I don't think space is expanding.

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by theprestige

It doesn't, though. Your hypothesis is falsified by observations. You've already conceded this.

Yeah. 25 years ago, all the evidence pointed toward the big bang.

Slowly things have been going the other direction. Now half the evidence supports the big bang, and the other half is against it.

The big bang is falsified by observations of mature galaxies in the young universe, CMB anomalies, and the theory predicts a different value than the observed value of Hubble's constant.

If we remove all the falsified theories from consideration, there's nothing to consider.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

My hypothesis does a pretty good job with the redshifts.

No, it does a **** job, because it requires additional physics which is contradicted by observation (remember the angle changes?)

And you can’t say anything about those other two items, can you?

Quote:

Questioning whether or not the inflation story is right is not scientific solipsism.

As if that was a full description of what you are doing.

It’s not.

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

No, it does a **** job, because it requires additional physics which is contradicted by observation

The same can be said for the big bang (accelerating universe and dark energy).

Quote:

(remember the angle changes?)

Yes.

If the light changes speed when it redshifts, then it should change angles all throughout it's journey through space.

Leads me to think that a photon changing speed in a vacuum is not like a photon changing speed in a medium.

Quote:

And you can’t say anything about those other two items, can you?

With regards to the CMB I already know your opinion.

As far as elements, v=c-HD doesn't say anything about that.

The big bang claims it can (retrospectively) show the right amounts of H and He. How about Li?

The big bang also tells us how old the universe is, where v=c-HD does not.

It could be the big bang is right about that. But maybe the redshifts aren't related to and the age of the universe and element abundances at all?

If the redshifts are expansion they're related. If the redshifts aren't expansion, there is no relation.

Quote:

As if that was a full description of what you are doing.

Doubting the story of the universe inflating 14 billion years ago, doesn't' mean the rest of physics is in any kind of peril.

What do I conclude about the beginning of the universe? I used to accept the standard big bang explanation. Now I highly doubt it.

I can have doubts and abstain from making a conclusion about something no one has ever seen.

That's not only a valid point of view, it's probably the most reasonable one you can you have.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

The same can be said for the big bang (accelerating universe and dark energy).

None of that is contradicted by observation. You think it's too speculative, but that's not the same thing.

Quote:

Yes.

If the light changes speed when it redshifts, then it should change angles all throughout it's journey through space.

No, it shouldn't, because the relevant "surface" to apply that to is normal to the path of travel, so no angle change.

Quote:

Leads me to think that a photon changing speed in a vacuum is not like a photon changing speed in a medium.

That's because you still don't understand Snell's law and how it's derived.

Quote:

With regards to the CMB I already know your opinion.

And yet, you still don't actually understand any of it.

Quote:

As far as elements, v=c-HD doesn't say anything about that.

Of course it doesn't. It doesn't say anything about pretty much anything except red shifts, because it's not really a theory at all, it's a vague idea that you can't actually build a theory around (and there's no point in trying since, again, it's already contradicted by observations).

Quote:

The big bang claims it can (retrospectively) show the right amounts of H and He. How about Li?

You can calculate the Li abundance. This gets more difficult to observe, though, since at these low levels, it's very hard to observe for the early universe, and observations of closer and older galaxies become affected by subsequent fusion generation.

Quote:

The big bang also tells us how old the universe is, where v=c-HD does not.

Because (again) your "theory" can't really predict anything.

Quote:

I can have doubts and abstain from making a conclusion about something no one has ever seen.

That's not only a valid point of view, it's probably the most reasonable one you can you have.

Yet you cling to your variable speed of light, even though no one has ever seen it AND it's contradicted by observations. That's not a valid point of view.

So go ahead, be as skeptical as you want. But why should the rest of us care? You don't actually know any physics, your opinions on the subject don't have any weight.

[steenkh]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

My hypothesis does a pretty good job with the redshifts.

Of course. It was designed around that. It does a lousy job with everything else.

Quote:

The big bang needs arbitrary amounts change to the rate of expansion at arbitrary times.

So what do you prefer: a theory that is strong everywhere, except one point, or a theory that is falsified everywhere, except on point?

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

None of that is contradicted by observation. You think it's too speculative, but that's not the same thing.

1929-1997: the universe expands by distance * Hubble's constant
1998: Hubble's constant isn't constant.

Quote:

No, it shouldn't, because the relevant "surface" to apply that to is normal to the path of travel, so no angle change.

So light, when it changes speed, has to follow Snell's law, except when it changes speed in a vacuum?

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by steenkh

Of course. It was designed around that. It does a lousy job with everything else.

Hubble's law was designed around it too, and it's broken.

Quote:

So what do you prefer: a theory that is strong everywhere, except one point, or a theory that is falsified everywhere, except on point?

That's a fair point.

If the redshifts are caused by the universe beginning 14 billion years ago, a theory of the redshifts should explain a lot more than redshifts.

If the redshifsts are caused by light doing it's own thing, then the theory of redshifts shouldn't say much more than that.

It's like, if you needed help sleeping, and I said, "I have a sleeping pill for you, it also cures acne and makes your stocks go up", the proper response would be "who you jivin'?"

Just because the big bang is oversold, that doesn't mean alternative explanations of redshift need to explain the beginning of time.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

1929-1997: the universe expands by distance * Hubble's constant
1998: Hubble's constant isn't constant.

And? What's your point?

Quote:

So light, when it changes speed, has to follow Snell's law, except when it changes speed in a vacuum?

God damn, but you're clueless, even after I explained this to you.

Apply Snell's law with an incident angle of 0 degrees at the boundary. What's the diffracted angle?

You might note that I haven't told you what velocities we're using for each side of the boundary. There's a reason for that.

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

And? What's your point?

As a description of redshifts, Hubble's law was falsified by observation in 1998.

Quote:

Apply Snell's law with an incident angle of 0 degrees at the boundary. What's the diffracted angle?

"Snell's law states that the ratio of the sines of the angles of incidence and refraction is equivalent to the ratio of phase velocities in the two media, or equivalent to the reciprocal of the ratio of the indices of refraction: "



With an incidence angle of 0, that would mean the phase velocity of the medium would be, 0? *edit* probably undefined

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

As a description of redshifts, Hubble's law was falsified by observation in 1998.

Hubble's "law" is a "law" in the sense that Ohm's law is a law: it's not really a law at all, but a rule of thumb.

Quote:

With an incidence angle of 0, that would mean the phase velocity of the medium would be, 0? *edit* probably undefined

It's a little more obvious if you rewrite the equation as

sin(theta₁)/v₁ = sin(theta₂)/v₂

but strictly speaking you don't need to, if you're good at math. We can assume that neither v1 nor v2 are zero (because if either of them is zero, the whole problem is moot), which means the only possible solution to either angle being zero is for both angles to be zero. And that's true regardless of what v1 and v2 actually are.

Now figure out what this means for applying Snell's law to hypothetical light changing velocities in a vacuum.

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

It's a little more obvious if you rewrite the equation as

sin(theta₁)/v₁ = sin(theta₂)/v₂

but strictly speaking you don't need to, if you're good at math. We can assume that neither v1 nor v2 are zero (because if either of them is zero, the whole problem is moot), which means the only possible solution to either angle being zero is for both angles to be zero. And that's true regardless of what v1 and v2 actually are.

Now figure out what this means for applying Snell's law to hypothetical light changing velocities in a vacuum.

You're saying the ratio of incidence to refraction is not undefined?

Since we're talking about light in a vacuum hitting a mirror, the phase velocity of the "medium" is always c.

*edit* and if light hit a mirror and does a 180, sin 0 == sin 180

[JesseCuster]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

*edit* and if light hit a mirror and does a 180, sin 0 == sin 180

If lights a mirror and does a 180, then it isn't hitting the mirror with an incident angle of 0, is it?

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by JesseCuster

If lights a mirror and does a 180, then it isn't hitting the mirror with an incident angle of 0, is it?

I dunno.

If a photon hits a mirror, and goes back in the direction it came, what's that angle?

It's path is perpendicular to the mirror.

[JesseCuster]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

I dunno.

If a photon hits a mirror, and goes back in the direction it came, what's that angle?

It's path is perpendicular to the mirror.

Oops, my bad. Ignore me. Brain fart.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

You're saying the ratio of incidence to refraction is not undefined?

God damn, but you need a lot of hand holding. You really are absolute crap at both physics and math.

In a vacuum, WITHOUT A MIRROR, if light slows down it will not change its angle of travel. You claimed that slowing light not bending is evidence that Snell's Law doesn't apply in a vacuum, but in fact Snell's law says that light should NOT generally bend in a vacuum even if it slows down.

Now, there is in fact a possible exception to this. If space is not uniform, if the speed of light varies from one point to the next in a direction OTHER THAN the direction of travel, then light can bend in a vacuum. But you've only posited a change in speed in the direction of travel. So your slowing light isn't an exception.

So is there an actual example of a variation in speed perpendicular to the direction of travel in the real world? Why, yes, actually there is. Gravitational time dilation slows down light. So gravitational potential differences can be described like variations in the index of refraction. Now, this variation is continuous rather than discreet, so we need to generalize from Snell's law (which only deals with discrete differences). The math gets messy and we won't do it here, but what do you get? Gravitational lensing. So we have in fact OBSERVED that the basic physics behind Snell's law, generalized to the continuous case, does apply to light traveling in a vacuum.

Quote:

Since we're talking about light in a vacuum hitting a mirror, the phase velocity of the "medium" is always c.

According to you, it's less than c before it hits the mirror, and c after it hits the mirror. Remember, that was YOUR claim, not mine.

Quote:

*edit* and if light hit a mirror and does a 180, sin 0 == sin 180

Sure. But mirror telescopes never use 0 or 180 degrees. If they did, they couldn't direct light onto a detector, since it would just go back towards the source. Mirror telescopes always need angles other than 0/180. So if the velocity of light changes upon reflection (again, YOUR claim, not mine), then the incident and reflected angles won't match.

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

According to you, it's less than c before it hits the mirror, and c after it hits the mirror. Remember, that was YOUR claim, not mine.

The speed of a photon is always c-HD in a vacuum (according to the hypothesis).

When the photon hits the mirror, it's energy is transferred to the atoms of the mirror. New photons (D=0) are then emitted. Maybe they're the old ones, who knows. But D=0 either way.

This means the speed of a photon in a vacuum changes, yes.

Not "the phase velocity of the medium."

Snell's law is about the phase velocity of the medium. In this case, it's always c.

If two a photon from 1 light year away and a photon from 1 billion light years away are traveling in the same space, they will have different speeds.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

The speed of a photon is always c-HD in a vacuum (according to the hypothesis).

When the photon hits the mirror, it's energy is transferred to the atoms of the mirror. New photons (D=0) are then emitted. Maybe they're the old ones, who knows. But D=0 either way.

This means the speed of a photon in a vacuum changes, yes.

Not "the phase velocity of the medium."

Snell's law is about the phase velocity of the medium. In this case, it's always c.

Oh, look, you found a NEW way to be completely wrong.

Group velocity and phase velocity can only differ in a dispersive medium (ie, one where different frequency waves have different phase velocities). But the vacuum isn't a dispersive medium. It's not dispersive under standard physics, and even under your own theory it's not dispersive. Which means that the distinction you're trying to use in order to rescue your theory CANNOT APPLY. According to your own theory, the phase velocity must change as well. It cannot remain c.

I'm not surprised you don't understand how group and phase velocity are related, but I am actually a bit surprised that you were inventive enough to try appealing to it in the first place. But it was bound to fail, because again, you don't actually understand anything, you just pick up these words and vague notions of what they are without ever gaining real comprehension.

Quote:

If two a photon from 1 light year away and a photon from 1 billion light years away are traveling in the same space, they will have different speeds.

No ****, Sherlock. I understand that's what your theory says. That doesn't change anything I said.

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

Group velocity and phase velocity can only differ in a dispersive medium (ie, one where different frequency waves have different phase velocities). But the vacuum isn't a dispersive medium. It's not dispersive under standard physics, and even under your own theory it's not dispersive. Which means that the distinction you're trying to use in order to rescue your theory CANNOT APPLY. According to your own theory, the phase velocity must change as well. It cannot remain c.

Ok.

Snell's law says the ratio of sin(incident) to sin(refraction) is equal to the ratio of the phase velocity of two mediums.

If the speed of a photon in a vacuum is c-HD, then the photon change's velocity, but that doesn't change a vacuum into a medium.

From what I understand, you don't apply Snell's law to quantum mechanics. The rules of QED instead produce Snell's law at the classical limit.

What your describing, from a quantum mechanical perspective, would be that when a photon slows down, atoms spontaneously appear to form a medium around it.

That's not what I'm suggesting happens.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

Ok.

Snell's law says the ratio of sin(incident) to sin(refraction) is equal to the ratio of the phase velocity of two mediums.

No. The two REGIONS. It doesn't have to be a medium. I have told you this before.

Quote:

If the speed of a photon in a vacuum is c-HD, then the photon change's velocity, but that doesn't change a vacuum into a medium.

How many times do you need to be told this? It doesn't need to be a medium. That has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Nothing about Snell's law requires a medium. Absolutely nothing. Which you would know if you understood it, but of course you don't actually understand any of the stuff you're talking about.

Quote:

From what I understand, you don't apply Snell's law to quantum mechanics. The rules of QED instead produce Snell's law at the classical limit.

That's not relevant, since we're dealing with the classical limit here.

Quote:

What your describing, from a quantum mechanical perspective, would be that when a photon slows down, atoms spontaneously appear to form a medium around it.

That's not what I'm suggesting happens.

NO. How the **** many times do I have to tell you this? Snell's law does NOT require a medium AT ALL.

How can you be so god damn clueless even after being told again and again?

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

No. The two REGIONS. It doesn't have to be a medium.

Aren't the regions differentiated by their refractive indexes?

In this case there are no differences.

Quote:

How many times do you need to be told this? It doesn't need to be a medium. That has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Nothing about Snell's law requires a medium. Absolutely nothing.

"Snell's law (also known as Snell–Descartes law and the law of refraction) is a formula used to describe the relationship between the angles of incidence and refraction, when referring to light or other waves passing through a boundary between two different isotropic media, such as water, glass, or air. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law

"Snell’s law, in optics, a relationship between the path taken by a ray of light in crossing the boundary or surface of separation between two contacting substances and the refractive index of each."

https://www.britannica.com/science/Snells-law

Since Snell's law is derived by Fermat's least time principle, a decelerated photon would take more time to get to the mirror than a fresh photon from the same distance, but everything else should apply the same.

Quote:

NO. How the **** many times do I have to tell you this? Snell's law does NOT require a medium AT ALL.

Then what are n1 and n2?

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

No. The two REGIONS.

What are the two regions you're talking about?

I was talking about light bouncing off a mirror in space.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

Aren't the regions differentiated by their refractive indexes?

They are differentiated by the speed of light being different. The reason is irrelevant. Index of refraction is usually a good metric for this, but it isn't necessary.

Quote:

In this case there are no differences.

Effectively, there is.

Quote:

Since Snell's law is derived by Fermat's least time principle, a decelerated photon would take more time to get to the mirror than a fresh photon from the same distance, but everything else should apply the same.

God damn, but this is moronic. You really don't understand Snell's Law at all.

Quote:

Then what are n1 and n2?

n is a proxy for the speed of light. What do YOU think it should be?

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

What are the two regions you're talking about?

I was talking about light bouncing off a mirror in space.

Figure it out. I've already told you.

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

Figure it out. I've already told you.

You told me there are two regions of space?

I don't think there are two regions of space.

I think there's one region of space in front of the mirror, that you're counting as two different spaces with two different refraction indexes.

But, here I've simulated Snell's law with v=c and v=c-HD, and this actually has two different regions of space:

https://mikehelland.github.io/hubble.../snellslaw.htm

It results in this:



v=c on the left, v=c-HD on the right.

Vacuum on the top, medium on the bottom, let's say water.

You see that not all the photons on the right side make it to the boundary. Some of them reach the end of their line (Hubble's limit) before they reach the body of water.

Keep in mind, if the light was redshifting due to the expansion of space, you'd have to end up with the same thing as the right hand side. Not all of photons can reach the gravitationally bound structure, and those will remain in expanding space above the boundary.

[hecd2]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

You told me there are two regions of space?

I don't think there are two regions of space.

I think there's one region of space in front of the mirror, that you're counting as two different spaces with two different refraction indexes.

But, here I've simulated Snell's law with v=c and v=c-HD, and this actually has two different regions of space:

https://mikehelland.github.io/hubble.../snellslaw.htm

It results in this:

https://mikehelland.github.io/hubble.../snellslaw.png

v=c on the left, v=c-HD on the right.

Vacuum on the top, medium on the bottom, let's say water.

It's complete garbage, Even your v=c is wrong. That is not how light is refracted at a boundary. Why do you have light originating at a point being focused to a point through a plane surface. It's gibberish.

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by hecd2

It's complete garbage, Even your v=c is wrong. That is not how light is refracted at a boundary. Why do you have light originating at a point being focused to a point through a plane surface. It's gibberish.

It shows all the possible paths, and ranks them by speed.

The fastest path (least time) is shown at full opacity, and the other paths and transparent based on their ranking. So the winner is the brightest path.

You can actually watch it here:

https://mikehelland.github.io/hubble.../snellslaw.htm

And here's the source:

var static = setup(0)
var vcHD = setup(0.005)


function setup(H) {
    var canvas = document.createElement("canvas")
    var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d")
    document.body.appendChild(canvas)

    var photons = []
    for (var i = 0; i < 90; i++) {
        photons.push({x: 0, y: 0, 
            angle: i,
            dx: Math.sin(i * Math.PI / 180), 
            dy: Math.cos(i * Math.PI / 180)})
    }

    var boundary = canvas.height / 2

    var finished = 0

    return () => {
        ctx.fillStyle = "black"
        ctx.fillRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height)

        ctx.strokeStyle = "red"
        ctx.beginPath()
        ctx.moveTo(0, boundary)
        ctx.lineTo(canvas.width, boundary)
        ctx.stroke()

        ctx.fillStyle = "yellow"
        ctx.strokeStyle = "yellow"
        for (var photon of photons) {

            var h = photon.flipped ? 0 : H //(H * Math.sqrt(Math.pow(photon.x, 2) + Math.pow(photon.y, 2)))
            photon.x += Math.max(0, photon.dx - h * photon.x)
            photon.y += Math.max(0, photon.dy - h * photon.y)

            ctx.fillRect(photon.x, photon.y, 2, 2)

            if (!photon.flipped && photon.y > boundary) {
                photon.flipped = true
                photon.flipX = photon.x

                var ndx = canvas.width - photon.x
                var ndy = canvas.height - photon.y

                var hyp = Math.sqrt(ndx*ndx + ndy*ndy)
                console.log(hyp)
                photon.dx = ndx / hyp * 0.5
                photon.dy = ndy / hyp * 0.5
            }

            if (!photon.place && photon.x >= canvas.width && photon.y >= canvas.height) {
                photon.place = ++finished
            }

            if (photon.place) {
                ctx.globalAlpha = Math.max(0, 1 - (photon.place / 20))
                ctx.beginPath()
                ctx.moveTo(0, 0)
                ctx.lineTo(photon.flipX, boundary)
                ctx.lineTo(photon.x, photon.y)
                ctx.stroke()
                
            }

            ctx.globalAlpha = 1
        }
    }
}

setInterval(() => {
    static()
    vcHD()
}, 1000/60)

[hecd2]

It’s gibberish.

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by hecd2

It’s gibberish.

So you say.

Snell's law is a consequence of Fermat's least time principle.



"Fermat's principle in the case of refraction of light at a flat surface between (say) air and water. Given an object-point A in the air, and an observation point B in the water, the refraction point P is that which minimizes the time taken by the light to travel the path APB. If we seek the required value of x, we find that the angles α and β satisfy Snell's law."

So what I've done is send a photon in 90 different directions from the top left, and once it hits the boundary, point them to the point toward the bottom right.

When they're past the boundary, they're in a medium where the speed of light is 0.5c.

You can see the fastest time minimizes the amount of time in the medium, because that's where it moves slower.

If this body was sufficiently far from the source, such that it is beyond Hubble's limit for some photons, those photons will never reach the boundary.

That's going to be true for the expansion of space interpretation of redshifts as well as v=c-HD.

[Mike Helland]

Here, I made it clearer. The predicted path is in green.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

You told me there are two regions of space?

I don't think there are two regions of space.

I think there's one region of space in front of the mirror, that you're counting as two different spaces with two different refraction indexes.

No ****, Sherlock. Do you understand why this works? No, you probably don’t.

I bet if you ever studied electromagnetism and someone tried to introduce you to the method of image charges, you would object that the image charge didn’t exist, and that the method was therefore invalid.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

It results in this:

https://mikehelland.github.io/hubble.../snellslaw.png

v=c on the left, v=c-HD on the right.

Ok, so you want to do a least time method of finding the right path. Fine.

Now try that with reflection, and have the reflected light go from <c back to c. See what happens to the reflection angle. It won’t be the same.

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

No ****, Sherlock. Do you understand why this works? No, you probably don’t.

I bet if you ever studied electromagnetism and someone tried to introduce you to the method of image charges, you would object that the image charge didn’t exist, and that the method was therefore invalid.

Well, if you apply Fermat's least time principle to expanding space, you get the same thing as v=c-HD.

[Mike Helland]

Originally Posted by Ziggurat

Wow. You got that completely wrong. Why do you have a flat surface acting as a lens to focus light back down to a point? Did that not strike you as off?

If Fermat's principle is the light takes the path that takes the least amount of time, draw the possible paths and see which one takes the least amount of time. That's the angle.

Seems pretty straightforward.

[Ziggurat]

Originally Posted by Mike Helland

Snell's law is a consequence of Fermat's least time principle.

That is only one of several ways to derive it. And all of them will still produce the same result when applied to your theory: light reflected from a mirror, if it changes from <c to c upon reflection, will not reflect at the same angle as it came in at.