POTM Nomination: Re: Wave bu-bye to evolution ! bu-bye! bu-bye!.....

On Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:23:41 -0400, <carlip-nospam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

For Steve's reply to Madders giving a concise description of the
current state of VLS research AND the effects of changes in c
on the earth.

[M]adman <grat@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

It appears that you no longer have the amount of time necessary for
spontaneous life and macro-evolution to occur.

[...]
Within the last 24 months, Dr. Joao Magueijo, a physicist at Imperial
College in London, Dr. John Barrow of Cambridge, Dr. Andy Albrecht
of the University of California at Davis and Dr. John Moffat of the
University of Toronto have all published work advocating their belief
that light speed was much higher - as much as 10 to the 10th power
faster - in the early stages of the "Big Bang" than it is today.

Andy Albrecht is one of my colleagues -- his office is right upstairs from
mine. I've talked to him a lot about his work with Magueijo on variable
speed of light models (which was, by the way, published in 1999, which
is not "within the last 24 months"). The idea that it somehow supports
a young universe, or makes any difference at all to the past 14 billion
years of cosmic evolution, is laughable.

First of all, Albrecht, Magueijo, Barrow, and Moffat are theorists. None
of them has claimed to present any experimental or observational evidence
for changes in the speed of light. What they *have* done is to ask the
question: What would the implications be if the speed of light changed
in the first .00000000000000000000000000000000000000001 seconds
or so after the Big Bang? They address a series of observations that are
currently explained (very successfully) by a model called "inflation," in
which the Universe expands exponentially fast in the first small fraction
of a second, and ask whether a varying speed of light could offer an
alternative explanation. Albrecht and Magueijo explain why they ask
in the conclusion of their paper: "...broadening the range of possible
models of the very early Universe would be very healthy for the field of
cosmology, and would ultimately allow us to state in more concrete
terms the extent to which one model is preferred."

In a more recent paper, http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0511440), Barrow
reviews the experimental and observational evidence. He concludes
that over the past few billion years, the speed of light has varied by at
most about .0000000000001 percent per year, and that since a time a
few seconds after the Big Bang it has changed by at most one or two
percent. Magueijo reaches the same conclusion in his discussion of
experiment in http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0305457.

Barrow is a coauthor (with Tipler) of a book titled _The Anthropic
Cosmological Principle_. Its final conclusions about "fine tuning"
are highly debatable, but if you look at chapter 5, you'll find a good
discussion of how various physical quantities depend on the speed of
light. If you take their equations and plug in a varying speed of
light -- and, God forbid, do a bit of algebra -- you will find that a
5% increase in the speed of light (c) would dim the Sun enough to
lower the Earth's average temperature to -12C. A 10% increase in c
would lower the Earth's mean temperature to -35C. Similarly, a 5%
decrease in c would increase the Earth's mean temperature to about
46C, and a 10% decrease would increase the temperature to 83C. In
one of his papers, Setterfield proposes that the speed of light was
about 11% lower at 1000 BC than it is now. That would give the Earth
a temperature of 91C; the oceans wouldn't quite be boiling, but I think
it would have been noticed.
[...]
That must mean the universe is NOT as old as claimed. Boy, I bet
THAT will ruffle some tail feathers!

Right! If Albrecht, Magueijo, Barrow, or Moffat are right, the Universe
might be as much as .00000000000000000000000000000000000000001
second younger than in standard cosmology. I can see the tail feathers
ruffling right now.
Steve Carlip




--
Martin

.

Relevant Pages

  • POTM Nomination: was Re: Wave bu-bye to evolution ! bu-bye! bu-bye!.....
    ... Andy Albrecht is one of my colleagues -- his office is right upstairs from ... First of all, Albrecht, Magueijo, Barrow, and Moffat are theorists. ... which the Universe expands exponentially fast in the first small fraction ... would lower the Earth's mean temperature to -35C. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Wave bu-bye to evolution ! bu-bye! bu-bye!.....
    ... Andy Albrecht is one of my colleagues -- his office is right upstairs from ... First of all, Albrecht, Magueijo, Barrow, and Moffat are theorists. ... which the Universe expands exponentially fast in the first small fraction ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: POTM Nomination: was Re: Wave bu-bye to evolution ! bu-bye! bu-bye!.....
    ... Albrecht of the University of California at Davis and Dr. John ... First of all, Albrecht, Magueijo, Barrow, and Moffat are theorists. ... model called "inflation," in which the Universe expands exponentially ... increase in c would lower the Earth's mean temperature to -35C. ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Wave bu-bye to evolution ! bu-bye! bu-bye!.....
    ... Andy Albrecht is one of my colleagues -- his office is right upstairs from ... First of all, Albrecht, Magueijo, Barrow, and Moffat are theorists. ... which the Universe expands exponentially fast in the first small fraction ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: CMBR- A More Explicit Answer
    ... ....assuming the gas is burning at an actual temp of 25,000 K. ... > the mass in the universe should result in a Lobachevskian pattern (if ... > you neglect all acceleration due to collisions and gravity). ... > appear to have an infinite temperature by this equation; ...
    (sci.physics.relativity)
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