In 1905 Albert Einstein published five papers, three of which change physics and the world forever. He won the Nobel Prize for one of them, but not for the one we usually think of. Photons were described in the first; followed by evidence for the existence of the atom; that paper is followed by special relativity and finally E=mc2 is defined. It is the first of these papers that won the gold medal.
In between all this he is raising a family, he completes a doctoral dissertation and another paper that will be published in 1906, and he is working full time at the Swiss Patent Office. To top it all off he is only 26 years old.
In a later paper Einstein defines time and space within his theory of General Relativity. Somehow, as E=mc2 makes the immense energy that holds our world together understandable, general relativity makes the natural forces of time and space and mass real.
I think of this as I commute south down Lake Shore Drive on an especially stunning morning. After a week of rain, snow, ice and low scudding clouds the rising sun illuminates the downtown buildings with a reddish hue that second-by-second becomes an exhilarating bluish white.
To the East is the natural world and to the West is the world of commerce and art. I am part of both. The light of both worlds’ changes with the time of year, with atmospheric conditions and even, I suppose, with my mood.
Like a standing wave in a wild river there is a daily traffic jam at Buckingham Fountain. I find this serendipitous, for depending on the season the slow down allows me time to watch the sunrise, to inspect the fleet of anchored boats in Monroe harbor or to marvel at the man-made wall of lights that commences at Michigan avenue. I take advantage of the gridlock to take a deep breath and prepare to concentrate on the work ahead or to take stock in what transpired during the day.
Light, whatever its source, travels at 299,792,458 meters per second, give or take a few meters depending on the medium it passes through. But this hardly matters to me. What matters is that light can be focused through the plastic lenses of my eyeglasses, allowing my compromised vision to enjoy Chicago’s lakefront and skyline clearly.
What is our relationship to the light that inundates our world, and what must life have been like without the yellowish glow of tungsten, the sallow fluorescence of excited mercury vapors and more recently, the blinding halo created by LEDs. We build massive structures to power our denial of the night. Light has become so much a part of us that we are shocked to drive through an unlit section of the city. Can this be, this darkness… how is it allowed.
When I was younger I had to occasionally escape to darkness. Before credit cards and payday loans this meant saving a few hundred dollars, quitting my job and heading for the mountains, or as I did many times, seeking refuge in one of the last great wild spaces in the country, the Everglades. At one point after reading The Man Who Walked Through Time by Collin Fletcher, I even forbade myself the pleasures of a campfire in an attempt to immerse myself in the night.
On cloudless nights the icy light of the firmament would caress me as I lie on my back looking and trying to grasp the complexity of the Milky Way. I am wiser now about the intricate details of the universe, but I still grasp for an understanding of the information carried by the light that travels to the earth from the beginning of time.
I am not a mathematical genius. I squeaked through calculus by camping out at the professor’s doorstep and peppering him with endless questions regarding my solutions (or the lack of) to our assigned proofs. He was very patience with me and it paid off. After countless hours with paper and pencil in hand I did well in the class, and moved on, forgetting all but the most basic concepts of limits, derivatives and integrals.
The pathetic part of this is to truly understand the nature of light another language, one that I will never master, is needed. So I will have to be satisfied with my primordial reaction of awe as the eastern glow materializes and becomes a shimmering orb that courses through our sky, hardly noticed by most till it disappears to the west and leaves us wanting to begin another day.
Volume 5746 (4), 1/30/2009
