OT: Speed of light [was Re: Why not a Python compiler?]

[Steve Holden]

greg wrote:
> Gabriel Genellina wrote:
> 
>> Before the famous Michelson-Morley experiment (end of s. XIX), some  
>> physicists would have said "light propagates over ether, some kind of  
>> matter that fills the whole space but has no measurable mass", but the  
>> experiment failed to show any evidence of it existence.
> 
> Not just that, but it showed there was something seriously weird
> about space and time -- how can light travel at the same speed
> relative to *everyone*? Einstein eventually figured it out.
> 
> In hindsight, Maxwell's equations had been shouting "Relativity!"
> at them all along, but nobody had seen it.
> 
>> previous experiments showed 
>> that  light was not made of particles either.
> 
> Except that the photoelectric effect showed that it *is* made
> of particles. Isn't the universe fun?
> 
>> Until DeBroglie formulated 
>> its  hypothesis of dual nature of matter (and light): wave and particle 
>> at the  same time.
> 
> Really it's neither waves nor particles, but something else for
> which there isn't a good word in everyday English. Physicists
> seem to have got around that by redefining the word "particle"
> to mean that new thing.
> 
> So to get back to the original topic, it doesn't really matter
> whether you talk about light travelling or propagating. Take
> your pick.
> 
Well the history of physics for at least two hundred years has been a 
migration away from the intuitive. In strict linguistic terms the word 
"subatomic" is a fine oxymoron. I suspect it's really "turtles all the 
way down".

regards
  Steve
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