Everyone Measures Light in a Vacuum at the Same Speed

[BrandonInFlorida]

TL;DR

Does anyone know of a concrete experimental verification of this?

I ran into something on a non-technical message board that is familiar to me - a poster, clearly without any scientific knowledge, saying that Relativity is wrong. Unfortunately, the point he used as a battering ram is one to which I don't know the answer. He suggested that the light principle, that all observers measure the same speed for light in vacuum, is obviously wrong and that physicists take it on faith. Does anyone know of a concrete experimental verification?

Thanks.

Brandon

 

[Dale]

Yes. There is a ton of excellent experimental evidence. See the famous Experimental Basis of Special Relativity page:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/experiments.html

The guy needs to explain the result of every single one of those experiments quantitatively.

 

[BrandonInFlorida]

Yes. There is a ton of excellent experimental evidence. See the famous Experimental Basis of Special Relativity page:

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/experiments.html

The guy needs to explain the result of every single one of those experiments quantitatively.

This looks great. Thanks!

 

[Orodruin]

In the Soviet union, relativity was allegedly on pretty shaky ground for political reasons (as I understand it, relativism was not very popular in marxism). Kurchatov, leader of the Soviet’s atomic bomb program is supposed to have swayed the Party’s stance on relativity by telling the party leaders that ”if it was wrong, the bomb would not explode”.

I do not know if this story has any truth to it (it was told to me by an older Russian colleague), but it demonstrates a more basic concept: There is no point in going around claiming that relativity (or QM, or ...) is wrong when countless functioning applications have been constructed based on the assumption of it being true.

 

[MikeeMiracle]

Some people just do not trust Science, just look at all those flat Earth believers as a classic example.

 

[phinds]

Some people just do not trust Science, just look at all those flat Earth believers as a classic example.

And interacting with such folks in any attempt at a rational discussion is a total waste of time.

 

[TeethWhitener]

I do not know if this story has any truth to it (it was told to me by an older Russian colleague), but it demonstrates a more basic concept: There is no point in going around claiming that relativity (or QM, or ...) is wrong when countless functioning applications have been constructed based on the assumption of it being true.

Oblig. XKCD:
https://xkcd.com/808/

 

[Ivan Drago]

In the Soviet union, relativity was allegedly on pretty shaky ground for political reasons (as I understand it, relativism was not very popular in marxism). s wrong when countless functioning applications have been constructed based on the assumption of it being true.

I spent all my childhood and school years in the USSR. Relativity in Soviet Union was elevated to the rank of unquestionable and untouchable theory while the theory of Marxism – Leninism was the subject of ridicule and anecdotes at least. Almost all the books on the theory of relativity that were popular in the west were translated into Russian. In those years, western scientific publications could be obtained and read in the library.

The following demonstrates status of the theory: the concept of conventionality of simultaneity was practically not mentioned anywhere. The most famous conventionalist was A.A. Tyapkin (http://lib-docs.web.cern.ch/lib-docs/Archives/biographies/Tyapkin_A-200406.pdf). By the way, he wrote in Russian a wonderful biographical book about Poincaré. In 1972 with the support of the famous Soviet academician Vitaly Lazarevitch Ginzburg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitaly_Ginzburg he published an artice (https://ufn.ru/en/articles/1972/2/f/) in the leading Soviet scientific journal – Uspekhy Fiziceskih Nauk (UFN) that considered this matter. However, in the same issue of the journal famous Soviet physicists Kadomtsev, Keldysh, Kobzarev, Sagdeev severely criticized his article ( https://ufn.ru/en/articles/1972/2/g/) , their commentary is fully consistent with the trends of that time.

This https://peterstamps.ru/item/31623 postage stamp was issued on the centenary of the birth of A. Einstein.

 

[Orodruin]

I spent all my childhood and school years in the USSR.

Although it may seem rude, I feel I must ask what years those were for context.