Quote:
Originally Posted by GatorB
Why is that Einstien? Lt's see because c stands for "speed of light in a vaccuum" but even space is not a TRUE vaccuum. There are still atoms scattered about even in the most desolate areas of space even if they are spread very far apart. Is that why it's not completely correct?
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No - actually the reason its not correct is that since Einstein first deveoped his theories, other little discoveries have been made leading to quantum physics which delves a little deeper into the energy equation - showing that there are some losses at the sub-particle level that cannot be explained away as energy or mass. The other explanation that might "weigh" in here is that the photon (which is what light is made up of) is assumed to be 0 mass - which is probably not correct - it probably has a very small mass approaching 0 but we cannot say for sure that it is perfectly 0
The second reason its not correct is that the speed of light does actually change - year to year - by a fraction due to the slowing down of the speed of rotation of the earth by 1/10E5 of a second - which changes the actual duration of a second in time - and since C is a measurement of speed which is in M/sec the changing of the duration of a second changes the constants' value
Third - lay-people usually make the same mistake when looking at this C constant - the primary way it is used is just the opposite measurement - it is used to measure the standard length for a meter by measuring the distance light travels in a particular time interval in a vacuum - Einsteins original theory just stated that the speed of light constant was in "space" - not a vacuum