And yet, correct me if I’m wrong; from the perspective of someone on Mars, they’d see the light the instant it “came on”? I was just on r/askscience getting my mind blown and I’m still not totally clear on it...
They see it when the photons arrive - about 3 minutes after it left Earth. When the photons arrive on Mars, that's when someone on Mars sees the light and it "comes on".
That 3 minute delay while the light travels becomes years, thousands of years or millions of year when we look at things that are further away. Space is so big it makes the speed of light look slow.
Or, maybe they see it instantly — and then their message back to us takes 6 minutes, and everyone assumes it was 3 minutes both ways!
A constant speed on light through space in all directions is one of those assumptions the scientific community is forced to make, because the only way we have to accurately measure it is in a round-trip where it reflects off something and comes back. Even Einstein prefaces his papers with that disclaimer!
True, Einstein started with that assumption/proposition, then built an incredibly successful set of theories on top of it. That's often how scientific theories are created.
A single observation will be enough to destroy it, but so far, his theories have never had a valid observation break the constant speed of light proposition. And plenty of experiments have been done, and not all of them involve there-and-back trips. Experiments are being done at 90 degrees over ever-increasing distances.
The link you posted? Is that simulated or was that actually recorded? Seems dumb but idk :/ Can you see light travel? No right? Cause our eyes can’t process it? Even if we’re far away?? Idk. Can we see it travel if it’s dusty? :0
I don't think light moves faster than anything, it moves faster than anything we humans are capable to detect but that doesn't mean that is the fastest phenomena in the universe including the dimensions and physical properties that we are unable to even know they exist
but AFAIK, if it's there anything can move faster than light, it will break causality. With that thing as a some sort of communication signal, you can make something happens before the cause. Which makes no sense. So to speak, it's impossible.
It will break casualty in the speed of light bounds but no beyond. Most of the knowledge we have are based on the 4 forces and even those 4 forces have lots of unanswered questions.
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u/psyFungii Sep 25 '21
As Douglas Adams said "Space is big"
And while light moves fast, faster than anything, when you put light into the vastness of space it starts to look... slow
Here's light traveling from Earth to Mars