Today's cosmologists develop the concepts of Big Bang and Black Hole based on the implicit (sometimes explicit) assumption that the speed of light does not vary with the gravitational potential, that is, Einstein's 1911 equation c'=c(1+V/c^2) (and any other equation predicting variation of the speed of light in a gravitational field) is wrong:
http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/dice.html
Stephen Hawking: "Interestingly enough, Laplace himself wrote a paper in 1799 on how some stars could have a gravitational field so strong that light could not escape, but would be dragged back onto the star. He even calculated that a star of the same density as the Sun, but two hundred and fifty times the size, would have this property. But although Laplace may not have realised it, the same idea had been put forward 16 years earlier by a Cambridge man, John Mitchell, in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Both Mitchell and Laplace thought of light as consisting of particles, rather like cannon balls, that could be slowed down by gravity, and made to fall back on the star. But a famous experiment, carried out by two Americans, Michelson and Morley in 1887, showed that light always travelled at a speed of one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a second, no matter where it came from.How then could gravity slow down light, and make it fall back."
Joao Magueijo, PLUS VITE QUE LA LUMIERE, Dunod, 2003, pp. 50-51:
"En cours de route, en 1911, Einstein proposa même une théorie où la vitesse de la lumière variait! Aujourd'hui, les scientifiques sont soit horrifiés par cette article écrit par le grand Albert Einstein, alors professeur à Prague, soit tout simplement ignorants de son existence. Banesh Hoffmann, collègue et biographe d'Einstein, décrit ce texte de la manière suivante: "Et cela signifie... Quoi? Que la vitesse de la lumière n'est pas constante, que la gravitation la ralentit. Hérésie! Et de la part d'Einstein lui-même. (...) La théorie de 1911 était fausse, et Einstein la jeta à la poubelle sans regret, en compagnie de quelques autres impasses."
On the other hand, other Einsteinians teach that Einstein's 1911 equation is correct and even suggest that the gravitational redshift is a consequence of the variation of the speed of light in a gravitational field:
http://www.physlink.com/Education/AskExperts/ae13.cfm
"So, it is absolutely true that the speed of light is not constant in a gravitational field [which, by the equivalence principle, applies as well to accelerating (non-inertial) frames of reference]….Indeed, this is exactly how Einstein did the calculation in: "On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light," Annalen der Physik, 35, 1911. which predated the full formal development of general relativity by about four years. This paper is widely available in English. You can find a copy beginning on page 99 of the Dover book “The Principle of Relativity.” You will find in section 3 of that paper, Einstein’s derivation of the (variable) speed of light in a gravitational potential, eqn (3). The result is, c'=c0(1+V/c^2) where V is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the speed of light c0 is measured."
http://www.blazelabs.com/f-g-gcont.asp
"So, faced with this evidence most readers must be wondering why we learn about the importance of the constancy of speed of light. Did Einstein miss this? Sometimes I find out that what's written in our textbooks is just a biased version taken from the original work, so after searching within the original text of the theory of GR by Einstein, I found this quote: "In the second place our result shows that, according to the general theory of relativity, the law of the constancy of the velocity of light in vacuo, which constitutes one of the two fundamental assumptions in the special theory of relativity and to which we have already frequently referred, cannot claim any unlimited validity. A curvature of rays of light can only take place when the velocity of propagation of light varies with position. Now we might think that as a consequence of this, the special theory of relativity and with it the whole theory of relativity would be laid in the dust. But in reality this is not the case. We can only conclude that the special theory of relativity cannot claim an unlimited domain of validity ; its results hold only so long as we are able to disregard the influences of gravitational fields on the phenomena (e.g. of light)." - Albert Einstein (1879-1955) - The General Theory of Relativity: Chapter 22 - A Few Inferences from the General Principle of Relativity-. Today we find that since the Special Theory of Relativity unfortunately became part of the so called mainstream science, it is considered a sacrilege to even suggest that the speed of light be anything other than a constant. This is somewhat surprising since even Einstein himself suggested in a paper "On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light," Annalen der Physik, 35, 1911, that the speed of light might vary with the gravitational potential. Indeed, the variation of the speed of light in a vacuum or space is explicitly shown in Einstein's calculation for the angle at which light should bend upon the influence of gravity. One can find his calculation in his paper. The result is c'=c(1+V/c^2) where V is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the measurement is taken. 1+V/c^2 is also known as the GRAVITATIONAL REDSHIFT factor."
Needless to say, Einstein zombie world is invariably singing "Divine Einstein" and "Yes we all believe in relativity, relativity, relativity" but still some day Einsteinians will have to answer the question: If Einstein's 1911 equation c'=c(1+V/c^2) is correct, what will remain of current Big Bang and Black Hole theories?
Pentcho Valev
pvalev@yahoo.com