杏吧原创

Light Years by Brian Clegg, Piatkus, 拢14.99, ISBN 0749921978

LIGHT鈥橲 properties often seem mysterious to the point of being unfathomable.
Yet in this extraordinary book Brian Clegg manages to explain them through the
lives of those so fixated with light that they have shaped our perception of it.
All the usual gang are there: Galileo, Newton, Faraday and Einstein. But other
players emerge to take their rightful places among the Lichtmeisters:
the German poet Goethe, Renaissance artist Brunelleschi and the French
Impressionist Seurat, to name but three.

Clegg鈥檚 accessible writing style manages to encapsulate the lives of light鈥檚
disciples with humorous and interesting anecdotes. These often involve the
protagonist in an ordinate degree of self-mutilation鈥擭ewton tested the
effect of the eye鈥檚 shape on vision by inserting a thin knife between his eye
and socket. Clegg also provides real scientific insight into how light behaves.
He explains complex theories through lucid metaphors, without resorting to the
elaborate diagrams so beloved of some popular science writers. This doesn鈥檛 stop
him tackling the 鈥渋s light a wave or particle?鈥� dilemma, quantum electrodynamics
and the EPR paradox. Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen devised a thought experiment
that showed quantum mechanics to be incomplete.

This is not a history of science textbook though. Clegg brings us to the
present with the work of, among others, G眉nther Nimtz and Lijun Wang, whose
experiments are challenging accepted theories that the speed of light is
constant. There is also some speculation on the properties of 鈥渟low鈥� glass,
which can decelerate light to the speed of a bicycle. Clegg indulges in future
gazing, too, the results of which are quite awesome.

My tip: skip the first two pages, and read them after you鈥檝e finished the
book to get the full impact.