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From: rsl@SPA-Nimbus@sri-unix.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.physics
Subject: Re: Speed of light
Message-ID: <4375@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Aug-83 15:40:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.4375
Posted: Fri Aug 19 15:40:00 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Aug-83 06:07:18 EDT
Lines: 24

From:  Richard Lamson <rsl at SPA-Nimbus>

    Date: 19 Aug 1983 0421-EDT
    From: Robert W. Kerns <RWK@SCRC-TENEX>
	Date: 19 August 1983 02:06 EDT
	From: Keith F. Lynch <KFL @ MIT-MC>
		[Submitted to physics by dciem!ntt]
		"According to next month's issue of Science 83, the participants in the
		international Geneva Conference on Weights and Measures in October will
		adopt a new definition of the meter; it will be the distance travelled
		by light in 1/299792458 of a second (in a vacuum, I presume)."
     
	  So after that date any scientist who thinks he is measuring the speed
	of light is actually doing nothing of the sort.  He is measuring the
	length of the meter!
	  Isn't it amazing how much of 'reality' is made by such means?

    Funny; I had though it was already so defined.  Does anybody
    know how a second is defined?
It's so many ticks of a cesium clock, I think.  It's funny, I had read
the same story about defining the length of the meter and never figured
out that it meant that it means there is no independent measure of the
speed of light.  Anybody have any idea how one would operationally
measure the length of the meter given the new definition?