THE SPEED OF LIGHT ,
SIR.—In her very interesting article in the Spectator of October 23rd, Miss Cartwright points out that a mathematical specialist realises as no one else can that one broken link in a long chain of reasoning leaves the whole valueless. Perhaps she would be so good as to consider what the astronomers would make of the universe if some mathema- tician showed that light waves coming from distant stars are damped, down by whatever it is that transmits them, with the result that light gradually slows down and stops. The evidence that light travels from the sun to the earth at 186,000 miles per second is prob- ably easy enough to understand, but what is the evidence that light travels at that speed for thousands or millions of years ? Obviously the evidence must be extremely abstruse, liut it is very curious that the ques- Von is never even mentioned in the elementary books on astronomy. Could Miss Cartwright be persuaded to give some explanation—in the simplest possible terms 7—Yours faithfully,
R. L. I.: I I CHING
Wetherby, Yorkshire
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