Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2017 October 15

= October 15 =

Confirmation of Special relativity
General Relativity had the famous confirmation with the bending of light during a solar eclipse. Was there any similar moment for Special Relativity? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 00:47, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Is the Wikipedia article titled Tests of special relativity insufficient for your purposes? The most important and earliest such experiment is probably the Michelson–Morley experiment, which while it predates special relativity by some decades, provided the results to verify it.  -- Jayron 32 00:55, 15 October 2017 (UTC)


 * Well, it looks like there was already some experimental evidence in favor of it when it came out, but it wasn't until the 1930s that there was a confirming experiment. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 03:51, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Do you mean the Ives–Stilwell experiment? I thought all those outcomes could have been predicted from the Lorentz transformation, which however wasn't really an explanatory theory.  Maybe I'm wrong about that though.  The SR chapter of the Feynman Lectures on Physics has a brief historical treatment if that's of any interest. 173.228.123.121 (talk) 06:34, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Just because it happened before the theory was formalized does NOT mean that the results could not be used to confirm it. -- Jayron 32 10:55, 16 October 2017 (UTC)
 * History of special relativity may also be of interest. --47.138.160.139 (talk) 01:45, 17 October 2017 (UTC)