OT: System Clock Loses Hour

[AngleWyrm]

The Michelson-Morley experiment was trying to detect wind from the earth passing through aether--the fluid that conducts light waves. It failed to notice any, and is considered proof that there is no aether.

your perceptions of time and distance will conspire to give the same result.
I recently read a philosopher's quote, that I'll paraphrase: A theory which claims to be unmeasurable is probably best left unspoken as well.

Walter Ritz proposed Emitter Theory that suggested light speed was added to local motion, but that was not observed in binary stars as they orbited each other. The example given is that light from the approaching orbit would appear to be C+orbital speed, and therefore the light would overtake previous light, and our observation would be...strange. (maybe reversed)

[douglas]

AngleWyrm said:
your perceptions of time and distance will conspire to give the same result.
I recently read a philosopher's quote, that I'll paraphrase: A theory which claims to be unmeasurable is probably best left unspoken as well.

Except it's not unmeasurable. There are all sorts of experimentally measurable implications of the constancy of the speed of light independent of reference frame, and many of them have been tested and found to be correct. For example, take two atomic clocks and synchronize them. Then put one of them on a supersonic jet, have it fly around at high speed for a while, and put them back next to each other. One of the implications of the speed of light being constant regardless of reference frame is that the two clocks will now be out of sync - they will disagree about how much time has passed since they were synchronized. The exact amount of the difference can be calculated using equations derived strictly from conceptual analysis of what would have to be true for the observed fact about the speed of light to be true. This experiment has actually been conducted, and the result was well within experimental error of the calculated value.

[AngleWyrm]

(Tricia Helfer, Battlestar Galactica)