Skulls in the Stars

A post inspired by work I’m doing on my next book, on the history of invisibility! Also will help me get my thoughts in order to write the book chapter.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, humanity’s understanding of the nature of light underwent a dramatic transformation. For about a century, the study of optics had been dominated by the views of Isaac Newton, who published his classic work on the subject, Opticks, in 1704. Newton did rigorous experiments, testing the properties of light in every way imaginable in his era, and concluded from his work that light consists of a stream of particles. Newton’s work seemed to put to rest an argument that had raged in his time — is light a stream of tiny particles, or a wave, like water and sound? In 1800, however, the British scientist Thomas Young published the first of several papers arguing that light does, in fact, have wavelike properties, and his research would be the start of a new era of wave optics that continues (with some important modifications) to this day.

I’m not sure how many people are aware of the work of Young. I think most scientists have heard about his most famous contribution, now known as Young’s double-slit experiment, but even most of them may not be aware of the fascinating story of how Young came to his conclusions. This post is an attempt to rectify this.