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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!bbncca!keesan
From: keesan@bbncca.ARPA (Morris Keesan)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.physics
Subject: C as constant
Message-ID: <226@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 25-Oct-83 14:13:41 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbncca.226
Posted: Tue Oct 25 14:13:41 1983
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Oct-83 06:55:14 EDT
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 7

Well, the international standards community certainly considers the speed of
light to be a constant.  This weeks's _S_c_i_e_n_c_e_ _N_e_w_s reports that the official
international definition of a meter is a specific fraction of the speed of
light in a vacuum.  The meter was previously defined in terms of the wavelength
of a particular color of light, with a specification of how to produce that
wavelength, and prior to that the meter was defined as the distance between
two marks on a platinum-iridium bar kept somewhere in Paris.