QUESTION: "A key factor in the commonly held view of time today, that time is an illusion, is the notion that the speed of light is absolute, a postulate of Einstein’s special theory of relativity...Setting aside any other debates about relativity theory for the moment, why would the speed of light be absolute? No other speeds are absolute, that is, all other speeds do indeed change in relation to the speed of the observer, so it’s always seemed a rather strange notion to me."
LEE SMOLIN: "Special relativity works extremely well and the postulate of the invariance or universality of the speed of light is extremely well-tested. It might be wrong in the end but it is an extremely good approximation to reality. This issue is discussed in some detail in the book. We are also working on the website, which will have on-line appendices to give more details of some topics including special relativity. Even if special relativity ultimately is transcended, it is a beautiful experience to comprehend it." https://www.independent.com/2013/04/17/time-reborn/

Mitchell J. Feigenbaum: "In this paper, not only do I show that the constant speed of light is unnecessary for the construction of the theories of relativity, but overwhelmingly more, there is no room for it in the theory." http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0806/0806.1234v1.pdf

Mark Buchanan: "...a photon with mass would not necessarily always travel at the same speed. Feigenbaum's work shows how, contrary to many physicists' beliefs, this need not be a problem for relativity." http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026801.500-why-einstein-was-wrong-about-relativity.html

Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond: "The evidence of the nonzero mass of the photon would not, as such, shake in any way the validity of the special relativity. It would, however, nullify all its derivations which are based on the invariance of the photon velocity." http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/One_more_derivation.pdf

Sabine Hossenfelder: "If photons had a restmass, special relativity would still be as valid as it's always been. The longer answer is that the invariance of the speed of light features prominently in the popular explanations of special relativity for historic reasons, not for technical reasons. Einstein was lead to special relativity contemplating what it would be like to travel with light, and then tried to find a way to accommodate an observer's motion with the invariance of the speed of light. But the derivation of special relativity is much more general than that, and it is unnecessary to postulate that the speed of light is invariant." http://backreaction.blogspot.bg/2016/05/dear-dr-b-if-photons-have-mass-would.html

Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond: "It could even be that future measurements highlight a tiny, but not zero, mass of the photon; the light then would no longer go at the "speed of light", or, more precisely, the speed of light, henceforth variable, would no longer be identified with the invariant speed limit. The operational procedures brought into play by the "second postulate" would become null and void ipso facto. Would the theory itself be invalidated? Fortunately, not at all." http://o.castera.free.fr/pdf/Chronogeometrie.pdf

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Einstein's 1905 first postulate, the principle of relativity, is true, but his second postulate, the constancy of the speed of light, is obviously false. Assume that a light source emits equidistant pulses and an observer starts moving towards the source:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bg7O4rtlwEE

The speed of the light pulses relative to the stationary observer is

c = df

where d is the distance between subsequent pulses and f is the frequency at the stationary observer. The speed of the pulses relative to the moving observer is

c'= df' > c

In order to camouflage the obvious falsehood of his second postulate, Einstein brainwashed the gullible world into believing that this postulate is a logical consequence of the principle of relativity (logic says that the consequence, if validly deduced, cannot be false if the premise is true):

Albert Einstein: "If a ray of light be sent along the embankment, we see from the above that the tip of the ray will be transmitted with the velocity c relative to the embankment. Now let us suppose that our railway carriage is again travelling along the railway lines with the velocity v, and that its direction is the same as that of the ray of light, but its velocity of course much less. Let us inquire about the velocity of propagation of the ray of light relative to the carriage. It is obvious that we can here apply the consideration of the previous section, since the ray of light plays the part of the man walking along relatively to the carriage. The velocity W of the man relative to the embankment is here replaced by the velocity of light relative to the embankment. w is the required velocity of light with respect to the carriage, and we have w = c - v. The velocity of propagation of a ray of light relative to the carriage thus comes out smaller than c. But this result comes into conflict with the principle of relativity set forth in Section 5." http://www.bartleby.com/173/7.html

Albert Einstein, On the Principle of Relativity: "After all, when a beam of light travels with a stated velocity relative to one observer, then - so it seems - a second observer who is himself traveling in the direction of the propagation of the light beam should find the light beam propagating at a lesser velocity than the first observer does. If this were really true, then the law of light propagation in vacuum would not be the same for two observers who are in relative, uniform motion to each other - in contradiction to the principle of relativity stated above." https://einsteinpapers.press..princeton.edu/vol6-trans/16

All Einsteinians know that the constancy of the speed of light is NOT a logical consequence of the principle of relativity. Yet they diligently teach Einstein's hoax:

Dave Slaven: "Einstein's first postulate seems perfectly reasonable. And his second postulate follows very reasonably from his first. How strange that the consequences will seem so unreasonable." http://webs.morningside.edu/slaven/Physics/relativity/relativity3.html

Professor Raymond Flood: "A consequence of Einstein's principle of relativity is that the speed of light in vacuum has the same value in two uniformly moving frames of reference." https://youtu.be/IjRSYv7u3T4?t=304

Chad Orzel: "The core idea of Einstein's theory of relativity can fit on a bumper sticker: The Laws Of Physics Do Not Depend On How You're Moving. Absolutely everything else follows from the simple realization that physics must appear exactly the same to person in motion as to a person at rest - the constant speed of light, the slowing of time for moving observers, E=mc2, black holes, even the expanding universe (I've written a whole book about this, explained through imaginary conversations with my dog)." http://www.forbes.com/sites/chadorzel/2015/05/29/four-reasons-to-not-fear-physics/

Michael Fowler: "Therefore, demanding that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames implies that the speed of any light wave, measured in any inertial frame, must be 186,300 miles per second. This then is the entire content of the Theory of Special Relativity: the Laws of Physics are the same in any inertial frame, and, in particular, any measurement of the speed of light in any inertial frame will always give 186,300 miles per second." http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/109/lectures/spec_rel.html

Leonard Susskind: "The principle of relativity is that the laws of physics are the same in every reference frame. That principle existed before Einstein. Einstein added one law of physics - the law of physics is that the speed of light is the speed of light, c. If you combine the two things together - that the laws of physics are the same in every reference frame, and that it's a law of physics that light moves with certain velocity, you come to the conclusion that light must move with the same velocity in every reference frame. Why? Because the principle of relativity says that the laws of physics are the same in every reference frame, and Einstein announced that it is a law of physics that light moves with a certain velocity." https://youtu.be/toGH5BdgRZ4?t=626

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