Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930Various
Science
Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930
Various
Science fiction -- Periodicals; Science fiction, American -- Periodicals
Scientific "discoveries" are largely made by the trial and
error system. The scientist takes what he finds. Generally
he does not know, at first, what it means. Martell took his
oscillating current and "discovered" the Martel Magnetic
Levitation, whereby gravity was lessened, and then
completely nullified. Grenfell, with his de-electroniration,
increased the power of gravity. The two were combined by
Grenfell and his associates--and the secret of
interplanetary flight was at hand.
But there was a host of other workers not interested in
space flyers; they probed in other directions. It was found
that the subnormal magnetic field surrounding a metallic
substance in a state of de-electroniration had two unusual
properties: its color absorption was high; and it bent light
rays from their normal straight path into a curve abnormally
great. Yet, though it absorbed the color of the rays
emanating from the de-electronired metal (the metal itself
increasing this result), the magnetic field, while bending
the rays passing through it from distant objects behind it,
nevertheless left their color and all their inherent
properties unchanged.
The principles of color absorption are these:--a pigment--a
paint, a dye, if you will--is "red" because it absorbs from
the light rays of the sun all the other colors and leaves
only red to be reflected from it to the eye. Or "violet"
because all the rest are absorbed, and the violet is
reflected. Or "black" because all are absorbed; and "white"
the reverse, all blended and reflected. Color is dependent
upon vibratory motion. The solar spectrum--its range of
visibility through the primary colors from red to
violet--can be likened to a range of radio wave-lengths;
vibration frequencies; and when we eliminate them all save
the "violet"--that is what we have left, in the radio to
hear, in color absorption to see.
Thus, a de-electronired metal was found to produce black.
Not black as habitually we meet it--a "shiny" black, a
"dull" black; but a true black--a real absence of light-ray
reflection--a "nothingness to see"; in effect, an
invisibility.
A word of explanation is necessary regarding the other
property of the de-electronired field--the bending of
distant light rays into a curve, yet leaving their spectrum
unchanged. It was Albert Einstein who first made the
statement--in the years following the turn of the century at
1900--that it was a normal, natural thing for a ray of light
to be slightly deflected from its straight path when passing
through a magnetic field. The claim caused world-wide
interest, for upon its truth or falsity the whole fabric of
the Einstein Theory of Relativity was woven.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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