• vithigar@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    There’s no reason it wouldn’t be. The point is that it’s impossible to prove that it is. There is no conceivable experiment that can be performed to prove the two-way speed of light is symmetric.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 months ago

      That’s not how anything works. It’s impossible to prove that the universe wasn’t created last Thursday with everything in place as it is now. There’s no point in assuming anything that can’t be proven has validity.

      • Got_Bent@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        It’s just a thought exercise. There are several reputable YouTube videos on this topic. None of them claim that the speed of light isn’t the speed of light. They’re just demonstrating that we can’t prove it with current technology. Similar to the difficulty it took to finally prove that one plus one equals two. We know that’s correct, but it took years to prove it.

      • vithigar@lemmy.ca
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        4 months ago

        …but that’s exactly what you’re doing. The fact that light travels at the same speed in all directions cannot be proven. You’re the one insisting that it does.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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          4 months ago

          I’m not insisting anything. I’m saying that, based on everything we know, the direction of light has no bearing on its speed.

          Suggesting that it does just because we don’t have evidence that it doesn’t is no different, as I said, as claiming the universe was created last Thursday.

          Maybe the speed of light doubles when it goes through the exact right type of orange. You can’t prove it doesn’t.

          • InnerScientist@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            This is slighlty different though, we only know the two-way speed of light, not the one way speed of light.

            We only know that this trip, to and back, takes x seconds. We cannot prove that the trip to the mirror takes the same length of time as the way back.

            The special theory of relativity for example does not depend on the one way speed of light to be the same as the two way speed of light.

            Wiki

              • vithigar@lemmy.ca
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                4 months ago

                For no reason. No one is saying that it is different, only that it’s impossible to prove one way or the other. Light traveling the same speed in all directions, and light traveling at 2x c away from an observer and instantaneously on the return, and every other alternative that averages out to c for the round trip, are indistinguishable to any experiment we can conduct.