Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-09-28

despite ths prOS Inatty of It's treatment has
been bse< seller both here and abroad
Within its covers thousands of Americans have
become acquainted with the Fitzgerald con-
traction asaa the quantum theory but few of
them can care 10 believe that they have a
speaking acquaintance with either.
I spoke Of this book to DR.. Nicholson when,
somewhat tartly, he suggested that the public
had very little Zeal interest in the coming tests
at Santa Ana. Il can't See he said how the
public can hope to understand questions upon
which the experts not agreed" thought
the circulation of the Eddington volume was
evidence SUFFICIENT that the public was intensely
interested
the book and don't understand all Of it my
self"
But whether he was paying his respects to
Edcngton's power of Qualification or whether
he was acknowledging his own insuticieucy in
aspects Of physics in which he has not special
lied, had no means of knowing My impress
sion was that Nicholson was confessing his
own ignorance, but he delivered himself i'm a
way that encouraged no extension of this par
hcular discussion, SO let the matter pass
THE plain fact is that no physicist worthy
Of the name pretends to any conclusive
understanding because within the last so years
the physical world has gone topsy -turvy and
at this moment is in process of reconstruction
Eddington repeatedly says SO, remarking that
an addition to knowledge now is won at the
expense Of an addition to ignorance. He as
.seTts unequivocalIy that there is something
radically wrong with the present fundamental
conception of physics and we do not see how
30 set it right" and, sflming down to the last
fundamental, he admits taat the best definition
of matter is that it lis an electrical charge
and an electrical charge Is something which
exeFts electric force
During Michelsons lifetime end due in great
part to him, physical science SsaX come to this
impasse, working over the Commissions he has
advanced, adding to his luster So the greatest
worker in pure science that, with the excep-
ton of Millikan, America has produced
There is dramatic interest in this effort, here
and now, to establish finally a problem that
Calico set for himself and tried to solve with
the crude lanterns of his day and his unaided
eye. Every high school student who has gone
through elementary physics knows that CLAUS
Romer, the Dane, made one of the greatest of
scientific discoveries-that of the propagation
OF light in time-by carefully observing the
.eclipses of Jupiter's satellites. Romer first
established lights velocity at $4,000 miles a
second Other physcists-Foucault, Fifeau
CoFnu-made their calculations refining their
methods until in 1878 Nicholson made his first
experiments and put the figure at 1856 508 Half
= century Of precision has reduced it stil
farther, and, now that he is to try again. we
await the final result.
As / looked at the little old man before me
tt was difficult to perceive the genius in the
substance genius that, as some one has said
lies wholly in his extraordinary power to sim
plfy. Here was the quinteSSence of intel
lectuality; the farthest projection the race has
made from the primal mud; the clearest cold
est thinking, qua thinking. brain power to
the nth degree. Aud yet he was merely quiet,
unassertive old man, the stub of cigar gone
70 e1nder in his fingers. his shoes polished his