Thanks for posting your comment. You are right, there is more to this line of thinking than just GRBs and AGN jets. The sequel to this paper (http://www.thulasidas.com/2008-11/light-travel-time-effects-and-cosmological-features.htm) discusses some of the implications. But this sequel was too speculative to get published in any decent journal.

Right now, I am too busy with my day job to worry about these things, but I do hope to get back to physics (and may be even philosophy) in a couple of years.

– cheers,
– Manoj

I like it. I see a number of good reasons to hold on to this idea as potentially true.

Often, but not always, the simple answer turns out to be correct, even when initially rejected as clashing with established orthodoxy. It is also wise to avoid spurious simplicity when it fails Popper’s test of falsifiability, such as the many worlds ‘theory’.

What I like about this is that it is firmly based in the world of pre-established physics. This is in my view essential given the many fundamental problems of post 1900 physics.

Let us say for a minute that this explanation might be correct. We are talking then about a shock wave in an underlying background substance that has been comprehensively rejected. Putting that aside, which you are careful not to do, we might ask what would be some of the properties of a universe consistent with your model and hence with an aether.

We would find, for example, that the slowing of clocks was Lorentzian but not relativistic in principle. This is indeed what we see in the clocks in planes experiment, with the eastbound clock ‘running fast’ compared to the other two, as if travelling more slowly in relation to some preferred background. The experiment even suggests a remarkably simple way of determining that preferred frame.

We would find that the motion of the Earth was discernable from observations of any general background radiation, such as the CMBR. Again, as observed.

We would be able to view light as a wave, as Schrodinger did, and to use his work to explain ‘particle like’ effects.

We would need to re-read Maxwell, who assumed a background medium, and rethink the apparent contradictions in his work, in particular his conclusion that light is a transverse wave. In fact, his assumption that electromagnetism involved vortices would fit with the medium you now invoke, and the manner of his calculations on light suggest that it is (transverse) ripples on these vortices that he misinterpreted as light. Such a medium as Schrodinger, Maxwell, Hafele and Keating, Wm & JJ Thomson, and now yourself invoke, would be expected to sustain longitudinal (pressure) waves, removing the need for the hypothesis of the photon, and fitting very nicely with your shock wave theory.

Lots more. Are you sure you want to go down this road? Modern theory has fragmented and its basis is showing signs of unravelling, so perhaps you should!