io9: Galileo's Ship Was One of the Oldest Relativity Though Experiments

It has always irked me, a little, when people claim that Einstein "invented" relativity. The man was a genius, to be sure, and contributed greatly to our understanding of general and special relativity in modern physics -- but the idea of relativity existed well before him. The term itself is quite broad, encompassing everything from temporal and spatial relativity to more nebulous perspective- and human interaction-based concepts; it hardly seems possible that despite hundreds of years of innovation in math and physics, relativity only arose within the past century. Certainly, there have been a number of similar (if more rudimentary) observations throughout history, such as Zeno's paradox(es). One of the oldest examples dates from the Renaissance:

http://io9.com/galileos-ship-was-one-of-the-oldest-relativity-thought-486468038

It sounds like a very low-tech version of Einstein's lasers-on-a-train thought experiment, doesn't it?

This brings to mind a blog post from about a year ago... Straying away from the sciences for a moment, relativity as an abstract concept -- even models of relative perspective uncannily like the sort of thought experiments Einstein proposed -- seems to have existed in the literary and cultural milieu for quite a while. It's reasonable to conjecture that there was some cross-pollination. (Eliot, for example, even drops an allusion or two to relativity in "The Waste Land.") The idea of relativity is marvelously intuitive (albeit in a slightly mind-bendy way) and quite useful in describing life alongside other sentient beings.

Cover-a-Week #7: "Galileo" by the Indigo Girls

In honor of Galileo's 449th birthday:


http://youtu.be/ggVZ90hprAM

io9: Race Relations in the Space Age

An adorable, moving video about breaking all sorts of glass ceilings in pursuit of one's dreams (also, Star Trek pioneering integration FTW):

http://io9.com/5981089/a-sweet-animated-tale-of-challenger-astronaut-ronald-mcnairs-early-experience-standing-up-to-racism

Ronald McNair. I didn't know who he was until I saw this, but I'm glad I found it. I'll admit to tearing up a little at the end. (Challenger, why?) He's one of the many unsung heroes of science -- much as the Catholic Church has a body of saints, I propose that science establish its own roster of martyrs for the cause. McNair would be up there with Galileo and Marie Curie.

Physics from Hell

Speaking of Galileo:



It's quite fascinating how this entire body of mythology developed as a way of rationalizing a historical document in light of scientific advances over the course of centuries. It led to some pretty interesting literalist interpretations, as shown above. (Obviously, Biblical literalism yielded some rather significant results, mostly through its loss of scientific credibility. Ironic, but not surprising.)

Poetry vs. the Inquisition

A thought on the power of poetry, or perhaps just the abstruseness of some of the stuff:

If Galileo had said in verse that the world moved, the inquisition might have let him alone.

~ Thomas Hardy

Of course, if Galileo had written the Dialogue in the style of Vergil, he might never have achieved the posthumous scientific success that he did. (Then again, there were Renaissance men in his day, scientist-poet-philosophers. I wish our modern education system allowed for that -- but that's for a different post all together.)

Hardy was himself a great poet, so he knows whereof he speaks.