical interval is becoming fewer. Presumably, if the result has any generality to it, this means that atomic phenomena are slowing down with respect to dynamical phenomena" [71]. Van Flandern has more recently been involved in setting the parameters running the clocks in the Global Positioning System of satellites used for navigation around the world. His clock comparisons indicated that atomic phenomena were slowing against the dynamical standard until about 1980. This implies that 'c' was continuing to slow until at least 1980, regardless of the results obtained using the frequency-dependent measurements of recent atomic clocks.

back to Paul:

Here is my reasoning for that. Radioactive decay rates are seen to occur directly in supernova decay rates, for the afterglow of supernova is due to radioactive decay of highly radiactive material created in the explosion. It is the same as we see it across the universe, once corrections are made for the red shift in distant galaxies. In the standard interpretation, the decay rates have not changed as light speed has not changed. If light speed has changed, then the decay rates would by necessity have changed in lock step with the light speed, and the fact that we see it at current rates today is proof of the link.

from Barry: When the speed of light was higher, radioactive decay rates were faster, but light slowed as it came to earth. The appearance of what we were seeing in relation to light thus also slowed proportionately. Therefore we would see no difference in decay rates in distant object from what we have today. Paul has brought up this issue a dozen times before and has been answered just as many times. As this brings up other related issues he will be asking the same questions again and I have already addressed his issues in earlier replies. One is about pulsars and another about cepheid variables and the answers to these questions are on the website. If Paul refuses the answers, there is no reason for him to keep asking the same questions over again.

Now concerning the relationship between light speed and gravity: It is a very basic and straightforward thing to measure the rotation of galaxies. We compare the doppler shift between the approaching part and the receding part and we have the rate.

The Doppler equation in relation to gravitational effects is still being examined. You have asked this question before, too, Paul, and have taken no notice of the reply. In Barry's words, "this is just a hobby horse he's got."

Setterfield will never accept that gravity effects become stronger and thereby provide for faster orbits when light was faster. The whole point, after all, is to be able to say that the earth only orbited the sun about 8000 times in "dynamic orbital" time while "atomic light speed" time registered several billion years. These simple, well known galactic observations show his theory can't be true.

from Barry: When you have a look at the gravitational equations for orbiting objects, the quantity GM appears in each. This quantity remains invariant no matter what the behavior of G or M separately are. The effects of gravity do not change. I've also mentioned this to him before on a number of occasions. He obviously does not want to take any notice.

Gen 1:14-19
4 And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. 16 God made two great lights--the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. 17 God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, 18 to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening, and there was morning--the fourth day.
NIVDoes anybody see anything here referring to orbital time? Yet another example of the ability of some to add to God's word without warning us it is only their interpretation.

Ummmm, the sun marks the day and night. It does this because we rotate on our axis. The sun marks the seasons. It does this because we revolve around the sun. The moon marks the months. It does this because it revolves around the earth. If Paul knows any other reason these astronomical bodies mark days and years and month apart from their orbits, I would be extremely interested in knowing!

I stated in an earlier post: "In addition, Setterfield theory requires that energy conservation be abandoned, that Einstein's theory of Relativity cannot apply, and besides he hasn't reconciled gravity with it yet anyway." Here is Helen's reply:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />
The conservation of energy is primary to Barry's material; Einstein's work is upheld on the atomic level; he is working on the gravity and mass paper right now. Please, Paul, do not make untrue statements about his work.

Note the odd use of the phrase "atomic level" here. One might pass it over, thinking he's being inclusive here. One would be wrong. In Setterfield theory he makes a distinction between atomic level and macro levels of mass, and has made the incorrect claim that atomic levels of mass do not always manifest macroscopically. Mass is a big problem for Setterfield, he must dispose of that problem somehow.</font>[/QUOTE]Paul, I don't expect you to know this, but there has been a discrepancy in the measurements of mass in peer-reviewed research articles in physics journals. Measurements of mass on the macroscopic level are not matching up with the microscopic measurements. This is why I said 'microscopic', because it is here that we KNOW Einstein's equation works. A paper Barry is working on at this time is dealing with this. Not to disparage you, sir, but you know extremely little about physics and I sometimes wonder if someone outside this forum isn't egging you on to keep on asking questions whose responses you pay no attention to. There is a problem with mass -- there are a number of problems with it, in fact, in physics in general -- including defining exactly what it is! So perhaps, until you know more, it is best not to stick both feet in your mouth at once?

We are all familiar with e = mc^2. If C changes drastically, E changes also. Its that simple. Why doesn't Helen realize this implies non-conservation of energy?

Why doesn't Paul understand that there is another term in the equation which must exhibit change if E is constant (which it is). Mass on a microscopic level has been measured as changing.
http://www.setterfield.org/report/report.html#t14

And I think, Paul, that one of the reasons you think Barry has changed his theory a lot is because you have not understood it from the first. Other than that, of course there have been refinements as new data comes in. That's how science works, remember?

At one time he made the decrease in mass under Adamic conditions extreme enough to allow energy to be conserved. Unfortunately, this decrease in mass also resulted in an inability to keep Adam on the planet and he had to abandon that tack. A virtually massless Adam is far to easy to accelerate to the escape velocity.

No, Paul, that was your accusation due to your ignorance of the subject. Barry never said anything like that, nor does his work in any way imply it. It is something you made up. The rest of your post simply enlarges on your ignorance of the matter.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

Originally posted by Helen above as evidence that light speed has varied in the past:

AN OBSERVED DECLINE IN LIGHT-SPEED

The question then arises as to whether or not any other observational evidence exists that the speed of light has diminished with time. Surprisingly, some 40 articles about this very matter appeared in the scientific literature from 1926 to 1944 . . . .

Since those days concerns about declining c have virtually disappeared. The observations have settled down to a pretty consistent value now. Scientists thinking about this consider that there is not particular reason to expect light to be especially different in its behavior just between 1800 and 1940 compared to today so they naturally lean towards interpreting the earlier values as signs of getting the information more and more accurately determined.

Gravitational time is constant. Atomic time is not. The two were measured as ticking at different rates by Van Flandern:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />COMPARING ATOMIC AND DYNAMIC CLOCKS

However, this problem with frequencies and atomic clocks can actually supply additional data to work with. It is possible in principle to obtain evidence for speed of light variation by comparing the run-rate of atomic clocks with that of dynamical clocks. When this is done, a difference in run-rate is noted. Over a number of years up to 1980, Dr. Thomas Van Flandern of the US Naval Observatory in Washington examined data from lunar laser ranging using atomic clocks, and compared their data with data from dynamical, or orbital, clocks. From this comparison of data, he concluded that "the number of atomic seconds in a dynamical interval is becoming fewer. Presumably, if the result has any generality to it, this means that atomic phenomena are slowing down with respect to dynamical phenomena" [71]. Van Flandern has more recently been involved in setting the parameters running the clocks in the Global Positioning System of satellites used for navigation around the world. His clock comparisons indicated that atomic phenomena were slowing against the dynamical standard until about 1980. This implies that 'c' was continuing to slow until at least 1980, regardless of the results obtained using the frequency-dependent measurements of recent atomic clocks.

</font>[/QUOTE]Van Flandern's work has its own critics. He seems to have misunderstood how to properly apply Einstein's Relativity corrections to the data he analyzed.

back to Paul:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Here is my reasoning for that. Radioactive decay rates are seen to occur directly in supernova decay rates, for the afterglow of supernova is due to radioactive decay of highly radiactive material created in the explosion. It is the same as we see it across the universe, once corrections are made for the red shift in distant galaxies. In the standard interpretation, the decay rates have not changed as light speed has not changed. If light speed has changed, then the decay rates would by necessity have changed in lock step with the light speed, and the fact that we see it at current rates today is proof of the link.

from Barry: When the speed of light was higher, radioactive decay rates were faster, but light slowed as it came to earth. The appearance of what we were seeing in relation to light thus also slowed proportionately. Therefore we would see no difference in decay rates in distant object from what we have today. Paul has brought up this issue a dozen times before and has been answered just as many times.
</font>[/QUOTE]It seems to have utterly escaped Helen's attention that on the particular issue of stating C and decay rates are locked together I AGREED with that particular issue. As long as Helen and Barry persist in misunderstanding what I say and the strength of the objection to their theory I will continue to try to make it as clear as I can for them.

Of course, since I also hold that c has not changed, that implies radioactive decay rates have not changed.

As this brings up other related issues he will be asking the same questions again and I have already addressed his issues in earlier replies. One is about pulsars and another about cepheid variables and the answers to these questions are on the website. If Paul refuses the answers, there is no reason for him to keep asking the same questions over again.

In fact, the answers are not there. That is, the real issues I have raised, not the smoke screen issue Helen "answers" above. I am asserting that gravitational orbital results are observed moving faster than they should be observed in distant galaxies. Helen keeps posting answers about atomic processes being expected to show what they show. Rotating Galaxies are not an atomic process. Cepheid variables rise and fall in response to the tug of gravitation, except for the "bounce" at the bottom. Once again, gravitational action is involved. I havn't posted about Pulsars, maybe someone else did. I did mention x-ray binary stars in the Megellanic galaxie.

The Doppler equation in relation to gravitational effects is still being examined.

You see here an admission that Barry doesn't have an answer yet. There are not very many doppler equations and they aren't very complicated.

You have asked this question before, too, Paul, and have taken no notice of the reply. In Barry's words, "this is just a hobby horse he's got."

Why give up on a winning horse? And what reply? The only thing close to a reply consists of remarks very much like those from Helen quoted at the beginning of this post, which appear to completely miss the point.

Gravity is asserted by Barry to work on a seperate clock time from light/atomic processes. Gravity is observed by astronomers to work on the same clock time from light/atomic processes. Therefore the assertion is wrong.

from Barry: When you have a look at the gravitational equations for orbiting objects, the quantity GM appears in each. This quantity remains invariant no matter what the behavior of G or M separately are. The effects of gravity do not change. I've also mentioned this to him before on a number of occasions. He obviously does not want to take any notice.

Objecting to an assertion and proving it is contrary to observation is, in fact, a way of taking notice! Once again we see a complete lack of any substantive reply to the issues I have raised. Let Barry pick apart the thought experiment I raised on page 5 of this thread (middle of the page). It's a simple story, one that should be easy for the master of Setterfield Variable Light Speed theory to show exactly why and where the point is invalid. Of course, I will insist on a better understanding than was shown in Helen's initial quote above.

Ummmm, the sun marks the day and night. It does this because we rotate on our axis. The sun marks the seasons. It does this because we revolve around the sun. The moon marks the months. It does this because it revolves around the earth. If Paul knows any other reason these astronomical bodies mark days and years and month apart from their orbits, I would be extremely interested in knowing!

All we have in Genesis 1 is the statement that the lights in the sky are GOOD FOR keeping time, not THE ONLY way to keep time. Therefore one can't say this proves God likes orbits better than resonating electrons for keeping time without reading more into the verse than is there.

And I think, Paul, that one of the reasons you think Barry has changed his theory a lot is because you have not understood it from the first. Other than that, of course there have been refinements as new data comes in. That's how science works, remember?

It is possible I completely misunderstand Setterfield theory. Perhaps if he would be so gracious as to go over the thought experiment I posted on page 5 of this thread and show how the conundrum for his theory I falsly imagine to be there is resolvable we'll get to a better understanding.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> At one time he made the decrease in mass under Adamic conditions extreme enough to allow energy to be conserved. Unfortunately, this decrease in mass also resulted in an inability to keep Adam on the planet and he had to abandon that tack. A virtually massless Adam is far to easy to accelerate to the escape velocity.

No, Paul, that was your accusation due to your ignorance of the subject. Barry never said anything like that, nor does his work in any way imply it.
</font>[/QUOTE]OH, I remember posting a long time ago that since e=mc^2 that changing c means energy isn't conserved. And the answer came back right away that it was, because mass at the same time was decreased in exact proportion as c was increased. So we went around and around about what it was like to live with such a great loss of mass. Don't you remember those posts? And we talked about how mass would affect the frequecy of sound from vocal cords, and so forth. Finally Barry agreed to calculate mass relationships in his theory in a definative fashion. He wound up with mass being reduced by about a factor of 4, as I recall, for Adam when C was well over a million fold faster. His post on that is in the archive here and maybe I'll look it up.

Strangely, he had never even considered the issue prior to that point. Well, that's one thing these debates are good for.