Let's Talk Rainbows

[_subgenius]

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Only if we want it to be. ; )

again, another "objective" statement.
please, let the next person in line move forward.

[_subgenius]

Ahhhhh, the perch rises to the bait. Delicio!
Perch is considered a delicacy in my country, despite all the bones.

and yet the perch has found no hook, looks like only salad for you.
still waiting for the "misquotes"

[_consiglieri]

No one has yet to address the original assumption that light has always refracted in the manner of rainbows and that it always will.

What other way do you propose light should refract?

[_subgenius]

No one has yet to address the original assumption that light has always refracted in the manner of rainbows and that it always will.

What other way do you propose light should refract?

i am not proposing either way. The OP, and others, has assumed that light has behaved consistently for time and all eternity, yet they have posted no empirical evidence to support such a declaration.

[_Tarski]

A while back, the admittedly caustic and politically opinionated Lubos Motl (Theoretical Physicist until recently at Harvard) couldn't stand it anymore and posted the following on VSL theories.
I repost it below but for a calmer look at the notion see this link:
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vste ... iefs/c.pdf

My quip would simple be that the speed of light is exactly 1. Yup! exactly one.

The archives and sometimes even journals are continuously flooded with new articles about a theory that was originally invented by young Earth creationists to reconcile the Bible with the Big Bang and that was later adopted by non-Christian crackpots, too. It is called


•Varying Speed of Light (VSL) theory
George Ellis has decided that there should exist an authoritative, published article explaining why all this VSL industry is complete crap. I fully agree. If this nonsense keeps on appearing all the time, there should exist some reactions that can be referred to. He mentions virtually identical arguments that I always say about these VSL theories:

•Their authors don't understand that one can always change her units. They don't know what's the difference between dimensionless and dimensionful quantities.
•The meter is moreover defined as 1/299,792,458 of a light second, so according to current definitions, a varying speed of light is simply a contradiction.
•One doesn't gain anything whatsoever by redefining the speed of light in a time-dependent fashion because it is just a time-dependent change of units (or coordinates in GR).
•When the speed of light is allowed to be different for various phenomena, we need to determine the right modifications in all equations of physics, including Maxwell's equations and others. No VSL paper is doing anything like that.

•Moreover, one expects to end up with a generic non-relativistic theory with infinitely many parameters. The VSL papers never offer any principle that would replace the broken Lorentz symmetry and determine these parameters. They don't even acknowledge this problem.

In other words, VSL theories are 100% vacuous and stupid crap.

Tonight, Magueijo and Moffat have submitted an answer that have made me so upset by its breathtaking stupidity that I simply had to write this text to calm down. ;-) They don't understand a single one among Ellis' obvious complaints. Instead, they paint themselves as new Galileos because they are ready to make a constant variable.

Important physics has never worked like that. Quite on the contrary. Every new major revolution in physics has shown that a certain conversion parameter was not only constant but it was meaningful to set it equal to one.

Joule has figured out that heat and energy can be transformed to each other. We can thus use the same unit for both quantities: to celebrate his discovery, we call the international unit a Joule.

Einstein has found out that space and time are equivalent. This allowed him to declare "c" to be a universal constant. Moreover, all adult physicists who need relativistic phenomena use units where "c=1". This choice also implies that mass and energy are essentially the same thing.

Analogously, quantum physics is closely associated with Planck's constant. Frequencies are the same thing as energies. Adult physicists set "hbar=1". In quantum gravity we may also set Newton's constant "G=1" although in perturbative string theory, it is more natural to set "alpha'=1".

We no longer need degrees to measure angles because rads make equations simpler. Also, we don't need Avogadro's constants and moles because we can count individual atoms and molecules which are better "units" than moles. The number of constants we need to write into our equations decreases.

Making constants variable is going exactly in the opposite direction than what progress in theoretical physics has always been doing. The only "constants" that should be variable are those that depend on some parameters of the environment. But such a declaration of their variability is only interesting once we understand how the environment actually works. Saying that quantities should become variable without understanding how they vary is a meaningless sleight of hand but certainly not a complete theory of anything.

A very similar criticism applies, to a lesser extent, to doubly special relativity etc. The people who work on all these stupid things have a tremendous problem to distinguish physics from conventions, predictions from ways of writing things, deep insights from vacuous sequences of mathematical symbols. They don't understand what a choice of units and field redefinitions means and why they're unphysical. Despite all of their profound ignorance about basics of physics, these crackpots are extremely arrogant (Magueijo is the #1 example, of course) - they view themselves as competitors of inflationary cosmology and many other key segments of science - which makes me quite upset. ;-)

[_consiglieri]

i am not proposing either way. The OP, and others, has assumed that light has behaved consistently for time and all eternity, yet they have posted no empirical evidence to support such a declaration.

This is the best you can come up with?

Really?

I guess you're not kidding about the "subgenius" bit.


All the Best!

--Consiglieri

[_Tarski]

Subgenius, do ever plan to attempt to address the evidence against your claims, or will you continue to make excuses?

what actual evidence...only theories have been proposed.
No one has yet to address the original assumption that light has always refracted in the manner of rainbows and that it always will.

It isn't an assumption. It is a mathematical deduction based on much simpler and more fundamental assumptions that hopefully even you would not be inclined to deny. Physics is a connected whole and one cannot willy nilly suspend belief in individual bits and pieces on pain of making nonsense out of the whole thing. But then there would be a whole heck of a lot of explaining to do to account for the success of physics in everything from semiconductors to quantum optics, to the design of satellite GPS technology (which actually uses standard general relativity!).

By the way, do you have empirical evidence that shows that relatively pure liquid water (say rain water) was even transparent in the past? Do you just assume it? Perhaps it was as opaque as molten lead? (lol)

[_Buffalo]

Subgenius, do ever plan to attempt to address the evidence against your claims, or will you continue to make excuses?

what actual evidence...only theories have been proposed.
No one has yet to address the original assumption that light has always refracted in the manner of rainbows and that it always will.

More evasions. I accept your surrender.

[_subgenius]

More evasions. I accept your surrender.

well if "evasions" be the guide, then you surrendered long ago.

[_Buffalo]

More evasions. I accept your surrender.

well if "evasions" be the guide, then you surrendered long ago.

Your opponents have offered plenty of evidence and well-reasoned arguments. All you've given in return is evasion. You're a poor partner.