The Rising Star
摘要
Professor Planck overworked. He was tired, leaning on a couch and holding in hand the new issue of Annalen der Physik, which had just arrived from the printing house. As a member of the editorial board, he was responsible for theory papers. He started to read again carefully the article On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. He stood up suddenly and started pacing back and forth in the study. He looked calm, but his mind was in upheaval. “No,” he said to himself. “It is not the time to be tired. Look at this A. Einstein. How daring and profound he is! He is revolutionizing physics. He argues that simultaneity can only be measured in a coordinate system. There is no absolute simultaneity, and so there is no absolute time. We have never questioned about Newton’s notion of time and space. Is it fundamentally flawed?” (Fig. 5.1)