Speed of light

Speed of Light

There are not necessarily only two possible solutions regarding the speed of light:

Einstein’s solution (invariance of the speed of light with respect to different inertial frames of reference);

Lorentz’s solution involving a privileged frame of reference.

On this subject, if you search for "Lorentz ether theory" on Google, you will find:

"In Lorentz's Ether theory, the speed of light is isotropic only in the Ether frame and anisotropic otherwise; inertial frames are not physically equivalent."

There is at least a third possibility:

The possibility of locally privileged frames of reference.

This point of view has not been considered by physics since the birth of special relativity. It leads to a new vision of space-time, a new conceptual framework for physics.

"I am merely seeking to show that, from a theoretical standpoint, physical invariance of the speed of light implies relativity of simultaneity at the physical level. However, since the latter leads to contradictions, this allows us to definitively eliminate the first possibility. And since Lorentz’s interpretation can likely also be ruled out, the only remaining interpretation is the one I propose: a speed of light that is locally invariant with respect to certain inertial observers, due to a constant adaptation of the speed of light to the spatial configuration (*). Moreover, this aspect could probably be measured..."
— Extract from the book "And He Was Hovering Over the Waters: Towards a New Vision of the Physical World ?"

(*) I might perhaps have written: "due to a speed of light dependent on the spatial configuration." One must, for example, take into account the Shapiro effect.

Philippe de Bellescize