IN 1887 physicists were feeling pretty smug about their sub-ject. They thought they under-stood reality well, and that the future would just be one of ever more precise measurements. They could not have been more wrong. The next three decadesturned physics on its head, with the discovery of electrons, atomic nuclei, radioactivity, quantum theory and the theory of relativity. But the grit in the pearl for all this was a strange ob-servation made that year by two researchers called Albert Mi-chelson and Edward Morley that the speed of light was con-stant, no matter how fast the observer was travelling.
展开▼
