yes, all that. And indeed, very surprising, the space travelled by the slower photons would be bigger, not smaller. Cool.
Or.
Our accepted view of the time-related property of spacetime is too human-centric.
Too restricted. It doesn't feel right to me, that we aim to split up the flow of time into segments which we, and only we, have agreed on.
A civilisation on a different planet - maybe even on a moon-like planet that doesn't revolve around its own axis, such a civilisation must have developed a totally different feeling of what time means. They'd live in constant twilight. Looking at their star for any scientifically meaningful time would burn them. They wouldn't look at their own star and hence, their Ancient Greeks wouldn't develop a heliocentrical understanding of their home system. Nor would they feel the need to experiment with sun dials or to split time slices into hours and then seconds.
And still, assuming they'd become space faring, their spaceships could also be slingshot around another planet to gain more momentum on their way out of the solar system. They'd calculate differently. I don't know how.
I'm just trying to offer a more open approach to what we assume time in spacetime actually is.
One more thing about the article in #1. The author isn't writing from a neutral perspective. Without saying so explicitly, she advertises her own publications from 2012, the Springer article ("downloaded 10.000 times"? Maybe. But scholar.google says the article was quoted only 4 times...) and the book. Even uses the word "popular book", right? Without saying that's it's hers.
Offputting. But also understandable.
When I assume that she was sarcastically ridiculed by her colleagues for her approach? Of course, under such circumstances, a person would develop thorns and use them. Sadly, to her own disadvantage and to the disadvantage of her concept.
To me, the real value was in the
Esa-article she also links to and (ab-)uses it to underline her own concept.
Quote:
ESA:
2) Fundamental physics experiments:
• Gravitational Red-shift. To measure with an improved accuracy the Einstein's gravitational red-shift.
• Drift of Fine Structure Constant. To measure time variations of the fine structure constant α at an increased level of accuracy.
• Anisotropy of Light. To test the validity of special relativity by detecting a possible anisotropy of the light velocity with an improved accuracy.
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Interesting wording. In contrast with Riofrios bold interpretation, the ESA people put it much more timid so as to not shock the scientific establishment. But they do seem to expect to some degree what Riofrio has been proposing.