Variable speed of light Variable speed of light A variable speed of light (VSL) is a feature of a family of hypotheses stating that the speed of light in vacuum, usually denoted by "c", may in some way not be constant, e.g. varying in space or time, or depending on frequency. A variable speed of light occurs in some situations of classical physics as equivalent formulations of accepted theories, but also in various alternative theories of gravitation and cosmology, many of them non-mainstream. Notable attempts to incorporate a variable speed of light into physics have been made by Einstein in 1911, by Robert Dicke
One-way speed of light Even though this theory is experimentally indistinguishable from special relativity, Lorentz's theory is no longer used for reasons of philosophical preference and because of the development of general relativity. A sychronisation scheme proposed by Reichenbach and Grünbaum, which they called ε-synchronization, was further developed by authors such as Edwards (1963), Winnie (1970), Anderson and Stedman (1977), who reformulated the Lorentz transformation without changing its physical predictions. For instance, Edwards replaced Einstein's postulate that the one-way speed of light is constant when measured in an inertial frame with the postulate: So the average speed for the round trip remains the experimentally