The speed of light has steadily been declining

since the dawn of time

This is an amplified and amended article by Chris Bennet, that was placed
on the Internet (2009, WorldNetDaily.com). He explains that as early as 1979
an Australian student in physics and geography, Barry Setterfield, thought it
would be interesting to chart all the different measurements of the speed of
light, that started with a 17th century Danish astronomer, Olaf Roemer (Ole
Rmer). In 1676 he took the first measurements of the speed of light.
In the following years Setterfield acquired data on over 163 measurements
that were using 16 different methods over a time span of 300 years, excluding
those of Roemer, which he considered unreliable. The early measurements
typically tracked the eclipses of the moons of Jupiter when the planet was near
the Earth and compared it with observations when the planet was farther away.
These observations were standard, simple and repeatable, and have been
measured by astronomers since the invention of the telescope. These are
demonstrated to astronomy students even today.
The early astronomers kept meticulous notes and sketches, many of which
are still available. Setterfield expected to see the recorded speeds grouped
around the accepted value for light speed, roughly 299,792 kilometers /second.
In simple terms, half of the historic measurements should have been higher and
half should be lower. What he found defied belief. The derived light velocities
from the early measurements were significantly higher than today. Even more
intriguing, the older the observation, the faster the speed of light. A sampling
of these values is listed below: (see also: setterfield.org)
In 1738: 303,320 +/- 310 km/second
In 1861: 300,050 +/- 60 km/second
In 1877: 299,921 +/- 13 km/second
In 2004: 299,792 km/second (accepted constant)
Setterfield teamed with statistician Dr. Trevor Norman who demonstrated
that, even allowing for the clumsiness of early experiments, and correcting for
the multiple lenses of early telescopes and other factors related to technology,
the speed of light was discernibly higher 100 years ago, and as much as 1.17%
higher in the 1700s. Dr. Norman confirmed that the measurements were
statistically significant with a confidence level of more than 99%. After
extensive peer review Setterfield and Norman published their results in July
1987 at the SRI International. (SRI International was founded as the Stanford
Research Institute. It separated from Stanford University in the seventies.)

During 2002 and 2003, Dr. Joao Magueijo, a physicist at Imperial College
in London, Dr. John Barrow of Cambridge, Dr. Andy Albrecht of UC Davis
(University of California) and Dr. John Moffat of the University of Toronto
have all published work advocating their belief that light speed was much
higher as much as 10 to the 10th power faster in the early stages of the Big
Bang than it is today, which was an extension of the work of the Russian
theoretical physicist, Dr. V.S. Troitskii, in 1987. They believed, with the
exception of John Barrow, that the speed of light was faster only in the instants
following the very first beginnings of time. But those beliefs were not based
on measurements, but on mathematical equations.
However, Setterfield and others believe, based on measurements, that the
speed of light has steadily been declining from the very beginnings up to the
present time, though a remark is in order here. The decline has not been
continuous over time, as measurements have indicated: a minimum value was
reached around 1970/1980, and since then the speed has been increasing again,
teaming up with many other cosmological constants.

Using the aberration method, C. Barnet et al. reported in 1985 that light
from distant quasars arrive here with the same velocity as light from nearby
stars. That seems to be a problem, for they concluded that the velocity of light
had remained constant to within 0.4% throughout the life of the universe.
However, as Barry Setterfield remarked, these results do not necessarily set
limits on a cosmological variation of the velocity of light, but rather affirm the
principle that the light velocity has a universal value at any given time t (or
time capsule). See: The Aberration Constant for QSOs by C. Barnet, R.
Davis and W. L. Sanders - Astrophysical Journal 295 # Aug. 1985 (pp. 24-27).

credit: Jean-Pierre Petit

Four other major observed anomalies are consistent with a slowing of the
speed of light, as Setterfield pointed out:
1.
2.
3.
4.

quantized red-shift observations from other galaxies,

measured changes in atomic masses over time,
measured changes in the Plancks Constant over time,
and differences between time as measured by the atomic clock, and
time as measured by the orbits of the planets in our solar system.

See: The Atomic Constants, Light, and Time by Barry Setterfield and
Trevor Norman August 1987, as had been prepared for Lambert T. Dolphin
a Senior Research Physicist.