So, first there’s this:
Where some science guys discuss the idea that there *might* be a “preferred” direction for light in the universe, meaning that instead of the speed of light being “c” in every direction, in one direction is *might* be 0.5 c and in the 0ther, infinitely fast. if this was the case, people trying to measure the speed of light would not be able to figure that out since the only way to measure the speed of light is, essentially, to bounce a beam off of a distant mirror and measure the time.
All terribly interesting, but then the Institute for Creation “Research” got hold of the video and spent three months trying to come up with some propaganda based on it:
Teachable Minds and Scientific Discovery
The ICR author’s premise is that since these two guys discuss the possibility of directionality to the speed of light, then we can no longer assume that the speed of light is measurable. And thus the stars we’re seeing that are a billion light years away no longer present a problem for a world view that has concluded that the universe is a mere 6,000 years old… because that light could have zapped here more or less instantaneously.
Of course the idjit fails to mention that the whole idea of there being preferred directionality for lightspeed trashes his idea. If there was in fact a direction where the speed of light was infinitely fast and the universe was only 6,000 years old… then, yes, we could see distant stars far further than 6,000 light years away. BUT… only in that direction. The other direction where the speed of light was half of c? The furthest you could see *that* way would be 3,000 light years. You could see the nearer stars, and that’s it. The speed of light at an angle perpendicular to the direction of min/max speed would be right at ‘c’ presumably, and in that direction you could only see out to 6,000-ish light years. Most of the friggen’ Milky Way galaxy would be cut off from view. It’d be *dark* across most of the sky, with no other galaxies visible, and every year a few new stars would just seem to pop into existence as the radius of the visible universe expands by (in one direction) another half of a light year.
That’s not what happens, of course. The ICR author is either to dim to figure that out or not honest enough to mention it.
Now, as to the problem of calculating the speed of light in different directions.
In the video they use as an example sending messages from Earth to Mars and back. If ‘c’ was constant either way, or greatly different, the video shows that you wouldn’t be able to tell. But… I suspect they’re wrong. They are right *at* *any* *particular* *moment.* But do the experiment over the course of a year or so. Sometimes Earth would see Mars as it really is Right Now. Sometimes it would see it as it was some time in the past due to light speed lag. OK, so… watch the moons of Mars. Their orbital speed around Mars will seem to subtly change as the speed of light varies. In fact this very experiment was carried out in the late 1600’s; by watching the moons of Jupiter and how the timing of the eclipses seemed to slightly vary, astronomer Ole Rømer was able to determine that the speed of light was finite, and got – for the time – a reasonably good estimate, about 26% short of the actual value. With modern equipment, the variation of the apparent speed of the moons of Mars or Jupiter of Saturn could be used to calculate “drift” in the speed of light based on where the moons *should* be at any instant given a fixed speed of light. Or am I wrong here?