Que Sera, Sera

science:

Irregular Webcomic:

Imagine you are James Clerk Maxwell, in 1865, formulating your theory of electricity and magnetism, and writing down your four equations for the first time in history. You write down the terms of these equations based on your experiments with electric batteries, bits of wire, and magnets. (…) You take the values you measured for εo and μo, multiply them together, take the square root, and then take the reciprocal. The answer is a speed, so it has units of speed, in this case metres per second. And the answer is very close to 300,000,000 metres per second. Converted into miles, that’s a tad over 186,000 miles per second. Being James Clerk Maxwell, and a brilliant physicist, you immediately recognise what this number is.

The speed of light. (…)

When you were writing down your equations, you were thinking about electricity and magnetism. Light was the farthest thing from your mind. You had not the slightest clue (and nor did anyone else) that light was related to elecricity or magnetism. But there it is, falling out of your equations.

You realise that you are the first person in all of history to know what light is made of. Can you imagine that feeling?