Face it, we don't have a clue how to explain this or many other things that we think we understand.

That's not quite right. Yes, there are many mysteries, but that there are mysteries does not mean that we don't know or don't understand anything. We have very good ideas of how certain things work. We can make very accurate predictions about a good many things. Do we understand "everything." No. But, we do understand a great many things. If we get surprised and learn that something isn't quite what we thought it was, that doesn't mean that we were entirely wrong. For instance, you can likely throw a baseball from here to a moon orbiting a distant planet on the other side of the galaxy using only Newtonian physics. We know Newton was "wrong" regarding certain things, but his theory is "right enough" for gubbermint work... :)

So, yes, we can understand and we can explain the process that you are describing with an accuracy and with likely mechanisms that have yet to be falsified.

Life is an illusion, and we are all falling for it.

Fast forward 30 years or so, and looking back the Professor was probably right.

It has since been proven that a beam if light can be stopped dead in its tracks. Totally disproving the speed of light is an unchangeable constant.

Light stopped dead in its tracks

Ironically, she was a Psychology Professor

The first example of an assumption ignores Special Relativity. The second assumption ignores the fact that the light is traveling through what can be called a Bose Einstein Condensate which is a fancy word for something that is really, really, really, really, really, cold... sorta. :)

And, that she was a Psych prof attempting to teach very complicated physics isn't too surprising.

Nobody has ever said that the speed of light was constant, everywhere. The speed of light is constant within a vacuum, which is a bit different than a BEC. However, IIRC, there have been some new experiments involving the speed of light that show some interesting results: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2015/jan/22/structured-photons-slow-down-in-a-vacuum

What we "know" can be measured in how valid our predictions are. If we can predict, using only our knowledge, what will happen when x+7=z, and we can do this reliably, it's a good guess that we're on the right track. If, after repeated challenges, this prediction can't be invalidated, we can say very confidently that we "know" how to predict x+y=z. We can not, however, also be as confident in the mechanisms that we assume impact our predictions. Most of the time, we're right when we attribute certain mechanisms to something we can predict when our predictions are correct and haven't been invalidated. Others will experiment with the proposed mechanisms and discover properties that are likely to contribute towards the described or assumed mechanisms. But, not always... Sometimes, something new is discovered, usually due to improvements made to the tools that we use to observe and measure things. Better tools = Better and more accurate capabilities in gaining knowledge.

But, discovering new knowledge does not mean that we were ignorant, it only means that we have some fine-tuning to do. :)

PS - Sorry for the formatting. This forum is becoming more and more frustrating to use the more I try to interact, here. But, I'm sure that's been griped about by so many, it's no use for me to gripe about it... :/