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Speed of Light

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Thread replies: 13
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File: light-01.jpg (612KB, 3000x1687px) Image search: [Google]
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Can someone explain to me how we know the speed of light is constant (in vacuum), and why?
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google can answer this question
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>>8249053
not it can't
I've spent the last hour trying to find something and all I get is experiments of people measuring the speed of light, and how it was discovered, but I've yet to see an explanation as to why, and how we know for certain.
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Because it's the limit of speed at which information is transmitted

If something was faster than light, then that something would be used to transfer information to the past and violate casualty
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The postulate of relativity is that the space is homogenous and isotropic.

With this, you can proove there is a finite limit speed, let's call this V (btw the proof is not very rigorous to me but I probably read an easy book for newfags). At this point, there are litteraly no reason that V = c.

You can proove V = c with some arguments about waves and electromagnetism.

The speed is constant because the space is homogenous and isotropic, that's the main point.
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File: rEh6n.gif (1MB, 129x160px)
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>>8249052
This isn't the bottom most turtle, but it falls directly out of Maxwell's equations, which were empirically discovered (sans Maxwell's modification to Faraday's Law). Peeps didn't know what to make of it because the waves move at constant velocity, but with respect to what was unknown, so we had aether theory for a long time trying to explain it. The idea was that EM waves move at c wrt to the aether. Countless experiments searched for aether's reference frame (Michelson-Morley being the most famous), but came up empty handed. Then Einstein came along, looked at the evidence, and postulated that light moves that fast for ANY reference frame. He then pooped out relativity.

Go here if you want to see the math:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_wave_equation
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>>8249062

>I've spent the last hour trying to find something and all I get is experiments of people measuring the speed of light, and how it was discovered

if this doesn't satisfy you then you have a serious misunderstanding of what science is

>I've yet to see an explanation as to why

which part, the interpretation of experimental results or the resulting theoretical formalism? because both are pretty easy to google

>how we know for certain

define certainty. we stick with the theory of relativity because every experiment done so far agrees with it. furthermore, the theory (formulated before and after experimental confirmation) is incredibly consistent in multiple realms of physics and is logically sound (see >>8249073 and >>8249084 ). if you define certainty any more than that it's not science, it becomes a faith system
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As far as I can tell the most "proof" is that if somehow you were able to move at the speed of light compared to a light wave the electric and magnetic waves would no longer switch back and forth making the wave no longer exist. I am just a high school student that is interested so do not take this as the total truth. Also if someone was to correct me I would love to know why it really is.
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>>8249575
The proof is written in a million places across the internet. I pulled this from wiki and condensed it. This is the simplest proof you can find using classical EM.

As a high school student, you won't understand the vector calculus yet. Unfortunately you gotta learn the math to appreciate the result. No way around it. But fear not, vector calc is a beautiful theory, and highly intuitive once you put in the effort to learn it.
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because a photon of light has no mass

you can't get faster than that
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>>8249052

There is a plethora of evidence out there but the clearest examples are that we have gotten relatively close to a perfect vaccum and measured the speed of light in it.

Two, we have experimentally shown that things moving more quickly experience time more slowly. IE a twin brother leaves earth at near the speed of light and comes back to find everyone he knows to be 50 years old. We have shown this to be true with clocks.
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>>8249589
This doesn't prove by itself that the speed of light is the same relative to everything, it could be constant relative to "cosmic aether" or some other privileged frame of reference. Now after disproving that, like with Michelson–Morley experiment, you get a result that wouldn't make sense without an universal constant speed of light (unless Earth would be the privileged frame of reference, I guess, but repeating the experiment on orbit would disprove that)
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In space when nothing else is floating trought medium transmitting phothons, it can slice easier(like hot metal ball in ice to gravity only), I think you only carried equations only trought certain known certain kind of field carriers trought not yet widely known.
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