(April 23, 2014 at 3:33 pm)Heywood Wrote:(April 23, 2014 at 3:14 pm)ThePinsir Wrote: I don't know. I'm not afraid to admit that. I'm not a physicist. Let me google it real quick...
Ok, General Relativity says that Maxwell's Equations work with any inertial frames.
Maxwell's equations depend on the permeability of free space being a constant. How do you know the permeability of free space is a constant and not random....just appearing to be constant as a matter of happenstance?
Not just permeability, but also permittivity!
And you know what? Stars all around us shine. Each star sends out a signature which can be interpreted as its elementary composition, the radiation emission spectrum. Mapping the stars, we find that there a few different sets which only change due to an apparent shift towards the lower frequencies, the so-called redshift.
Down here on Earth, we can analyze the emission spectrum of each known element of the periodic table and compare that to the spectrum of the stars... They match amazingly well, which tells us that light propagates through space in the same manner as it does within our earthly proximity... And that the elements on those far away stars are the same as those on Earth. QM is the model which shows us how those elements give rise to their particular spectra.
Also, don't forget that this planet is moving through space around the sun... the sun is moving around the galactic center... and the galaxy is moving... somewhere.... in all, the planet is moving quite a lot relative to stationary space. And since the first measurement of the speed of light until today, thousands upon thousands of college students have been measuring it every year... it is always the same, regardless of where it has been measured. Even on the ISS and on the moon.
This just to show that Maxwell's equations, as well as QM, are valid everywhere we look... sometimes, with a little help from General Relativity.
Then there's dark matter.... why don't you pick on that and get called off for a god-of-the-gaps argument?
Oh, and since you ask:
http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?ep0
http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?mu0
