What is the speed of light in a vacuum? Why the speed of light is constant on your fingers™. What is the speed of light in a vacuum?

Regardless of color, wavelength, or energy, the speed at which light travels in a vacuum remains constant. It does not depend on location or directions in space and time

Nothing in the Universe can travel faster than light in a vacuum. 299,792,458 meters per second. If it is a massive particle, it can only approach this speed, but not reach it; if it is a massless particle, it should always move at exactly this speed if it happens in empty space. But how do we know this and what is the reason for this? This week our reader asks us three questions related to the speed of light:

Why is the speed of light finite? Why is she the way she is? Why not faster and not slower?

Until the 19th century, we did not even have confirmation of this data.

An illustration of light passing through a prism and being separated into distinct colors.

When light passes through water, a prism, or any other medium, it is separated into different colors. The red color is refracted at a different angle than blue, which is why something like a rainbow appears. This can also be observed outside the visible spectrum; infrared and ultraviolet light behave the same way. This would only be possible if the speed of light in the medium is different for light of different wavelengths/energies. But in a vacuum, outside any medium, all light moves with the same finite speed.

The separation of light into colors occurs due to the different speeds of light, depending on the wavelength, through the medium

This was only realized in the mid-19th century, when physicist James Clerk Maxwell showed what light actually is: an electromagnetic wave. Maxwell was the first to put the independent phenomena of electrostatics (static charges), electrodynamics (moving charges and currents), magnetostatics (constant magnetic fields) and magnetodynamics (induced currents and alternating magnetic fields) on a single, unified platform. The equations governing it - Maxwell's equations - make it possible to calculate the answer to a seemingly simple question: what types of electric and magnetic fields can exist in empty space outside of electric or magnetic sources? Without charges and without currents, one could decide that there are none - but Maxwell’s equations surprisingly prove the opposite.

Tablet with Maxwell's equations on the back of his monument

Nothing is one of the possible solutions; but something else is also possible - mutually perpendicular electric and magnetic fields oscillating in one phase. They have certain amplitudes. Their energy is determined by the frequency of field oscillations. They move at a certain speed, determined by two constants: ε 0 and µ 0. These constants determine the magnitude of electrical and magnetic interactions in our Universe. The resulting equation describes the wave. And, like any wave, it has a speed, 1/√ε 0 µ 0, which turns out to be equal to c, the speed of light in vacuum.

Mutually perpendicular electric and magnetic fields oscillating in one phase and propagating at the speed of light determine electromagnetic radiation

From a theoretical point of view, light is massless electromagnetic radiation. According to the laws of electromagnetism, it must move with a speed of 1/√ε 0 µ 0, equal to c - regardless of its other properties (energy, momentum, wavelength). ε 0 can be measured by making and measuring a capacitor; µ 0 is precisely determined from the ampere, a unit of electric current, which gives us c. The same fundamental constant, first derived by Maxwell in 1865, has appeared in many other places since then:

This is the speed of any massless particle or wave, including gravitational ones.
This is the fundamental constant that relates your movement in space to your movement in time in the theory of relativity.
And this is the fundamental constant relating energy to rest mass, E = mc 2

Roemer's observations provided us with the first measurements of the speed of light, obtained using geometry and measuring the time required for light to travel a distance equal to the diameter of the Earth's orbit.

The first measurements of this quantity were made during astronomical observations. When Jupiter's moons enter and exit eclipse positions, they appear visible or invisible from Earth in a specific sequence depending on the speed of light. This led to the first quantitative measurement of s in the 17th century, which was determined to be 2.2 × 10 8 m/s. The deflection of starlight - due to the movement of the star and the Earth on which the telescope is installed - can also be estimated numerically. In 1729, this method of measuring c showed a value that differed from the modern one by only 1.4%. By the 1970s, c was determined to be 299,792,458 m/s with an error of just 0.0000002%, much of which stemmed from the inability to accurately define a meter or second. By 1983, the second and meter were redefined in terms of c and the universal properties of atomic radiation. Now the speed of light is exactly 299,792,458 m/s.

Atomic transition from the 6S orbital, δf 1, determines the meter, second and speed of light

So why is the speed of light not faster or slower? The explanation is as simple as that shown in Fig. Above is an atom. Atomic transitions occur the way they do because of the fundamental quantum properties of nature's building blocks. The interactions of the atomic nucleus with the electric and magnetic fields created by electrons and other parts of the atom cause different energy levels to be extremely close to each other, but still slightly different: this is called hyperfine splitting. In particular, the hyperfine structure transition frequency of cesium-133 emits light of a very specific frequency. The time it takes for 9,192,631,770 such cycles to pass determines the second; the distance that light travels during this time is 299,792,458 meters; The speed at which this light travels determines c.

A purple photon carries a million times more energy than a yellow photon. The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope shows no delays in any of the photons coming to us from the gamma-ray burst, which confirms the constancy of the speed of light for all energies

To change this definition, something fundamentally different from its current nature must happen to this atomic transition or to the light coming from it. This example also teaches us a valuable lesson: if atomic physics and atomic transitions had worked differently in the past or over long distances, there would be evidence that the speed of light has changed over time. So far, all our measurements only impose additional restrictions on the constancy of the speed of light, and these restrictions are very strict: the change does not exceed 7% of the current value over the past 13.7 billion years. If, by any of these metrics, the speed of light were found to be inconsistent, or if it were different for different types of light, it would lead to the biggest scientific revolution since Einstein. Instead, all the evidence points to a Universe in which all the laws of physics remain the same at all times, everywhere, in all directions, at all times, including the physics of light itself. In a sense, this is also quite revolutionary information.

And as it was, it is what it is, sixteen kilograms.
M. Tanich (from the song for the film “The Mysterious Monk”)

The special theory of relativity (SRT) is undoubtedly the most famous of physical theories. The popularity of STR is associated with the simplicity of its basic principles, the striking paradox of its conclusions and its key position in the physics of the twentieth century. SRT brought unprecedented fame to Einstein, and this fame became one of the reasons for the tireless attempts to revise the theory. Among professionals, the debate around service stations ceased more than half a century ago. But to this day, the editors of physics journals are constantly besieged by amateurs offering options for revising the SRT. And, in particular, the second postulate, which asserts the constancy of the speed of light for all inertial reference systems and its independence from the speed of the source (in other words, no matter in which direction from the observer and at what speed the observed object moves, the light ray sent from it would have still the same speed, approximately equal to 300 thousand kilometers per second, no more and no less).

Critics of SRT, for example, argue that the speed of light is not constant at all, but changes for the observer depending on the speed of the source (ballistic hypothesis) and only the imperfection of measurement technology does not allow this to be proven experimentally. The ballistic hypothesis dates back to Newton, who viewed light as a stream of particles whose speed decreases in a refractive medium. This view was revived with the advent of the Planck-Einstein photon concept, which gave convincing clarity to the idea of adding the speed of light to the speed of the source, analogous to the speed of a projectile fired from a moving gun.

Nowadays, such naive attempts to revise the SRT, of course, cannot get into serious scientific publications, but they overwhelm the media and the Internet, which has a very sad effect on the state of mind of the mass reader, including schoolchildren and students.

Attacks on Einstein's theory - both at the beginning of the last century and now - are motivated by discrepancies in the assessment and interpretation of the results of experiments to measure the speed of light, the first of which, by the way, was carried out back in 1851 by the outstanding French scientist Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau. In the middle of the last century, this prompted the then President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, S.I. Vavilov, to become concerned with developing a project to demonstrate the independence of the speed of light from the speed of the source.

By that time, the postulate about the independence of the speed of light was directly confirmed only by astronomical observations of double stars. According to the idea of the Dutch astronomer Willem de Sitter, if the speed of light depends on the speed of the source, the trajectories of motion of binary stars should be qualitatively different from the observed ones (consistent with celestial mechanics). However, this argument was met with an objection related to taking into account the role of interstellar gas, which, as a refractive medium, was considered as a secondary source of light. Critics have argued that light emitted by a secondary source "loses memory" of the speed of the primary source as it travels through the interstellar medium, because photons from the source are absorbed and then re-emitted by the medium again. Since data about this medium are known only with very large assumptions (as are the absolute values of distances to stars), this position made it possible to question most of the astronomical evidence for the constancy of the speed of light.

S.I. Vavilov proposed to his doctoral student A.M. Bonch-Bruevich to design an installation in which a beam of fast excited atoms would become the light source. In the process of detailed study of the experimental plan, it turned out that there was no chance of a reliable result, since the technology of that time did not allow obtaining beams of the required speed and density. The experiment was not carried out.

Since then, various attempts to experimentally prove the second postulate of STR have been made repeatedly. The authors of the relevant works came to the conclusion that the postulate was correct, which, however, did not stop the flow of critical speeches that either raised objections to the ideas of the experiments or questioned their accuracy. The latter was associated, as a rule, with the insignificance of the achievable speed of the radiation source compared to the speed of light.

However, today physics has a tool that allows us to return to the proposal of S.I. Vavilov. This is a synchrotron emitter, where a very bright light source is a bunch of electrons moving along a curved path at a speed almost indistinguishable from the speed of light With. Under such conditions, it is easy to measure the speed of emitted light in a perfect laboratory vacuum. According to the logic of supporters of the ballistic hypothesis, this speed should be equal to twice the speed of light from a stationary source! Detecting such an effect (if it exists) would not be difficult: it is enough to simply measure the time it takes a light pulse to travel a measured segment in an evacuated space.

Of course, for professional physicists there is no doubt about the expected result. In this sense, experience is useless. However, direct demonstration of the constancy of the speed of light has great didactic value, limiting the basis for further speculation about the unproven foundations of the theory of relativity. In its development, physics constantly returned to the reproduction and refinement of fundamental experiments carried out with new technical capabilities. In this case, the goal is not to clarify the speed of light. We are talking about filling the historical gap in the experimental substantiation of the origins of SRT, which should facilitate the perception of this rather paradoxical theory. We can say that we are talking about a demonstration experiment for future physics textbooks.

Such an experiment was recently carried out by a group of Russian scientists at the Kurchatov Synchrotron Radiation Center of the National Research Center KI. In the experiments, a source of synchrotron radiation (SR) - the Sibir-1 electron storage ring - was used as a pulsed light source. The SR of electrons accelerated to relativistic speeds (close to the speed of light) has a wide spectrum from infrared and visible to the X-ray range. The radiation propagates in a narrow cone tangentially to the electron trajectory along the extraction channel and is released through a sapphire window into the atmosphere. There, the light is collected by a lens onto the photocathode of a fast photodetector. A beam of light on its way through a vacuum could be blocked by a glass plate inserted using a magnetic drive. Moreover, according to the logic of the ballistic hypothesis, light, which previously supposedly had double speed 2 With, after the window should have returned to normal speed With.

The electron bunch had a length of about 30 cm. Passing past the lead window, it generated an SR pulse in the channel with a duration of about 1 ns. The rotation frequency of the bunch along the synchrotron ring was ~34.5 MHz, so that a periodic sequence of short pulses was observed at the output of the photodetector, which was recorded using a high-speed oscilloscope. The pulses were synchronized by a high-frequency electric field signal of the same frequency of 34.5 MHz, compensating for the loss of electron energy on the SI. By comparing two oscillograms obtained in the presence of a glass window in the SR beam and in its absence, it was possible to measure the lag of one pulse sequence from the other, caused by a hypothetical decrease in speed. With a length of 540 cm in the section of the SR extraction channel from the window inserted into the beam to the exit into the atmosphere, the speed of light decreases from 2 With before With should have resulted in a time shift of 9 ns. Experimentally, no shift was observed with an accuracy of about 0.05 ns.

In addition to the experiment, a direct measurement of the speed of light in the lead channel was carried out by dividing the channel length by the pulse propagation time, which led to a value only 0.5% lower than the tabulated speed of light.

So, the results of the experiment turned out to be, of course, expected: the speed of light does not depend on the speed of the source, in full accordance with Einstein’s second postulate. What was new was that it was confirmed for the first time by direct measurement of the speed of light from a relativistic source. It is unlikely that this experiment will stop attacks on SRT by those jealous of Einstein’s fame, but it will significantly limit the field of new claims.

The details of the experiment are described in an article that will be published in one of the upcoming issues of the journal “Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk”.

See also:
E. B. Alexandrov. , “Chemistry and Life”, No. 3, 2012 (more details about this experiment).

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Finally!
It’s just a pity that ignorant loudmouths will still run in and yell that this whole experiment is a complete scam, does not prove anything, and, in general, Einstein came up with his stupid theory only so that scientists could extract more money from them, stupid ordinary people, or not give nugget geniuses deserve the glory for the drawing of a superluminal starship drawn with a crooked pen. :)

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Exactly. This behavior is especially stupid if you consider that even in the “theory of the ether” the SRT formulas remain the same - the sizes of bodies are distorted clearly “according to Einstein”, depending on the speed, the intensity of any processes slows down in the same way, and also exactly according to the slowdown formula time, and taking into account the fact that there is a limiting speed of signal propagation (in the theory of ether, the exchange principle of interaction with this speed is considered, due to which both a reduction in length and a slowdown of processes are observed), the distance has to be measured by half the time it takes for the light beam to travel there -back". It is these three incidents: distortion of length, change in the intensity of processes ("crooked" rulers, lagging clocks) and the forced method of determining distances "by the light" that lead to the fact that from within the ether one can neither determine the zero, absolute frame of reference, nor detect a change in the speed of the ether itself. light is not possible. In this way, the relativistic principle of adding velocities operates, the effect of “increasing mass” is observed (with jet acceleration, for example, a system with automatically decelerating processes will never be able to exceed the speed of light - for an outside observer in an inertial system it will look like the effect of increasing mass, and also in absolute accordance with the formulas from the theory of relativity).

A funny incident, indeed. There is an almost complete coincidence of the mathematical basis of the two theories - however, supporters of one of them constantly rebel against the evidence and try to look for the same deviations in the speed of light. And this is even despite the fact that a number of effects from SRT have long been clearly demonstrated using the example of a quantum liquid - liquid helium! Gentlemen kefir workers. Calm down and rejoice - a change in the speed of light cannot be detected even in your theory. And if the planet is unlucky enough to stumble upon an ethereal flow, then it will simply be torn to shreds, and relativists will describe the phenomenon, before they perish with everyone, as “a rupture in the space-time metric in higher dimensions,” and prove even in the hour of death who is right, everyone it still won't work.

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- Let me clarify: I have already read this note. BEFORE your message. And it was not about the deviation of the speed of light, but about the deviation of the speed of NEUTRINOs from the speed of light. Do you catch the difference? ;)
  By the way, if the assumption is confirmed and a way is found to exchange signals at a speed greater than light, the zero, “absolute” coordinate system will be clearly defined - in view of what has already been stated in my commentary. True, for now the experiment with neutrinos is still doubtful for me. We are waiting for confirmation or refutation from other laboratories!
  
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  I was referring to the note about geostationary satellite tracking. I am more than calm about superluminal neutrinos. Firstly, the existence of the muon neutrino was predicted quite a long time ago, and secondly, the speed of the photon was measured first precisely because a person perceives them directly. The discovery of elementary particles with a speed significantly exceeding the speed of light is a matter of time. This is my personal point of view. If only because the human toolkit has expanded quite considerably.
  
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  - For a satellite? I haven’t read it... I’ll have to take a look :)
    As for the particles, we'll wait. It would be funny if it turns out that we are just “Lorentzian fish” swimming in an ordinary multiverse pond with a specific speed of propagation of basic interactions. Therefore, we are distorted depending on the speed according to local Lorentz transformations, we measure with clocks that lag behind them, and therefore we cannot find out either the speed relative to our own pond, or our own distortions-slowdowns (and what if all our clocks and rulers glitch along with us ?). Yes, particles moving faster than the standard disturbances of our “reservoir” will help us calculate it. But for now... For now everything is too vague and unsteady - and therefore the theory about the curvature of space-time, the metric tensor, the multidimensional interval in Minkowski space has no less grounds.
    
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    - So what is your attitude towards measuring the parameters of the movement of the Earth and the Solar system? Or did the “gentlemen kefir people” measure it with “buggy rulers”? Your point of view does not give you the right to express it with contempt for your opponents. Just a few seconds ago, by geological standards, you would have been first strung up on the rack for your views, in order to force you to renounce them, and then on the gallows, so as not to change your mind. Science does not stand still, and the rotation of the Earth around the Sun and Newton’s laws have become just special cases. It is likely that the same thing awaits Einstein’s general relativity.
      
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      - It depends on what... You see - when we are talking about energy media in space, be it ordinary matter or measuring the frequency of certain radiations arriving at different angles to the observer - then this is a measurement relative to them, and not relative to the absolute system . And as for her specifically... Well, yes. In the theory of the ether, we have a distortion of the rulers, a change in the speed of processes and a certain maximum speed of propagation of signals, which together leads to the fact that a body moving relative to the ether not only does not feel its contraction, but it also seems to it that EVEN a body at rest relative to the ether contracts “according to Lorentz” at the same speed. In the theory of relativity, we initially believe that there is no absolute system at all, and all variations of space-time parameters are only a consequence of invariance during transitions between inertial reference systems. A deeper analysis of the two theories continues to reveal a complete analogy of the hardware of the two theories, which does not allow me personally to prefer either of them. Except that the theory of the ether seems a little more beautiful, since it has completely material analogies (the same experiments in liquid helium), and therefore does not require additional assumptions about operations directly with space-time coordinates.
        In principle, the separation of theories is, of course, possible. But while the data is extremely vague and unreliable - the experiment with “superluminal” neutrinos requires confirmation from other, independent laboratories, experiments on energy spectra will “crawl” only at energies on the order of Planck’s, which even the LHC is like a vacuum cleaner before the LHC. No, gentlemen, whether you are kefirists or relativists - forgive me, for now you are for me just single-minded interpreters of a single mathematical apparatus. It is certainly interesting. But I'm glad that these are not my problems :)))
        
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        So, in the theory of relativity, not everything is relative to each other. For example, we cannot assume that we are moving towards a beam of light at the speed of light while it is standing still.
        
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        Why? Just this moment is considered fully and exhaustively (for the theory of relativity, of course): if you move EXACTLY at the speed of light, then your time stands still, the speed of any processes in you for any external observer with a speed slightly less is absolute zero and you NEVER, NOTHING you can't determine. But if your speed is even slightly different from the speed of light, then the oncoming flow of even infrared radiation for you is hard ultraviolet, or even worse, and it falls on you exactly at the speed of light according to the principle of relativistic addition of velocities.
        Just in case: in the theory of the ether, if you move exactly at the speed of light, your particles do not exchange any signals at all (they simply do not have time to get from one particle to another, since signals propagate in the ether at speed "c", but the particles are already moving at speed "c"). Accordingly, the speed of any processes in you is zero, but this is only in the case of a homogeneous ether. If you have the characteristic Planck size of the ether discretization, you will not be able to get close to “c” at all: when the sizes of the interparticle bonds in you are close to this scale, the nature of the interactions will inevitably change, the spectra of atoms and molecules will “creep”, which will most likely lead to their destruction and your death. But if you move away from the speed of light by even trillionths of a percent, you will see exactly the same as in the theory of relativity: the harshest ultraviolet moving towards you at the same speed of light. Do not forget: You measure distances with crooked rulers, measure time with lagging clocks and synchronize the clocks, mark the rulers all according to the same principle of emission-return of a light signal... This is the sad truth.
        
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In fact, opponents of Einstein’s general relativity also have a version that light emitted by a moving source moves away from the source not with the speed of the source adding to it, but with the speed subtracting it. That is, if the radiation source moves at a speed of 150,000 km/sec, then the light emitted by it will move away from it at approximately the same speed, and not twice as fast, as the respected master pointed out. It is precisely this circumstance that explains the example with double stars, without denying the absolute constancy of the speed of light. The author of the article would do well to use less highly educated irony, since the truth only becomes the only true one when the inconsistency of the others is proven. And with the refutation of this assumption, physicists have a complete collapse. Bye.

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I wonder how the source knows that it is moving at a speed of 150,000 km/sec? To emit light “correctly”?
Let's launch two glass satellites in advance, along one line. One will move away at 150,000 km/s, and the second will turn around and approach at the same speed. At what speed will light move away from us?

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- I am far from an expert in this matter. All my knowledge is drawn from popular science literature, so it is difficult for me to judge who is more right. Regarding your question - “we”, as I understand it, are in one of the glass satellites. Since the speed in the problem is close to that of light, this means that the time reference system is far from earthly, and therefore the perceived speed of surrounding objects does not fit within the earthly framework. This is as difficult to judge as if you try to observe from the outside at what speed light is moving away from one satellite and at what speed it is approaching another. I think that the paradox of the passage of time did not allow Einstein to create a unified field theory.
  
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  - No, we are on Earth, from where we launch satellites and shine light on them.
    As you wrote at the beginning,
    >light emitted by a moving source moves away from the source not with the speed of the source adding to it, but with the speed subtracting it
    For a satellite flying towards us, our source should emit light from 300,000 - 150,000 = 150,000 km/s
    For the receding one, apparently, 450,000 km/s (the satellite itself flies at 150,000, and our light should overtake it at a speed of 300,000 km/s)
    This is the kind of contradiction that arises with “subtraction,” which is obvious to a non-specialist. It turns out that it is not the physicists who fail, but their opponents.
    
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    - Apparently, you did not carefully read the key phrases about another time system.
      About 25 years ago I was given a book by some foreign author about the theory of relativity and the life of Einstein with comments from foreign experts. To my great chagrin, I don’t remember the author, and the book has long been lost. It describes Einstein's words on how he came to understand the theory of relativity. He often wondered what light was, because it corresponds to both the corpuscular theory (photons, elementary particles) and the wave theory (frequency of electromagnetic oscillations, refraction of light). One day he thought what would happen if he rushed after a beam of light at the same speed and looked at the photons up close: what are they? And then he realized that this was impossible, because the light would still move away from him at the same speed. The same book says that time in moving systems flows more slowly, inversely proportional to the speed of movement, remember the famous example with two twins, and when moving at the speed of light, the great master assumed (note: he assumed, and did not claim) that time stops completely. And in fact, the photon seems to be an eternal thing, outside of time, but it has a certain oscillation frequency in a certain period of time, which can be measured. And now a little arithmetic: when moving at a speed of 150,000 km/sec, time flows twice as slow, so while moving at this speed, you turn on the flashlight forward and a beam of light rushes away from you at a speed of 150,000 km/sec. But for you, a second is two seconds for an outsider, a motionless observer, i.e. we get the required 300,000 km/sec. Turn it back on and the beam of light will fly away from you at the same speed - 150,000 km/sec, since we minus your speed from the speed of light, and again take into account the double change in the flow of time, and "Oh, a miracle!" - again the same immutable 300,000 km/sec. By the way, it is clear to a non-specialist that 150,000 - 300,000 = -150,000. Such is higher mathematics. And, as an ignorant loudmouth, I can add that this whole experiment is just another attempt to measure the speed of light (and with a very large error), since the speed of removal of a beam of photons from a beam of electrons has not been measured in any way. And the speed of light itself cannot be measured, there is no state of immobility in nature: we and the surface of the earth are moving around an axis, the earth at this time is around the sun, it, in turn, is around the center of the galaxy, which, according to the theory of the expanding universe, is generally unknown where it is going . So what is the speed of light? And regarding what?
      Even the great Einstein (this is absolutely without any irony) doubted that time stops, why are we so self-confident?
      
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      - This is again from the above book. Since physicists cannot instrumentally measure the change in time at relativistic speeds, measurements are made using the red-violet shift of the spectrum. The general theory is divided into several special theories, i.e. for several special cases (Einstein failed to create a unified field theory). Special theories consider changes in space-time according to several parameters: the presence of a strong gravitational field, the movement of reference systems relative to each other, the rotation of the gravitational field, the movement of the reference system in the direction of rotation or against it. Modern physicists can operate at speeds tens of thousands of times lower than the speed of light, and measurements are carried out based on indirect evidence, but they are confirmed in practice, in particular, in the GPS system. The most accurate atomic clocks are installed on all satellites and they are constantly adjusted in accordance with the theory of relativity. In the light of this theory, physicists have developed about 30 different theories, the calculations of which are numerically comparable to Einstein's theory. Several of them provide more accurate measurements. Even Arthur Edington, without whose participation Einstein would not have been possible, significantly corrected his friend in some places. The theory I was talking about states that the speed of light is finite. But it may be slower. This is evidenced by a decrease in speed when passing through transparent media other than vacuum, and a decrease in speed when passing near strong sources of gravity. And the red shift itself is interpreted by some not as the “Doppler effect”, but as a decrease in the speed of light.
        Not to be unfounded, quote:
        The Hafele-Keating experiment is one of the tests of the theory of relativity that directly demonstrated the reality of the twin paradox. In October 1971, J.C. Hafele and Richard E. Keating took four sets of cesium atomic clocks aboard commercial airliners and flew around the world twice, first east and then west, and then compared the clocks as they traveled. with the clock remaining at the US Naval Observatory.
        According to the special theory of relativity, the speed of a clock is greatest for the observer for whom it is at rest. In a reference frame in which the clock is not at rest, it runs slower, and this effect is proportional to the square of the speed. In a frame of reference at rest relative to the center of the Earth, a clock on board an airplane moving east (in the direction of the Earth's rotation) runs slower than a clock that remains on the surface, and a clock on board an airplane moving west (against the Earth's rotation) , go faster.
        According to general relativity, another effect comes into play: a small increase in gravitational potential with increasing altitude again speeds up the clock. Since the planes were flying at approximately the same altitude in both directions, this effect has little effect on the difference in the speed of the two "traveling" clocks, but it does cause them to drift away from the clocks on the surface of the earth.
        
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        What are we talking about here? - “after which they compared the “traveling” watches with the watches that remained at the US Naval Observatory.” Who compared? Who wrote the article? The one who flew on the plane or the one who remained on the ground? It’s just that these comrades’ results should be completely different. If the guy who stayed at the base was comparing, then Keating’s and Hafel’s clocks should have been set for him. If, say, Keating compared, then the clock should have fallen behind already at the base (and Havel too, even more). Well, in Hafel’s opinion, the clock was behind, on the contrary, Keating’s (and at the base, but less)).
        Those:
        - Havel will write in his observation diary "Keating's clock has fallen behind."
        - Keating will write in his diary “Hafel’s clock is slow.”
        - Keating will look at Havel’s diary and see there “Keating’s clock has moved forward.”
        Those. since then, according to the dude at the base, Keating and Hafele will NEVER be able to produce ONE result because there are THREE of them! According to the number, respectively, of observer-experimenters. And for each observer, his colleagues will confirm his personal result, which differs from others.
        Well, I, as a reader of the article, get the fourth result, this time relative to me. Accordingly, if Keating and Havel moved relative to ME, the reader of the article, then their clocks fell behind. And, accordingly, I will read about this in the article. In that article that only I and almost everyone else on Earth will see...
        But personally, neither Keating nor Havel will ever know that they wrote it and what the inhabitants of the earth will see - they, personally, had completely different results... And the publication of these results around the world will be seen by 20 people. Of those that were on board with them...
        This is how the g... turns out according to your favorite theory. How can you believe in this bullshit? No wonder Einstein stuck out his tongue at you...
        
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        And anyway, why fly? Tickets for a business trip report can be obtained from arriving passengers near the baggage claim area.
        I understand that you wanted to direct people to look for errors in reasoning. But nowadays the public will simply echo, “Einstein is a fool,” and won’t dig into it. It was necessary to make at least a hint about the non-inertiality of all three reference systems...
        
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        > It was necessary to make at least a hint about the non-inertiality of all three reference systems...
        Why do you think this “non-inertiality” should somehow influence the results of this logical calculation of mine? After all, the authors of the experiment carried out measurements with “purely” non-inertial reference systems (airplanes flying in and out, changing gravitational field back and forth, etc.). And this circumstance did not bother the authors at all - they measured, looked, announced - yeah, there seems to be a slowdown! After all, then it turns out that if they have this slowdown, then the savagery I described is reality? Or is there some third option?
        
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Please explain how these experiments can confirm or refute the second postulate of STR? How do the requirements for the inertiality of the reference system relate to the accelerated motion of electrons?

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For that fought for it and ran...
arXiv:1109.4897v1
Abstract: The OPERA neutrino experiment at the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory has measured the velocity of neutrinos from the CERN CNGS beam over a baseline of about 730 km with much higher accuracy than previous studies conducted with accelerator neutrinos. The measurement is based on high-statistics data taken by OPERA in the years 2009, 2010 and 2011. Dedicated upgrades of the CNGS timing system and of the OPERA detector, as well as a high precision geodesy campaign for the measurement of the neutrino baseline, allowed reaching comparable systematic and statistical accuracies. An early arrival time of CNGS muon neutrinos with respect to the one computed assuming the speed of light in vacuum of (60.7 \pm 6.9 (stat.) \pm 7.4 (sys.)) ns was measured. This anomaly corresponds to a relative difference of the muon neutrino velocity with respect to the speed of light (v-c)/c = (2.48 \pm 0.28 (stat.) \pm 0.30 (sys.)) \times 10-5.

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Interesting... MEASUREMENT OF MOTION PARAMETERS OF THE EARTH AND SOLAR SYSTEM

Kazan Institute of Physics and Technology, KSC RAS, 420029,
Kazan, Sibirsky tract, 10/7, Russia, [email protected]

When tracking a geostationary satellite, the influence of the uniform motion of the Earth on the aberration of electromagnetic waves from a source installed on the satellite was discovered. At the same time, the parameters of the Earth's orbital motion were measured for the first time without the use of astronomical observations of stars. The average annual speed of the found orbital component of motion turned out to be equal to 29.4 km/sec, which practically coincides with the value of the Earth’s orbital speed known in astronomy of 29.765 km/sec. The parameters of the galactic motion of the Solar System were also measured. The obtained values are equal to: 270o - for the right ascension of the apex of the Sun (the value known in astronomy is 269.75o), 89.5o - for its declination (in astronomy 51.5o, and 600 km/sec for the speed of movement of the Solar system. Thus, it is proved that the speed a uniformly moving laboratory coordinate system (in our case, the Earth) can actually be measured using a device in which the radiation source and receiver are at rest relative to each other and the same coordinate system.This is the basis for revising the statement of the special theory of relativity about the independence of speed light from the movement of the observer.

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Thank you for a very interesting message. I immediately re-read everything that came my way on the topic of aberration. Consequently, it is now possible to determine the speed of motion of the galaxy in accordance with the theory of the expansion of the universe. Or disprove this theory.

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- Perhaps this will be useful for your reference (C) ....1926 E. Hubble discovered that nearby galaxies statistically fit on a regression line, which in terms of the Doppler shift of the spectrum can be characterized by an almost constant parameter
  H=VD/R,
  where VD is the spectrum shift converted to Doppler velocity, R is the distance from the Earth to the galaxy
  In reality, E. Hubble himself did not assert the Doppler nature of these displacements, and the discoverer of “novae and supernovae” stars, Fritz Zwicky, back in 1929, associated these displacements with the loss of energy by light quanta at cosmogonic distances. Moreover, in 1936, based on a study of the distribution of galaxies, E. Hubble came to the conclusion that it cannot be explained by the Doppler effect.
  However, absurdity triumphed. Galaxies with high redshifts are assigned almost light speed in the direction away from Earth.
  By analyzing the redshifts of various objects and calculating the “Hubble constant”, you can see that the closer the object is, the more this parameter differs from the asymptotic value of 73 km/(s Mps).
  In reality, for each order of distances there is a different value for this parameter. Taking the redshift from the nearest bright stars VD = 5, and dividing it by the standard relativistic value, we get the absurd value of the distances to the nearest bright stars R = 5 / 73 = 68493
  Sorry, I can’t present the table here))
  
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  - - - Regarding Ballistics and other things, I found an interesting judgment on this topic on the net... The fact is that Galileo’s deeply physical law of inertia, which states (in modern formulation):
        “Any physical body at rest or moving in a physical medium at a constant speed in a straight line or in a circle around the center of inertia will continue this motion forever, unless other physical bodies or the medium provide resistance to this motion. Such movement is movement by inertia,”
        Was transformed by Newton, 1687, into the formulation:
        "Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus illud a viribus impressis cogitur statum suum mutare"
        “Every body continues to be maintained in its state of rest or uniform and rectilinear motion until and unless it is forced by applied forces to change this state.”
        In its modern formulation, the so-called “Newton’s first law” is even worse:
        “Every material point maintains a state of rest or uniform and rectilinear motion until the influence of other bodies takes it out of this state.”
        At the same time, a purely experimental physical law, found by Galileo in 1612 - 1638, refined by 1644 by Rene Descartes and Christian Huygens, and widely known by the time Isaac Newton transitioned from alchemical to physical and mathematical activity, turned into philosophical nonsense for the latter - the movement of abstract “material” point in emptiness. The 3 rotational degrees of freedom of inertial motion and the carrier medium were excluded.
        I understand how difficult it is for a modern person, into whose consciousness movement in the void was introduced at the level of instinct, dogmatic faith, to realize the illogicality of this, the inconsistency of the Newtonian interpretation with the realities of Nature. However, without losing hope of understanding, I will try to convey my point of view to the reader.
        If the movement of any physical system occurred in absolute (abstract) emptiness, then it would be impossible even logically to distinguish this movement from rest, since emptiness does not have distinctive signs (marks) by which this movement could be determined. This “mathematical property” was used as a justification for relativism, although this “property” exists only in theory, in the minds of relativists, but not in Nature.
        It should be noted here that Galileo’s phenomenological principle of relativity, if we do not focus on the trivial mathematical side - the Cartesian transformation of coordinates, states only that at the usual low speeds with which people deal in everyday life, the difference between inertial frames of reference is not felt. For the ethereal medium, these speeds are so insignificant that physical phenomena proceed in the same way.
        On the other hand, linear motion measured in emptiness relative to other bodies cannot be an objective unambiguous measure of motion, since it depends on the arbitrariness of the observer, that is, the choice of the reference system. In terms of linear motion, the speed of a stone lying on the ground can be considered equal to zero if we take the Earth as the reference frame, and equal to 30 km/s if we take the Sun as the reference frame.
        Rotational motion, declared a special case and thrown out by Newton from the formulation of the law of inertia, in contrast to translational motion, is absolute and unambiguous, since the Universe certainly does not revolve around any stone.
        Thus, Galileo’s initially purely phenomenological law was cut off by three degrees of freedom, deprived of a physical environment and turned into a kind of abstract dogma that stopped the development of mechanics and physics as a whole, closing the thoughts of physicists only on linear relative motion.
        
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        That is, there are no problems participating in several types of movement at the same time? And the reasons for this movement may be different? Then why attribute motion to a single star _only_ as a result of the expansion of the Universe?
        Hubble constant ~70 km/s per _megaparsec_. Those. at the distance of the nearest stars, several parsecs, the expansion contribution is a million times less, about 10 cm/s
        
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        ))) the reason for the movement or the reverse, in general, is a big mystery, about the expansion... here you go from an apologist for ethereal physics (c) ... Secondly, this is a mythical expansion of the Universe, contrary to facts and logic. Relative to what is the Universe expanding, where is the benchmark? Why is the insignificant Earth the center of expansion? As the living classic of astrophysics Dr. Arp quite correctly writes, the red shift has nothing to do with the expansion of space or the “scattering” of galaxies.
        Thirdly, in the actually observable Universe we see objects much older than the age of the Big Bang, for example, galaxy clusters. Where did they come from? Isn't it easier to ask yourself the question: where did the deceiver come from who writes fables about the "Big Bang"?
        
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        >Why is the insignificant Earth the center of expansion?
        This center was given to you! Hubble's Law V = H * R (for Earth)
        Take another point and recalculate the speeds for it, in a simple way, according to Galileo. The same thing will happen: V1 = H * R1
        And which one is the center?
        >red shift has nothing to do with the expansion of space or the “scattering” of galaxies.
        Fine. What is it connected with?
        >Thirdly, in the actually observable Universe we see objects much older than the age of the Big Bang, for example, galaxy clusters.
        How is their age estimated? Zeldovich also modeled the gravitational compression of matter after BV, and he succeeded quite well in clusters (the so-called “pancakes”)
        > where did the deceiver come from, inventing tales about the "Big Bang"?
        Lemaitre? From Charleroi. And what?
        
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        Regarding Zeldovich and the cosmic microwave background It was theoretically predicted at the beginning of the twentieth century by the classics of physics Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev, Walter Nernst and others, and experimentally measured with high accuracy by Prof. Erich Regener in 1933 (Stuttgart, Germany). His result of 2.8°K is practically no different from the modern value. And the explanation of its origin BV is not proof itself... modeling, as practice shows)) ... is not the final authority due to its subjectivity in relation to the object...
        
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        >As the living classic of astrophysics Dr. Arp writes quite correctly,
        >redshift has nothing to do with the expansion of space
        >or the “scattering” of galaxies.
        It's not a question. This statement. Having said “A”, you must say “B” - what then is the red shift associated with. I'd love to hear it.
        
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        Now the question is specific.... a) In the theory of relativity, the Doppler Redshift is considered as a result of a slowdown in the flow of time in a moving reference frame (the effect of the special theory of relativity). b) The Hubble red shift is the result of dissipation of the energy of light quanta in the ether; its parameter “Hubble constant” changes depending on the temperature of the ether. Two mutually exclusive statements... and the answer lies in one of them...
        
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        Temperature, ether? ....all that is known for certain is the temperature of the cosmic microwave background 2.7ºK. And why should this temperature rise...?! And if we talk about the ethereal theory, it would be correct to talk not about the theory but about ethereal hypotheses and theories.. Regarding the current state of temperature)) I hope that nothing has changed... Regarding time... if you follow some hypotheses... eternity)) in both directions...
        
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        >Temperature, ether?
        I'm just using your terminology:
        “its parameter “Hubble constant” changes depending on the temperature of the ether”
        >And why should this temperature rise...?!
        Because “The Hubble red shift is the result of the dissipation of the energy of light quanta in the ether.”
        Energy is such a thing, it tends to be conserved. There are quite a sufficient number of phenomenological observations on this score. And dissipation is not a loss of energy, but its transition into an indigestible form of chaotic motion, i.e. warm. And if we have eternity left (at least in one direction, back), then the temperature of the ether should become infinitely large.
        
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        That's what you're talking about... this is a quote from a work... I found on the net)) ... "the Hubble constant changes depending on the temperature of the ether" ... in space, conditions arise for changes in both the density and the temperature of the ether, these conditions are created by powerful radiation from stars... and the temperature of the ether is constant 2.723...))) it can’t be lower. And dissipation in this case is the absorption of energy by the ether; the ether, in turn, gives its energy to moving particles of matter, the more intense the faster the particle moves. Thus, stars containing masses of heated gas are absorbers of ether energy, which is then emitted by them into space in the form of quanta of electromagnetic radiation.
        
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        >the ether, in turn, gives its energy to moving particles of matter,
        >the more intense the faster the particle moves
        The effect would be noticeable at particle accelerators, such as the LHC, which is not observed.
        
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        )) And it is not surprising that this was “undetected” on existing accelerators; the opposite would be even more surprising; for the sake of fairness, all this can also be attributed to the Hicks boson. Even putting aside all subjective factors, the question arises: is it even possible from a technical point of view, hypothetically, to detect that energy process with the help of accelerators and how to calculate it? After all, if you follow some ethereal theories... the very phenomenon of gravity is the process of “energy cycle in nature” between matter and non-substance, or rather non-substance, that is, ether”...
        
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        “Is it even possible from a technical point of view, hypothetically, to detect that energy process with the help of accelerators and how to calculate it?”
        Elementary. Read the description of the accelerator sections of the collider in the "Posters" section of I. Ivanov, and you will immediately understand why it is easy.
        Now, if they switch to laser overclocking methods, they can write off some interest. But also not so much that the stars glow due to this.
        
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        ))Has a way been found to simultaneously measure the momentum and coordinates of a particle at accelerators....and without this it is impossible to observe such a process)) or its absence is impossible... Planck metric, you know...
        
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        It is enough to know the energy of the particle, and it is known quite accurately from calorimetric measurements. At a speed of ~c, the process of transferring the energy of the ether will be a thousand times stronger than in the Sun.
        
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        Still, I should explain the essence of the transfer of ether energies to matter within the framework of one of the ether theories... to the extent possible in this format... The structure and parameters of the ether. The ether is a hierarchical structure consisting of corpuscular and phase ethers.
        Elements of the corpuscular ether are spherical particles of Planck radius 1.6·10-35 [m] and inertia numerically equal to Planck mass 2.18·10-8 or, which is the same, Planck energy 1.96·109 [J]. They are under the influence of a monstrous pressure of 2.1·1081. The array of particles of the corpuscular ether is integrally, that is, statistically, in a state of rest and represents the main energy of the Universe with a density of 1.13·10113. The temperature of the corpuscular ether is absolutely constant 2.723 0K. It cannot be changed by anything.
        The solar system moves relative to the corpuscular ether at Marinov speed (360± 30 km/s). This is observed as the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background and the sidereal dependence of the speed of light, established by prof. Art. Marinov in 1974 - 1979. However, the microwave background is not radiation from the corpuscular ether. This is the radiation of the “superstructure” above the corpuscular ether – the phase ether.
        The phase ether consists of the same corpuscles (amers, in the terminology of Democritus) as the corpuscular ether. The difference is in their phase state. If the corpuscular ether is a superfluid liquid similar to solid helium, that is, in fact, a kind of quicksand without any friction between particles, then the phase ether mass is similar to saturated steam interspersed in the corpuscular ether mass.
        The main part of the phase ether binds the corpuscular ether into ethereal domains, the linear dimensions of which are 1021 times larger than the particles of the corpuscular ether. Particles of the bound phase ether are quasi-spherical nets-string bags, each of which has 1 ethereal domain of ~1063 particles of corpuscular ether. Etheric domains are empty blanks of elementary particles - electrons, protons, mesons... They are seen by modern physicists as virtual particles that seem to not exist and which seem to exist at the same time.
        When elementary particles are bombarded, particles of the phase ether connecting them are momentarily observed, which physicists consider quarks, attributing to them a fractional charge.
        In the Universe, there is 1063 times less bound ether than corpuscular ether, but 1063 times more than matter. The temperature of the bound ether is also constant and is in strict balance with the temperature of the corpuscular ether. The energy capacity of the bound ether ~3·1049 and its density ~3·1032 are also so high that its temperature and these parameters cannot be changed.
        However, there is another type of ether - free phase ether, freely wandering through space (along the boundaries of ethereal domains) and accumulating in matter in a proportion of 5.1·1070, creating the phenomena of gravity and gravitational mass.
        Gravity is the process of phase transition of this type of ether into corpuscular ether, during which an ether pressure gradient arises around the substance. This gradient is the force of gravity.
        Being elementary electric dipoles, that is, “violators” of the pressure balance in the phase ether (at the boundaries of domains, which does not affect the pressure of the corpuscular ether), amers of the phase ether are the cause of the occurrence of polarization phenomena (anisotropy of dipole distribution), electric field and charges (pressure deviation in the phase ether up or down) and electromagnetic field (light).
        Since the energy density of free ether 2.54·1017 is not so high that it cannot be changed, in some cases this change can actually be observed in the form of a change in the speed of light and red shift.
        And following further, in the data coming from the detectors there is information about the transfer of energy by the ether to matter, but it is impossible to isolate it at the moment... this exchange is the very essence of the existence of matter, the presence of mass and motion, hypothetical in my opinion of course... If you If you're curious about the details, you can find it by typing part of the text I quoted into a search engine. This is one of the works of Karim Khaidarov.
        
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The experiment to verify the second postulate of STR can not be complicated, but take and verify an equivalent statement: in a transparent body, both moving and at rest, the speed of light is the same and depends on the refractive index of the medium. Moreover, this has already been done by Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau, as E. Alexandrov recalled.
In the experiment of 1851, the light source was at rest, and the medium (water in parallel pipes) moved counter- and parallel to the beam. And it turned out that the water seems to add some speed to the light when moving in the same direction and takes away the same amount when moving in the opposite direction. But at the same time, the addition of the velocities of water and light turned out to be non-classical: the experimental data were exactly two times less than those calculated according to Galileo’s principle of relativity. At the same time, the predictions of the Fresnel theory (the prototype of STR) differed from the measured values by 13%.
The intrigue is that any experiment of the Fizeau type (for example, a multiparameter one, when different liquids are involved in the experiment, different flow rates are used, and in a laboratory setup the length of the pipes and the frequency of the light used are changed) will give a result that is exactly half that calculated according to the classical law of addition of speeds. Why? Yes, because the speed of light is not a speed and adding it to the speed of water, for example, is not correct both metrologically and semantically. After all, speeds and their squares are defined in relation to different units of measurement. You can find out more about this by searching for links to “quad speed” in a search engine. We have the Earth, whose orbital speed (30 km/s) is only an order of magnitude less than the speed of thermal motion of the particles of the Sun.
The sun receives and emits 2e-5 W/kg (I will write in exponential notation, 3.14e+2=3.14×10²=314).
Then for the Earth it will be 1e-6 W/kg, i.e. Every kilogram of earthly matter will receive 1e-6 J of kinetic energy every second.
All speeds are far from light speeds, so purely school physics.
∆E = mV²/2 - mV˳²/2 = (m/2)×(V²-V˳²)≈ m×∆V×V
∆V = ∆E/mV, m=1kg V=3e+4 m/s ∆V≈3e-11 m/s per second
This, of course, is very short and completely imperceptible, but how many seconds do we have?
There are approximately 3e+7 in a year, i.e. over a year the speed will increase by 1e-3 m/s, by 1 mm/s
For a thousand years 1 m/s For a million 1 km/s For a billion years...
Are you ready to join the Young Earth creationists? Me not.
Do these calculations cover the transfer of energy from the ether? No. But they set the upper limit for this transmission such that weather does not make an ethereal contribution to the heat release of the Sun.
We have to return to thermonuclear.
“And it seems to me that nuclear reactions are fundamentally unstable in the absence of artificial feedback, and once the reaction of the main substance of the sun, protium, had occurred, it would not have occurred smoothly and stably, but would have exploded the sun like a hydrogen bomb.”
Firstly, there is feedback; the explosion scatters the unreacted substance to the sides, reducing its concentration. Somewhere I came across a figure that approximately 10% of plutonium reacts in a nuclear bomb. The infamous Chernobyl reactor exploded, but not in the same way as in Hiroshima.
Secondly, kinetics is a complex thing, and, for all its energetic benefits, some processes proceed slowly. Otherwise we would not be able to use metals in our oxygen atmosphere.

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Yes, there’s no need to waste time on trifles))) 30 km/s, ...and the galactic 220 km/s? Plus its own rotation around its axis? My God, how much energy should there be... where is it?! But it was not for nothing that I mentioned in the previous post about MASS and the gravitating free phase ether, or do you think gravity does not require energy, so to speak, a “cost-free method”?! The phase transition of the ether, that is, the free phase ether condensing or gravitating when interacting with matter turns into corpuscular ether, in this case the phase transition occurs spherically symmetrically, the “collapses” of amers are compensated without producing Brownian motion of particles.
as a result of this transformation, a spherically symmetrical pressure difference is created around the gravitating substance, which determines the gradient of the gravitational field, and where there is force, there is energy... So creationists can rest, although they should have been given a couple of poultices)). And I must note, for me personally, the above is still a hypothesis. Regarding the sun...at one time it was assumed that the basis of nuclear fusion is the proton - a proton fusion reaction as a result of which heavier chemical elements appear and the energy and duration of such a hypothetical combustion would be sufficient for 10 (to the tenth power) years of existence the sun, but the earth, terrestrial planets, asteroids have existed for 4.56 billion years, and during this time the sun should have used up up to half of its hydrogen, and research has confirmed that the chemical composition of the sun and the interstellar medium is almost identical, and it turns out that for all time During the “burning” of the Sun, hydrogen was practically not consumed. And the neutrino flux comes not from the internal high-temperature parts of the Sun, but from the equatorial surface layers and is subject to seasonal fluctuations of daily, 27-day, annual and 11-year, and the neutrinos themselves are several times less than what is necessary to state the presence of pp- on the sun reactions, a lot of questions in general.... Z.Y. There are more difficult and interesting questions. Please advise where to ask them.

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Sorry,
For some reason, Academician Aleksandrov proved for the first time in a million times “the independence of the speed of light from the speed of the source.”
Where is at least one single proof of the “independence of the speed of light from the speed of the receiver”?
The speed of a wave on water does not depend on the speed of the wave source - a motor boat. But it DEPENDS on the speed of the receivers - swimmers. A swimmer swimming towards a wave will register a higher wave speed than a swimmer swimming away from the wave.
If the independence of the speed of the sea wave from the speed of the source does not prove the independence of the speed of the sea wave from the speed of the receiver, then the independence of the speed of the light wave from the speed of the source in no way proves the independence of the speed of the light wave from the speed of the receiver.
Therefore, Academician Alexandrov really did not prove anything. What a pity.
And the existence of laser gyroscopes refutes the idea that the speed of light is invariant. They really exist and they really work. And they work on the principle that the speed of light is different for different receivers.
My condolences to the relativists.

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It seems to me that the speed of light is not a constant. A constant is its increment, i.e. the magnitude of the acceleration of the process of light propagation in space, which is numerically equal to the Hubble constant, if in the dimension of the last megaparsec of distance the distance is converted into seconds of time and the numerical value of the constant is divided by the number of seconds in megaparsecs. In this case, Hubble's law will determine not the speed of removal of the extragalactic objects we observe from the Earth depending on the distance to these objects, expressed in the time of passage of the light signal with speed c, but the difference in the speed of propagation of electromagnetic waves between the modern era and the time when the measured radiation has left this or that object. For more details, see http://www.dmitrenkogg.narod.ru/effectd.pdf.
The speed of light is constant (for different ISOs) FOR ENTIRELY DIFFERENT reasons.
The transition between the states of an abstract atom - from the "ground" state to the "glow" state - is characterized by a restructuring of the atom's configuration. The elements of this configuration are massive, i.e. this transition takes time.
Abstract charge, as a component of this transition, has its own field. This field is not massive (inertia-free), i.e. repeats the movement of its charge simultaneously with it throughout space.
During the interaction of a source atom and a receiver atom, oscillations in the fields of the charges of the source atom act on the charges of the receiver atom instantly (“immediately”), regardless of the distance.
Those. The “speed of light” has two components - the infinite speed of (field) interaction and the speed of transition of the receiver to the “glow” state.
In fact, this is a qualitatively completely different theory - field oscillatory.
In the general case, for “constancy of the speed of light” an infinite speed of interaction is required.

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The speed of light is the distance that light travels per unit time. This value depends on the substance in which the light propagates.

In a vacuum, the speed of light is 299,792,458 m/s. This is the highest speed that can be achieved. When solving problems that do not require special accuracy, this value is taken equal to 300,000,000 m/s. It is assumed that all types of electromagnetic radiation propagate in a vacuum at the speed of light: radio waves, infrared radiation, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, x-rays, gamma radiation. It is designated by a letter With .

How was the speed of light determined?

In ancient times, scientists believed that the speed of light was infinite. Later, discussions on this issue began among scientists. Kepler, Descartes and Fermat agreed with the opinion of ancient scientists. And Galileo and Hooke believed that, although the speed of light is very high, it still has a finite value.

Galileo Galilei

One of the first to try to measure the speed of light was the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei. During the experiment, he and his assistant were on different hills. Galileo opened the shutter on his lantern. At the moment when the assistant saw this light, he had to do the same actions with his lantern. The time it took for the light to travel from Galileo to the assistant and back turned out to be so short that Galileo realized that the speed of light is very high, and it is impossible to measure it at such a short distance, since light travels almost instantly. And the time he recorded only shows the speed of a person’s reaction.

The speed of light was first determined in 1676 by the Danish astronomer Olaf Roemer using astronomical distances. Using a telescope to observe the eclipse of Jupiter's moon Io, he discovered that as the Earth moves away from Jupiter, each subsequent eclipse occurs later than calculated. The maximum delay, when the Earth moves to the other side of the Sun and moves away from Jupiter at a distance equal to the diameter of the Earth's orbit, is 22 hours. Although the exact diameter of the Earth was not known at that time, the scientist divided its approximate value by 22 hours and obtained a value of about 220,000 km/s.

Olaf Roemer

The result obtained by Roemer caused distrust among scientists. But in 1849, the French physicist Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau measured the speed of light using the rotating shutter method. In his experiment, light from a source passed between the teeth of a rotating wheel and was directed onto a mirror. Reflected from him, he returned back. The speed of rotation of the wheel increased. When it reached a certain value, the beam reflected from the mirror was delayed by a moving tooth, and the observer did not see anything at that moment.

Fizeau's experience

Fizeau calculated the speed of light as follows. The light goes its way L from the wheel to the mirror in a time equal to t 1 = 2L/c . The time it takes for the wheel to turn ½ slot is t 2 = T/2N , Where T - period of wheel rotation, N - number of teeth. Rotation frequency v = 1/T . The moment when the observer does not see light occurs when t 1 = t 2 . From here we get the formula for determining the speed of light:

c = 4LNv

Having carried out calculations using this formula, Fizeau determined that With = 313,000,000 m/s. This result was much more accurate.

Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau

In 1838, French physicist and astronomer Dominique François Jean Arago proposed using the rotating mirror method to calculate the speed of light. This idea was put into practice by the French physicist, mechanic and astronomer Jean Bernard Leon Foucault, who in 1862 obtained the value of the speed of light (298,000,000±500,000) m/s.

Dominique Francois Jean Arago

In 1891, the result of the American astronomer Simon Newcomb turned out to be an order of magnitude more accurate than Foucault's result. As a result of his calculations With = (99,810,000±50,000) m/s.

Research by the American physicist Albert Abraham Michelson, who used a setup with a rotating octagonal mirror, made it possible to determine the speed of light even more accurately. In 1926, the scientist measured the time it took light to travel the distance between the tops of two mountains, equal to 35.4 km, and obtained With = (299,796,000±4,000) m/s.

The most accurate measurement was carried out in 1975. In the same year, the General Conference on Weights and Measures recommended that the speed of light be considered equal to 299,792,458 ± 1.2 m/s.

What does the speed of light depend on?

The speed of light in a vacuum does not depend on either the frame of reference or the position of the observer. It remains constant, equal to 299,792,458 ± 1.2 m/s. But in various transparent media this speed will be lower than its speed in vacuum. Any transparent medium has an optical density. And the higher it is, the slower the speed of light propagates in it. For example, the speed of light in air is higher than its speed in water, and in pure optical glass it is lower than in water.

If light moves from a less dense medium to a denser one, its speed decreases. And if the transition occurs from a more dense medium to a less dense one, then the speed, on the contrary, increases. This explains why the light beam is deflected at the transition boundary between two media.

The topic of how to measure, as well as what the speed of light is, has interested scientists since ancient times. This is a very fascinating topic, which from time immemorial has been the object of scientific debate. It is believed that such a speed is finite, unattainable and constant. It is unattainable and constant, like infinity. At the same time, it is finite. It turns out to be an interesting physical and mathematical puzzle. There is one option for solving this problem. After all, the speed of light was still measured.

In ancient times, thinkers believed that speed of light- this is an infinite quantity. The first estimate of this indicator was given in 1676. Olaf Roemer. According to his calculations, the speed of light was approximately 220 thousand km/s. This was not an entirely accurate value, but close to the true one.

Finitude and the estimate of the speed of light were confirmed half a century later.

In the future, the scientist Fizeau It was possible to determine the speed of light from the time it took the beam to travel an exact distance.

He conducted an experiment (see figure), during which a beam of light departed from the source S, was reflected by mirror 3, interrupted by toothed disk 2 and passed the base (8 km). Then it was reflected by mirror 1 and returned to the disk. The light fell into the gap between the teeth and could be observed through eyepiece 4. The time it took the beam to travel through the base was determined depending on the speed of rotation of the disk. The value obtained by Fizeau was: c = 313300 km/s.

The speed of beam propagation in any particular medium is less than this speed in a vacuum. In addition, for different substances this indicator takes different values. After few years Foucault replaced the disk with a rapidly rotating mirror. The followers of these scientists repeatedly used their methods and research designs.

Lenses are the basis of optical instruments. Do you know how it is calculated? You can find out by reading one of our articles.

You can find information about how to set up an optical sight consisting of such lenses. Read our material and you will not have any questions on the topic.

What is the speed of light in a vacuum?

The most accurate measurement of the speed of light shows the figure 1,079,252,848.8 kilometers per hour or 299,792,458 m/s. This figure is only valid for conditions created in a vacuum.

But to solve problems, the indicator is usually used 300,000,000 m/s. In a vacuum, the speed of light in Planck units is 1. Thus, light energy travels 1 Planck unit of length in 1 unit of Planck time. If a vacuum is created in natural conditions, then X-rays, light waves in the visible spectrum and gravitational waves can travel at such speeds.

There is a clear opinion among scientists that particles with mass can take on a speed that is as close as possible to the speed of light. But they are not able to achieve and exceed the indicator. The highest speed, close to the speed of light, was recorded during the study of cosmic rays and during the acceleration of certain particles in accelerators.

The speed of light in any medium depends on the refractive index of this medium.

This indicator may be different for different frequencies. Accurate measurement of the quantity is important for the calculation of other physical parameters. For example, to determine the distance during the passage of light or radio signals in optical ranging, radar, light ranging and other areas.

Modern scientists use different methods to determine the speed of light. Some experts use astronomical methods, as well as measurement methods using experimental technology. The improved Fizeau method is very often used. In this case, the gear wheel is replaced with a light modulator, which weakens or interrupts the light beam. The receiver here is a photoelectric multiplier or photocell. The light source can be a laser, which helps reduce measurement error. Determination of the speed of light According to the time of passage of the base, it can be done using direct or indirect methods, which also allow one to obtain accurate results.

What formulas are used to calculate the speed of light?

The speed of light propagation in a vacuum is an absolute value. Physicists denote it with the letter “c”. This is a fundamental and constant value that does not depend on the choice of reporting system and characterizes time and space as a whole. Scientists assume that this speed is the maximum speed of particle movement.
Speed of light formula in a vacuum:

s = 3 * 10^8 = 299792458 m/s

here c is an indicator of the speed of light in vacuum.
Scientists have proven that speed of light in air almost coincides with the speed of light in vacuum. It can be calculated using the formula:

epigraph
The teacher asks: Children, what is the fastest thing in the world?
Tanechka says: The fastest word. I just said, you won’t come back.
Vanechka says: No, light is the fastest.
As soon as I pressed the switch, the room immediately became light.
And Vovochka objects: The fastest thing in the world is diarrhea.
I was once so impatient that I didn’t say a word
I didn’t have time to say anything or turn on the light.

Have you ever wondered why the speed of light is maximum, finite and constant in our Universe? This is a very interesting question, and right away, as a spoiler, I’ll give away the terrible secret of the answer to it - no one knows exactly why. The speed of light is taken, i.e. mentally accepted for a constant, and on this postulate, as well as on the idea that all inertial frames of reference are equal, Albert Einstein built his special theory of relativity, which has been pissing scientists off for a hundred years, allowing Einstein to stick his tongue out at the world with impunity and grin in his grave over the dimensions the pig that he planted on all of humanity.

But why, in fact, is it so constant, so maximum and so final, there is no answer, this is just an axiom, i.e. a statement taken on faith, confirmed by observations and common sense, but not logically or mathematically deducible from anywhere. And it is quite likely that it is not so true, but no one has yet been able to refute it with any experience.

I have my own thoughts on this matter, more on them later, but for now, let’s keep it simple, on your fingers™ I’ll try to answer at least one part - what does the speed of light mean “constant”.

No, I won’t bore you with thought experiments about what would happen if you turn on the headlights in a rocket flying at the speed of light, etc., that’s a little off topic now.

If you look in a reference book or Wikipedia, the speed of light in a vacuum is defined as a fundamental physical constant that exactly equal to 299,792,458 m/s. Well, that is, roughly speaking, it will be about 300,000 km/s, but if exactly right- 299,792,458 meters per second.

It would seem, where does such accuracy come from? Any mathematical or physical constant, whatever, even Pi, even the base of the natural logarithm e, even the gravitational constant G, or Planck’s constant h, always contain some numbers after the decimal point. In Pi, about 5 trillion of these decimal places are currently known (although only the first 39 digits have any physical meaning), the gravitational constant is today defined as G ~ 6.67384(80)x10 -11, and the constant Plank h~ 6.62606957(29)x10 -34 .

The speed of light in vacuum is smooth 299,792,458 m/s, not a centimeter more, not a nanosecond less. Want to know where this accuracy comes from?

It all started as usual with the ancient Greeks. Science, as such, in the modern sense of the word, did not exist among them. The philosophers of ancient Greece were called philosophers because they first invented some crap in their heads, and then, using logical conclusions (and sometimes real physical experiments), they tried to prove or disprove it. However, the use of real-life physical measurements and phenomena was considered by them to be “second-class” evidence, which cannot be compared with first-class logical conclusions obtained directly from the head.

The first person to think about the existence of light's own speed is considered to be the philosopher Empidocles, who stated that light is movement, and movement must have speed. He was objected to by Aristotle, who argued that light is simply the presence of something in nature, and that’s all. And nothing is moving anywhere. But that's something else! Euclid and Ptolemy generally believed that light is emitted from our eyes, and then falls on objects, and therefore we see them. In short, the ancient Greeks were as stupid as they could until they were conquered by the same ancient Romans.

In the Middle Ages, most scientists continued to believe that the speed of propagation of light was infinite, among them were, say, Descartes, Kepler and Fermat.

But some, like Galileo, believed that light had speed and therefore could be measured. The experiment of Galileo, who lit a lamp and gave light to an assistant located several kilometers from Galileo, is widely known. Having seen the light, the assistant lit his lamp, and Galileo tried to measure the delay between these moments. Naturally, he didn’t succeed, and in the end he was forced to write in his writings that if light has a speed, then it is extremely high and cannot be measured by human effort, and therefore can be considered infinite.

The first documented measurement of the speed of light is attributed to the Danish astronomer Olaf Roemer in 1676. By this year, astronomers, armed with the telescopes of that same Galileo, were actively observing the satellites of Jupiter and even calculated their rotation periods. Scientists have determined that the closest moon to Jupiter, Io, has a rotation period of approximately 42 hours. However, Roemer noticed that sometimes Io appears from behind Jupiter 11 minutes earlier than expected, and sometimes 11 minutes later. As it turned out, Io appears earlier in those periods when the Earth, rotating around the Sun, approaches Jupiter at a minimum distance, and lags behind by 11 minutes when the Earth is in the opposite place of the orbit, and therefore is further from Jupiter.

Stupidly dividing the diameter of the earth's orbit (and it was already more or less known in those days) by 22 minutes, Roemer received the speed of light 220,000 km/s, missing the true value by about a third.

In 1729, the English astronomer James Bradley, observing parallax(by a slight deviation in location) the star Etamin (Gamma Draconis) discovered the effect aberrations of light, i.e. a change in the position of the stars closest to us in the sky due to the movement of the Earth around the Sun.

From the effect of light aberration, discovered by Bradley, it can also be concluded that light has a finite speed of propagation, which Bradley seized upon, calculating it to be approximately 301,000 km/s, which is already within an accuracy of 1% of the value known today.

This was followed by all the clarifying measurements by other scientists, but since it was believed that light is a wave, and a wave cannot propagate on its own, something needs to be “excited,” the idea of the existence of a “luminiferous ether” arose, the discovery of which the American failed miserably physicist Albert Michelson. He did not discover any luminiferous ether, but in 1879 he clarified the speed of light to 299,910±50 km/s.

Around the same time, Maxwell published his theory of electromagnetism, which means that the speed of light became possible not only to directly measure, but also to derive from the values of electrical and magnetic permeability, which was done by clarifying the value of the speed of light to 299,788 km/s in 1907.

Finally, Einstein declared that the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant and does not depend on anything at all. On the contrary, everything else - adding velocities and finding the correct reference systems, the effects of time dilation and changes in distances when moving at high speeds and many other relativistic effects depend on the speed of light (because it is included in all formulas as a constant). In short, everything in the world is relative, and the speed of light is the quantity relative to which all other things in our world are relative. Here, perhaps, we should give the palm to Lorentz, but let’s not be mercantile, Einstein is Einstein.

The exact determination of the value of this constant continued throughout the 20th century, with each decade scientists found more and more numbers after decimal point at the speed of light, until vague suspicions began to arise in their heads.

Determining more and more accurately how many meters light travels in a vacuum per second, scientists began to wonder what it is we are measuring in meters? After all, in the end, a meter is just the length of some platinum-iridium stick that someone forgot in some museum near Paris!

And at first the idea of introducing a standard meter seemed great. In order not to suffer with yards, feet and other oblique fathoms, the French in 1791 decided to take as a standard measure of length one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the equator along the meridian passing through Paris. They measured this distance with the accuracy available at that time, cast a stick from a platinum-iridium (more precisely, first brass, then platinum, and then platinum-iridium) alloy and put it in this very Parisian Chamber of Weights and Measures as a sample. The further we go, the more it turns out that the earth's surface is changing, the continents are deforming, the meridians are shifting, and by one ten-millionth part they have forgotten, and began to count as a meter the length of the stick that lies in the crystal coffin of the Parisian "mausoleum."

Such idolatry does not suit a real scientist, this is not Red Square (!), and in 1960 it was decided to simplify the concept of the meter to a completely obvious definition - the meter is exactly equal to 1,650,763.73 wavelengths emitted by the transition of electrons between the energy levels 2p10 and 5d5 of the unexcited isotope of the element Krypton-86 in a vacuum. Well, how much more clear?

This went on for 23 years, while the speed of light in a vacuum was measured with increasing accuracy, until in 1983, finally, even the most stubborn retrogrades realized that the speed of light is the most accurate and ideal constant, and not some kind of isotope of krypton. And it was decided to turn everything upside down (more precisely, if you think about it, it was decided to turn everything back upside down), now the speed of light With is a true constant, and a meter is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in (1/299,792,458) seconds.

The real value of the speed of light continues to be clarified today, but what is interesting is that with each new experiment, scientists do not clarify the speed of light, but the true length of the meter. And the more accurately the speed of light is found in the coming decades, the more accurate the meter we will eventually get.

And not vice versa.

Well, now let's get back to our sheep. Why is the speed of light in the vacuum of our Universe maximum, finite and constant? This is how I understand it.

Everyone knows that the speed of sound in metal, and in almost any solid body, is much higher than the speed of sound in air. This is very easy to check; just put your ear to the rail, and you will be able to hear the sounds of an approaching train much earlier than through the air. Why is that? It is obvious that the sound is essentially the same, and the speed of its propagation depends on the medium, on the configuration of the molecules from which this medium consists, on its density, on the parameters of its crystal lattice - in short, on the current state of the medium through which the sound transmitted.

And although the idea of luminiferous ether has long been abandoned, the vacuum through which electromagnetic waves propagate is not absolutely absolute nothing, no matter how empty it may seem to us.

I understand that the analogy is somewhat far-fetched, but that’s true on your fingers™ same! Precisely as an accessible analogy, and in no way as a direct transition from one set of physical laws to others, I only ask you to imagine that the speed of propagation of electromagnetic (and in general, any, including gluon and gravitational) vibrations, just as the speed of sound in steel is “sewn into” the rail. From here we dance.

UPD: By the way, I invite “readers with an asterisk” to imagine whether the speed of light remains constant in a “difficult vacuum.” For example, it is believed that at energies of the order of temperature 10–30 K, the vacuum stops simply boiling with virtual particles, and begins to “boil away,” i.e. the fabric of space falls to pieces, Planck quantities blur and lose their physical meaning, etc. Would the speed of light in such a vacuum still be equal to c, or will this mark the beginning of a new theory of “relativistic vacuum” with corrections like Lorentz coefficients at extreme speeds? I don't know, I don't know, time will tell...