From my patchy understanding of relativity, the speed of light being same to all observers is the key ‘hypothesis’ that leads to other consequences like time dilation, relativity etc.
But how did Einstein come to this ‘hypothesis’? Was it just a moment of extraordinary inspiration or were there other ‘hints’ that lead to this? I mean Michelson Morley experiment ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley\_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment) ) was well over a decade earlier. So how come nobody else thought of the idea of speed of light being a constant to everyone?
Follow up question: from this hypothesis, is the space-time continuum also an obvious conclusion? Or did it require another inspired genius moment?
(I use hypothesis in quotes to illustrate that it was indeed a hypothesis when proposed).
In: Physics
Before Einstein others like George Francis FitzGerald, Hendrik Lorentz (after whom space dilation AKA Lorentz contraction is named), and Henri Poincaré, and others worked on the problem.
In fact, Poincaré submitted a paper a month after Einstein (but a month before Einstein’s paper was published) that had many of the same conclusions and even terminology as Einstein.
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