| It's very good post, except for the fact that you missed the point of discussion completely. Minkowski space-time is math. Time is used as coordinate. In reality, we cannot walk 10 seconds to the left. Math is important (major) instrument for physicist, because it's allows us to make predictions for things, which we cannot see with our senses, but here we are talking about nature of the vacuum. In short, about 100 years ago, the dominant theory was Theory of Ether. Ether was imagined like completely transparent gas or fluid, which transfers light and EM waves like water transfers sound waves. This theory was replaced by Theory of General Relativity, because ToGR makes much more precious predictions than ToE. The one of the key experiments was Michelson–Morley experiment, which tried to answer is Ether is moves with Earth, so we are moving with our Ether, or is it static, so we are moving trough it at high speed (because of rotation around Sun and around Milki Way center). However, experiment found no disturbances at all, which leads to assumption that there is no medium for EM waves at all. With time, we have more and more evidence that vacuum is not empty space. (I will use word vacuum instead of Ether, because, like with atom or +/-, it is well-known therm). 1) QM in general. Especially Heisenberg principle of uncertainty. Small particles displays something like Brownian motion: their position is uncertain when they at rest, except that we cannot see that with eyes because, photons are too massive. 2) _Linear_ Sagnac interferometer demonstrates that light is captured with medium, which leads to assumption that physical vacuum is attached to objects like atmosphere is attached to planet. If so, then it's impossible to find distributions of physical vacuum in well isolated room, because vacuum will be still, like air in cabin of airplane. Only major events, like massive explosion, can shake air in the isolated cabin while plan travels through air. 3) Hubble constant is not a constant. It's measured with high precision, but it has different values for different frequencies. If these values are plotted, then they for exponential curve. It's means that light is just ages with distance traveled, i.e. it loses some energy to the medium. 4) LIGO found gravitational waves at 1E-18 precision, which means that Michelson-Morley experiment had much lower accuracy than necessary. And so on. |