• Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    The speed of light in a vacuum unaffected by external forces such as gravity should be the same no matter what direction it is in. I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be. That’s like saying a kilometer is longer if you go East than if you go West.

    However, it’s actually far more complicated than that, and much of it beyond my understanding.

    https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_of_light.html

    That said, direction should not matter.

    • vithigar@lemmy.ca
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      1 year 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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        1 year 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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          1 year 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.