Skulls in the Stars

History of science

A WTF scientific paper from Edinburgh, 1884

... the Hell? / History of science / Physics

I’m still quite busy finishing off my book, and a grant proposal in the meantime, but I thought I’d share a very odd paper from the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 13 (1884), 23-24, entitled, “Extraordinary occurrence at House No. 7 York Place”.

One of the fun things about old journals are the miscellaneous “reports” sent in about unusual phenomena seen in the field, often by non-scientists.  Perhaps my favorite example of this comes from the very first volume of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1665, “An account of a very odd monstrous calf,” by Robert Boyle.  This was the fifth paper ever published in a scientific journal, a fact that I find very amusing for some reason.

The paper I want to describe carries the sub-heading, “(The following notice was sent to the General Secretary, from the Office of Messrs Hunter, Blair and Cowan, W.S.)”.  I can’t really do it justice without quoting it in its entirety:

(more…)

Read More...

Mythbusters were scooped — by 130 years! (Archimedes death ray)

History of science

Searching through old journals results in wonderfully serendipitous moments.  I originally started searching through the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for articles by Lord Kelvin, but along the way have found all sorts of interesting and thought-provoking papers.

A few weeks ago I noted that one article, “On the bursting of firearms when the muzzle is closed by snow, earth, grease, &c.”, foreshadowed later attempts by the MythBusters to test whether the barrel of a gun will “banana peel” when fired with a plug in it.  About the same time, however, and in an earlier volume of the Proceedings, I found an article with the title, “On the burning mirrors of Archimedes, and on the Concentration of light produced by reflectors,” by John Scott.  This article is also an investigation of a myth that would be tackled some 130 years later by the MythBusters!  Apparently the 1870s-1880s were a good era for ‘busting!

(more…)

Read More...

Mythbusters were scooped — by 130 years! (Finger in the barrel)

Entertainment / History of science / Physics

During my first evening in San Antonio, I sequestered myself in my hotel room to polish up my presentation.  Fortunately, there was a Mythbusters marathon on the Discovery Channel at that time, so I was able to keep myself marginally sane by watching the ‘Busters abuse places, things, and themselves for the cause of science.

One of the episodes that played during the marathon contained the “finger in the barrel” myth — the idea that a person can stick a finger in the barrel of a rifle or shotgun as it fires, causing the barrel to split like a banana peel without harm to the finger!  The initial investigation of the ‘busters clearly demonstrated that a finger would certainly be lost in the attempt, and that a barrel would not split in the manner suggested.  An updated investigation two years later, however, demonstrated that a rifle barrel could be split if sufficiently weakened by use.

In a remarkable case of serendipity, the next evening I was browsing the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and came across an article with the title, “On the bursting of firearms when the muzzle is closed by snow, earth, grease, &c.”!  The article, by Professor George Forbes, is a theoretical explanation of the bursting of firearms and was published in the 1878-1879 session of the Royal Society, meaning that Forbes’ investigation was some 130 years before the Mythbusters!  The calculation and explanation are short and entertaining, and I thought it would be fun to take a look at them.

(more…)

Read More...

Lord Kelvin vs. the Aether! (1901)

History of science / Physics

The more I study the history of aether physics, the more I feel that modern physicists underappreciate both the huge influence the theory had on the development of physics and how it indirectly spurred many positive scientific discoveries, even though it is an incorrect theory. The “aether”, for those not familiar with it, was a hypothetical substance theorized in the early 1800s to be the medium in which light waves propagate, just as water waves travel through water and sound waves travel through air.  Many papers were written speculating on the nature of the aether before Einstein’s special theory of relativity (1905) argued convincingly that the aether was unnecessary.

Nevertheless, these speculations resulted in a number of interesting results.  For instance, we have noted previously that Earnshaw’s theorem (1839), an important result in electromagnetic theory, arose from an attempt to determine the forces that hold the aether together.  In 1902, Lord Rayleigh attempted to detect the aether-induced “length contraction” by measuring the birefringence of moving objects, an ingenious attempt that gave a negative result.

In the broadest sense, a “good” theory is one which raises interesting questions that may inevitably be tested by experiment.  Even if it proves to be fundamentally incorrect in the end, it has spurred numerous theoretical and experimental results.  This can be contrasted with sham “theories” such as intelligent design (the “theory” that living creatures are too complex to have developed without the aid of a creator), which has resulted in no testable predictions and exists only as a way to push religion into the classroom.

By 1900, the aether remained a vexing mystery, and perhaps the foremost scientific problem, for the physicists of the era.  It is not surprising that many famous scientists expended considerable energy to try and elucidate its properties.  In 1901, a paper appeared in the Philosophical Magazine (Ser. 6, vol. 2, 161-177) by the famous (even infamous) Lord Kelvin, entitled, “On Ether and Gravitational Matter through Infinite Space.”  It is not, in fact, an original publication; as Kelvin puts it,

This is an amplification of Lecture XVI, Baltimore, Oct. 15, 1884, now being prepared for print in a volume on Molecular Dynamics and the Wave Theory of Light, which I hope may be published within a year from the present time.

In fact, the article begins with a reprinting of material from 1854, nearly fifty years old!  This is, if nothing else, a measure of how baffling the aether was to physicists of the time — material fifty years old was still, in some sense, “state of the art”.

The 1901 paper, as a whole, summarizes Kelvin’s theoretical musings on the nature of the aether, and highlights how perplexing the topic remained before Einstein’s wonderful theory came along and shattered the aether hypothesis once and for all.

(more…)

Read More...

Lord Rayleigh on Darwin

General science / History of science

There are lots of fascinating connections one can uncover by browsing the history of science.  In my search for Lord Rayleigh’s invisibility research, I happened across a paper titled, “Insects and the colours of flowers,” published in Nature 11 (1874), 6.  This comment by Rayleigh is short enough to be reproduced in full:

There is one point connected with Mr. Darwin’s explanation of the bright colours of flowers which I have never seen referred to.  The assumed attractiveness of bright colours to insects would appear to involve the supposition that the colour-vision of insects in approximately the same as our own.  Surely this is a good deal to take for granted, when it is known that even among ourselves colour-vision varies greatly, and that no inconsiderable number of persons exist to whom, for example, the red of the scarlet geranium is no bright colour at all, but almost a match with the leaves.

(more…)

Read More...

Lord Rayleigh’s comments on invisibility (1884)

History of science / Invisibility

Found it! I pointed out in my previous invisibility post that R.W. Wood attributes an early discussion of invisibility to Lord Rayleigh in his Encyclopædia Britannica article on optics; however, I couldn’t find the quote after browsing Rayleigh’s articles and wondered if Wood had miscited Rayleigh’s work.

A bit of closer inspection, however, shows that I overlooked Rayleigh’s comment, which was buried in a footnote in his article on geometrical optics (Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 17 (1884, 9th ed.), 798-807), in what I would have considered an unlikely place, namely his discussion of achromatic object-glasses (p. 805).  The footnote is as follows:

Even when the optical differences are not small it is well to remember that transparent bodies are only visible in virtue of a variable illumination.   If the light falls equally in all directions, as it might approximately do for an observer on a high monument during a thick fog, the edge of (for example) a perfectly transparent prism would be absolutely invisible.  If a spherical cloud, composed of absolutely transparent material, surround symmetrically a source of light, the illumination at a distance would not be diminished by its presence.

(more…)

Read More...

The Discoverie of Witchcraft, by Reginald Scot (1584)

History of science / Religion

One topic that I’ve long had a fascination with is the history of skeptical and scientific thought.  Human beings are naturally endowed with the ability to reason, but that reason is a far cry from a belief in a world governed by immutable natural laws.  This is why I consider scientific education to be very important on a societal level; ignorance and fear combined with credulity can lead to devastating consequences: the bloody period of witch hunting in Europe resulted in somewhere between 40,000 and 100,000 executions, a colossal waste of life and perversion of justice.  I’ve written before about the real human suffering these witch hunts inflicted.  It is frightening to note that such times are not completely behind us.

In the midst of such times of ignorance and superstition, however, there are always shining pillars of skeptical and rational thought that beat back the darkness, at least temporarily.  On such example is Reginald Scot (1538-1599), who took the incredibly bold step to not only defend accused witches against the charges laid before them, but to also prove once and for all that witchcraft does not exist!  His views were presented in his book The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), a lengthy tome which chronicles the supposed powers of witches and provides devastating arguments against them:

discoveriediscoverie

I’ve had this book in my collection for probably a decade, long before I was really interested in blogging or the history of science, but had not managed to get through it until now.  It is an extremely difficult book to read, being written in archaic Early Modern English and using many words and phrases which are outdated and virtually unknown.  I found it extremely rewarding, however, for its glimpses into the naturalistic thinking of the time, the utter absurdity of the witch hunter’s claims, and the wisdom and courage of its author.  I dare say I even found it inspiring.

(more…)

Read More...