Variable Speed of Light

Monday, July 20, 2009

n observer outside gravitational fields measures the speed of light locally (in his location) at 299792.458 km/s but when he looks towards a black hole he sees the speed of light there to be as slow as a few meters/s. At the same time an observer freefalling into that black hole measures the speed of light locally (in his location) at 299792.458 km/s; when he looks towards the black hole he sees the speed of light there much slower; when he looks away from the black hole he sees the speed of light there much faster. When he looks towards outside gravitational fields he sees the speed of light there a zillion km/s. In 1915 (10 years after Special Relativity) Einstein developed another theory called General Relativity that deals with gravitational fields and according to this latest theory the speed of light appears to vary with the intensity of the gravitational field

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