There is not, and likely cannot, be an experiment which proves the speed of light to be the fastest anything can travel in the universe. Yet scientists don’t take it to mean that the previous statement can’t possibly be true.
There are many things in science which cannot be proven to be true, that doesn’t make those things automatically false.
Religion aside, the topic about the speed of light is actually really fascinating, actually. I didn’t quite grok what it was all about until recently watching a particular video which I’ll link at the end.
The going theory (and here theory means our best model for how a thing works) is that the speed of light is constant in a vacuum. You may be familiar with the toss-a-ball-on-a-train (🚂) thought experiment?
If I’m traveling on a train traveling forwaes at 20mph and standing still relative to the car I’m in, and toss a ball at 10mph in the direction of the train’s travel (toward the front), an observer outside the train could see and measure the speed of the ball they would find it is traveling 30mph relative to the ground (20+10) in the direction of the train’s motion.
If I had thrown the ball in the opposite direction, toward the back of the train, the ball would be traveling at 10mph towards the front of the train (20-10)
Speed is measured relative to a frame of reference, ground or train, say.
Now if I were to instead use a flashlight, how fast would the photons travel if I were pointing the flashlight towards the front? The back? (And let’s assume everything is in a vacuum to illustrate the point)
They wouldn’t be 20mph + c forward or c - 20mph toward the back. The photons would travel at c.
Experiments have proven that c is constant-- that photons don’t go faster when being emitted from a source already traveling at a given speed (see: Michaelson-Morley experiment among others). (A number of experiments demonstrate the general theory of relativity holds up at large scale, too).
But anyway, how can light possibly be constant regardless of the motion of the emitter?? It’s a paradox right? It is because spacetime isn’t “constant”. That’s where the video comes in…
It may be more accurate to think of the process of science as: developing, verifying, and updating models based on the results of high quality evidence gathered from experiments that follow the scientific method.
That is to say that if sufficient, good evidence is gathered contradicts a model, the model is wrong, at least for the specific conditions of the experiments in question. In that case the part of the model addressing those conditions has to be updated. (In some cases the conditions are “all” essentially and so the whole model has to be tossed…like the aether theory).
Good comment, always interesting to hear about physics. And I agree with your definition of science. I think my comment was a rather weak argument to begin with.
Physics is so fascinating, right? I’m too dumb to be a physicist 😆 but videos like this are great. This channel is good. I also really enjoy and recommend PBS Spacetime videos to anyone interested. Another topic that is fascinating is how relativity and gravity relate. It’s kind of wild.
Your example just serves to further strengthen my argument. The lack of experimental evidence for FTL travel is an astonishingly good argument that it doesn’t exist.
You should research the logical fallacy “argument from ignorance” which implies that a thing is true simply because it hasn’t been disproven to be true. That kind of argument is a feeble attempt to shift the burden of proof to the other party, when instead the maker of the claim is responsible to provide evidence for that claim.
Interesting, I agree with you, my comment was a particularly weak argument. I think the problem with disproving or proving that a god exists, lies with the fact that they/it would presumably lie outside of our universe. And from what we think now we won’t ever be able to escape our universe. Everything that Science says should exist or does exist, lies within our Universe, and we can’t say what lies outside it, and we won’t ever be able to. Which makes the topic of a creator especially difficult to prove/disprove. Following that, I personally still believe that someone who asserts that there is no creator holds it as a belief rather than a fact, although someone else pointed out to me earlier that absence of belief could be called the default. I personally believe that we can’t ever know whether there exists a creator or not, it’s my belief. In my eyes, everything regarding a creator is a belief, because again, I don’t think it’s a thing that is possible to prove or disprove.
Sorry for the hostility of my earlier comments, I just got carried away, I hope you can understand how that is.
Right, if a hypothetical deity exists outside of the universe and does not affect it in any way, that entity would be impossible to detect, by definition. (That entity would also be irrelevant to humans.)
You might also be interested in the term agnostic:
a person who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena
Some agnostics believe in a god and some don’t, what they agree on is that the truth of it cannot be known.
Agnosticism is also scientific in nature, because it acknowledges that there are no experimental ways to test the existence of a god.
And no worries, I didn’t read any hostility in your comments. I enjoy talking about this since I’ve spent multiple decades going over the topic myself.
Yes, I think that everyone must be at least somewhat agnostic, because I think it is human nature to question the logic in what they are told, provided they have the mental capacity to question things (by this I mean as ling as they aren’t a child or mentally developmentally challenged).
There is not, and likely cannot, be an experiment which proves the speed of light to be the fastest anything can travel in the universe. Yet scientists don’t take it to mean that the previous statement can’t possibly be true.
There are many things in science which cannot be proven to be true, that doesn’t make those things automatically false.
Religion aside, the topic about the speed of light is actually really fascinating, actually. I didn’t quite grok what it was all about until recently watching a particular video which I’ll link at the end.
The going theory (and here theory means our best model for how a thing works) is that the speed of light is constant in a vacuum. You may be familiar with the toss-a-ball-on-a-train (🚂) thought experiment?
If I’m traveling on a train traveling forwaes at 20mph and standing still relative to the car I’m in, and toss a ball at 10mph in the direction of the train’s travel (toward the front), an observer outside the train could see and measure the speed of the ball they would find it is traveling 30mph relative to the ground (20+10) in the direction of the train’s motion.
If I had thrown the ball in the opposite direction, toward the back of the train, the ball would be traveling at 10mph towards the front of the train (20-10)
Speed is measured relative to a frame of reference, ground or train, say.
Now if I were to instead use a flashlight, how fast would the photons travel if I were pointing the flashlight towards the front? The back? (And let’s assume everything is in a vacuum to illustrate the point)
They wouldn’t be 20mph + c forward or c - 20mph toward the back. The photons would travel at c.
Experiments have proven that c is constant-- that photons don’t go faster when being emitted from a source already traveling at a given speed (see: Michaelson-Morley experiment among others). (A number of experiments demonstrate the general theory of relativity holds up at large scale, too).
But anyway, how can light possibly be constant regardless of the motion of the emitter?? It’s a paradox right? It is because spacetime isn’t “constant”. That’s where the video comes in…
https://youtu.be/Rh0pYtQG5wI?si=d1FG5jpGi6cghY5t
It may be more accurate to think of the process of science as: developing, verifying, and updating models based on the results of high quality evidence gathered from experiments that follow the scientific method.
That is to say that if sufficient, good evidence is gathered contradicts a model, the model is wrong, at least for the specific conditions of the experiments in question. In that case the part of the model addressing those conditions has to be updated. (In some cases the conditions are “all” essentially and so the whole model has to be tossed…like the aether theory).
Good comment, always interesting to hear about physics. And I agree with your definition of science. I think my comment was a rather weak argument to begin with.
Physics is so fascinating, right? I’m too dumb to be a physicist 😆 but videos like this are great. This channel is good. I also really enjoy and recommend PBS Spacetime videos to anyone interested. Another topic that is fascinating is how relativity and gravity relate. It’s kind of wild.
Your example just serves to further strengthen my argument. The lack of experimental evidence for FTL travel is an astonishingly good argument that it doesn’t exist.
You should research the logical fallacy “argument from ignorance” which implies that a thing is true simply because it hasn’t been disproven to be true. That kind of argument is a feeble attempt to shift the burden of proof to the other party, when instead the maker of the claim is responsible to provide evidence for that claim.
Interesting, I agree with you, my comment was a particularly weak argument. I think the problem with disproving or proving that a god exists, lies with the fact that they/it would presumably lie outside of our universe. And from what we think now we won’t ever be able to escape our universe. Everything that Science says should exist or does exist, lies within our Universe, and we can’t say what lies outside it, and we won’t ever be able to. Which makes the topic of a creator especially difficult to prove/disprove. Following that, I personally still believe that someone who asserts that there is no creator holds it as a belief rather than a fact, although someone else pointed out to me earlier that absence of belief could be called the default. I personally believe that we can’t ever know whether there exists a creator or not, it’s my belief. In my eyes, everything regarding a creator is a belief, because again, I don’t think it’s a thing that is possible to prove or disprove.
Sorry for the hostility of my earlier comments, I just got carried away, I hope you can understand how that is.
Right, if a hypothetical deity exists outside of the universe and does not affect it in any way, that entity would be impossible to detect, by definition. (That entity would also be irrelevant to humans.)
You might also be interested in the term agnostic:
Some agnostics believe in a god and some don’t, what they agree on is that the truth of it cannot be known.
Agnosticism is also scientific in nature, because it acknowledges that there are no experimental ways to test the existence of a god.
And no worries, I didn’t read any hostility in your comments. I enjoy talking about this since I’ve spent multiple decades going over the topic myself.
Yes, I think that everyone must be at least somewhat agnostic, because I think it is human nature to question the logic in what they are told, provided they have the mental capacity to question things (by this I mean as ling as they aren’t a child or mentally developmentally challenged).
Thank you