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Originally Posted by trebor
who decided what the speed of light was, what if it was measured wrong, what if it's not as fast as you all think 
how many laws of physics have already been adjusted to fit in with modern thinking ?
they said we could not travel faster than 30mph, they said we could not fly
the list goes on, but they were wrong |
But the point is that this is *science*.
If someone claims that "we cannot fly" or "we'll die if we travel over 100 mph" someone else can go out and do an experiment and either prove them right or wrong.
Then yet another person will go over the second person's results and check to see they didn't make any mistakes.
It was originally thought that the speed of light was inifinite, simply because those thinkers didn't have the ability to measure it. Then it was measured, corrected, measured again and it was stated that the speed of light was constant. Then someone else looked at the details and said "hang on, no, it's not constant, it can change in certain circumstances..."
Science constantly evolves and changes as we learn more, so, to quote Arthur C Clarke's personal "three laws:
1) "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
2) "The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."
3) "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
http://www.lsi.usp.br/~rbianchi/clarke/ACC.Laws.html
(Gregory Benford came up with a corollory to Clarke's third law: Any technology that is distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced!)