Andrew Zimmerman Jones - String Theory For Dummies

Maxwell’s equations allowed him to calculate the exact speed that an electromagnetic wave traveled. When Maxwell performed this calculation, he was amazed to find that he recognized the value. Electromagnetic waves move at exactly the speed of light!

Maxwell’s equations showed that visible light and electromagnetic waves are different manifestations of the same underlying phenomena. In other words, we see only a small range of the entire spectrum of electromagnetic waves that exist in our universe. Extending this unification to include all the forces of nature, including gravity, would ultimately lead to theories of quantum gravity such as string theory.

Two significant unanswered questions about the electromagnetic theory remained. The first problem was that the ether hadn’t been detected, while the second involved an obscure problem about energy radiation, called the blackbody problem (described in Chapter 7). What’s amazing, in retrospect, is that physicists didn’t see these problems (or dark clouds, as British scientist Lord Kelvin called them in a 1900 speech) as especially significant, but instead believed they were minor issues that would soon be resolved. As you see in Chapters 6and 7, resolving these two problems would introduce the great revolutions of modern physics: relativity and quantum physics.

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