What is the excepted theory, to explain why light travels so fast.

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Before this thread continues, perhaps you could explain to us what you are looking for. While there might be some value in finding the accepted way that light gets to light speed, the value of the excepted way that light gets to light speed is unclear, especially since there may be a great many of those.
It’s just curiosity, I feel that the interactions of light are strange and that fully unlocking how it does what it does is going to be fundamental to understanding our universe.
I read and see it been measured but not understood, let’s face it most things that are created don’t shoot off at light speed they just sit their exactly where they were created unless they are waves. So the thing that’s both a wave and a partial with strange behaviours like even if we are traveling at say 50% of light speed light would still appear to be moving away at light speed not 50% of light speed.
So feel no obligation to go to any effort on my part like I said it’s just my curiosity.
 
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It is not just the power levels, there are factors which control light speed, such as refraction. Light changes it speed as it passes from one medium to another, this is evident by the change in its direction.

How does then "...the wave of the quantum..." sets the speed of light, say water. (I am looking for the general idea.)


Further, interesting news from this website:





"Scientists have apparently broken the universe’s speed limit.



For generations, physicists believed there is nothing faster than light moving through a vacuum - a speed of 186,000 miles per second. But in an experiment in Princeton, N.J., physicists sent a pulse of laser light through cesium vapor so quickly that it left the chamber before it had even finished entering.



The pulse traveled 310 times the distance it would have covered if the chamber had contained a vacuum.

This seems to contradict not only common sense, but also a bedrock principle of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, which sets the speed of light in a vacuum, about 186,000 miles per second, as the fastest that anything can go.

But the findings--the long-awaited first clear evidence of faster-than-light motion--are "not at odds with Einstein," said Lijun Wang, who with colleagues at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton, N.J., report their results in today’s issue of the journal Nature.


Nothing with mass can exceed the light-speed limit. But physicists now believe that a pulse of light--which is a group of massless individual waves--can.

To demonstrate that, the researchers created a carefully doctored vapor of laser-irradiated atoms that twist, squeeze and ultimately boost the speed of light waves in such abnormal ways that a pulse shoots through the vapor in about 1/300th the time it would take the pulse to go the same distance in a vacuum.

As a general rule, light travels more slowly in any medium more dense than a vacuum (which, by definition, has no density at all). For example, in water, light travels at about three-fourths its vacuum speed; in glass, it’s around two-thirds.

The ratio between the speed of light in a vacuum and its speed in a material is called the refractive index. The index can be changed slightly by altering the chemical or physical structure of the medium. Ordinary glass has a refractive index around 1.5."



But by adding a bit of lead, it rises to 1.6.



The slower speed, and greater bending, of light waves accounts for the more sprightly sparkle of lead crystal glass."
The Ceisum vapour, experiment is very interesting it will be intresting to see how the effect gets explained.
Spooky action at a distance?
Or an actually speeding up of light which would point to other things at play.

Thanks for the reply.
 
There is a lot of space out there. How much space is empty and how much is filled with quantum fluctuations. And how about the speed of light in Empty Space.


I came across this web page: https://www.sciencealert.com/physicists-say-they-ve-managed-to-manipulate-pure-nothingness

A lot of mis-information in it. I am quoting just a paragraph:

"But a byproduct of one of the most fundamental principles in quantum mechanics, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, states that there's a limit to how much we can know about quantum particles, and as a result, a vacuum isn't empty, it's actually buzzing with its own strange energy, and filled with particle-antiparticle pairs that appear and disappear randomly. "


It equates the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle ....and comes to the conclusion to the vacuum of space NOT been empty. How can a principle can lead to a general conclusion of ALL space ....not been empty, is a mystery to me.

Generally, speaking, the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle says, if you know the value of one complimentary pair with a high precision , the less you know about the value of the other part of the pair.
I think the quantum world fills every space that is possible.
It's size will be limited also so at some size we have nothing.
my guess is that size is the decay orbit size of the electron.
It jumps from point A to point B and no place inside that orbit so it's saying something for sure.

Light for sure has a set limit so it's going through a medium of some format when it goes through space.
Is it Time/Space or simply Space and Time/QF as 2 different entities.
 
I guess, as the light pulse from the laser in conjunction with the cesium vapor had the overall effect of reducing the threshold of the quantum restriction and so light traveled faster.

Sort of like ..... the light inside the chamber went into warp drive ( Star Trek style) while the part of the light pulse outside the chamber was travelling at normal space speeds.
 
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I guess, as the light pulse from the laser in conjunction with the cesium vapor had the overall effect of reducing the threshold of the quantum restriction and so light traveled faster.

Sort of like ..... the light inside the chamber went into warp drive ( Star Trek style) while the part of the light pulse outside the chamber was travelling at normal space speeds.
Could be it effects quantum fluctuation is some way.
Interesting though since it proves light speed is only set with a natural balance of some force or medium.
Or the universe is far weirder than expected :)
 
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We know light can be created with relatively little energy much less than it takes to get an electron up-to to close to light speed, ie a simple torch, what’s the excepted way that light gets to light speed from these very low power levels. What makes it travel so fast?
I was considering the options, the flow of time as we see it is relative, or it’s being pulled by something, the absence of light acts like a magnet, etc etc, I actual have no clue and have yet to see any explanation, so I just wondered what is sciences current thinking.
I've only just discovered this thread. Part of the answer to your original question is that electrons have mass and photons are massless
 
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What is time, or more precisely, does time exist.

Time is like numbers, in fact, it is a subset of numbers, or better still, it belongs to the concept of numbers, or numbering system, it describes events.

Do numbers exist. The answer is a big NO with capital letters.

Yet, we use numbers every day, at school, shopping, etc. They are an invention of the human mind as they do not exist in nature, an invention that became necessary, initially, to communicate quantity, 1 sheep, 2 sheep, 3 sheep ..... etc.

As the use of numbers grew, they became more complex, developed its own logic structure, and generally, it was called mathematics, the study of numbers.

Because of certain events, the sun rises every day, the day yesterday is not the same as today or the day tomorrow. Living organisms, are born, stay alive for a certain period and then die, the human mind was forced to invent the concept of time, just like numbers.

However, later, tried to define it, more precisely. That is, which moment is past, which moment is now and which moment is future. And how about in between moments, is there really a time lapse - time ceases to exist, before it begins again.

To the point, including Albert Einstein, as some ancient Greeks, came to the conclusion, the past, present and future exist at the same time. The concept of time is an illusion but necessary to explain timely events.

...all of the above, in relation to your statement "I was considering the options, the flow of time as we see it is relative ....."

...and to be more succinct. An illusion just like the co-ordinates of an object's position.

As you were, probably, taught at school, we need three co-ordinates: xyz to define position, other argue the time as well.

If you were in space, how any combination of the above co-ordinates would identify, your position in space. Can you tell the position of the earth, say, an hour ago, in space. The space co-ordinates, in other words.

Well said! I am glad to see their is some intelligence in here.lol!
 
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It makes very interesting reading about the speed of light:


Part of the article:

"
THE GRAVITATIONAL RED SHIFT REJECTS EINSTEIN’S “EQUIVALENCE PRINCIPLE” AND THE FALLACIOUS “ETHER STRUCTURE”

Olympia 1993 Einstein's quanta led to wrong relativity



Einstein believed that the most direct and transparent prediction of his equivalence principle is the gravitational red shift. In fact, I discovered that in quantum dynamics when the constant velocity c of the dipolic photon is parallel to gravity Fg then according to Newton’s second law Fg = dp/dt the photon cannot accelerate along the direction of c but changes its mass under a basic length contraction and a time dilation.

In my paper Impact of Maxwell's equation of displacement current on electromagnetic laws and comparison of the Maxwellian waves with our model of dipolic particles I showed that the dipolic photon at the speed of light c has equal electric attraction and magnetic repulsion. Thus it cannot move faster than the speed of light because the increase of the magnetic force will violate Newton’s third law. That is the acceleration always approaches to zero under a length contraction and a time dilation. Under this condition a photon cannot accelerate along the direction of its velocity c. In other words the equivalence principle which says that gravity is equivalent to acceleration, in fact, in the quantum dynamics leads to complications. Here according to Newton’s second laws we write

Fg ds = dw = hdν = (dmc/dt)ds = dmc2

In this case the decrease of energy dw implies a decrease of the frequency which means that the gravitational red shift is a very different situation than that of the bending of light near the sun. Note that Einstein for the explanation of this phenomenon did not use the relativistic Doppler effect but the simple Doppler effect of the Newtonian mechanic

δν/ν = υ/c

which occurs in accordance with the principle of relativity deduced from Newton’s laws. For example when a spectroscope moves away from the source of light the frequency decreases. In the same way the frequency decreases when the light source moves away from the spectroscope. That is, according to the principle of relativity deduced from laws only the relative motion of one with respect to the other matters. This result is really not surprising. If it made a difference which is moved and which is at rest we should be forced to conclude that there is a fallacious “ether structure” or a strange “curvature of vacuum”. Note that Einstein I his development of special relativity violated also this principle of relativity because he believed that when a magnet moves with respect to a coil a fallacious Maxwellian electric field is generated. Though Neumann in 1845 discovered that the induction laws is consistent with the force of the Ampere law (1820) Maxwell in 1865 for developing his electromagnetic theory introduced the fallacious electric field by violating the principle of relativity."
 
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It makes very interesting reading about the speed of light:


Part of the article:

"
THE GRAVITATIONAL RED SHIFT REJECTS EINSTEIN’S “EQUIVALENCE PRINCIPLE” AND THE FALLACIOUS “ETHER STRUCTURE”

Olympia 1993 Einstein's quanta led to wrong relativity



Einstein believed that the most direct and transparent prediction of his equivalence principle is the gravitational red shift. In fact, I discovered that in quantum dynamics when the constant velocity c of the dipolic photon is parallel to gravity Fg then according to Newton’s second law Fg = dp/dt the photon cannot accelerate along the direction of c but changes its mass under a basic length contraction and a time dilation.

In my paper Impact of Maxwell's equation of displacement current on electromagnetic laws and comparison of the Maxwellian waves with our model of dipolic particles I showed that the dipolic photon at the speed of light c has equal electric attraction and magnetic repulsion. Thus it cannot move faster than the speed of light because the increase of the magnetic force will violate Newton’s third law. That is the acceleration always approaches to zero under a length contraction and a time dilation. Under this condition a photon cannot accelerate along the direction of its velocity c. In other words the equivalence principle which says that gravity is equivalent to acceleration, in fact, in the quantum dynamics leads to complications. Here according to Newton’s second laws we write

Fg ds = dw = hdν = (dmc/dt)ds = dmc2

In this case the decrease of energy dw implies a decrease of the frequency which means that the gravitational red shift is a very different situation than that of the bending of light near the sun. Note that Einstein for the explanation of this phenomenon did not use the relativistic Doppler effect but the simple Doppler effect of the Newtonian mechanic

δν/ν = υ/c

which occurs in accordance with the principle of relativity deduced from Newton’s laws. For example when a spectroscope moves away from the source of light the frequency decreases. In the same way the frequency decreases when the light source moves away from the spectroscope. That is, according to the principle of relativity deduced from laws only the relative motion of one with respect to the other matters. This result is really not surprising. If it made a difference which is moved and which is at rest we should be forced to conclude that there is a fallacious “ether structure” or a strange “curvature of vacuum”. Note that Einstein I his development of special relativity violated also this principle of relativity because he believed that when a magnet moves with respect to a coil a fallacious Maxwellian electric field is generated. Though Neumann in 1845 discovered that the induction laws is consistent with the force of the Ampere law (1820) Maxwell in 1865 for developing his electromagnetic theory introduced the fallacious electric field by violating the principle of relativity."

Interesting....Here is a question for you. How fast do you think consciousness itself moves? If you think about it we can go in an instant back to the past with our thoughts of it. Or say if your consciousness could move couldn't it go to the moon in an instance with just the thought?
 
I would say, very very much less than the speed of light. To think, in other words, is via neuro chemicals, , very slow process.

To think about something, takes about a second. You are confusing speed with thought forming or accessing your memory.

Here is a simple test. Ask a friend to hold a ruler and you on the other hand trying to catch this ruler falling down with your thump and index finger. Time will vary between tests. Especially, if the test is done without you anticipating the release of the ruler.
 
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I would say, very very much less than the speed of light. To think, in other words, is via neuro chemicals, , very slow process.

To think about something, takes about a second. You are confusing speed with thought forming or accessing your memory.

Here is a simple test. Ask a friend to hold a ruler and you on the other hand trying to catch this ruler falling down with your thump and index finger. Time will vary between tests. Especially, if the test is done without you anticipating the release of the ruler.

That makes sense. So what do you suppose could be faster then the speed of light? I guess it is pretty hard to imagine how fast the speed of light is. Well if their is a speed of light would their be a speed of dark?
 
I understand your thoughts. And I take it you mean space been the emptiness between objects, such as between planets, star and planets, asteroids, etc. etc. You may say, the space is the boundless "playground" where all the events of the cosmos that we see or don't see take place.

On the other hand, space could be a the foundation of everything, which without out it, the cosmos would not exist, space came first, then everything else followed.

You got to have an ocean before you have fish in it. No ocean, no fish.

In effect, you are asking about the properties of space, if space exists in the notion, no ocean, no fish.

......if we can not measure it, then we can not define it.
 
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I understand your thoughts. And I take it you mean space been the emptiness between objects, such as between planets, star and planets, asteroids, etc. etc. You may say, the space is the boundless "playground" where all the events of the cosmos that we see or don't see take place.

On the other hand, space could be a the foundation of everything, which without out it, the cosmos would not exist, space came first, then everything else followed.

You got to have an ocean before you have fish in it. No ocean, no fish.

In effect, you are asking about the properties of space, if space exists in the notion, no ocean, no fish.

......if we can not measure it, then we can not define it.

That makes sense. It is a very perplexing interesting topic.lol! I do think if their are extraterrestrials traveling here they wouldn't be using the speed of light to get here. For as vast as space is the speed of light would even take to long. It just is amazing how big space really is. And this is just one universe of who knows how many. It really boggles the mind.lol!
 
IMO the speed of light traveling through a void would be infinite.
Now would a empty(void) region of space stay that way?
I doubt it, seems nature wants to fill a void with something (quantum fluctuation) and i think it's the reason for everything.
 
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What is time, or more precisely, does time exist.

Time is like numbers, in fact, it is a subset of numbers, or better still, it belongs to the concept of numbers, or numbering system, it describes events.

Do numbers exist. The answer is a big NO with capital letters.

Yet, we use numbers every day, at school, shopping, etc. They are an invention of the human mind as they do not exist in nature, an invention that became necessary, initially, to communicate quantity, 1 sheep, 2 sheep, 3 sheep ..... etc.

As the use of numbers grew, they became more complex, developed its own logic structure, and generally, it was called mathematics, the study of numbers.

Because of certain events, the sun rises every day, the day yesterday is not the same as today or the day tomorrow. Living organisms, are born, stay alive for a certain period and then die, the human mind was forced to invent the concept of time, just like numbers.

However, later, tried to define it, more precisely. That is, which moment is past, which moment is now and which moment is future. And how about in between moments, is there really a time lapse - time ceases to exist, before it begins again.

To the point, including Albert Einstein, as some ancient Greeks, came to the conclusion, the past, present and future exist at the same time. The concept of time is an illusion but necessary to explain timely events.

...all of the above, in relation to your statement "I was considering the options, the flow of time as we see it is relative ....."

...and to be more succinct. An illusion just like the co-ordinates of an object's position.

As you were, probably, taught at school, we need three co-ordinates: xyz to define position, other argue the time as well.

If you were in space, how any combination of the above co-ordinates would identify, your position in space. Can you tell the position of the earth, say, an hour ago, in space. The space co-ordinates, in other words.
Great Explanation!
 
Another aspect of light in a vacuum experiment, this time light moving slower, the URL : https://www.iflscience.com/physics/speed-light-can-vary-vacuum/
It's an interesting read but i think the concept is wrong.
When light travels through the vacuum of space it isn't really traveling through a vacuum .
IMO we can answer the why light speed alters through mediums and why light speed changes when we alter the light wave.
Simple interference of the wave traveling through empty space in space full of quantum fluctuation will give good results on why light can change speed.
Light traveling at it max speed is simply matching the wave points of empty space and quantum fluctuation, any alteration such as a medium or alteration of the light wave will miss the space between a quanta and nothing.

IMO a very simple solution to what seems a very complex problem.
No real set L speed law just a simple reason it goes at the speed it does.
 
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Fibonacci one example of numbers that existed without our help. We needed to be able to label for own way of understanding and visualizing

Good point. Isn't it interesting during an eclipse that the moon is the perfect diameter to cover the sun? I just wonder what the chances of that are that it happened by accident? I mean I don't think some religion God made it happen that way. The theory that makes sense to me though is that the moon was dragged here by a race that is millions of years ahead of us and can move planets around if they want.
 
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Time exists. There is nothing you can do about that. Claiming that time exists will not change that. There is no rational reason to attempt to deny the existence of time. More people believe the Earth is flat than believe that time does not exist. In fact, you might be the only one.

That is not true. Even in your example above, you use time in your claim. Time has existed for as long as the Universe has existed, and will continue to exist either until the Universe no longer exists, or on into infinity.
Stay on Track
What I'd give to be observant
Making every moment count
Oh what vivid recollections
In my memory I could mount

Present schedules oft escape me
Common sense rules hold no sway
While on sidetracks revs my thought train
Its sights set for faraway

Father Time raised up a signal
"Read the crossings down life's way"
"Warns today was once tomorrow"
Both on track "just yesterday"
 
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Stay on Track
What I'd give to be observant
Making every moment count
Oh what vivid recollections
In my memory I could mount

Present schedules oft escape me
Common sense rules hold no sway
While on sidetracks revs my thought train
Its sights set for faraway

Father Time raised up a signal
"Read the crossings down life's way"
"Warns today was once tomorrow"
Both on track "just yesterday"
The raven nevermore
 
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Reactions: IG2007 and Dave643

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