Dear Professor Rickles.
I found reading your essay was a truly awesome educational experience, and I do hope that it does well in the contest.
You wrote: "Personal experience (the stuff that matters most to humans) has been eroded from science.) Fortunately for us all, it has not eroded from non-scientists with common sense such as myself.
Based only on my observation, I have concluded that all of the stars, all of the planets, all of the asteroids, all of the comets, all of the meteors, all of the specks of astral dust and all real things have one and only one thing in common. Each real thing has a material surface and an attached material sub-surface. All material surfaces must travel at the constant "speed" of light. All material sub-surfaces must travel at an inconsistent "speed" that is less than the "speed" of light. It would be physically impossible for light to move as it does not have a surface or a sub-surface. Abstract theory cannot ever have unification. Only reality is unified because there is only one reality.
I use the term "speed" of light merely to make it easier for the reader to understand my theory. Actually light cannot move because it does not have a surface. Light is the only stationary substance in the real Universe. The proof of this is easy to establish. When one looks at an active electrical light, one must notice that all of the light remains inside of the bulb. What does move from the bulb is some form of radiant. The radiant must move at a rate of speed that is less than the "speed" of light, however, when the radiant strikes a surface it achieves the "speed" of light because all surfaces can only travel at the "speed" of light. When it strikes a surface, the radiant resumes being a light, albeit of a lesser magnitude. While it is true that searchlights, spotlights and car headlights seem to cast a beam of light, this might be because the beams strike naturally formed sub-atomic particles prevalent in the atmosphere that actually form a surface.
In the Thomas Young Double Slit Experiment, it was not direct sunlight that passed through the slits. Light from the sun is stationary and it cannot move because light does not have a surface. Radiants emitted from the sun went through the slits and behaved like wave radiants.
Einstein was completely wrong. His abstract theory about how abstract observers "see" abstract events differently is wrong. This is what every real observer sees when they look at a real light. They see that all of the light remains near the source. The reason for that is because light does not have a surface, therefore it cannot move. This happens to real observers whether they are looking at real fabricated lights such as neon, incandescent or LED. This also happens when real observers observe real natural light such as from the real sun or reflected from the real moon, or light caused by a lightning bolt, or from real firelight, real candle light, or light from out of a real lightning bug's bottom.
Respectfully,
Joe Fisher