Re: >Re: >Design Flaw in the Brain
George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Sat, 01 Nov 1997 20:19:07 -0500Glenn Morton wrote:
> There is a very
> self-contained observation that the fundamental constants have not changed.
> It lies in the explosion of a star in the large Magellanic Cloud, 169,000
> years ago. This is a modification of another note on the same topic I posted
> earlier. First off, before someone says I believe in a change in c I don't.
> But one can assume such a change and examine how the universe would be
> different. Here is the post. .............................
Glenn's post (whose details I omit here) is very helpful. It
may be worth noting another angle on this. In special relativity (which
has been confirmed by a huge # of observations) c can be seen simply as
a conversion factor between intervals in one direction (timelike) &
others (spacelike): 1 sec = 3 x 10^5 km. (See, e.g., the opening pages
of Wheeler & Taylor's _Spacetime Physics_.) Thus talking about a change
in c would be like talking about a change in the conversion factor
4.2 joules/calorie. (That "mechanical equivalent of heat" used to be
thought of as a fundamental constant too).
George Murphy