Streaking through space, light is the fastest thing in the universe. As it reaches us across vast distances it reveals the history of the cosmos. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Its speed is the ultimate barrier; nothing can go faster. The Universe s3e3: Light Speed
Seeing red-shifts everywhere, Hubble discovered that all of the universe’s galaxies were moving away from each other, which we know now is caused by the expansion of space itself. ibid.
It’s called our light horizon: a sphere thirteen and a half billion light years in all directions containing everything we can see ... Does space end there? ibid.
Space itself then is the exception to the rule: it can expand faster than the speed of light. But everything inside it remains bound by Albert Einstein and his Theory of Relativity. ibid.
We think it’s a region in which a great deal of mass has been compressed down to a very small size. The gravitational field is so strong that nobody, not even light can escape. So black holes cannot shine. Professor Sandra Faber
Strings of gravity vibrate at a different frequency than strings of light. Roy H Williams
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly, to be fearful of the night. Sarah Williams, Twilight Hours: A Legacy of Verse
The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole –
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things. Sylvia Plath
How will the ships navigate without stars? And then he remembered that the stars were dead, long dead, and the light they shed was not to be trusted, was false, if not an outright lie, and in any case was inadequate, unequal to its task, which was to illuminate the evil that men did. Jeet Thayil, Narc
Suns, that set, may rise again;
But if once we lost this light,
’Tis with us perpetual night. Ben Jonson, Volpone, 1606
The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun. F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I’m not like them
But I can pretend
The sun is gone
But I have a light.
The day is done
But I’m having fun
I think I’m dumb … Kurt Cobain, Dumb lyrics
Einstein was always full of beautiful simple illustrations of such principles ... What would the world look like if I rode on a beam of light? Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 7/13: The Majestic Clockwork, BBC 1973
Light is the carrier of information that binds us. ibid.
If light were modified by glass, the second prism should produce new colours. Newton called this the Critical Experiment. ibid.
The longest of the invisible waves are the radio waves. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 11/13: Knowledge or Certainty *****
The infra-red waves are heat waves. ibid.
White Light is a mixture of wave-lengths. ibid.
For perhaps hundreds of years based upon Native American legends people have seen these strange multi-coloured spheres of light moving on and around this ridge and in these mountains. Joshua Warren, author & paranormal investigator
During the Second World War there was a phenomenon that was very very similar to the ghost lights – it became known as the Foo Fighters ... They seem to exhibit some sort of intelligence. Nick Redfern, author & investigator
Light. The light of early morning. The light of Holland. It spreads over the flat fields, it’s reflected in the canals, and it picks out distant towers and spires. This was the inspiration of the first great school of landscape; one might almost say skyscape painting. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 8/13: The Light of Experience, BBC 1969
Turner: The solitary king of light. Matthew Collings, Turner’s Thames, BBC 2012
I can’t cope – we’re going at the speed of light – me bottle’s gone. Red Dwarf s1e2: Future Echoes, Holly, BBC 1988
A jellyfish outlined by its own pulsing illuminations. David Attenborough, The Trials of Life X: Talking to Strangers, BBC 1990
I’m in a cave. Each one of those tiny lights is produced by the larva of a small insect called a fungus gnat as a way of attracting its prey ... One of the most magical illuminations in the whole of the natural world. David Attenborough, Life in the Undergrowth III: The Silk Spinners, BBC 2005
As dusk gives way to twilight the encroaching darkness is lit by life. These dancing lights around me are produced by fireflies, creatures that have the strange ability to produce light, they bioluminesce. Attenborough’s Life that Glows, BBC 2017
The discovery of more and more luminous creatures raises more and more questions. Why? What is the light for? And how is it made? ibid.
This language of light even has local dialects. ibid.
The threads of certain fungi form a glowing underground network. But why would a fungi shine in the permanent darkness of the soil? We just don’t know … Some species only glow above ground and at night. ibid.
On rare occasions the oceans do glow. ibid.
These lights are made by captives which are farmed in special organs below the eyes of flashlight fish. ibid.
Bacteria may have been the first living lights. ibid.
Light was a wave everybody thought. Till Einstein. Light, he said ... was a wave. And a particle. James Burke, Connections s2e7: Photo Finish, BBC 1994
Gaslight changed everybody’s life. People started going out in the evenings for the first time. ibid.
What would I see if I rode on a beam of light? Nova: Einstein’s Big Idea I, PBS 2013
All the fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no closer to answer the question, ‘What are light quanta?’ Of course today every rascal thinks he knows the answer, but he is deluding himself. Albert Einstein, cited Lam ‘Seasonal Affective Disorder and Beyond’
If light is a kind of wave, what’s it a wave in? ... What came to be called from the early 1800s the Luminiferous Ether. Professor Simon Schaffer
Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead thou me on. John Henry Newman, hymn 1834
I procured me a [triangular] glass prism to try therewith the celebrated phenomena of colours. Isaac Newton
Do not Bodies act upon Light at a distance, and by their action bend its Rays; and is not this action (caeteris paribus) strongest at the least distance? Isaac Newton, Opticks Query I
Are not the Rays of Light in passing by the edges and sides of Bodies, bent several times backwards and forwards, with a motion like that of an Eel? And do not the three Fringes of colour’d Light... arise from three such bendings? ibid. Query III
Do not the Rays of Light which fall upon Bodies, and are reflected or refracted, begin to bend before they arrive at the Bodies; and are they not reflected, refracted, and inflected, by one and the same Principle, acting variously in various Circumstances? ibid. Query IV
Do not Bodies and Light act mutually upon one another; that is to say, Bodies upon Light in emitting, reflecting, refracting and inflecting it, and Light upon Bodies for heating them, and putting their parts into a vibrating motion wherein heat consists? ibid. Query V
Do not several sorts of Rays make Vibrations of several bignesses, which according to their bigness excite Sensations of several Colours, much after the manner that the Vibrations of the Air, according to their several bignesses excite Sensations of several Sounds? And particularly do not the most refrangible Rays excite the shortest Vibrations for making a Sensation of deep violet, the least refrangible the largest form making a Sensation of deep red, and several intermediate sorts of Rays, Vibrations of several intermediate bignesses to make Sensations of several intermediate Colours? ibid. Query XIII
Is not the Heat of the warm Room convey’d through the Vacuum by the Vibrations of a much subtiler Medium than Air, which after the Air was drawn out remained in the Vacuum? And is not this Medium the same with that Medium by which Light is refracted and reflected and by whose Vibrations Light communicates Heat to Bodies, and is put into Fits of easy Reflexion and easy Transmission?
... And do not hot Bodies communicate their Heat to contiguous cold ones, by the Vibrations of this Medium propagated from them into the cold ones? And is not this Medium exceedingly more rare and subtile than the Air, and exceedingly more elastick and active? And doth it not readily pervade all Bodies? And is it not (by its elastick force) expanded through all the Heavens? ibid. Query XVIII