Deflating Hyperspace

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

D'oh!

Frankly, I really feel like Miles now, tripping over something that 
should be obvious, but it was so ubiquitious, as if it were merely 
the local atmosphere, or a trick of the light. . . .

Einstein's law of the photo-electrical effect 
has been extremely rigorously tested by 
the American Millikan and his pupils and 
passed the test brilliantly. Owing to these 
studies by Einstein the quantum theory has 
been perfected to a high degree and an 
extensive literature grew up in this field 
whereby the extraordinary value of this 
theory was proved. Einstein's law has 
become the basis of quantitative 
photo-chemistry in the same way as 
Faraday's law is the basis of 
electro-chemistry.**

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1921/einstein-bio.html


                     There was a "Ray-rush" in progress---light and magnetism, 
                     as well as all manner of extra-Hertzian rays, were there 
                     for the taking, and prospectors had come flooding in, many 
                     of them professional claim-jumpers aiming to get by on 
                     brute force, a very few genuinely able to dowse for rays of 
                     all frequencies. most neither gifted nor unscrupulous, 
                     simply caught up in everybody else's single-minded flight 
                     from reason, diseased as the gold and silver seekers of 
                     earlier days. Here at the high edge of the atmosphere was 
                     the next untamed frontier, pioneers arriving in airships 
                     instead of wagons, setting in motion property disputes 
                     destined to last generations. AtD 121

                     Like weather and internationally traded goods, radio 
                     propagation and RF technology do not stop at national 
                     boundaries. Giving technical and economic reasons, 
                     governments have sought to harmonise spectrum 
                     allocation standards.
                     A number of forums and standards bodies work on 
                     standards for frequency allocation, including:
                     ITU
                     CEPT
                     ETSI
                     International Special Committee on Radio Interference
                     High-demand sections of the electromagnetic spectrum 
                     may sometimes be allocated through auctions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_allocation

And you've just gotta look at this official frequency allocation chart:

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf

The modern concept of the photon was developed gradually (1905–17) by Albert 
Einstein[3][4][5][6] to explain experimental observations that did not fit the 
classical wave model of light. In particular, the photon model accounted for the 
frequency dependence of light's energy, and explained the ability of matter and 
radiation to be in thermal equilibrium. Other physicists sought to explain these 
anomalous observations by semiclassical models, in which light is still 
described by Maxwell's equations but the material objects that emit and absorb 
light are quantized. Although these semiclassical models contributed to the 
development of quantum mechanics, further experiments proved Einstein's 
hypothesis that light itself is quantized; the quanta of light are photons.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon

In modern physics, the photon is the elementary particle responsible for 
electromagnetic phenomena. It mediates electromagnetic interactions and makes up 
all forms of light. The photon has zero invariant mass and travels at the 
constant speed c, the speed of light in empty space. However, in the presence of 
matter, a photon can be absorbed, transferring energy and momentum proportional 
to its frequency. Like all quanta, the photon has both wave and particle 
properties, exhibiting wave–particle duality.

http://www.answers.com/topic/photon-2

photon

In some ways, visible light behaves like a wave phenomenon, but in other 
respects it acts like a stream of high-speed, submicroscopic particles. Isaac 
Newton was one of the first scientists to theorize that light consists of 
particles. 
Modern physicists have demonstrated that the energy in any electromagnetic field 
is made up of discrete packets. The term photon (meaning "visible-light 
particle") has been coined for these energy packets. Particle-like behavior is 
not restricted to the visible-light portion of the electromagnetic radiation 
spectrum, however. Radio waves, infrared rays, visible light, ultraviolet rays, 
X rays, and gamma rays all consist of photons, each of which contains a 
particular amount of energy that depends on the wavelength.

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci214455,00.html

(The following is an older posting )

After finding this official frequency allocation chart:

http://www.ntia.doc.gov/osmhome/allochrt.pdf

I started to think of the various charts and graphs that correlate 
color to frequency, though not in the one-for-one correlation 
of the actual frequency (bandwidth?) of the color, but assigning 
that color to a different frequency, and wondering what sorts of 
things I'd find if I googled "Light over Ranges", which led in a 
rather direct fashion to:

                   Abstract. A method is described for obtaining the 
                   azimuth and ellipticity of polychromatic elliptically 
                   polarised light as a function of wavelength, without 
                   the need for wavelength scanning. Elliptically 
                   polarised light with calculable polarisation was 
                   generated using a birefringent plate or a twisted 
                   nematic liquid crystal cell, and measurements of the 
                   azimuth and ellipticity of the light were made using 
                   the method. Good agreement with the calculated 
                   values was found, thus demonstrating the correctness 
                   of the technique.

http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0022-3735/20/7/012

Although I lack the technical know-how to decipher this abstract,
its clear that there's many technical terms and concepts in this
abstract that correlate to AtD. Looking further there's:

                   The dielectric omnidirectional reflector consists of 
                   multilayer films, and has potential applications in 
                   solar and thermoelectric power sources and laser 
                   microcavities. . . .

                   . . . .The MIT reflector, described in Science, vol 282, 
                   p1679, was constructed as a stack of nine alternating 
                   layers of polystyrene and tellurium, and demonstrates 
                   omnidirectional reflection over the wavelength range 
                   from 10 to 15 micro m. Because the omnidirectionality 
                   criterion is general, it can be used to design reflectors 
                   in many frequency ranges.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0WVI/is_1999_Jan_11/ai_53570468

Just thinking how this ties to "Gravity's Rainbow", remembering
the periodic table of the elements from my 7th/8th grade science
class. I'd look at that periodic table, noting that many of these tables 
were (like Slothrop's map of amourous conquests in London) 
color-coded: 

http://www.webelements.com/

http://tinyurl.com/2h3v96

And, of course, the era of AtD is, among other things, is the time 
when scientists started to think of matter and light in describable,
predictable, calculable terms, as a range of frequencies.

                     John Carvill:
                     . . . .there's a lot of photography in ATD, what with Merle 
                     and all, and photography is one of many ways into one 
                     of those nodal points where a load of thematic strands 
                     come together in a thick little knot. Where would you 
                     even start with trying to untangle it?

Note that the book moves from Chicago's Columbian Exposition of 
1893 to Hollywood in the early twenties. In between we are given 
demonstrations of the alchemy of silver, as explosives (base 
matter into light) as photography (from light back into base 
matter) and eventually as moving pictures---Movies beginning 
the technological cycles that evolves (devolves?) into TV. The 
book ends with the first glimmers of TV. These are themes explored
with a curious blend of nonchalance and detail in Vineland.

                     John Carvill:
                     In my initial reading of ATD, while I hugely enjoyed 
                     the first part, 'The Light Over the Ranges', and in fact 
                     reckon that part alone could stand as a rebuke to all 
                     the short-sighted negative reviews, I did wonder 
                     about the lightness of tone, and thought there was 
                     a certain Pynchon quality missing (there wasn't, but 
                     I only realised that later), which if pushed I'd have 
                     described as 'strangeness'. 

At the same time, that "lightness of tone" pervades Vineland. There
is much in AtD that stands as a rebuke to Vineland's critical 
non-reception, as the two novels share a tremendous number of 
concerns, in particular depicting dark places being bathed in light. . . .