OK, but wouldn't that make it true of light waves involved in redshift then?
Yes, and so it is, even to the point where Newtonian physics allowed for light to travel at varying speeds. Thus, the whole point of the M-M experiment.
So whatever step it may be in your mind, in the end, you assume that a wave speed is constant, no?
No. But in working out the math of the complete situation, I start with examples where I only need to consider how one or two of the variables changing affects the outcome. After I have the more simplified equation accounted for, I add in situations where the other variables (including speed) can also change.
All of this is done on the math side of the process, and does not affect the actual physical situation at all. If speed is variable, it is variable even if I am working out the math for those few cases where it does not happen to vary.
Ether? Define....? Have we some on earth?
Under Newtonian physics, waves have to propagate through some physical medium. Seismic waves propagate through rock, water waves through water, sound waves through air. It was proposed that space was composed, not of hard vacuum, but of a physical substance through which light waves could propagate. This substance was called the "luminiferous ether" (luminiferous being Latin for "light-bearing"). It turns out that the ether, if it exists, is undetectable to modern science, and is not necessary under Relativity, so Relativity ignores it.
Except that he had no jurisdiction that I am aware of to apply his little mind experiments far away from earth. What it...is not knowing. The experiments are good near earth. Fine.
And all of Einstein's thought experiments were written so as to occur on earth. He wrote them as occurring on trains and elevators here on earth. Later writers do change the wording to rocket ships, that is true, but only because we have discovered that starlight does behave
exactly the same way in space as light on earth does. It is affected by the gravity of other stars it passes near, Doppler effects produce frequency shifts, including the famous red-shift of receding galaxies, etc.
Is it possible that these effects are caused by factors that are different from those we credit them to? Yes, but in that case, it is extremely unlikely that the effects would be so
precisely what we expect them to be.
Did I suggest it had something to do with the speed of light? No. I raised it as an issue where time has to be involved. If time can be changed then everything else is affected proportionately, no?
You've lost me here. Perhaps you are referring to something you proposed in a different thread, but I don't see any reference to time being different in space in your OP in this thread. So I have no idea what you are trying to say.
