Physicists found that the speed of light was once faster
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Claim
Physicists have found that the speed of light was faster in the past.
Source
Responses
- This is false; João Magueijo is a proponent of the Variable Speed of Light theory. This theory amounts to a vacuous explanation of cosmology, since it just mutates the unanswered question, as opposed to answering it. VSL, since its inception, has been shown to be contrary to observation (as of several decades ago), with cosmic inflation theories being the accepted solution to the "horizon problem" since. This argument, as a creationist claim, has been obsolete since before it was first uttered in defense of YEC back in 1987.
- To be perfectly clear: the speed of light, which is to say the speed of photons, which is to say 299,792,458 m/s, is a universal constant and has never been higher or lower in the history of the universe, going as far back as a few seconds after the Big Bang.
- Even IF the speed of light was greater in the past, we would see this change reflected in the periods of astronomical timekeeping phenomena - particularly in pulsar rotation rates. Because the speed of light would decrease with increasing distance, the periodicity of a pulsar would appear to us to slow down with increased distance. This is not what we observe; pulsar rotational rates are highly consistent everywhere we look. The only creationist solution to this problem would be to have pulsars rotating faster the further out they were. Yet there is a limit to how fast things can rotate; pulsars are very close to flying apart even at their familiar rates. What we observe, then, is incompatible with a young universe, even if we allow c decay.
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Fallacies contained in this claim
- Vacuous Explanation (just shifting and labeling)
References
- Albrecht, Andreas & Magueijo, Joao, 1999 (15 Feb.). Time varying speed of light as a solution to cosmological puzzles. Physical Review D 59(4): article number 043516.
- Day, Robert, 1997. The decay of c-decay. TalkOrigins archive.
