JOÃO MAGUEIJO’S BIG BANG
April 18, 2008 by Healthy Shana
OK, other than the fact that I cannot pronounce this guys name. This show looks quite interesting and will be premiering on Science Network on Sunday, May 25th at 9PM ET/PT. The host of the show is a cosmologist, which is a branch of astronomy. Apparently Joao is a pretty controversial guy and not too many people take him or his theories very seriously.
Joao is from Portugal and is a Professor of Theoretical Physics in London and is the pioneer of the varying speed of light theory. Hmmm…interesting.
Image Source: www.thegreatdebate.org
`not too many people take him or his theories very seriously.’
That is not an accurate comment at all. Although the VSL model is not in the mainstream, Prof Magueijo has done a lot of other influential and highly thought of work in cosmology.
I have heard that the recorded history of the speed of light suggests that it is slowing. If true this might support the varying speed of light theory.
According to the big bang theory, background microwave radiation is remnant radiation from the big bang which has “cooled off”, i.e. lowered in frequency all the way from hyper-cosmic radiation all the way down to microwaves, and yet starlight from 13 billion light years away doesn’t miss a beat, i.e. remains at the same frequency all the time. In other words light ages, but does not age. (?)
Only morons would go along with such a preposterous notion. On the other hand, if light does in fact age, then red-shifting is ALSO caused by light aging, and thus should emerge another factor besides Doppler effect in any equation interpreting red-shifting. True, two variables in a single equation is never good news, but someone will surely come up with another equation for a matrix solution, huh?
I had a daycare business for 5 years. Before it started to increase, it was up and down. One day I was watching T.V. I came across your program of “Success -N- Life”. It was interesting. You saying , “make a vow out of your need.” At that time I needed my Daycare to increase. I called the Success -N- Lifeline to make a $1000. vow of faith! I started to pay on the vow. My rent was always 3 months behind. I couldn’t pay any of my bills on time. About 6 months later, my Daycare increased and I began to pay my rent on time, along with all my other bills, AND had money left over! I give God all the praise. PLEASE VISIT AND MAKE A VOW OF FAITH !!
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After my daycare business was ble$$ed, my wife found out she had brain cancer. The doctor’s prognosis was terminal and we had no medical insurance so before long we were bankrupt. I remembered my VOW OF FAITH and called Robert Tilton again and sowed another seed with our last $5000 that was to go towards my wife’s next chemo treatment. A week later her cancer was gone !! I give God (and Robert Tilton) all the praise. PLEASE VISIT AND MAKE A VOW OF FAITH !! http://successinlife.tv
Our neighbor Nancy and Fred’s horse was injured in a riding accident and had to be put down. They worried how to tell their young daughter Victoria about the loss of the beloved family pet when Success In Life came on tv and Pastor Tilton asked for those who are missing loved ones to make a VOW OF FAITH. Fred picked up the phone and made a ‘holy-guacamole’ pledge of $10,000 in the name of the Holy Ghost. A short while later the veterinarian called to share the amazing news that the horse wondrously ‘woke up’ and was galloping around the parking lot! PRAISE THE LORD !! PLEASE VISIT AND MAKE A VOW OF FAITH !! http://successinlife.tv
Brothers and Sisters, all this talk of protons and neutrons really hurts the head doesn’t it? When you are standing at the Gates of Judgement when God calls you to account for your sins where will you stand ? Hell is a real place my friends and I believe if God had wanted us to fiddle with atoms and the heavens he would have put it in the Good Book. Go to my website and make a vow of faith and I and my followers will pray for you ‘men of science’ (more like men of sins!!’. PRAISE THE LORD !! PLEASE VISIT AND MAKE A VOW OF FAITH !! http://successinlife.tv
Seems you just can’t get away from the annoying missionaries. It’s fear of change and loss of gainful employment. God is laughing at you! …All the way to the bank.
As a conservative Christian, myself, I’d like to say that this type of behavior does NOT represent God or Jesus’s teachings at all. I find it hypocritical that people like this will make such rediculous statements, calling “‘men of science’ (more like men of sins!!).” Does such a person ever visit a doctor, use a computer (wait, they did in order to post their drivel), wear glasses, take Tylenol, watch TV, or listen to the radio – all invented by and supported by ‘men of science?’
The opinions stated in the posts above do NOT reflect clear thinking, Bible believing Christians who do not fear what they do not understand.
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Back to the topic. I’ve just watched Magueijo’s show on Discover Science and found it interesting, yet incomplete. There is, of course, no way to put forth all the ins and outs of VSL in a 1 hour TV show on popular TV. As he points out, c is used in an amazingly large number of physical formulae, from cosmic to quantum. How does VLS, for example, effect Hubble’s Law? If VSL’s fix to the horizon problem of the Big Bang negates Hubble’s theory of the red shift, perhaps it ends up negating the Big Bang itself, the very theory it sought to clarify.
One must be careful that evidence from the expanding universe not get misinterpreted to negate the expanding universe theory and, therefore, negate the data that negated the theory. It seems a bit circular – because it can be. The implications, and potential impassible contradictions, of VSL should be explored much further, I think, before a popular TV show is made.
I am also rather certain that unpublished and frustrated cosmologists like Barry Setterfield will jump on this as an attempt to demonstrate Young Earth Creationism. Setterfield likes VSL, and has for many years. VSL, after all, “explains” the “age of the universe” problem. But he also doesn’t like Hubble’s Law and the expanding universe theory. If VSL comes from a big bang perspective, yet with the red shift’s being misinterpreted, meaning we do not live in an expanding universe but a static one, don’t you end up with a classic chicken-egg dilemma? These things need to be thought through more carefully and thoroughly than they have been.
All these raving Christians missionaries should take heed and study hard. I hope they can find a way to time travel back to the 3th century where they belong! I don’t need YOUR faith rammed down my throat!
You people are like used car salesmen!
re VSL. What a self-aggrandizing display with not a dime’s worth of content. It’s a shame science is being sensationalized to the point of being fulsome. Who pays for this?
Views of him as a child eating an apple and wondering, help us see him as a real person, but he’s a neo-cosmologist, using a medal-covered spandex vest to help us see that spacetime expands and carries the galaxies along is too much.
Where’s a defining equation for VSL, never mind the eggbeater ones used to dazzle us? Did he bankroll this show?
Please, people, please, read what this man is saying. It has nothing to do with religion or god or any thing else. Bankroll this this show, the asshole who made that comment still lives in thier parents basement. All that can be asked of anyone is to examen the truth they hold to be beyond question. The speed of light, the role of God, what ever, if they state they have the answer, they are full of shit.
I have not read all the comments associated with this thred. I do not enjoy giving time to mental defectives. All things considered, what we should be
considering is those abosluts we take as truth. Forgive my spelling and my structure of thought, but do not lose sight of the questions we should ask.
When I saw this show advertised, I HAD to watch it. Nearly 20 years ago, I came up with a very simple ARITHMETIC problem in the Big Bang Theory, and I’m no physicist, mathmetician, scientist, cosmologist. Joao’s show sounded to me like it was going to address the same arithmetic problem, and in a way it did, but also it didn’t, and in any case, it seemed not to DENY Big Bang, but support it, in spite of simple arithmetical problems. When I first thought of the problem, back in about 1990, I couldn’t imagine I could be right since I’m no mathematical genius, but there was no way to justify the Big Bang, based on my very simple arithmatic (indeed, the simplicity made me feel I HAD to be wrong — how could I know something that scientific GENIUSES hadn’t realized). I’m annoyed with VSL (something I had considered, too, back then, but threw out), but without VSL, it’s easy to deny Big Bang; the “red shift” MUST be explained in other ways — if there even IS a red shift. How do we KNOW the red shift is caused by expansion, rather than something else — we don’t. Maybe that’s just how the Universe goes. Or even if there IS expansion, it’s not universal or it’s not gone on “since the beginning,” or who-knows’what. The point is, the Big Bang just doesn’t work, and I had hoped Joao would address the issues I had thought up, and explain them or explain them away, but he did neither, and I’m still stuck where I’ve been.
MJ – You’ve touched on my point. If the red shift means something else, then it doesn’t support expansion. If that’s the case, we should seriously consider throwing out the Big Bang theory, since Hubble’s interpretation of the red shift was the primary reason for the Big Bang theory to start with. If we throw out the Big Bang theory, we have no “horizon problem” for VSL to solve, and therefore, no reason to even consider VSL to start with. There are some theories that are so central, if falsified, will cause more serious ripples throughout the rest of physics and cosmology than the theorists have been willing to consider. All I’m saying is that these things need to be considered – and that it is extremely important to do so.
It’s simple if you look at it! It’s not VSL. The speed of light stays constant. What has happened if you believe in black holes, White holes, Worm holes? Other dimensions? When the big bang occured light was sent all over, through, around the universe through worm holes! Thus the light light was more or less taking a bus ride throughout our universe ariving at different locations faster than they would have traveled moving at the speed of light!
Beau, One problem that you have is the absence of evidence of the existence of white holes. Also, any time any particle enters a worm hole, it colapses – vanishes, if you will. Light is made of both waves and particles, as I’m sure you know. The entrance of a photon into the worm hole would cause it to collapse, not transport it to another location in the universe.
Besides violating special relativity and possibly violating space-time causality principles, if light speed varied within the vacuum of the early universe, what’s stopping it from varying right now? If this was some previously unpredicted phase transition, when did it begin or end on the Plank timescale? Or was it after the Plank time?
Allowing Faster Than Light speed to exist within the vaccum might make technologies like GPS and satellite telemetry an impossibility. If light is allowed to act this way, what are are we to make of the universe’s accelerated expansion? AE is the real evidence for hyperinflation, the point which Magueijo claims has no observable data to support it. Where have we ever seen the evidence to support FTL?
Only to the extent that our information is incomplete, is FTL possible in the phase transitions of the early universe. Since no light escaped during the strong-weak decoupling, the evidence has always been hidden from our view…Maybe Cern is able to reproduce it within a few years. It doesn’t seem likely that the electro-weak decoupling would allow for FTL since we have seen the way some particles behave in this energy range and no experiment has yet recorded any FTL phenomena under standard test conditions.
Another by-product of FTL would be particles called tachyons…which have never been observed…but who’s existence would show that C is not a constant. Their existence would demonstrate a variety of causality violations, starting with their observable movement which would show them appearing before their actual arrival and show their movement backward toward our actual time position…a bizarre concept even for quantum theory. Positrons seem to travel backward in time, so QFT doesn’t disallow this.
Does his theory of VSL allow for ordinary matter to travel at FTL speed? Is there an infinite mass/
infinite energy problem if matter traveling at >C decelerates down to C? So if all matter travelled at FTL speed until after the second phase transition, when the coupling eras began, C must have settled down to its present speed. But what are the consequences of FTL speed existing at any point in the vacuum? What precipitated the slow down? We’ve never observed the laws describing EM and Gravity to arbitrarily alter
themselves somewhere in the universe. Gravity would no longer work the way it does if C were not the speed that it is. Matter might have spun off into an accelerated dissolution before gravity could condense anything into clusters…stars…n number of objects…we might never have existed.
Einstein’s overturning of absolute time had an experimental history supporting it. If you attempt to overturn GR’s gravitational models, what do you replace it with? From what we observe of matter everywhere, nothing seems to indicate that nature operates any differently than what the equations in GR show.
This might be a dumb questions, but do we know if galaxies are just not traveling away from one another, but revolving around a source more massive than anything imaginable? A super-galaxy if you will, where the rotation is not proportional; therefore, you’d see both red and blue shifts, depending on the exact time interval you’re looking at.
Reaz. In the 1950’s a mathematician named Kurt Godel created a circular model for the universe which, if true, would have certain ramifications for special relativity. Apparently, if the Universe orbited, you could theoretically violate causality by traveling backward in time simply by jumping out of the orbit, waiting for the Universe to rotate, and then jump back in to find yourself in a completely different spacetime. This ‘loophole’ annoyed Einstein to no end because it violated causality but was not prohibited by either relativity theories.
Godel was a funny guy in this sense. He came up with mathematical proofs for the existence of God, using formalisms and self-consistent proofs which a great deal of ordinary mathematical and physical theories rely for support. He developed something called the “incompleteness theorem” which states that it is possible to construct a multitude of logical proofs that are inherently false. It was based on issues in set theory, which showed, roughly speaking, that you cannot find a complete and consistent set of axioms which apply to all mathematical formalisms.
“you could theoretically violate causality by traveling backward in time simply by jumping out of the orbit, waiting for the Universe to rotate, and then jump back in to find yourself in a completely different spacetime”
Randall, that’s very interesting, I’ll have to look him up. But I don’t see how you would travel backward or even forward for that matter. If you apply the same method on planet Earth for example, you can leave the orbit, but when you jump back in, you would return in a future date. But it would not be an instantaneous time travel because you would have to wait and allow time to pass before reentering the orbit.
VSL
Who ever said that nothing could go faster then the speed, needs to reconsider their thinking. Consider a simple analogy. You are in a rocket ship and you keep going faster and faster until you exceed the speed of light. What do you think is out there to stop you from going faster then the speed of light. Only your perspective changes and the way you are precieved by others. Some one behind you would not see you
(so to them you do not exsist) and those ahead of you would see you coming. Joao should use this analogy to explain his theory of VSL.
Einstein did not explicitly say that you cannot exceed light speed. It is implied in relativity theory. Here’s why:
Photons have zero mass and do travel at light speed (C). Ordinary matter has mass, and the faster matter travels, the more its mass increases. The problem is that once matter approaches C it acquires infinite mass, which according to thermodynamic laws would require an infinite energy source to continue its momentum to achieve C. There is a paradox here since there is no possible way to acquire infinite energy. The closest analog would be the gravitational forces in a black hole. But we all know the catastrophic consequences of what happens within the event horizon of a black hole…You drop into a singularity never to be seen from again. Good luck with the VSL experiment…hope you have life insurance!
Bill, Two other considerations that you may have overlooked could be based on your apparently linear approach to acceleration. First, according to special relativity, time and space both bend. Second, you can have continually positive acceleration and yet still have c as a velocity asymptote. In fact, my understanding is that c is a velocity asymptote, rather than a “speed limit.” Anything that happens to travel faster than c (most likely undetectable by us), can never decelerate below c. While anything traveling slower than c can never exceed c.
Nathan. Excellent framing of SR in your last comment. Clifford Pickover mentioned in his book about hyperspace that the ‘edge’ of the vacuum itself might be expanding at FTL speed. This is also connected in some way to the idea that phase transitions might occur in a nearly dead universe, which could theoretically change the laws of physics. If the Universe branched into some other phase space we might find a Universe where special relativity was as alien a concept as VSL is in our own .
@ M.J.Lessem
Red shift is used as a theory because it has supporting documented evidence. We can then apply the known facts from what we have previously seen to the conditions of the movement of galaxies. Your just pointing out the obvious in human fallibility.
And why does there have to be another way to explain the red shift? It seems pretty fundamental when you actually look at the math, but maybe its too complex for your simple attitude. The red shift is a result of something we experience every day. It is no different from the doppler effect.
Even if the speed of light can change over time, this doesn’t directly relate to light that is already in motion. based on the light we currently receive from distant galaxies, they are moving away based on the fact that there is a red shift. It doesn’t matter if that speed is fluctuating in between, its what we are observing at this very moment is what matters.
I agree with the comment from Mark, “that according to the big bang theory, background microwave radiation is remnant radiation from the big bang which has “cooled off”, i.e. lowered in frequency all the way from hyper-cosmic radiation all the way down to microwaves, and yet starlight from 13 billion light years away doesn’t miss a beat, i.e. remains at the same frequency all the time. In other words light ages, but does not age. (?) On the other hand, if light does in fact age, then red-shifting is ALSO caused by light aging, and thus should emerge another factor besides Doppler effect in any equation interpreting red-shifting.” I just read this article in the universe today, from UC Davis, that indicates that the MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov) telescope found that high-energy photons of gamma radiation from a distant galaxy arrived at Earth four minutes after lower-energy photons, although they were apparently emitted at the same time. If correct, that would contradict Einstein’s theory of relativity, which says that all photons must move at the speed of light. If there was a variable speed of light wouldn’t that wipe out hubble’s law? We would then have to admit that we have no way of measuring how old our universe is and we would not be sure if it was static, like Einstien orginally thought, or dynamic like Friedmann convinced him it was. If I’m correct, I think that hubble’s law and the idea of expanding spacetime is what lead everyone to the big bang theory in the first place. So this would solve the horizon problem, but if the speed of light wasn’t a constant wouldn’t that contradict the idea of an expanding universe and possibly the big bang theory as well? I am glad that he posed this question though because the theory of relativity doesn’t sit right with me. I like the obsessive personality of Newton but now days a great man like that would be given a pill instead of a question.
Deborah, Is there a web site where we can find more information about this recent observation?
Also, as for special reletivity, that was clearly demonstrated decades ago when the east- & west-bound airline experiment. It’s also demonstrated on a regular basis with the atomic clocks in CO & MD. It’s counter-intuitive, for sure. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not true. Pretty much everything in quantum mechanics is counter-intuitive as well, yet also true.
Nathan, the cite was High Energy Gamma Rays Go Slower Than the Speed of Light? | Universe Today. Who knows if it is true or correct, but it was interesting. I have read every book I can get my hands on about relativity but what bugs me is that the velocity time dialtion test used the dobbler shift to measure their results and in the Hafele–Keating experiment Louis Essen the inventor of the atomic clock thought there was inadequate accuracy of the experiment. I’m not totally convinced about the dobble shift or about the expanding universe. Calculations are ultimately based on determining which events are simultaneous. Notice also that establishing simultaneity of events separated in space necessarily requires transmission of information between locations, which by itself is an indication that the speed of light will enter the determination of simultaneity. I have an open mind but I am human and we do enjoy our power of reason. What do they mean when they say that experimental evidence has shown that the speed of light is independent of the motion of the source. Light is a tranverse wave but if the motion of the source is moving it creates a longitudinal wave like the red shift. I do not get it. If we start to think that at the beginning “c” was different where do we draw the line? Newton’s 3rd law sounds reasonable. This would make sense to me if someone said it was happening due to the resistance of motion, like flying against the rotation of the earth would cause it to slow down and flying with it would cause it to speed up. I think that is what special relativity does predict right. It just seems like it is our perception which is warped not spacetime. I’m just a housewife that likes to think while I work so don’t think that I am capable of a debate. You sound smart. What do you do for a living?
In One of his episodes while he is talking about the Horizon Problem there is a creepy subliminal message, that i barely caught with my eye, but can confirm with Tivo. A few seconds after he uses the metaphor of seeing 3 different people with orange paint on them far away from each other in a city.
Right where the title “Horizon Problem” is a line forms, then the next frame it gets stretched into the Words “AXIS OF EVIL” – The following frame changes the words to “666 of Evil” (look closely), then the following 3-4 frames are again “Axis of Evil” but in different fonts.
Pretty creepy if you ask me, on what you would think would be a politically nuetral program.
i guess i should look into it before i post. I guess Joao uses the tern to describe hot and cold spots in the CMB that do not fit with the normal pattern. And maybe the 666 part is just some wierd editing between frames
I would like to start by asserting that I know nothing about cosmology, or any of the scientific “laws” that it adheres to; nor do I have any scientific “knowledge” about the universe at all, besides what I have learned from a few TV shows here and there, and from what I have conjured up in my imagination, which ultimately has proven to be the main catalyst for the propagation of science and inquiry in the first place, so I figure why negate a few ‘crazy,’ scientifically unsupported thoughts that have just recently popped up in my head regarding (VSL). Therefore, in a very impromptu manner, how about this: at the moment the big bang occurred, when energy began turning into mass, the universe was in a unique state—a true vacuum state—that enabled light to travel at speeds faster than any recorded measurements of light traveling in a “vacuum” on earth; for the reason that matter in the early universe hadn’t formed into large objects with a defined mass and gravity, which would have exerted a force upon the light, causing it to slow down. Furthermore, perhaps the early universe lacked an abundance of black holes and other profoundly dense objects with massive amounts of gravity that cause light to slow and bend. So…as the universe cooled, and matter formed into denser objects with different gravitational levels, the universe, in a sense, possesses more obstacles, or forces, or dark matter, or whatever, that oppress the speed of light. Thus, when we measure the speed of light in a vacuum on earth, the calculations are not pure—like the time right after the big bang—but diluted by forces from matter and particles that were not present immediately after the big bang, which have developed over the billions of years of cooling and have caused light to slow. Perhaps think of it like traffic: early in the morning you (light) can drive your car fast because there is a lack of other cars (formed, dense matter with gravity) on the road, but as time goes on, and more cars drive onto the road, you have to slow down due to the existence (the forces acting against you) of the other cars on the same road. Ergo, while at one time you moved fast; now, the forces of traffic act upon you, causing you to slow down.
Ah, my verb agreement is off and I can’t edit the post…lovely. oh well, you get the point.
Wow Todd I’m gonna have to check that out. I don’t have TiVo so I might have to watch it a couple times.
Juelz, that were you going to say? I don’t see your posting.
His comparison, when discussing the Horizon issue, didn’t make much sense to me. He was comparing himself and Felix from his childhood and mentioned that based on existing theory, he and Felix should be identical. But isn’t he comparing apples to oranges? As far as we can tell, space isn’t making decisions every second that can alter their future; whereas, Felix can and did, which made his a butcher. What am I missing?
Big Bang is a fake for me.Red shifting is a electromagnetic property for long distance solid angle.We have a very small light signal who theoretically had disappear but still see.Photons
lost frequency & energy towards red shifting.
Vacuum generate chaotic electromagnetic in 0 Kelvin ,
or (else we have a 0 Kelvin universal hard block ,I imagine).
There is no way to explain the Horizon Problem much less his theory on a short TV program. He is interesting to watch and a true top cosmologist, but if you want to understand the issues completely it will take years of study.
Also there is not time on a TV program to point out all the contributions others have made.
The map of the back ground big bang radiation that he shows on the program came from a NASA satelite. The chief investigator on that program won a Noble prize for his work. That was a first for a NASA scientist.
He also does not even mention dark matter or Nonsymmetric Gravitational Theory or John Moffat’s latest work on a Theory of Modified Gravity.
Anyway, if the program gets a few people interested I guess it did it job.
I have only just watched Joao’s program on the big bang and his VSL theory and although I’m only a layman, I believe it can be proved much more easily than people think. Randall Rhodes talks about objects with mass attaining infinite mass if accelerated to velocities approaching the speed of light. This argment is used by the mad prophets of doom who insist the LHC will generate a black hole that will eventually swallow the universe but the very existence of muons contradict this argument. Muons have mass and travel through space at speeds very close to that of light and yet they have a mass that is infinitessimally small.
I came up with an idea several years ago that I call “Yapman’s Paradox” which states – “If the speed of light is constant the the flow of time must also be constant, but if the flow of time is constant, then the speed of light is not neccessarily constant”. This idea evolved from considering the predicted effect of time dilation and I think is easily checked out.
If we take a line from the theoretical origin of the big bang, extend it through the milky way and beyond, by comparing the state of galaxies on this line, some closer to the origin and also some approximately equidistant, but further away, time dilation predicts that the galaxies further away should be significantly younger in their stage of development than those closer to the origin. If that proves not to be the case, then Einstein’s got it wrong and E=mc² needs re-evaluating.
I realise that many people are going to consider me as a crank but I can offer good, reasoned arguments that show the idea of time dilation to be nothing more than an illusion. I believe Joao’s bang on the button with VSL.