> For example: Michelson-Morley experiment — disproved by LIGO/VIRGO and NANOGrav.
Care to elaborate?
Care to elaborate?
These fluctuations of speed of light were found much later, by LIGO/VIRGO and NANOGrav.
The flaw of Michelson-Morley experiment is that it was performed in isolated environment, but tried to measure an external effect.
Imagine that we want to measure atmospheric circulation in the same way: by measuring speed of wind in an closely isolated and insulated room: it's impossible.
However, Michelson-Morley experiment is one of corner stones for theory of Relativity.
> This incongruous result puzzled the physicists of the world until 1905 when Einstein published his theory of relativity. Viewed in the light of Einstein's revolutionary work, the null results of the Michelson-Morley experiment were not only predictable, but provided experimental confirmation of Einstein's theory.
That the speed of light is constant in vacuum is one of the fundamental assumptions of general relativity. The results of LIGO/VIRGO are so far fully compatible with GR.
I never said you're too stupid to understand. What I said, and maintain, is that you lack a basic understanding of the concepts involved. If you want to have a proper discussion, you need to first properly study general relativity, and refrain from making ridiculous assertions about things you are obviously not an expert on.
If we want to predict what the camera attached to a rocket moving along a complex trajectory at a speed close to the speed of light will see, we need a powerful theory that can predict the image and characteristics of other physical processes that this camera will observe. The Theory of Relativity and the Special Theory of Relativity can predict these characteristics. However, the Theory of Relativity doesn't explain the «why» behind this happening.
If we consider the theory of the ether, the speed of light is the speed of wave propagation in the medium, which is itself determined by the speed of an interaction between particles in this medium (which is usually higher than the speed of wave itself).
In the case of experiments like LIGO/Virgo or NANOgrav, the speed of light changes because gravitational waves affect the medium.
If we take General Relativity (GR), the speed of light is the ultimate speed because Einstein stated so.
In the case of LIGO/Virgo experiments, the speed of light remains constant because the speed of light is the constant, as stated by Einstein, and space and time stretch in the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th dimensions, which leads to light moving slower, although the speed of light itself doesn't change. :-/
The reason MM failed to show that light changes speed is because we’re not moving through the aether, but are ourselves aether stuff — and so our own perspective gets equally warped. Since us and the light both change with the relative motion, we can’t see the change.
> Michelson-Morley experiment found no changes in speed of light at all. Nothing. Zero fluctuations.
The MM experiment aimed to observe a predicted effect of the theory of luminiferous aether, which would have enabled measuring the Earth's speed relative to a canonical reference frame (the aether). It was sufficiently precise to observe that predicted effect but did not observe it, which provided strong evidence that the aether theory was wrong.
Finding that any variation in the propagation of light was too small to be detected by their instruments (and too small to be consistent with aether theory) is not the same as finding that it's exactly zero.
> These fluctuations of speed of light were found much later, by LIGO/VIRGO and NANOGrav.
It's not the same fluctuations though: these experiments found much smaller fluctuations than MM looked for, from a different effect. They're not even (understood to be) fluctuations in c, but in the shape of space.
> The flaw of Michelson-Morley experiment is that it was performed in isolated environment, but tried to measure an external effect.
The later interferometer experiments (LIGO and VIRGO) are conceptually very similar to the original MM experiment. The environment is not fundamentally different, and on the contrary LIGO and VIRGO are better isolated (against ordinary vibrations: we don't know any way to isolate an experiment from gravitational waves). They're just much larger and more precise, which is why they can observe the much smaller effect of gravitational waves.
> However, Michelson-Morley experiment is one of corner stones for theory of Relativity.
Yes, but the effects observed by LIGO and VIRGO are predicted by general relativity, which is what inspired scientists to carry out those experiments. As far as I know, they are consistent with GR to the extent that LIGO and VIRGO have measured them.
MM failed to observe effects predicted by theory of STATIC luminiferous aether. It looks like there is no absolute aether frame (which will be strange to have in the infinite Universe).
> They're just much larger and more precise, which is why they can observe the much smaller effect of gravitational waves.
Yep. We can discard MM experiment now, because LIGO/Virgo is much better.
If we want to measure wind at high altitude, but we put our measurement tool deep and isolated it well, with high enough precision, we will be able to measure distant earthquakes and nuclear explosions. No luck with wind, of course.
To catch the wind, we need something like NANOgrav, but at much smaller scale at high orbit around Earth. Luckily, we have large number of GPS satellites with high-precision clocks in the sky: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10291-017-0686-6 . I see strong annual signal here.
> Yes, but the effects observed by LIGO and VIRGO are predicted by general relativity
This doesn't make GR unique. Other theories can predict this too. It's just waves in a medium. However, GR is abstract theory, which lacks explanation power. Lack of explanation causes lack of understanding.