Goal!

At 9:40 PM CST Wednesday night the Kickstarter project HIT GOAL! Thank you backers! In a cold and dark time, we are bringing Light to the world.

We have stretch goals, so there are still 3 days to back this project. Tell your friends!

Light on a Cloudy Day

The GOES satellite took this photo of the storm-wracked US at 1815 Greenwich time on February 11. We have come to rely on the space-age miracle of accurate weather forecasts, but the weather satellites are starting to wear out. Replacements will be needed soon.

According to old models of astrophysics, 4 billion years ago the Sun shone with only 75 percent of its present luminosity. Earth would have been frozen solid, making the evolution of life unlikely. The geological and paleontological records both say that early Earth was warm enough for liquid water and life. Evidence from Mars says that planet had liquid water and possibly life when the model says it was frozen solid. Conflict of observations with the standard solar model is called the Faint Young Sun Paradox.

The Sun turns its fuel to energy according to E=mc^2. If the speed of light had changed as much as GM=tc^3 predicts, solar luminosity 4 billion years ago was almost exactly today's value. Over billions of years the Sun has maintained a roughly constant luminosity, making life on planets possible. If c had not changed in the amount predicted by GM=tc^3, life would not be here to think about it. Our life depends on a slowing speed of light.

The Faint Young Sun Paradox is described in more detail in THE SPEED OF LIGHT.

A Far Galaxy and the Speed of Light

The Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes have together found one of the most distant galaxies ever sighted. Abell2744 Y1 was formed about 650 million years after the Big Bang. Astronomers have now found many such galaxies from the universe's early years. Every galaxy ever found contains at its centre an enormous Black Hole, with millions of times the mass of our Sun. Science is baffled as to how galaxies and supermassive Black Holes could have formed so early.

Many theorists believe that the Big Bang created billions of primordial Black Holes. They would have formed from quantum density fluctuations grown large by expansion of the universe. Everything within reach of the fluctuation would collapse into a Black Hole. Size of a primordial Black Hole would be limited by a "horizon distance" related to the speed of light.

If the speed of light were always the same value as today, primordial Black Holes would be tiny. The enormous Black Hole at the centre of Abell2744 Y1 may be primordial, formed shortly after the Big Bang. This distant galaxy is one more sign that the speed of light was once much greater. Many discoveries of galaxies formed early after the Big Bang are all indicators of "c change".

Presently we are crowdfunding for a book about the changing speed of light. This discovery will someday be big. THE SPEED OF LIGHT will describe in non-mathematical terms data from distant galaxies, supernovae, the Sun and even the Moon. At this writing we are at 85 percent of goal, close but not yet there. This is a chance for all of us to make a "c" change.