JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

I found–or bumped into–the following short note in Nature (September 5, 1878) .  At first glance it has a flat-earthy/Nazis-on-the-dark-side-of-the-Moon quality to it, or at least to me it did. It is a very unexpected question, though it isn’t quite what it seems at the outset before you try to think about what part of one-sidedness the author, Balfour Stewart, is addressing. Read the note, and then the title will make sense.  

“Balfour Stewart, (born Nov. 1, 1828, Edinburgh—died Dec. 19, 1887, Drogheda, Ire.), Scottish meteorologist and geophysicist noted for his studies of terrestrial magnetism and radiant heat. Stewart pursued a mercantile career for 10 years before becoming an assistant at Kew Observatory and later an assistant to James Forbes at Edinburgh University, where Stewart conducted his research on radiant heat. In 1859 he became director of Kew Observatory, and in 1870 he became professor of natural philosophy at Owens College, Manchester. In his work on radiant heat, Stewart was the first to discover that bodies radiate and absorb energy of the same wavelength; his work in this field was soon surpassed, however, by that of the German physicist Gustav Kirchhoff. In his studies of terrestrial magnetism, Stewart discovered that daily variation in the magnetic field could be explained by air currents in the upper atmosphere, which act as conductors and generate electrical currents as they pass through the Earth’s magnetic field.”–Encyclopedia Britannica