Well...I don't deal in hypotheticals too well. Presumably, you are confused about what ``free thought'' actually means to phyiscists, in terms of physics. I think each moderator will give you a different definition of what ``free thought'' means. To me, some ideas are just bad, or are just wrong. I'll give you a prime example.
There used to be a poster here called Uclock. I think his name was Tony. He had developed an entire theory where ``time'' was just a human construction, caused by evolution of physical systems. (Actually, what he proposed was very similar to another poster's theories here: Farsight.) This is also very similar to things that people thought before Einstein arrived in the ninteenth century.
The problem with doing this doesn't take a whole lot of training to spot---it's an idea called Lorentz Invariance which tells us that time and space are (at the end of the day) pretty much the same thing. Now, one would expect that someone who was in favor of abandoning the space-time interpretation of gravity that Einstein invented would at least know what Lorentz Invariance was. But when pressed on such issues, both Farsight and Uclock dismissed these questions as nit-picking. It was quite clear that they didn't know anything about Lorentz Invariance beyond what they could read on Wikipedia. And you can read all of the Wikipedia you want, it will never be a substitute for sitting down with a textbook and a pencil and working out the details for yourself.
I am a HUGE fan of Lorentz Invariance. And besides gauge invariance, it's my second favorite invariance (last but not least is modular invariance). The reason that it's my favorite invariance is that it explains why we only see particles with integer and half integer spins! So, aside from telling us something about space and time, we get bosons and fermions ``for free''. To me, and to every other physicist worth his salt, exchanging the machinery and beauty of Lorentz Invariance for something that doesn't at least explain integer and half integer spins is a bit like trading a cow for ``magic'' beans.
I hate to break anyone's bubble here, but you haven't shown Einstein wrong. You haven't proved that there's an aether, and you haven't disproven dark energy. Sorry. If you have a thought about these things, let's talk about it. Maybe I can show you where it's wrong---in fact, I can probably show you where it's wrong because I have a lot of practice with it...I shoot down my own ideas all the time.
``Free thought'' to me has to be consistent with everything else that has come before it. The stuff is called ``established physics'' because it has been tested, and proven. Because I don't moderate outside of the physics forum (nor would I want to), I can't speak for other moderators.
Probably not, because there are still things which interest me here. But I would probably also spend much less time here.
