Time Odyssey

What happens when the speed of light is relative? Currently the speed of light in a vacuum is set at about 3 x 10⁸m/s. But the question I have is whether a vacuum really has anything to do with the absolute speed of light. See here is my problem. We know that light slows downin a medium. The reason typically given has to do with the density of the material in question but what if we suppose that the reason has to do more with the nature of gravity rather than mass. Could it be possible that the speed of light has to do with the number of phase transitions between different gravitational wells regardless of their scope or scale?

By analogy, picture two inclined planes. One has an absolutely smooth surface. The second is filled with indentations of varying shapes and sizes. Now roll a marble down each. It would seem obvious that the marble on the smooth surface would reach the bottom the fastest as the other marble would be slowing down and trying to get back to speed as it hits each bump in along the surface. Further, that for each bump of a given size, the depth only becomes an issue after the size of the bump increases in relationship to the size of the marble. If the marble and the bump are relatively the same size then the depth (or scale) really doesn’t matter all that much – all that matters is the fact that the surface isn’t perfectly smooth.

This would suggest that we have the speed of light correct, but only within our frame of reference which is our local neighbourhood. The actual speed of light in a vacuum in terms of a constant should be greater than what we have experimentally measured. This idea provides for a number of rather weird implications that should be able within reach of experimental evidence.

The first is that the energy released according to Einstein’s equation E = mc²may need to be modified to take into account the gravitation effects of the frame of reference in which the calculation is made. For example, the energy released in a highly dense environment (i.e. larger numbers of gravity wells) should be less energetic than that in a vacuum (with fewer gravity wells) since the speed of light would be slower in highly dense environments.

The second is that the size of the universe and distances to far away galaxies should not be able to be calculated with any great precision as the light which is used as the yardstick for determining time will have sped up and slowed down countless times as it travels through space of various densities. What I don’t know is whether that effect has any impact on red-shift and blue-shift which would certainly thrown just about every astronomer into a tizzy if the de facto standard for determining spacial relationships suddenly proved to be bogus.

The third then would be this concept of the speed of light being absolute. If c is a function of the wavelength of light times a gravitational factor, then by reducing the gravimetric effects of the surrounding space, technically there would then be no limit to the speed at which we could travel. Einstein’s prediction that infinite speed requires infinite energy would no longer be the case if a spaceship could be encased in a bubble of non-gravity. I would suspect that the time effects also predicted by Einstein’s equations would also no longer be of relevance because we have now essentially changed our frame of reference so that the gravitational influences on the rate of time potentially cancel out.

Would be interesting to see if this is actually the case. Experimentally it would be simple to prove under conditions in which gravimetric effects of the surrounding frame of reference could be cancelled out. Same experiment as originally done to prove the time dilation effect – just done in a gravimetric bubble. Two clocks out – two clocks back – should remain synchronized with a source clock maintained within normal space. And just think of the worlds that little trick would open up – K