To obtain a complete understanding of the electrical and optical properties of solid materials such as gold, physicists must take into account the time dialation of the atomic electrons, including those near the nucleus. For example, take the color of gold. Most metals have a silvery appearance but not gold. Its distinctive and attractive glitter can be traced to the effects of relativity on the motions of the electrons inside the metal that are responsible for reflecting light. So it is no exaggeration to say that this precious metal is precious - and financially valuable - partly as a result of time dilation operating within the gold atoms. Paul Davies. About Time On days when the library is completely obscured by fog rolling low the library tour isn't something that you walk around, it's a story written down and handed out, an experience of the library in words. Faith longs for the foggy days, when she has to hand out pieces of paper and not turbo skeletons (with training wings for the children) to the tourists. Not because it's a great deal more work to puff up and turn on and give directions for the turbo skeletons, but because the story written down is somehow more the real library and reading it is the real experience. To say that human knowledge is always tangled with fiction does not imply and end of human response to nature. It places man in a country he creates partly with his own mind. In this country he is surrounded by brilliant, fantastic, wildly distorted images of himself. Is there a God behind the mask? There is no way of knowing. Hence the third moment of modern science, the authentically modern moment, the moment of reality as a game. O. B. Hardison, Disappearing Through the Skylight    back                                     text by Gallium Ellington