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I am still struggling with C being a constant and what that implies. So can an experiment be done to find the resting state for the universe? Take a device with an observer and a light source and two mirrors, one 10 meters in front and the other 10 meters behind the light source. Now move this through space at some speed. Can’t you determine your speed by using the red/blue shift from the light reflected by the mirrors? Will this allow you to find the resting reference for the entire universe?

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you probably mean ... a unique rest frame ... – propaganda Jan 26 '12 at 3:25

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You've missed something important about relativity.

The rule that all (inertial) observers measure the speed of light in vacuum to be the same is really just a special case of the big rule: all inertial frames have the same physics.

That is explicitly a claim that there is no experiment that can distinguish one free-falling frame from another without reference to some external frame of reference.

So no: there is no universally special frame of reference.

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I think that I am getting it now. So if I observe an experiment measuring the speed of light that is flying passed me at .99 C, I will think that the distance that the experimenter is using is only 1% of the distance the experimenter thinks that it is. This is because of revativistic shorting. – Kent Byerley Jan 26 '12 at 18:08
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If the source and detector of light are moving with you, there will be no Doppler shift.

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This still confuses me. So if our part of the universe were traveling at 99% of C. There is no way to determine that light doesn't travel as fast in one direction as opposed to another? Is there a web page that I could read more about this concept? – Kent Byerley Jan 26 '12 at 0:07
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If you were moving at 99% of c and you measured the speed of light in any direction you would always get the same result. Velocities don't add up in relativity as they do in classical mechanics. – Adam Zalcman Jan 26 '12 at 0:22
actually, you are moving 99% of c in some reference frame – propaganda Jan 26 '12 at 3:24
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This experiment will not produce the result you expect, because redshift caused by the Doppler effect depends on the speed of the source relative to the observer. In your experiment this speed is zero.

See also the Principle of Relativity and Einstein's "On the Electrodynamics of moving bodies".

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First let there be an observer and a light source, at rest relative to each other.

Now we accelerate the light source away from the observer. The observer says: The light from the light source red shifted.

Then we accelerate the observer towards the light source. The observer says: The light from the light source blue shifted.

If the two accelerations are equal, then finally the observer says: Now the situation is the same as at the beginning, except that the light source is a little bit further away, and if at the beginning the light source and I were standing still, then now we must be moving.

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