The speed of light is science's most revered measuring stick. Among countless other uses, the figure299,776 kilometers per secondhas been built into radars, which measure distances by the time it takes radio waves (traveling at the same speed as light) to cover them.
Commander Carl I. Aslakson of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey recently noted that a long series of land measurements made by shoran (a kind of radar) had gone wrong. Each measurement went wrong by the same small percentage. The measurers checked their instruments, checked their procedures. Everything was shipshape. The only thing left to account for the errors...
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