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Oh my god, thats like the time in AP Physics where I had to answer the downward acceleration of a car that slid sideways off a cliff, and wound up solving for gravity.

Because if it differed, then the results of things like the Michelson-Morley Experiment would have been different. We also have the fact that predictions based on the postulate "the speed of light in a vacuum is the same for observers in all inertial reference frames" keep being correct.

The issue with Michelson-Morley Experiment is that he measured the speed of light in the air around him. If you measure the speed of an external sound in two box cars traveling in opposite directions. The speed would be the same.

A simple experiment could be made with two tubes of water flowing in opposite directions. Light travels up one tube and reflected back down the other. Then flip the direction. travel time will be different.

Michelson-Morley was hardly the only relevant experiment, just the most famous. The null result of Michelson-Morley has also been confirmed with similar experiments done with the light path in vacuum chambers or largely outside of Earth's atmosphere, (using Lunar retroreflectors).

It's been blowing my mind lately that the vacuum has measurable properties. It feels like things like the casimir effect, electromagnetic gauge field, etc point to the vacuum being a "thing". Is the aether making a comeback!?

Whenever I come up with a great idea, I make sure to ask myself, "Did I just reinvent something obvious?" That saved me so much embarrassment with my "fork, but with no space between the tines so you can eat soup instead of having to drink straight from the bowl" idea.

My friend once invented a revolutionary container that used a container nested within another container, reinforced so that the gap between the inner and outer layer was actually a vacuum, so that thermal transfer would be negligible and the contents would remain at a constant temperature.

Same. As a high school student, I intuited conservation of momentum and then worked out a little math and solved a problem that had been left on the board for a different class. It never occurred to me that this might be brilliant. I always assume anything I think has been previously thunk.

Before the internet, I needed the area of a circle for a work problem - couldn’t remember it, so worked it out from first principles using differentiation. In hindsight I was wasted at the pizzeria. 😂

I didn't even know this was a Magic School Bus reference when I wrote this lol, I haven't seen the show thank you, people singing in my replies

I did this once. Someone challenged me to identify ingredients by taste, and I knew I could taste citric acid. I completely forgot that meant a citrus was one of the ingredients. It was lime by the way.