Claim CE411.1:

Physicists Joao Magueijo at London's Imperial College and Andreas Albrecht at U. C. Davis say the speed of light immediately after the beginning of the universe was many times faster than it is now, and it has been slowing ever since.

Source:

Dolphin, Lambert, 1999. On the constancy of the speed of light. http://www.ldolphin.org/constc.shtml

Response:

  1. Albrecht and Magueijo [1999] have hypothesized that the speed of light may have been much faster (up to 1069 times faster) in the very early universe. This is a theoretical model proposed as an alternative to the inflation theory of the early universe to explain why the universe is so uniform. The increased speed applies only to the inflationary stage of Big Bang models, which means only the first 10-43 second or so. Their theory has not been verified by observation.

  2. Other evidence shows that the speed of light has been constant for a long time.

References:

  1. Albrecht, A. and J. Magueijo, 1999. Time varying speed of light as a solution to cosmological puzzles. Physical Review D 59: 043516, http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/9811018
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created 2001-2-18, modified 2004-4-6