Early 20th century Irish literature isn’t the first place you’d go to look for thought provoking scientific absurdism*, but The Third Policeman is such a find. A haunting novel, seeping with dark humor throughout.
We all know the Michelson–Morley experiment; in an attempt to prove the existence of ether, they developed an elegant way to measure the speed of light with mirrors. In The Third Policeman, the protagonist’s philosophical guru De Selby, took this to new extremes. After the realization that we when look in a mirror, we are always seeing ourselves in the past, he constructed a ‘familiar arrangement of parallel mirrors’ until he saw ‘the face of a beardless boy of twelve’. Unfortunately, he couldn’t regress further owing to ‘the curvature of the earth and limitations of the telescope’. We are also treated to arguments for why movement doesn’t exist, that night is a congregation of black air that asphyxiates us into sleep, and why quantum theory implies you shouldn’t ride your bicycle too often. An essential read.
Moving away from fiction, the e-Journal of Surface Science and Nanotechnology just published the proceedings from last year’s ICSFS conference. Peer reviewed and free access. Our contribution was Li/H in MgO.
*Although we do have Joyce to thank for “Three quarks for Muster Mark!”.