Tag: Physics

Why the Speed of Light Probably Isn’t a Constant

All matter and energy is constantly in flux. What appears to be solid, such as a desk, is actually made of trillions of tiny atoms, each one vibrating in place, and each one made up of waves of electron fields around nuclei that are made of vibrating protons and neutrons which are in turn made of moving quarks. Force fields are in flux because they emanate from matter which is in flux, and force fields aren’t matter or energy anyway—they’re just mathematically defined causal relationships between physically existing things.

The laws of physics appear to be static, but they all boil down to two aspects: 1) the aspect of it that is necessarily true just because it’s logically consistent with the of physics. This aspect is why we’re able to do derivations in physics; and 2) the aspect of it that comes purely from observations. The first aspect is necessarily static just because logic itself can’t logically be any different, but there’s no justification to assume the other is static just because the observations seem consistent over time. Since everything else we observe is in flux, chances are that those things are in flux as well—they just change too slowly to be noticed.

Add to this the fact that there’s no ultimate way to distinguish between the physics of matter and energy and the physicality of it. The so-called “laws” of physics are not a separate thing “acting on” matter and energy. The closer you look, the more these two things blend together. One way of saying this is that form is function. How can you know the form of something other than through how it interacts with the observer? And how it interacts with the observer is its function. And the functionality of matter and energy is the physics of it.

All of physicality boils down to matter, energy and fields. Matter is in turn a pattern of seething energy, and fields. Can’t, even in principle, be defined or observed in any way other than as causal relationships between matter, so it’s safe to say that fields are merely an aspect of physics. And what is energy other than behavior patterns, and what determines its behavior if not the internal logic and mechanics of it which is what physics reveals? Also, as I mentioned in my last essay, Emmy Noether proved that the conservation of energy logically follows from the consistency through time of the laws of physics. And what is the concept of energy other than an invariant? What sense would energy make if it weren’t conserved?

So, everything physical is in flux, and there’s no ultimate way of distinguishing between physics and the physical. And physics is derived from only from a combination of observations and pure logic, while we can only observe the physical and most of what we observe seems to change constantly. So all of this would seem to suggest that the constants in physics, such as the speed of light and the gravitational constant for example, aren’t actually constants but are only assumed to be because they’re so slow to change. They’re part of a cascade of change that makes up the physical world, from the most universal and slowest to the most local and fastest.

I wrote a longer, more elaborate version of this same basic concept here and a briefer version of that one here.

On Mach’s Principle

Assume rotational velocity is relative to the rotational velocity of the whole universe as according to Mach’s principle. This causes three paradoxes:

1. From the perspective of a non-universal rotating body, the rest of the universe looks as if it’s rotating *around* it. If rotation is relative, this must be true from the perspective of the body. This clearly violates the laws of motion and acceleration (even from the perspective of the body), independently of any axioms about the relativity of rotation per se, because centrifugal force would immediately start pulling the universe apart.

2. If rotation were given its behavior by relation to an absolute rotation (or lack of rotation) of the entire universe, then an object rotating relative to the universe some distance away from the universe’s center would fly away from the universe’s center because, relative to the object’s rotation, the universe as a whole is rotating about its center and is thus generating centrifugal force for the objects within it (or at least for the objects relative to which the universe is rotating).

3. Although the universe is not rotating (that would require under Mach’s principle that it be rotating relative to itself, after all, which would be self-contradictory), measuring an object’s rotation against the rotational velocity (which is 0) of the universe in order to say that the first is relative to the second implies that the universe’s rotational velocity is a variable that could have been something different from 0; for example it could have been whatever velocity it would have to be in order to make the thing that’s rotating relative to it *not* rotating relative to it (and hence, by Mach’s principle, not rotating at all). So it is not simply that rotation doesn’t apply to the universe as a whole, but that the universe’s rotational velocity is a specific variable, and that variable happens to be 0 (zero).

The problem with this is that, if the universe has a specific rational velocity (even if it just happens to be 0), it must have a specific center/axis of rotation, yet, with the universe as a whole necessarily not rotating relative to itself (and hence, according to Mach’s principle, not rotating at all), there is no way even in principle to determine where its axis is. And if there’s no way even in principle to tell where it is, then it doesn’t exist and the notion is meaningless. This clearly contradicts the notion that an axis must logically exist as explained above.

Therefore, we can determine, a priori, that rotation cannot be relative.

Rotation is simply a form of constant acceleration, where a centripetal force conserves angular momentum (at each moment the particles “want to” fly off in a direction tangent to the circle of rotation, but they’re accelerated toward the center), so it should be no more mystifying that rotational velocity could exist without being relative to frame of reference than that acceleration in general could exist without being relative to frame of reference.