(Conspiracy Nation, 06/22/05)
-- The "scientists" are obsessed with measuring things. To them, for
all intents and purposes, if "it" cannot be measured then "it" does not
exist. (See "Bodies Having Purpose," http://www.shout.net/~bigred/BodPurp.html)
Centuries ago, the question arose: What is light? The "scientists"
got out their measuring tools and went to work.
Around 1600 A.D., Galileo stood on a hill and flashed a lantern. An
assistant, on a different hill, flashed a lantern back. The time
involved in the experiment might give an answer to the speed of light.
In 1676 A.D., Olaus Roemer was noticing Jupiter's satellites. The
orbits of the satellites had already been well-measured. Whenever one
of the satellites was eclipsed by Jupiter, that moment could be
calculated. But the eclipses were happening off-schedule! They were
either several minutes too late or several minutes too early! "Ah hah!"
thought Roemer. "Here might be a way to measure the speed of light!"
The satellite eclipses were not off-schedule. The time it took for
Jovian light to reach earth was causing the delay. Roemer's
measurement: Light travels at 150,000 miles per second.
But of course, to the "scientists," Roemer's measurement was not
precise enough. In 1728, James Bradley used "aberration of light" and
the already known velocity of the earth around the sun to calculate
more precisely. The new measurement: 190,000 miles per second.
Still not good enough, squeemied the "scientists." Accordingly,
Armand Hippolyte Louis Fizeau returned to Galileo's hill and tried a
new technique. In 1849, he used a mirror to return light from a distant
hill. He also used cogs of a turning wheel to "chop" the returning
light. If the cog happened to block the light, the intensity would be
decreased overall. Speeding up the wheel, Fizeau measured various
intensities and cog wheel speeds, together with the known distance
between hills. But still, his result was not considered accurate enough.
Jean Bernard Leon Foucault fine-tuned Fizeau's technique, adding
another mirror and measuring angles. His result for the speed of light
was "pretty good."
In 1923, Albert Abraham Michelson enhanced Foucault's technique by
choosing two hills further apart. That way, the light traveled a
greater distance. He sweated and worried over the measurement between
the hills and got it almost exactly right. From these particulars,
Michelson obtained a light speed which was "mighty fine."
Finally, in 1963, the U.S. government officially declared the speed
of light to be 186,281.7 miles per second. Case closed.
But along the way in this thrilling journey of measurement, there
remained the original question: What is
light?
Centuries ago, some thought "light" must be "tiny particles." Others
thought "light" must be "waves."
If the light were tiny particles, this meant it must be rarefied
(not dense). For instance, light passes through air, which implies it
must be less dense than even air. If the light were waves, that meant
it traveled via some medium (e.g. waves traveling through water have
water as the medium). Then how could light, traveling in waves via some
medium, reach earth from the sun, since "space" was void? And if light
traveled in waves, besides the question of what was its medium, there
remained the question: What is
light?
Of course, much measurement was resorted to. Finally, the
measurements indicated that light (whatever it was) traveled in waves.
While the "scientists" were wondering about "What is light," they
also considered "What is heat?" Once again, a flurry of measurements
took place.
"Heat," like "light," travels through a medium. If it travels via
gas or liquid, they call that "convection." If it travels through a
solid, they call that "conduction." But heat can travel through a
vacuum also. A hot object encased in a vacuum will make its heat felt
at a distance. Heat also travels from the sun, through space (void), 93
million miles until it reaches earth.
This might be what Isaac Newton meant by "action at a distance."
Some sort of "force," like "gravity," affected "matter" through "space"
yet with no observable mechanism or medium involved. It would be as if
you were to scratch another person's itch from across the room,
"somehow." Newton turned to Alchemy for a possible answer. The
Alchemists had developed a concept called "active principles": Spirit
might be able to act upon matter. There was, thought Newton, a "spirit
of nature." He called it "vegetable action," which was "an exceeding
subtle & unimaginably small portion of matter diffused through the
mass which, if it were separated, there would remain but a dead &
inactive earth." (White, Michael. Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer)
But a new breed of "scientists," concurrent with Newton and dominant
thereafter, the "positivists" (See "Bodies Having Purpose," http://www.shout.net/~bigred/BodPurp.html),
delighted principally in taking
measurements. Since Newton's "vegetable action" could not be measured,
alas, it was beneath consideration.
Early ideas had "heat" as a sort of fluid. "It" flows from hot
regions to cold regions. Then, around 1800, a shift of opinion
gradually occured: Heat was not a fluid; it was a form of motion. There
are "H molecules" (hot) and "C molecules" (cold). Collisions between
the H molecules and the C molecules occur at the boundary between hot
and cold. Eventually there is a normalization. But this normalization
need not always be so: it is conceivable that collisions between "H"
and "C" molecules could cause the faster moving H molecules to gain velocity.
J. Clerk Maxwell fantasized what is now called "Maxwell's Demon."
Two gas-filled containers, "H" and "C," connected by a valve,
controlled by an intelligent demon. Maxwell's demon selectively allows
any slower moving H molecules into the C container. Likewise, the demon
allows any faster moving C molecules into the H container. This would
cause the "heat" to "flow uphill," from cold to hot.
Well, this was rather unsettling to the entropics. They had
maintained that heat flows from hot regions to cold regions. Still, it
was a comfort that at least an equilibrium, in a closed system, was maintained.
There is an increasing evenness with which "heat" is spread out.
But this tendency to moderation of heat represents disorder. "Order" means
differentiation into categories. A tendency toward increasing evenness
meant a merging of categories, hence disorder. Implicit was that
disorder -- chaos -- tends to increase.
But by the way, what is "heat?"
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