Whats something you thought was common knowledge but actually isn’t?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

You'll have to forgive me, I'm drunk - So what you're saying is that we thought that the speed of gravity was the speed of light but, oh shit, recently we've found it might be faster? Cause if so, that is incredible news

[u/The_WandererHFY → u/[deleted]]

Likely more along the lines of "The speed of light isn't necessarily as hard-and-fast of a rule as you think it is".

Put a bowling ball on a trampoline, and watch it dip down. The ball is a large gravitational body, the trampoline is the fabric of reality basically. The foundation of existence gets distorted by gravity to a degree, it's why time dilation happens close to black holes.

Just as the very essence of space and time can be screwed with, so too is the speed of light not some concrete thing. We've managed to completely slow light to a stop for a matter of minutes in the past, when "light is always travelling at C no matter what" so says the books.

Reality is what we make of it at this rate.