Science: Measuring the Universe

Where lies the land to which the ship would go?

Far, far, ahead is all her seamen know.

—Arthur Hugh Clough

Astronauts heading for some distant planet may not be quite as ignorant as Clough's seamen. But if a spaceshipload of them were to blast off tomorrow, they could not predict their landing point within thousands of miles. Such uncertainty could be disastrous, and Physicist F. E. Lowther of General Electric Co. hopes to do something about it. He is starting his campaign with an effort to correct that old reliable constant of physics: the speed of light (now calculated at 186,282 m.p.h.).

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