Chapter 590: Length Contraction and Time Dilation
“Aether Drift?”
Allen savored this newly coined term carefully and couldn’t help but click his tongue: “Brilliant! This description is simply a perfect explanation for this state. So what are we waiting for? Let’s begin.”
Bruce shook his head, a mysterious expression appearing on his chubby face.
“Since this involves optics, we had better consult a super big shot and ask him to help.”
Eva slapped him on the back with a smack, saying dissatisfiedly: “Why keep us in suspense? If you have something to say, just say it directly.”
Bruce rubbed his back, his imposing manner suddenly gone, and said in a small voice: “I’m a Legendary Wizard after all, can’t you give me a little respect? I mean, let’s go find His Excellency Warren.”
Luther’s eyes lit up, and he said loudly: “Find His Excellency Warren who weighed the earth core and invented the torsion balance with a suspended wire?”
Bruce nodded, the flesh on his chubby face trembling slightly.
“Yes. His Excellency Warren is proficient in manufacturing various precision instruments. I heard he is recently working on a project to electromagnetize the mechanical computer. However, what we’re consulting him about isn’t this so-called electromagnetic computer. His Excellency Warren has deeply researched optics; we are earnestly requesting his help to design an interferometer.”
“Interferometer? About light.”
Allen pondered this new noun, murmuring.
“Yes, exactly a light interferometer. To measure secondary effects, there must be an interferometer.”
Bruce said with absolute certainty.
“A light interferometer? This idea you proposed is very interesting. Let me think about it.”
Inside Warren’s Wizard Tower, next to a giant machine taller than ten men, flashing with light and emitting the bzzz sound of electric current, Bruce’s group proposed their idea. Warren pulled a switch on the machine. Bzzz!
The electric current abruptly increased. A massive number of electronic components lit up, and complex integrated circuits ran rapidly.
Warren was covered in dirt. He cast a “Clean” cantrip on himself, becoming clean and decent, then turned to Bruce and the others and said: “This big guy is the main result of my recent research. You have to know, I’ve been trying to compress it, make it smaller. I think it’s a material issue. We wizards can’t just use spatial magic to shrink computers for carrying; the cost of that is too high.”
Bruce’s group walked behind Warren, nodding subconsciously, not quite clear on what Warren wanted to do.
They left this place full of the buzzing sound of electricity. Warren pressed a button on a metal door, and they directly walked into a spacious and bright reception room. There was no smell of machine oil here, only fresh green plants. Various animated wooden mannequins bustled about, carrying tea and desserts.
Through the oversized floor-to-ceiling windows, the midday sunlight spilled in, making one feel warm and comfortable.
Warren pointed a hand at the sofa and said amiably: “Everyone, take a seat. Where were we just now?”
“You wanted to make the computer smaller.”
Allen said, his eyes shining.
Warren smiled and slapped his head: “Right, smaller. Smaller means it can hold more. At the same time, the cost will also be lower. We must make the cost extremely low, low enough that a Junior Wizard Apprentice can afford it. Do you know what this means?”
Allen stood up and said excitedly: “I know! This means a new era! Every wizard, even a Junior Apprentice, will have a computer auxiliary device. Moreover, the computer can integrate some everyday life magic, industrial magic, and combat magic!”
Warren snapped his fingers and also said excitedly: “Yes, exactly! In my vision, we can establish a Magic Net similar to the Wizard World’s in Kaya. Perhaps we should ask Lord Ace to build this. In short, with this infrastructure, in the future, not only wizards, but ordinary Mages can also cast various magics with the help of this tool!
“We will enter an era of massive magic popularization! And the launch of this era requires two things: first is the Magic Net, and second is a micro electromagnetic computer.”
He raised his hands high. Sunlight hit him through the floor-to-ceiling window, looking as if a saint had descended.
“We wizards will usher in the Great Magic Era, benefiting all humans and even intelligent lifeforms! They will be free from the troubles of learning, and can use integrated microcomputer devices to memorize and cast various spells.
“This kind of computer device of ours should be an open system, with many portable plugs to load and unload different functional modules. The computer is mainly integrated with semiconductors. I plan to call this kind of device a ‘Magical Apparatus’!”
Allen couldn’t help but applaud. Bruce, Eva, and Luther were already dumbfounded.
Allen said yearningly: “That will absolutely be a great era of magic—no, it should be called the Great Magus Era. This is a great enterprise; please, you must let me join.”
Although Bruce knew that Allen had always been enamored with the computer concept proposed by Lord Ace, they came to find Warren to design an interferometer. Now the interferometer hadn’t even been designed, and a partner was about to run off?
For a moment, Bruce felt a rush of heat straight to his head.
He looked somewhat stifled at the two discussing heatedly, listening to their words of mutual admiration, his cheeks puffing out like a big frog’s. Finally, as the sun gradually set, Bruce couldn’t help but say: “Your Excellency Warren, actually we wanted to ask you to help us research and design a kind of interferometer…”
Before he finished speaking, Allen interrupted him and said: “You guys go back first. I’ll slowly talk to His Excellency Warren about this.”
Warren pulled Allen, saying admiringly: “You truly have great ideas; you should have cooperated with me earlier. Don’t worry about the interferometer. If there are no accidents, just come find me in a week.”
Bang!
The three were almost pushed out by Allen and kicked out of Warren’s Wizard Tower. They looked at each other in dismay. Luther scratched his head and said doubtfully: “Are we missing a person?”
Bruce said angrily: “Yeah! The Aether wind hasn’t been found, the idea for the interferometer hasn’t been fully explained, and we lost a person first. I’m not angry at all, really!”
Eva bit her lower lip and said softly: “Don’t mind it too much, Bruce. You know how much Allen loves this computer thing. He actually isn’t very interested in the Aether wind, he only researched it together out of friendship. Remember when we were in ‘Fantasia’? His dream space was entirely filled with mechanical computers.”
Bruce nodded, kicked a stone by the roadside, and walked slowly.
“I know. I just… just feel a bit angry, and also a bit regretful. This is discovering the Aether wind! It’s a pity Allen missed it.”
Speechless, the three returned to Bruce’s Wizard Tower.
A week later, a Shadow Crow tapped on the window with a caw caw. Bruce opened the window, and with a caw, the crow spat out a large box far exceeding its body size.
Bruce opened the box and saw a precision instrument and a magic parchment scroll.
“Equal Optical Path Difference Interferometer! Excellent!”
Bruce looked at the instructions on the magic parchment, his eyes bright.
“Composed of plane mirrors, a 50/50 beam splitter, a beam expander, and an optical screen, along with screws, slide rails, drum wheels, stands, etc. Based on the principle of plane mirror reflection.
“The plane mirrors are used to form a virtual air wedge and generate an optical path difference. The 50/50 beam splitter is used to split the light waves. The beam expander is used to expand the beam for easy observation. The optical screen is used to receive diffraction images.
“Perfect.”
A trace of a smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. Bruce anxiously called for Luther and Eva, and the three entered the laboratory together.
The entire laboratory was very tidy. Light-shielding magic was deployed all around, making the entire room pitch black.
They fixed the interferometer on a stone disk. Eva used magic to drive the stone disk to rotate. Luther was responsible for creating the light source. The light source was split by the beam splitter into two rays of light, reaching the two reflectors respectively.
After these two beams of light were reflected, they passed through the semi-transparent mirror again, undergoing interference and producing concentric rings of fringes on the optical screen.
This instrument was extremely exquisite. As the stone disk slowly rotated, the three seemed to already feel the slight coolness of the Aether wind. Bruce didn’t even dare to breathe heavily, holding his breath as he observed.
Disbelief flashed in Bruce ‘s eyes: the fringes on the optical screen were completely identical!
“How is this possible? The speed of the two beams of light should be different, and the fringes should also be different. How could this be?”
He roared out loud, as if using all his strength.
“Don’t be anxious, Bruce. Perhaps we are too slow and need to accelerate.”
As she spoke, Eva spun the stone disk faster.
But no matter how fast the disk spun, the interference fringes only had a minute difference compared to when the disk was stationary, far from the actual calculation.
The three lay in Bruce ‘s reception room with worried faces. The magic parchment scroll was unrolled, but no one wanted to pick up a pen to record.
“When light propagates in the Aether in a vacuum, its speed is constant. And actually, the speed of light is also constant in non-vacuum Aether. Searching for the Aether wind yet there is no Aether wind. If analyzed from the perspective of drag, Aether is absolutely stationary, but this cannot explain stellar aberration!”
Bruce ‘s face was full of worry. His mental imagery world seemed to have developed slight cracks, causing the entire space to shake unstably.
“Calm down, Bruce, calm down. Aether is ultimately just a hypothesis; don’t treat a hypothesis as cognition. We need to believe the experimental results. Perhaps Aether doesn’t exist?”
Eva spoke without thinking for a moment.
Bruce felt his mental imagery world becoming even more unstable. He sank his mind into it, tried hard to adjust his state, lowered his voice as much as possible, and said: “If there is no Aether, how do you explain light waves propagating in the void? This is too absurd! Aether is the foundational hypothesis of electromagnetism! The reference frame of the Thales-Blania equations is stationary Aether.”
He was very confused, feeling that the majestic edifice of electromagnetism seemingly had an unstable foundation and was about to suffer a major collapse.
Luther hesitated for a moment, and finally asked: “Then are we still going to publish this experiment?”
Bruce sank weakly into the sofa. After about half an hour of silence, he wearily opened his eyes and said in a hoarse voice: “Publish it. Luther, you write the summary. Even if we don’t publish it, someone will do similar experiments in the future. It’s better to publish early, discuss early, and try our best to avoid dire consequences.”
One stone stirred up a thousand waves!
The experimental report by the four people—Bruce, Warren, Luther, and Eva—caused a massive shock. After pondering for a long time, Bruce felt that although he proposed the idea, the interferometer was manufactured by Warren, and Warren played a very important key role, thus he was listed as an author.
The Null Result Experimental Report on Light Interference caused a massive uproar. Thales looked at the experiment, almost unable to believe it. He and Blania immediately repeated this experiment, and the final result was the same as Bruce and the others.
“This… this is too unbelievable.”
Thales felt his whole body trembling. Perfect electromagnetism was facing an immense challenge.
Meanwhile, wizards began heated discussions. No one noticed that Ace had published a geometry paper under His own name.
Because it was pure mathematics, this paper wasn’t published in Magic, but in Numbers and Geometry.
This paper was titled Elliptic Geometry. Simply put, this article discussed spherical geometry, which is different from plane geometry; that is, spherical geometry where the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is greater than 180 degrees.
This short article did not attract any attention amidst the stormy wave of the null result report.
This null result incident didn’t cause any wave of exploding heads. After all, the foundation was a hypothesis, and the vast majority of people could overcome their cognition. But this null result report became a dark cloud, a dark cloud looming over the heads of electromagnetic wizards.
Their strength began to stagnate. The mental imagery worlds of some even shattered and solidified, never to advance again.
“We need to defend Aether!”
Inside the Wizard Tower, Thales, sporting deep dark circles under his eyes, said to Blania.
“How to defend it?”
Blania also asked with some confusion.
“I thought for a few days and came up with a hypothesis.
“Assume there exists a certain unknown force, which is also transmitted through Aether and has no connection with electromagnetic force. When an object moves, Aether forces this force to change, so the length of the object will change accordingly. This change exactly cancels out the change in the speed of light.
“This is the ‘Length Contraction Effect.’
“I need you, Blania. I need your genius-like mathematical mind.”
Thales held Blania and said slowly.
Blania stroked him. The two faced each other and kissed. After a long while, she said: “I will help you realize this hypothesis. Let’s call this force the Thales Hypothetical Force.”
Stack after stack of mathematical calculations, constantly altering and verifying, finally…
The genius Blania used mathematical methods to derive the hypotenuse equation of the Blania-Thales equations, and subsequently derived a conclusion:
The shape of an object is determined by the balance of the Thales Hypothetical Force; an object will inevitably shorten when in motion.
She expressed this sentence with a concise formula. The formula was: the length of an object when moving is equal to the length of the object when stationary multiplied by the square root of one minus the square of the object’s velocity divided by the speed of light. This was the Blania Transformation Formula.
“Excellent! Blania, you are my angel.”
Looking at this equation, Thales felt a sense of security in his heart, as if the Thales Hypothetical Force truly existed.
Blania, however, said to him seriously: “Darling, don’t rush to celebrate just yet. There’s a new discovery here. Not only is there a Length Contraction Effect, but according to calculations, not only the shape of the object changes, the object’s time also changes.
“In other words, clocks slow down!”
The “Length Contraction Effect” and “Time Dilation Effect” proposed by Thales and Blania alleviated everyone’s anxiety. Aether could continue to exist, and it seemed everything could continue.
And at this time, Ace’s true body descended from the sub-plane into the interior of the floating city.
“The time is ripe.”
Ace’s eyes shone brightly as He slowly walked into the Central High Tower.
(Chapter finished)
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