The expectation you're asking about is called Emission theory:
If you look at the section entitled Refutations of emission theory, you'll see some of the most concrete examples of how this was shown not to hold true for light. One convincing argument comes just from looking up at the night sky:
de Sitter's double star argument Experiments (similar to Michelson--Morley which was already mentioned) can measure photons from the same source travelling both in the same direction of earth's travel, and in the opposite direction of earth's travel. In the world of classical mechanics, one would expect the one launched in the direction of earth's travel to get a fixed distance away from the source faster, but experiments repeatedly show that both travel the same distance in the same time.
These are the simplest arguments that can be conjured up without requiring you to dig too deeply into things like interferometry and quantum electrodynamics - but these too are easily observable in the classical world and are completely incompatible with any theory that postulates a speed of light that is affected by the speed of the source. [1] Daniel Frost Comstock. A Neglected Type of Relativity. Physical Review, Feb 1910, 30 (2): 267 [2] W. de Sitter. An Astronomical Proof for the Constancy of the Speed of Light. Physik. Zeitschr. 14, 429, (1913) [3] D. Sadeh. Experimental Evidence for the Constancy of the Velocity of Gamma Rays, Using Annihilation in Flight. Phys. Rev. Lett. 10, 271–273 (1963) |
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