The Speed of News
Illustration
Stories
Every eye will see him…. (v. 7)
The speed of news is not quite instantaneous. There’s this traffic cop called the speed of light that strictly enforces that 186, 242 mile per second speed limit built into our universe. If there’s a way around that limitation it remains the stuff of speculation — out of this world speculation.
However, as long as you don’t travel as far away as the moon, where’d you have a couple seconds worth of delay to take into account when you carried on a conversation, for the most part nowadays we learn things, we see things, as close to instantaneous as no never mind.
It wasn’t always that way. Information traveled as fast as feet. Phidippides ran the approximately 25 miles from the Greek victory against the Persians at Marathon to the waiting citizens of Athens, but that was with fatal results. He barely spoke one word — nike, or “Victory!” — before expiring. (The modern marathon race is named after him).
It took Mary all of three days, for instance, to run a marathon of her own, (Dante says, “She ran!”) covering eighty miles from Nazareth to the hill country of Judea to visit her cousin Elizabeth to tell her about the news shared with her by the angel Gabriel. (Of course John the Baptist, still in his mother’s womb, had seemingly already heard the news, but if anything is faster than the speed of light, it’s a miracle).
The telegraph in the 19th century was a great improvement. It sped news across great distances at light speed, although there were delays because of the necessity of having people relay the information across a complicated network. Simon Winchester, in his book Krakatoa!, makes the case that the explosion of that volcano on August 27, 1883 was the first modern instantaneous event as the news of destruction and loss of 36,000 lives crisscrossed the entire globe the same day.
Now we take the network of satellites that make it possible for us to see great events immediately for granted. The silent sentinels orbit roughly 26,000 miles above the earth, meaning they travel the same speed as the earth rotates, making it seem as if they are standing still in the sky. They communicate with other satellites in similar orbits spaced around the skies, so that we are able to stream our favorite movies or watch sporting events from across the ocean in real time.
Now somebody had to have this idea first, and that somebody was the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008). Clarke was not only one of the great science fiction writers, he was also a scientist, a science writer, a futurist, and the originator of the concept of placing satellites in a geosynchronous 24 orbit (roughly 26,000 miles above the earth) so they seemed to hover motionless above the earth. Placing three of these equidistantly at intervals around the globe would make instant worldwide communications possible. Clarke did not patent the idea, preferring to see it realized rather than impede its realization by trying to make a fortune out of it.
During World War II, Clarke was an unknown radio operator in England, and his experiences led him to write an austerely titled paper packed with tedious mathematical equations titled “Extraterrestrial Relays,” which was published in the October, 1945 issue of a magazine called Wireless World. (In England “wireless” was their word for radio.)
Clarke wrote the article in part to convince ordinary people that there was a practical use for rocketry beyond the simply scientific. He especially wanted them to look beyond their recent experiences during the war, when London had been the receiving end of V-2 rockets. Portions of London had been reduced to rubble from the bombardment. Exhausted population, undergoing rationing as the war ended. Deprivation continued. But his eyes were on the stars. He knew enough that the commercial necessity of convenient television would carry a heavier weight than star struck idealism.
In that article Clark wrote, “A true broadcast service, giving constant field strength at all times over the whole world, would be invaluable not to say indispensable, in a world society. “ (pp 20-21), and after describing how this network of stations in space would work he added, “…everything envisioned here is a logical extension of developments in the last ten years — in particular the perfection of the long-range rocket of which the V-2 was the prototype (p 21).”
Few people had TVs in England at that time. Broadcasting was limited to specific areas and because of the curvature of the earth transmitters could reach fifty miles, but only under the most ideal of circumstances. Therefore a large network of earthbound relay stations on the ground would be needed to cover just the British Isles. On the other hand, Clarke pointed out, “It will be possible in a few more years to build radio-controlled rockets that can be steered into such orbits beyond the limits of the atmosphere and left to broadcast scientific information back to Earth (p 21).”
Without our advanced miniaturization and modern computer technology, Clarke could not imagine that automation would serve the purpose. As a result he assumed the orbiting broadcast space stations would be staffed. “That station could be provided with living quarters, laboratories, and everything needed for the comfort of its crew, who would be relieved and provisioned by regular rocket service.” (p. 23)
Well, long before this dream of instantaneous broadcast communication was realized, John the revelator, a captive on the prison island of Patmos, working in the tin mines under the most primitive of conditions, enthused about communication at the speed of miracle! In the opening of the Revelation, John assured his listeners that when Jesus returned in glory every eye would see him, everyone would know immediately who he was and why he had returned — Now!
(Want to know more? Clarke outlined the idea for geosynchronous communication satellites — he assumed they would have to be staffed! — in a 1945 scientific paper included in his book Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! Collected Essays 1934-1998, St. Martin’s Press, 1999, from which citations come, and you can also read about them in his 1951 book The Exploration of Space, which can occasionally be found in used book stores.)
The speed of news is not quite instantaneous. There’s this traffic cop called the speed of light that strictly enforces that 186, 242 mile per second speed limit built into our universe. If there’s a way around that limitation it remains the stuff of speculation — out of this world speculation.
However, as long as you don’t travel as far away as the moon, where’d you have a couple seconds worth of delay to take into account when you carried on a conversation, for the most part nowadays we learn things, we see things, as close to instantaneous as no never mind.
It wasn’t always that way. Information traveled as fast as feet. Phidippides ran the approximately 25 miles from the Greek victory against the Persians at Marathon to the waiting citizens of Athens, but that was with fatal results. He barely spoke one word — nike, or “Victory!” — before expiring. (The modern marathon race is named after him).
It took Mary all of three days, for instance, to run a marathon of her own, (Dante says, “She ran!”) covering eighty miles from Nazareth to the hill country of Judea to visit her cousin Elizabeth to tell her about the news shared with her by the angel Gabriel. (Of course John the Baptist, still in his mother’s womb, had seemingly already heard the news, but if anything is faster than the speed of light, it’s a miracle).
The telegraph in the 19th century was a great improvement. It sped news across great distances at light speed, although there were delays because of the necessity of having people relay the information across a complicated network. Simon Winchester, in his book Krakatoa!, makes the case that the explosion of that volcano on August 27, 1883 was the first modern instantaneous event as the news of destruction and loss of 36,000 lives crisscrossed the entire globe the same day.
Now we take the network of satellites that make it possible for us to see great events immediately for granted. The silent sentinels orbit roughly 26,000 miles above the earth, meaning they travel the same speed as the earth rotates, making it seem as if they are standing still in the sky. They communicate with other satellites in similar orbits spaced around the skies, so that we are able to stream our favorite movies or watch sporting events from across the ocean in real time.
Now somebody had to have this idea first, and that somebody was the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008). Clarke was not only one of the great science fiction writers, he was also a scientist, a science writer, a futurist, and the originator of the concept of placing satellites in a geosynchronous 24 orbit (roughly 26,000 miles above the earth) so they seemed to hover motionless above the earth. Placing three of these equidistantly at intervals around the globe would make instant worldwide communications possible. Clarke did not patent the idea, preferring to see it realized rather than impede its realization by trying to make a fortune out of it.
During World War II, Clarke was an unknown radio operator in England, and his experiences led him to write an austerely titled paper packed with tedious mathematical equations titled “Extraterrestrial Relays,” which was published in the October, 1945 issue of a magazine called Wireless World. (In England “wireless” was their word for radio.)
Clarke wrote the article in part to convince ordinary people that there was a practical use for rocketry beyond the simply scientific. He especially wanted them to look beyond their recent experiences during the war, when London had been the receiving end of V-2 rockets. Portions of London had been reduced to rubble from the bombardment. Exhausted population, undergoing rationing as the war ended. Deprivation continued. But his eyes were on the stars. He knew enough that the commercial necessity of convenient television would carry a heavier weight than star struck idealism.
In that article Clark wrote, “A true broadcast service, giving constant field strength at all times over the whole world, would be invaluable not to say indispensable, in a world society. “ (pp 20-21), and after describing how this network of stations in space would work he added, “…everything envisioned here is a logical extension of developments in the last ten years — in particular the perfection of the long-range rocket of which the V-2 was the prototype (p 21).”
Few people had TVs in England at that time. Broadcasting was limited to specific areas and because of the curvature of the earth transmitters could reach fifty miles, but only under the most ideal of circumstances. Therefore a large network of earthbound relay stations on the ground would be needed to cover just the British Isles. On the other hand, Clarke pointed out, “It will be possible in a few more years to build radio-controlled rockets that can be steered into such orbits beyond the limits of the atmosphere and left to broadcast scientific information back to Earth (p 21).”
Without our advanced miniaturization and modern computer technology, Clarke could not imagine that automation would serve the purpose. As a result he assumed the orbiting broadcast space stations would be staffed. “That station could be provided with living quarters, laboratories, and everything needed for the comfort of its crew, who would be relieved and provisioned by regular rocket service.” (p. 23)
Well, long before this dream of instantaneous broadcast communication was realized, John the revelator, a captive on the prison island of Patmos, working in the tin mines under the most primitive of conditions, enthused about communication at the speed of miracle! In the opening of the Revelation, John assured his listeners that when Jesus returned in glory every eye would see him, everyone would know immediately who he was and why he had returned — Now!
(Want to know more? Clarke outlined the idea for geosynchronous communication satellites — he assumed they would have to be staffed! — in a 1945 scientific paper included in his book Greetings, Carbon-Based Bipeds! Collected Essays 1934-1998, St. Martin’s Press, 1999, from which citations come, and you can also read about them in his 1951 book The Exploration of Space, which can occasionally be found in used book stores.)
