Account by two observers of a faint but distinctly triangular object,
visible for six nights in the sky. It was observed from two stations
that were not far apart. But the parallax was considerable. Whatever it
was, it was, acceptably, relatively close to this earth.
I should say that relatively to phenomena of light we are in confusion
as great as some of the discords that orthodoxy is in relatively to
light. Broadly and intermediatistically, our position is:
That light is not really and necessarily light--any more than is
anything else really and necessarily anything--but an interpretation of
a mode of force, as I suppose we have to call it, as light. At sea
level, the earth's atmosphere interprets sunlight as red or orange or
yellow. High up on mountains the sun is blue. Very high up on mountains
the zenith is black. Or it is orthodoxy to say that in inter-planetary
space, where there is no air, there is no light. So then the sun and
comets are black, but this earth's atmosphere, or, rather, dust
particles in it, interpret radiations from these black objects as light.
We look up at the moon.
The jet-black moon is so silvery white.
I have about fifty notes indicating that the moon has atmosphere:
nevertheless most astronomers hold out that the moon has no atmosphere.
They have to: the theory of eclipses would not work out otherwise. So,
arguing in conventional terms, the moon is black. Rather
astonishing--explorers upon the moon--stumbling and groping in intense
darkness--with telescopes powerful enough, we could see them stumbling
and groping in brilliant light.
Or, just because of familiarity, it is not now obvious to us how the
preposterousnesses of the old system must have seemed to the correlates
of the system preceding it.
Ye jet-black silvery moon.
Altogether, then, it may be conceivable that there are phenomena of
force that are interpretable as light as far down as the clouds, but not
in denser strata of air, or just the opposite of familiar
interpretations.
I now have some notes upon an occurrence that suggests a force not
interpreted by air as light, but interpreted, or reflected by the ground
as light. I think of something that, for a week, was suspended over
London: of an emanation that was not interpreted as light until it
reached the ground.
_Lancet_, June 1, 1867:
That every night for a week, a light had appeared in Woburn Square,
London, upon the grass of a small park, enclosed by railings. Crowds
gathering--police called out "for the special service of maintaining
order and making the populace move on." The Editor of the _Lancet_ went
to the Square. He says that he saw nothing but a patch of light falling
upon an arbor at the northeast corner of the enclosure. Seems to me that
that was interesting enough.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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