Black holes

[Brian-M]

From my earlier post...

I thought this one was important enough to merit it's own separate post. It's possible that the main point of contention between you and... everyone, might simply be due to some confusion in the terms being used.

To clarify, are you saying that the rate of all physical processes vary in direct proportion to the local speed of light, so that any possible (local) means of measurement will (mistakenly?) show the speed of light to be unchanged?

I see you'd already answered it...

Because you're an electromagnetic animal, and when the light slows down so do you.

You can't detect it locally. It's like asking some guy in a movie to notice when the movie is being played in slow-motion. And note that in that analogy, the motion is slower, not time.

Basically, you're saying that the rate at which physical processes or events occur is reduced, or slowed down. But the sequential occurrence of physical processes and events is what the rest of us call the passage of time.

So what you're saying translates as the passage time slows down, which is what we've been saying all along.

The only difference (to this particular aspect of the myriad of things we're arguing about) is that you're saying time slows down because light is slower, while we're saying that light slows down because time is passing slower.

 

[W.D.Clinger]

Farsight's been treating us to an unusually silly argument from false authority.

The only thing I think it's worth pointing out is that some of the people here are mathematicians rather than physicists.

It might also be worth pointing out that one person here is neither a mathematician nor a physicist.

He's the one who's saying the mathematicians are wrong about the math, and he's the one who's saying the physicists are wrong about the physics.

He's saying we should just take his word for it, because...well, apparently we're supposed to trust what he says because he knows his own name and lives in England:

Give it up. You're digging yourself into a hole....Now watch my lips: stop digging.....Don't you be the fall guy. I'm John Duffield by the way. I live in Poole, in England. What's your name?

John Duffield of Poole has not been able to supply any evidence in support of his positions. When that's pointed out to him, as here, look how he responds:

But you're not supplying evidence. Every bit of evidence that you have supplied matches the predictions of standard textbook theory which you claim is wrong. But how can you prove the theory is wrong if its predictions match the experimental evidence you provide? Obviously, you cannot.

I'm not proving the theory is wrong. I'm proving that charlatan quacks who have hijacked the theory are wrong.

John Duffield of Poole has not been able to supply any evidence in support of his claim that "charlatan quacks...have hijacked the theory". When that's pointed out to him, look how he responds:

All you've done is present your interpretation of the evidence, and claim that since your interpretation contradicts the standard interpretation, the standard theory is wrong. But it doesn't work that way. The evidence itself still matches, the standard theory still stands.

In your dreams, Zig. It's a busted flush. Those two trains on the tracks aren't going at the same speed. Nor is the light, just like Einstein said.

It's helpful to recall what Einstein actually said, instead of trusting what anti-mathematician and anti-physicist John Duffield of Poole says Einstein said:

You may recall that relativity (even special relativity) allows observers to disagree about lengths (even relative lengths), simulteneity, and sequences of events. Different observers may disagree on all of these issues, and may therefore disagree about which train is faster.

 

[ben m]

Hey folks! I wanted to let you know that I just won the LA Marathon. I won it by sitting on my couch having a cup of tea.

What's that? You say a marathon is a 26-mile footrace? Get your noses out of your books, morons. You say that thousands of people actually ran a 26-mile footrace in LA? Well, they're all wrong. Everyone can see that your appeal-to-authority has failed. I am the first person since Pheidippides to have done this correctly. What, you say Pheidippides himself ran a 26-mile footrace? Nonsense, you're stuck in your books again. Look carefully: Couch. Cup. Tea. I win. You don't even have an argument. I wish to point out that some of you are not professional racers, so I will ignore you all. And I haven't seen a refutation of my ironclad tea accomplishment.

 

[Reality Check]

Missed this bit of Farsight-speak:

I'm not proving the theory is wrong. I'm proving that charlatan quacks who have hijacked the theory are wrong.

Can you give us a list of the charlatan quacks who have hijacked the theory?

I've provided evidence that the speed of light isn't constant. Everything unravels from there. So you can kiss your precious Hawking radiation goodbye.

No you have not. Thus nothing unravels from there.

By definition the speed of light is constant.
What everyone has been telling you and reading a GR textbook or reading Einstein will confiirm this is that the coordinate speed of light varies.

If you think that Hawking radiation is a only GR result (or has something to do with only the speed of light) then you really need to find out what it is. I will quote the simplified description for you:

A slightly more precise, but still much simplified, view of the process is that vacuum fluctuations cause a particle-antiparticle pair to appear close to the event horizon of a black hole. One of the pair falls into the black hole whilst the other escapes. In order to preserve total energy, the particle that fell into the black hole must have had a negative energy (with respect to an observer far away from the black hole). By this process, the black hole loses mass, and, to an outside observer, it would appear that the black hole has just emitted a particle.

 

[dafydd]

Quote:
''A slightly more precise, but still much simplified, view of the process is that vacuum fluctuations cause a particle-antiparticle pair to appear close to the event horizon of a black hole. One of the pair falls into the black hole whilst the other escapes. In order to preserve total energy, the particle that fell into the black hole must have had a negative energy (with respect to an observer far away from the black hole). By this process, the black hole loses mass, and, to an outside observer, it would appear that the black hole has just emitted a particle.''

If that came from a book then Farsight will ignore it. Books!? We doan need no stinkin' books!

 

[ben m]

I mean, yeah, it's obvious that he says that when cornered, but --- well, he says that and goes right back to pretending to follow Einstein in the original form. Meanwhile, when I read Einstein I keep seeing sentences like

Die allgemeinen Naturgesetze sind durch Gleichungen aus-
zudrücken, die füralle Koordinatensysteme gelten, d. h. die
beliebigen Substitutionen gegenüberkovariant (allgemein ko-
variant) sind.

(trans: The general laws of nature are to be expressed by equations which hold good for all the systems of coordinates, that is, are covariant with respect to any substitutions whatever (generally covariant).)

In the 1916 paper that's italicized for emphasis.

Farsight, I haven't seen your response to this. Given that your argument is (a) "my coordinate system shows real things, and other coordinates systems show meaningless nonsense" and (b) "I'm using uncorrupted ideas of Einstein's" ... well, perhaps ignoring it is the best you can do.

 

[ben m]

This is what I'm asking you: what scientific evidence? I have a bunch of data from well-known gravity experiments. I have bunch of well-known mainstream-GR predictions for those experiments. I have a bunch of statistical data analysis saying that the experiments agree with the predictions. That's "scientific evidence"---the behavior of nature agrees with actual GR calculations performed by normal MTW-trained physicists.

I want to highlight another problem Farsight hasn't responded to. Farsight, when you've claimed that you have "experimental evidence" against mainstream MTW-style GR, what exactly are you referring to? There was a some sort of hint about clock-comparison-at-different-heights, but since those experiments agree with the standard MTW calculation (section 38.5) you can't have meant that, could you? Or maybe you're ignoring this on purpose.

 

[ctamblyn]

Your train didn't take a detour. Check that out. So you're there on the platform, fuming because you're going to be late for your presentation, then South West Trains announce We are sorry to report that the 7:55 from Weymouth to Waterloo is running 15 minutes late. This is due to a time warp in the Dorset region.

Phooey!

No. They decay to simpler nuclei, like unbalanced machines. Then you can chop them up further and annihilate them to photons. E=mc² and all that.

You don't understand it. What you don't understand is that at the fundamental level, matter has a wave nature, and pair production says something important. And annihilation. I know people told you that electrons and quarks are fundamental particles, but they'e not. You can destroy an electron if you've got a positron handy. Ditto for a proton if you've got an antiproton up your sleeve. You're left with photons. Or neutrinos, but they travel at c, so don't sweat it. Not quarks. Not gluons. Any pions you saw are ephemera. It's to do with the wave nature of matter. If you're made of waves, you always measure wave speed to be the same.

No I'm not. Because permittivity and permeability are two aspects of the electromagnetism.

Yawn. Please, somebody give me something worthwhile that challenges what I've been saying instead of all this desperate you're wrong because my book says you're wrong garbage. I really am starting to lose patience here.

Yeah yeah. Einstein was wrong. And the patent evidence is wrong. Beam me up Scottie.

And so to bed.

You skipped most of the main points I made in the post you replied to here, which is a pity. I'm particularly disappointed by your apparent non-answer to my pointing out your error regarding the relationship between c and Z₀. You keep asking for people to try to shoot your arguments down, yet when I pointed out a logical problem with your claim you were less than receptive.

I won't bother to go over all my points again though, or press you for answers, since it's obvious to me that we'd just end up going round in circles and, in any case, others here are covering most of the same questions better than I would. Perhaps they can help you bridge the gap.

When you return, I'd like to focus on the following issues in particular.

First, it is a fact (that anyone can verify) that "MTW"-style black holes are valid solutions of the mathematical model we've been calling "MTW" GR. On the other hand, you assert (without details) that this is incompatible with FGR, which advocates a frozen star picture. I'm going to anticipate the answer to ben m's question above, and say that there is no available evidence which favours FGR over "MTW" GR on this issue. In fact I will go further and bet that there is no empirical evidence whatsoever that favours FGR over "MTW" GR (feel free to prove me wrong). Given that, on what rational basis are you actually rejecting the one and embracing the other?

Second, the "details" issue. You claim that FGR can be understood in terms of vacuum permittivity and permeability varying through space. You further claim that the predictions of FGR are in accord with the predictions of "MTW" GR when it comes to the classical tests of general relativity, but disagree in some other areas (e.g. black hole interiors and Hawking radiation). However, you have not given us any details; you have not shown us any quantitative laws. You are just asking us to take your word for it.

Indeed, in light of the demonstrated inequivalence of certain other similar-sounding models to GR there is every reason for a good skeptic to assign a very low prior probability to the truth of your claims. Given the lack of detail you have provided there is no way to know if they are even self-consistent.

 

[ben m]

Indeed, in light of the demonstrated inequivalence of certain other similar-sounding models to GR there is every reason for a good skeptic to assign a very low prior probability to the truth of your claims. Given the lack of detail you have provided there is no way to know if they are even self-consistent.

Yep. Farsight isn't just making the claim "I've thought of something and convinced myself I'm right". He's making the claim "I've thought about something. It's something which other people have also thought about, and their thoughts (backed up by detailed math) explicitly contradict mine, and I can't explain why, but you should believe me."

Imagine someone walking into a casino with such a claim.

• F: "I've got a betting system that will beat the roulette wheel."
• G: "What, is this the Martingale again? It doesn't work."
• F: "No, it's not what *you* think of as Martingale. It's the original uncorrupted Martingale."
• G: "Whatever it is, there's a generic problem with all such betting systems. One can prove that the game is a Markov process with <etc>."
• F: "That proof doesn't apply to my system. Next."
• G: "Why not? An error in the proof, or the premises?"
• F: "Either one. My system is that you double your bet on losses."
• G: "Yep, that's a Martingale. Here is the particular proof that Martingale loses. Here is the general proof in which Martingale is a special case."
• F: "Nope, it's not a Martingale. If none of you have any intelligent responses I will leave."
• G: "If it were not a Martingale, it would fail the general proof anyway."
• F: "It doesn't. Look here: I double the bet on losses. When you win it adds up to cover."
• G: "You're like the 1000th person to have convinced himself that Martingale can beat roulette. Your infinite-series of doublings ignores the finite bank. If you do something different, show your analysis."
• F: "Argument from authority. Ignored."
• G: "I said: what did you compute differently? Can you show your actual statistical analysis?"
• F: "Anyone have an argument? No? Anyone intelligent here?"
• G: "Analysis?"
• F: "I'm not a mathematician. I've thought about it logically and it works out. "

 

[Farsight]

I mean, yeah, it's obvious that he says that when cornered, but --- well, he says that and goes right back to pretending to follow Einstein in the original form. Meanwhile, when I read Einstein I keep seeing sentences like....

Cornered? Me?

 

[Farsight]

I've read the thread, and will pick up from the bottom of page 13:

That's true according to an observer who actually thinks the tracks are the same length, that the starts were simultaneous, and that the finishes happened in the order you specified. You may recall that relativity (even special relativity) allows observers to disagree about lengths (even relative lengths), simulteneity, and sequences of events. Different observers may disagree on all of these issues, and may therefore disagree about which train is faster.

Whoa. Whilst there's a symmetry to time dilation in the SR "twins paradox" scenario, there is no such symmetry when it comes to gravitational time dilation. When you and I pass each other in space, I see your clocks running slower than mine, and you see mine running slower than yours. However when I'm at a higher altitude than you, I see your clocks running slower than mine, and you see mine running faster than yours. We can contrive the trains example such that the first train to hit the buffers detonates a bomb on the other train. All observers see the lower train blow up.

 

[Farsight]

And that is idoitic because c is the speed of light in vacuum. It is constant. It is always c

It's only constant because it's defined to be constant. If it was truly constant, optical clocks and parallel-mirror light clocks at different elevations would stay synchronised, and we'd then assert that indeed the speed of light is absolutely constant:

|-------------------|
|-------------------|

The coordinate speed of light does vary as GR states:

The speed of light varies. Experiment tells you this. Einstein did too.

In Schwarzschild coordinates the coordinate speed of light is zero at the event horizon (there is a coordinate singularity there).

In Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates the coordinate speed of light is the same everywhere (there is no coordinate singularity at the event horizon).

We are talking about the coordinate speed of light at the event horizon. This depends on the coordinate system used.

It's wrong to use a coordinate system that ignores what happens in the real world.

There is no "patent" evidence because no one has observed what happens when they fall into a black hole (and cannot communicate this to anyone!).

There is patent evidence for the varying speed of light. Optical clocks at different elevations don't stay synchronised. The lower clock goes slower than the upper clock. And it's a light clock. But incredibly, you dismiss this by saying Oh no, it isn't the light going slower, it's time. You dismiss what you can see in favour of what you can't. That's not good physics RC.

The evidence is that GR works and does not depend on the coordinate system used. It is expressed in coordinate free math. This is what as Einstein stated and everyone who has read anything about GR knows.

GR is a well tested theory, and I've previously referred to The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment. But Einstein did not advocate the point-singularity black hole interpretation.

The first problem is that there is no event horizon in your example.

There is. When light no longer moves, there are no more events.

The second problem is that there is not even a black hole in your example!

It's even more of a hole than the point-singularity interpretation. It's a "hole in the fabric of spacetime".

 

[Farsight]

Easy - you are too vague about your example to be even wrong. It depends on the velocity. Read some SR.

You are right . It is really, really simple. Both beams travelling at the speed of light (c). Two identical distances (d). Thus physically impossible!
So hopefully you have missed something out rather then failing high school physics .

Is nobody going to pick him up on this? Come on guys, let's have a sincere discussion here. If you're going to sit on your hands and say nothing when RC gets his physics wrong, you lose credibility when I point it out. Like this:

Sorry, Farsight, but your ignorance is showing again! A fundamental particle is not a particle that cannot be destroyed:

"In particle physics, an elementary particle or fundamental particle is a particle not known to have substructure; that is, it is not known to be made up of smaller particles".

All particles can be destroyed if you put them in contact with their antiparticle. For example photons are their own antiparticle and annihilate with each other.

Groan, the irony. RC, do not accuse me of ignorance. Photons do not annihilate one another. Shine a light beam, now shine another light beam through it. See that fireball of annihilating photons where the light beams intersect? Er, no.

 

[Farsight]

A negative -4m by -4m carpet sounds like an ace way to scam someone on ebay if you sell carpets.

Take care though, the price of such a carpet is negative.

 

[Farsight]

But the whole point of the question is that we haven't pinned C to a constant value. We're trying to work out the value of C by measuring the impedance of space.

We can't, it's a triangle. Locally you use something that moves to define your units, then when you say something else is moving at some speed, all you're doing is saying how fast it moves compared to first thing. When both things are light, you always get the same answer.

This brings us back to DeiRenDopa's question. How do you measure the impedance of space?

You send an electromagnetic wave through it at two locations, you note that at the upper location the wave reaches its destination sooner than at the lower location, then you use one location as your baseline and express the impedance at the other location as a factor of the former.

Your response makes no sense. In the example you gave, you told us we already know the frequency because we measured it before the clock broke down. Since our objective is to determine the duration of a second, and we already know the cycles per second of the signal, all we need to do is count the cycles to define the second. It doesn't matter how fast the light is traveling, or the wavelength of the signal.

You don't already know the cycles per second. Because you don't have your second defined yet.

In the boat analogy, if you already know how many times per second minute the waves are passing by your boat, and you want to find the duration of the second minute, you simply count the waves as the go past. How large the waves are, and how fast they're moving is irrelevant.

No you don't. You're in a boat with some waves passing you by. You sit there counting how many times you bob up and down, and then you say I declare the duration of x waves passing me by to be one minute. You don't already know their frequency, if you did you would already have your minute, so there wouldn't be any point counting those waves to define it.

Are you trying to be funny?

No. I'm deadly serious.

If you're trying to determine the duration of a second, there'd be no point counting the cycles of the signal unless you knew the frequency

And if you already know their frequency, you already know how many cycles per second you're talking about, so you already know what the second is so there's no point defining it.

But counting is just one possible method of determining the length of the second. Instead, you could multiply the observed duration of a single cycle by the frequency of the signal to get the same result.

You can't use frequency to define the second. Because frequency is cycles per second.

Either way, it's frequency that's being used to determine the duration of the second.

No it isn't.

I'm sure I must be misunderstanding you somewhere. It seems as if your saying that both frequency and wavelength remains the same regardless of how fast the light is traveling?

I didn't actually say that. What I'm trying to get across is that regardless of how fast those waves are coming at you, you count x bobs then say that's a second. Then you watch how far a wave moves during the same fraction of a second and say that's a metre. So regardless of how I vary the wave speed with my magic button, when you repeat your exercise you always end up saying that the waves are moving at 299,458,792 metres per second, and you always assign them the same wavelength and frequency.

 

[Brian-M]

When you and I pass each other in space, I see your clocks running slower than mine, and you see mine running slower than yours. However when I'm at a higher altitude than you, I see your clocks running slower than mine, and you see mine running faster than yours. We can contrive the trains example such that the first train to hit the buffers detonates a bomb on the other train. All observers see the lower train blow up.

But what if two spaceships are accelerating at slightly different rates? The people on each ship will feel the force pulling them "down" as slightly differently, exactly the same as people at different altitudes on a planet.

If we turn the ships around periodically so we can take a peek at each-other's clocks as we pass, we'll see that the clock on the ship with the lower rate of acceleration is faster than the clock on the ship with the higher acceleration.

Exactly what we see on earth, the clock with the lower acceleration (lower gravity) goes faster than the clock with the higher acceleration (higher gravity).

If it was truly constant, optical clocks and parallel-mirror light clocks at different elevations would stay synchronised, and we'd then assert that indeed the speed of light is absolutely constant:

The speed of light varies. Experiment tells you this. Einstein did too.

Okay.
The speed of light is not truly, absolutely constant.
It's just locally constant.

It's wrong to use a coordinate system that ignores what happens in the real world.

That's why we use coordinate systems that correspond to the real world.

There is patent evidence for the varying speed of light. Optical clocks at different elevations don't stay synchronised. The lower clock goes slower than the upper clock. And it's a light clock. But incredibly, you dismiss this by saying Oh no, it isn't the light going slower, it's time. You dismiss what you can see in favour of what you can't. That's not good physics RC.

Okay, let's entertain the possibility that it's truly light, and not time that's changing.

But what you've described before as the consequence of light changing speed is exactly the same thing as what we mean by time slowing down.

Can you explain to us what the difference is between our concept of time slowing down and your concept of light slowing down?

Because if there is no difference, you've just wasting our time with a mangled attempt to describe the same thing with different words.

It'd be as if someone had been arguing with us vehemently for hours insisting that the objects we're describing aren't really rectangle, torus and spherical like we say they are, and eventually we realize that he's trying to say they're actually oblong, doughnut-shaped and ball-shaped instead.

 

[Farsight]

First off, there is no other solution to √16. √16 is, by definition, 4. Not -4, but only 4. -4 is a solution to x²=16, but that equation yields x=+√16 or -√16 as the solutions.

Oh Zig, don't try conflating principal square roots with square roots. Multiply 4 by itself and you get 16. Multiply -4 by itself and you get 16. So what's the square root of 16? Ah, it's 4 is it? No, that's the principal square root of 16.

Second, you're still wrong: this IS a displacement. It must be a displacement and not a distance, because otherwise you can't specify that it's a square. Because if you cut out a rhombus with sides of 4 m, you won't get 16 m².

The length of each edge is a distance. It's a distance, not a displacement. There are no negative lengths. There are no carpets that measure less than 0m on a side, regardless of how many sides they have, regardless of what shape they are. There are no negative carpets. Just as there are no light clocks going slower than stopped.

Third, even in regards to distance, you are wrong. The math DOES tell you that distances can only be positive, and that negative distances are not real solutions - if you handle the math correctly. Which you seem incapable of doing.

LOL! You got this negative carpet excrutiatingly embarrassingly wrong, and now you're saying I can't handle the math?

Try cutting out a square of carpet without reference to direction. I think you'll find it rather difficult. This is a displacement, not a distance.

Try making a cut in a carpet. Make that cut -1m long. Tricky, isn't it? Look Zig, you've come a cropper on this one. Don't make it any worse. Stop digging, move on.

 

[Brian-M]

We can't, it's a triangle. Locally you use something that moves to define your units, then when you say something else is moving at some speed, all you're doing is saying how fast it moves compared to first thing. When both things are light, you always get the same answer.

So... there's no way to measure vacuum impedance except by measuring the speed of light? In that case, why did you even bring up the subject of vacuum impedance way back in post 290?

You don't already know the cycles per second. Because you don't have your second defined yet.

YOU SAID: You can't see any nearby stars, but you can detect the 21cm hydrogen line. This electromagnetic radiation "is at the precise frequency of 1420.40575177 MHz". You detect it, and find it to be isotropic. [...] So if your master clock suffers some breakdown, you know that you can recalibrate it by counting the hydrogen-line microwaves passing you by.

In your scenario we start off with a clock. The second has already been defined, that's how we know what the frequency is.

If the clock breaks down, we still know what the frequency was. We wrote it down on a piece of paper. (You might not have, but I did.)

So back to my original question, what do we care what the speed of light was, or what the wavelength is? All we need to know if the cycles per second, and measure how long it takes that many cycles to pass.

No you don't. You're in a boat with some waves passing you by. You sit there counting how many times you bob up and down, and then you say I declare the duration of x waves passing me by to be one minute. You don't already know their frequency, if you did you would already have your minute, so there wouldn't be any point counting those waves to define it.

Unless everybody in the world was on the boat, and they had no reliable way of precisely measuring the time, and those waves happen to be passing at a remarkably constant and unchanging rate.

Then you could just make up a number, any number you wanted, and as long as everyone else in the boat used the same number, that would be a minute.

If there was already a different way of measuring a minute, such as 1/1440 of the time between one dawn and another, but was unsatisfactory for some reason, you could pick a number that would give about the same length of time so that your almanacs and cookbooks which give time in minutes won't need to be updated.

That's pretty much what was done with the second, only the boat is the entire world.

If you're trying to determine the duration of a second, there'd be no point counting the cycles of the signal unless you knew the frequency, because it's the frequency that determines how many cycles you need to count.

And if you already know their frequency, you already know how many cycles per second you're talking about, so you already know what the second is so there's no point defining it.

Just because you know the frequency doesn't necessarily mean that you know the duration of the second. Somebody else, who happened to know the duration of the second, might have sent you a letter telling you what the frequency is. Or you might have worked out what the frequency was while you knew the duration of the second, but no longer know what the second is because your clock broke down. Or an international standards organization might have published a document telling you what the frequency of the microwaves that have a certain effect on a specific atom is.

In these cases, you know the frequency but not the second. So you can use the frequency to work out the second, without knowing or caring what the speed of light is.

You can't use frequency to define the second. Because frequency is cycles per second.

You've got that backwards. You can use frequency to define the second because frequency is cycles per second

No it isn't.

Yes it is.

No it isn't.

Yes it is.​

I didn't actually say that. What I'm trying to get across is that regardless of how fast those waves are coming at you, you count x bobs then say that's a second. Then you watch how far a wave moves during the same fraction of a second and say that's a metre. So regardless of how I vary the wave speed with my magic button, when you repeat your exercise you always end up saying that the waves are moving at 299,458,792 metres per second, and you always assign them the same wavelength and frequency.

I see where you're making your mistake. You think the speed of light is analogous to the distance traveled by waves on the sea. Not true. That's wavelength. The speed of light is analogous to the current of the water on which the waves propagate, which can be a completely different speed to the frequency at which the waves are passing you.

The frequency of light is the side to side "motion" of the photon. (Light is a transverse wave, remember?) The speed of light is the forward motion of the photon.

The speed of light is NOT dependent on it's frequency. It could be oscillating at a thousand cycles per second, or a million, or a billion. This has no effect on how far it travels in that time.

If we were defining the meter by wavelength, you'd have a valid point. But we're not, so you don't.

Groan, the irony. RC, do not accuse me of ignorance. Photons do not annihilate one another. Shine a light beam, now shine another light beam through it. See that fireball of annihilating photons where the light beams intersect? Er, no.

Oh my [Insert fictitious deity here].
This one literally made me laugh out loud.

(The humor lies in the fact that you begin by claiming it's ironic that he should be accusing you of ignorance... and then unwittingly and indisputably prove him right while attempting to prove the opposite.)

Farsight, I'm done wasting my time on you.

(You might want to look up some information on interference patterns, and the double slit experiment, before you make yourself appear even more foolish.)

 

[Farsight]

I thought this one was important enough to merit it's own separate post. It's possible that the main point of contention between you and... everyone, might simply be due to some confusion in the terms being used.

To clarify, are you saying that the rate of all physical processes vary in direct proportion to the local speed of light, so that any possible (local) means of measurement will (mistakenly?) show the speed of light to be unchanged?

Yes. If I move you to a lower altitude, your light clock goes slower, your quartz wristwatch goes slower, your optical clock (which uses the electron hyperfine transition) goes slower, the electrochemical signals in your brain go slower, and so on.

Having said that, it is possible that in the fullness of time we will be able to detect some process that doesn't slow down at quite the same rate, which is why I mentioned the nuclear clock.

 

[Vorpal]

Comment from the gallery: time-reverse, for example, electron–positron annihilation^WP and you get... photon-photon annihilation, though it's not typically called that. It is a completely normal process that does happen in the universe (including the lab). Photons are their own antiparticles. Neutral pions are another example of particles that are their own antiparticles.