From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Fri Sep 20 2002 - 17:37:33 MDT
> At the 1983 Conference Generale des Poids et Mesures the following SI
> (Systeme International) definition of the metre was adopted:
>
> "The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a
> time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second. This defines the speed of light
> in vacuum to be exactly 299,792,458 m/s."
>
> This provides a very short answer to the question "Is c constant": Yes, c
> is constant by definition!
>
> <snip>
[Nurgle]
This seems like veyr bad science to me. Einstien did his work long before the change in definition of a metre was introduced, therefore this definition cannot really be used, can it?
[rhinoceros]
This is the way things work. They have always been trying to find something constant so that they can define what a meter is. The speed of light, which had been measured even before Einstein, looked like a good idea, but they may have to move to another definition at some point in the future.
You can find more details here:
http://www.sizes.com/units/meter.htm
---- This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=26002>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Sep 25 2002 - 13:28:59 MDT