That's what they tell us. Light can travel through a vacuum with nothing in it. And maybe so but what is the evidence?
So I looked up the best vacuum on planet Earth. It contains 2.5 million molecules of air per cubic cm. This is said to replicate conditions between stars. So how then can we say we've ever tested light waves going through "nothing". We haven't.
To test the validity of my suspicions I've asked the science guys on reddit if they have an answer for this. The first few responses have already been hostile and that usually indicates this is one of those issues they simply don't have a good answer for. I was very polite in my question btw, so no I didn't provoke anybody, this is all on them.
We'll see how it goes. I'm open to a good explanation of why this is a valid test, but this light has 2 million molecules to interact with ever cubic cm it propagates, so you didn't rule out matter.
Not really. Since it is EM wave too, there can be all that difraction things, but atoms are much smaller than light wavelength, so all that stuff will be negligeable.
You will have exactly same "clock slowing" for speed of sound if you will observe moving object time with sound waves.
Lorenz is not specific to the speed of light. In Lorenz transforms you have speed of obtaining information, and that's all. Cool stuff, really, that allows to revert effects of finite speed of receiving observation information to get how things really go in moving frames.
I'd have to look at the equations for what they are actually correcting for in GPS to see if what you're saying is how these equations are used. But today is not that day.
GPS don't need any corrections, really. It is a differential system, not absolute, so relativistic effects if any just cancelled. Military was not 100% sure that relativity theory is valid, so designed system so, that no relativity corrections are necessary.
Well Ron Hatch who has patents in the field of GPS says they do use the Lorenz transformation.
No, they don't.
GPS, just like any known GNSS system is differential, not absolute.
Receiver doesn't use absolute time data from satellites, it measure differences of time in signals received from different satellites (phase) and use only that differences to find out position.
GPS clocks on satellites do slowed slightly IIRC not 1.024 MHz clock signal, but 1.02399...whatever MHz to satisfy special and general relativistic time distortion prediction (-7μS/day special, +45μS/day general, total +38μS/day) to make satellite clocks appear running at same pace as clocks on Earth, but this does not make any real sense, since any absolute error is cancelled by differential nature of measurement (not a frequency or time on satellite matters, but phase offset between different satellites, that is measured ), so any relativity corrections will give position error in order of millimeters. This shift was done purely to satisfy relativists marketing demand, not for solving any real problems. Also, in any case satellite clocks are forcefully synchronised with Earth UTC every 24 hours .
Take a look at GPS position calculation math, it is pretty clear that relativistic effects if any, could not give any noticeable error.
For GPS positioning syncronicity between satellites is orders of magnutude more important than any possible relativity effects.
Major GPS error comes from atmospheric interference, ephemeris precision and so on, potential relativistic effect errors are at the very bottom of the list, even lower than short-term instability of atomic clocks.
PS: that often pushed statement that unaccounting for relativistic effects in GPS will give 11km/day error is a pure lie. Idiots who made this statement (300000km/S * 38μS) to show importance of Einshtein just have no any clue about how GPS really works. In reality such error will be absolutely negligeable (millimeters in a worst case), much lower than other ineradicable errors and it will not accumulate at all.