Crawling at the Speed of Light

No way we are going to agree on this, Lev.

There IS an unbridgeable gap between language and meaning. Representational formalisms do not improve language capacity, because meaning doesn't reside in language (that meaning = language was the Logical Positivist position). We derive meaning from theory content alone, and test it against physical evidence.

Tom

"There IS an unbridgeable gap between language and meaning."

Not any more, not in ETS: see my paper. ;-)

Lev,

Haven't we had this discussion? Congruence is not identity. One could speak of congruent angles, e.g., but the structures are identical only within an arbitrary limit of the length of the sides. IOW, one has to assume a closed curve (both figures bounded by identical hypotenuse), which is not a realistic assumption in a world of continuous curves. There remains a gap between finite linguistic formalism and the infinite meaning generated by continuous production of novel forms in an evolving system.

Tom

Tom,

"Congruence" here means quite different thing.

In ETS, there is no "gap between finite linguistic formalism and the infinite meaning generated by continuous production of novel forms in an evolving system."

Lev,

If meaning were to reside in language, as you seem to be saying, language could not evolve, for the reason that closed form judgments are useful, but not natural. I mean, that unless there is at least one unassigned meaning in every representational formalism, it has no correspondence to phenomenological representation, which is dynamic. Popper (and Tarski) allowed that dynamic nature implies dynamic language, so that the correspondence principle of truth limits closure; in Popper, a limit on closed judgements of physical science, in Tarski, a limit to language content.

Tom

You see, Tom, my very reasonable postulate in ETS is that the Nature is just a (irreversible) temporal stream of interconnected events of particular universal structure. If this will turn out to be so, then you are relying on events to "talk" about actual events and all meanings can easily be captured.

This is not so in any spoken or formal language, and that is why, it appears, you are missing my point.

Lev,

Yes, I have always agreed with your postulate that Nature is infinitely self similar (and therefore scale invariant, and futhermore implying that time is identical to information). The thing that hangs me up is that given those parameters, if time (temporal stream) is an information bit stream of one dimension, there necessarily remains at least one other dimension to describe the state. We could never capture better than 1/2 the properties of a struct at a given instant.

Tom

Tom / Steve

Steve,"It's impossible that the light pass this c limit." Yes, that's virtually what the experiments say, but, when considering phase velocity, except for short local 'boosts' it gets, probably from harmonic interaction, in the narrow 'absorption bands", diving below n = 1 only momentarily.

Tom

Interesting view, as always. The 'reason' you give is not however quite what all the optical fibre research says. In fact there are two elements, one is the very local and short range harmonic one mentioned above, the other is that when dealing with dielectric media c/n remains a universal law in that frame. In other words, if a light pulse in an optical fibre cable does precisely, or even just over or just under, 'c', if that cable is in motion wrt the observer the v of the observer is simply added or subtracted. The light emitted towards the observer is a result of scattering from the particles, and it will pass through the optical fibre at c/n of the medium, and air at c/n of air, and be measured by the observer at c/n.

We may therefore observe light at apparently greater than 'c', but we are only observing a 'rate of change of position', as it rarely does much more than 'c' locally.

There are scores of excellent papers on atomic scattering, PMD and various aspects of Optical Fibre science and chromatic dispersion which all seem to lead to the same or similar conclusions. This does not conflict with the SR postulates but, again, does seem to conflict with a common misconception.

Peter

PS. Roy; I understand the Hau lab (Harvard) can now freeze it temporarily to a dead halt, but I suspect you are right and that may be just our 'perception' of stopped. It seems to support the concept of a temporarily 'imprinted' wave/oscillation pattern, with velocity slowed subject to temperature.

Hi Peter,

It's so important for the perception this c limit.

If the harmonic intereactions permits a short momment about c'.

That means that the return towards an equilibrium is logic.

Now if we consider the informations, we can imagine that this return at equilibrium can imply a transfert of informations.Now ity's just an extrapolation of course.

Regards

Steve

Hi Steve

The 'party line' is that it's group velocity, which helps because many don't understand the differences with phase and signal velocities - a bit like lambda and f between co-moving media/reference frames, it needs high conceptual mental dexterity. (I had to do myself a simple 'idiots guide' to refer to!).

It's true in space too. Did I post this?;

Lin Rui-guang, Fan Jun-hui, Liu Cui-hong, Xie Guang-zhon.g Superluminal聽motion and the acceleration model Optical magnitude & radio flux density Analysis of 48 Superluminal Sources. Chinese Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 21, Issue 1, January-March 1997, p24-27

It's pretty good, I think there's a link if you Google it.

The solution is relatively simple. I'm writing the idiots guide now before I forget! Do you understand Georgina's brilliant bit of logical perception?

If I were just outside one of your rotating spheres and you were just inside, moving past me, would we both measure the same bit of light at 'c'?

Peter

Hi Peter,

Interesting point of vue, geaorgina is an interesting person also like many here,like you.I like her politness and her style of writing, her works and extrapolations are ver relevant in a philosophical and physical point of vue.

The subjetcivity dances around the objectivity where the creativity permits to harmonize the perceptions.Interesting in all case.

,you ask "If I were just outside one of your rotating spheres and you were just inside, moving past me, would we both measure the same bit of light at 'c'?"

In fact Peter ,you shall be always inside the Universal sphere.

Now if you focus simply on moons planets, stars, Bh,Super groups...mega groups ....and the center of our Universe.You shall see a kind of spherical relativity.The volumes are important because the volumes increase towards the main central sphere.Like the quantum world.A specific system possesses the same number....

Now if the volumes and the thermodynamic are inserted like the GR and the QM....all is proportional with THE ROTATING SPHERES.

If BH has a rule.....it's due to its mass and thus its volume.....The otehrs centers have a rule also for the rotation, universal around the universal center.

In conclusion you shall be always also on a sphere, outside of always an smaller thus....perhaps hihihi

The planets are smaller........thermo Peter Thermo ..others are bigger.THE SPHERICAL THERMODYNAMICS ANSWER

Regards

Steve

Peter have you write a film for the sphericentrism or the c' centrism and its sister the politness hihihihi

Steve

You can build a virtual quantum reality where everything is determined by Einsteins dice.

Then you can compare that reality to a real world simulation that uses random dice.

Steve

This is really neat stuff. It always makes me wonder, however, why science continues to characterize the speed of light as a universal constant. It is obviously dependent on media. Why not say the speed of sound is a universal constant?

You can say it is because no sound can move through a vacuum I suppose. My take is if that is the case then it is probably the case that light also can not move through a vacuum. If it could then there would be no need for photons to jump between different discrete energy states.

In reading the comment threads concerning photons and the limitation of light speed etc. I get the distinct impression that although science characterizes light as both a particle and a wave and positions or discribes it as such to the "non-science" minded, science doesn't seem to understand or apply it when characterizing the behavior of light. I have often wondered why this is and I have decided that an earth bound analogy is in order.

If you are sitting on the beach, an activity I would highly recommend as opposed to sitting in a lab, and you observe the waves crossing the open water and lapping at the beach, are the water molecules and atoms in the water moving across the sea with the waves? The answer is no. The water molecules are moving up and down and back and forth in a manner that retains balance between gravitational and rotational and thermal forces acting on the water.

Photons are not zipping through space. Space can be viewed as a photonic energy field in which the photons move up and down and back and forth in a manner that retains balance relative to the forces acting upon that particular point in space. Waves are viewing that motion over an area as a function of time.

When it comes to velocity, the only thing constant in the universe is time. The amount of time it takes balance to propagate between two photons is constant. Photon density in space is not. Photon density increases in relation to its proximity to mass. What is viewed as the constancy of the speed of light is actually the speed of time, and the speed of light relative to distance is variable dependent on photon density between any two points in space. As more and more situations are observed where information and events occur at rates far in excess of the speed of light, at some point science is going to have to acknowledge that the speed of light is not a limit or constant and time is not relative.

If this was not the case building materials that "slow light" would not be possible. The characteristics of these materials does not slow light. The structure of the materials serve as piers and breakwaters that simply calm the waves.

In terms of the worth of these experiments it is priceless and well worth gaining greater understanding of the principles at play behind it. I do not view this in terms of creating quantum computers because we already have enough useless information around to process. However its potential application in creating solar cells and batteries and light sources and propulsion systems is phenomenal.

That is my two cents from an artistic perspective.

I have two questions.

1) Is the light really just being absorbed and re-emitted and in between that going at c in the vacuum? So the average velocity is slowed.

2) If the speed of light is slowed in a meduim, does that mean that the momentum of the light is a lot higher if n were really that high?

Ok, I just came across an article that stated that you get two different answers depending on whether you consider the photon as a wave or as a particle.

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/41873

There is a sort of resolution claimed in the article (that both are correct depending on what you are asking) but for me I want to know this

If you have a spaceship in deep space emitting a 1 KW beam in a certain direction (or a laser to make it simple) you get a very very weak kick from the beam.

Now, if the index of space was say 10^9 instead of 1, or say if C=1 m/s in this

space, would there be a substancial kick on the ship as the beam leaves?

For the John Howell group & other experimenters along this line.

When you slow down light, can you conduct at the same time the double slit experiment. I would like to confirm that the "slow" version of light will act as a particle, while the fast version of light, a wave.

CIG Theory (posted on Out Of The Darkness & Real-Time Physics this same FQXi site - see June 15, 2011 posting) suggests that mass becomes spatial when it travels at or near "c" rates. My guess is, that if you can actually slow light down, it will lose this spatiality. Conducting this experiment will confirm Coney Island Green Theory.

Could you try, and send me results. If I am wrong, I will have to rescind my theory, or at the very least revisit it in its entirety.

Thank You Kindly

Douglas Williaam Lipp