Peter,
thanks for your comments.
I read your essay. You have touched on many subjects. One thing of interest is your suggestion that speed of light changes, even in empty space, as it were.
I agree that speed of light changes and that c+v,c-v is inevitable with that. Aside from Einstein's explanation, it's the only alternative.
The problem today is that until now there was no good reason to abandon Einstein's simple postulates.
I offer a good reason to do so. Perhaps a bit immodest to say that.
I offer FIT (Fundamental Information Theory). It's not a theory of physics . It uses virtually nothing from current body of physics. It's an information theory. The only thing I focus on is the throughput of information.
In FIT, reality consists of entities that possess information. Such information is available everywhere instantly and its density declines with the square of distance (for a reason). Entities produce any effect only by using information.
This is rather big. In current physics, the reason for something to happen is "the law". It's saying we don't really know why things happen, but we will happily describe it with equations. After a while, we become oblivious to what comes first, and proclaim that things happen *because* of these equations.
In FIT, something happens because information available has been used. That's the reason why things happen. The concept of fundamental entities *using* information to do something is entirely missing from current physics.
When entity moves, it uses more information because in a unit of time it will have more information available to it. Kind of like getting more raindrops if you run. In turn, usage of more information (assuming resources are limited), slows down the entities rate of "doing things".
This is a very simple explanation for slowing down of physical processes.
Hmm. Okay. Now, there has to be a speed limit. Because if rate of using information slows down enough, there is no more computation to affect any further acceleration. Hmm. This is why a photon cannot go faster than c.
Information comes from other entities. So when you're close a big entity (such as Earth), you get to use lots of information. When you accelerate, you quickly hit the speed limit. Out in the space, there is little information, and when you accelerate, it will take a while to hit the speed limit.
This is the reason why a photon can change its speed. It depends on how dense information around it is and how fast are the sources of that information moving relative to it. It's like objects are moving in a sea of information, and depending on how much of it there is, they are more or less preoccupied. They function slower or faster. Their speed limit varies.
A concept of mass emerges. Mass is a measure of how slow an object uses information. The slower the use of information, the bigger the mass. Remember mass being the measure of resistance to change? If change is information that needs to be processed, then processing information quickly means your mass is low.
What happens to mass when you accelerate? Now you have to process more information, and your throughput of information use declines. It means you will process information slower. Your mass increases.
A large body such as Earth would have lots of information. This information declines away from it. Now say that an entity wants to move to a location where throughput of information use is lower, to preserve its resources. It's gravity.
Now, the speed of light. 'Light' is an entity that always moves at the local speed limit. Local speed limit is determined by how much information there is locally to process. That changes with movement of entities. So does the speed of light. However, it's not so erratic that you would notice. Earth and Sun are huge. Their influence is vast.
On Earth, a speed limit is 300,000km/s relative to Earth. If a photon is emitted from a vehicle moving at the speed of 100,000 km/s in the direction of motion, it would move at 200,000 km/s relative to car because 100,000+200,000 is the speed limit.
If it is emitted from a vehicle moving at the speed of 100,000km/s in the opposite direction, it would move at the speed of 400,000km/s relative to car because the speed limit relative to Earth is 400,000-100,000.
Moving away from Earth, the dominant body becomes the Sun. So the speed of the photon will be 300,000km/s relative to the Sun. The transition happens at some point.
Away from Solar system, some other group of celestial bodies become a dominant influence. So photon moves at speed of 300,000km/s relative to that group.
I call this group a 'constraint group', and this kind of relativity a 'constrained relativity'.
Essentially, a constraint group is a local absolute frame of reference. It is different with location and it changes in time, with movement of objects.
There is no absolute frame of reference, but large masses form their own local preferred frames of reference. The equation to deduce what constitutes this local preferred frame is simple, but its results aren't obvious.
Amazingly, I easily derive relativistic equations out of thin air. No concept of light, or gravity, or relativity. Yet I get all of it. Even the correct equation for the gravitational deflection. All from pure information theory.
Even more amazingly, no experiment is in violation of this approach.
The predictions of FIT: Michelson-Morley will succeed if performed in a setup that is moving relative to Earth.
Link to FIT paper: http://msg2act.com/physics/FIT.pdf
