Can light travel through a vacuum?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around whether light can travel through a vacuum, exploring the nature of light and its propagation without a medium. Participants touch on theoretical implications and historical concepts related to light's behavior in a vacuum.

Discussion Character

  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant asks if light can travel through a vacuum and requests an example.
  • Another participant humorously suggests that seeing the moon serves as an example of light traveling through a vacuum.
  • It is noted that space is essentially a vacuum and that the speed of light (C) is defined in this context.
  • Some participants mention that light does not require a medium to travel, contrasting it with other types of waves, and reference the historical concept of ether, which lacked conclusive experimental support.
  • Current theories describe light as electromagnetic waves, which some argue render the ether concept unnecessary and explain various phenomena.
  • One participant discusses the implications of no ether on the invariance of physical constants and the necessity of Lorentz transformations in special relativity.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally agree that light can travel through a vacuum and that it does not require a medium. However, there are competing views regarding the historical ether concept and its relevance to modern physics, leaving some aspects of the discussion unresolved.

Contextual Notes

Some claims rely on specific definitions of terms like "ether" and "vacuum," and the discussion includes unresolved implications regarding the relationship between physical constants and observers' velocities.

jaypee
Can light travel through a vacuum? If so, can you provide an example.

thx.
 
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Have you ever seen the moon? :wink:
 
Space is essentially a vaccuum. Furthermore, C is the speed of light in a vacuum, so how do you think we got that?!?
 
Yeah, unlike most other waves, light doesn't need a medium to travel through..It was proposed that there was some medium called the ether, but I think experiments could not find conclusive evidence supporting it.
 
And current theories of light as a group of mutually supporting electric and magnetic fields have made the ether rather pointless, as well as explained several other phenomenons...
 
light is a electromagnetic waves...
sure can through a vacuum
 
No ethir means no difference for any experiment in moving vs non-moving with any velocity lab. So, h, c, G, e and all laws of nature shall not depend on lab's velocity. This in turn requires that h, c, G, e shall be invariant values (shall not depend on velocity of moving by them pobserver). This in turn requires space and time to be transformed very certain way (called Lorents transformations). Special relativity then precepitates from those transformations mathematically.
 
No ether means no difference for any experiment in moving vs non-moving with any velocity lab. So, h, c, G, e and all laws of nature shall not depend on lab's velocity.

This in turn requires that h, c, G, e shall be invariant values (=shall have the SAME numerical values measured by DIFFERENT observers regardless their mutual motion). Say, observer moving with some velocity past electric charge shall measure same charge as non-moving observer. Or observer moving by flashlight shall measure same c as non-moving one.

This in turn requires space and time to be transformed very certain way between moving systems (called Lorents transformations).

Special relativity then precepitates from those transformations mathematically.
 

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