Well, yes, as far as our theories go. But we also “knew” that light was a wave that traveled through the luminiferous aether, which permiated all of space… Until we tested that theory with the Michelson-Morely experiment, and it turned out our theories were completely wrong and physics as we knew it was completely upended.
Point being, it’s important to actually test our theories instead of assuming they’re completely correct just because most of their predictions are accurate.
Science advances by testing the limit cases. You do it and you do it until one day you get an unexpected result. That result, and the subsequent understanding of why it happens, is what leads to Nobel Prizes.
Well yeah. The concensus at the time was that light is a wave, and waves need a medium to travel through, so they just made up some stuff that must be everywhere and called it the aether. The null result of the interferometer experiment is part of what led to the discovery that light is a particle that acts like a wave, and so doesn’t need a medium.
Well, yes, as far as our theories go. But we also “knew” that light was a wave that traveled through the luminiferous aether, which permiated all of space… Until we tested that theory with the Michelson-Morely experiment, and it turned out our theories were completely wrong and physics as we knew it was completely upended.
Point being, it’s important to actually test our theories instead of assuming they’re completely correct just because most of their predictions are accurate.
Science advances by testing the limit cases. You do it and you do it until one day you get an unexpected result. That result, and the subsequent understanding of why it happens, is what leads to Nobel Prizes.
Aether was a fudge and pretty sure Einstein knew it. Forgot the exact history, but it was made up from whole cloth to make the math work out.
Well yeah. The concensus at the time was that light is a wave, and waves need a medium to travel through, so they just made up some stuff that must be everywhere and called it the aether. The null result of the interferometer experiment is part of what led to the discovery that light is a particle that acts like a wave, and so doesn’t need a medium.
The medium for the electromagnetic field is space time
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson–Morley_experiment
A mistake plus kelevin gets you home by seven.
Dark energy is a fudge in a similar way. Eventually we’ll know what it actually is and no longer need it, kinda like alchemy was to chemistry.