Makemakean
Mr Makemean
- Pronouns
- Logical, unlike those in German
In alternate history, we frequently, either as reader encounter, or as writers create, situations were certain technologies or concepts develop far earlier than when they "ought to". The Romans developing a printing press or the Victorians developing a functioning analytical engine would be two very suitable examples. At other times, we see certain development "wait a bit longer". Thus, in Look to the West, for instance, we see the science of electromagnetism lag some fifty years behind that of our own timeline.
What I would, in this timeline like to discuss and seek examples of, however, are developments, discoveries, and innovations that in some sense developed at a much earlier date than they by all rights "should" have developed. As my go-to example, when I was at UCL, one of my lecturers, when treating special relativity, commented that it is truly bizarre that general relativity was developed when it was developed. That special relativity was developed in the early 20th century, that was straight-forward. The implications of the forms of Maxwell's equations, the failure of the Michelson Morley experiment to detect aether lags, and many other things, were indisputably hammering home that something was deeply wrong with our understanding of light and its propagation, and there was a deep urge to come up with a viable new model that could explain all our observations. Indeed, Einstein was far from the only one working on this particular problem, and many others had come very close to working it out when he published his paper. If, by a sad accident, Einstein was to have died in a train accident a few months before his great breakthrough, it is unlikely that it would have taken much more than an additional two or three years before special relativity would have been formulated. It might even have been merely a matter of months.
General relativity, on the other hand, now that is an entirely different matter altogether, since really, by the dawn of the 20th century, there really was only one observation we knew of that suggested that, in as far as the sphere of celestial dynamics were concerned, Newton's grand framework was not perfect. And this was a very, very tiny observation, an observation so tiny that unless you were actively looking for it, most people would never have noticed it with a telescope, which was why, for hundreds of years, it hadn't been noted. The orbit of Mercury was ever, ever so slightly off.
When you consider how much more sophisticated mathematics that is necessary to understand general relativity than special relativity (Einstein himself would later in his career sadly remark to the mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita how he envied him, who could actually discuss general relativity "in his native language"), it's actually somewhat astounding that it merely took us a decade to go from the special to the general case. After all, it was all done only in order to explain one very small and obscure detail!
However, the moment that the first satellites went up, and we began to communicate with them back and forth from Earth, suddenly then, on account of how radiowaves act, general relativity suddenly became highly relevant for practical purposes. As my lecturer would put it, it would to him have seemed far, far more plausible that it would first have been in the 1950s, when we began to see an avalanche of instances that showed that something more was wrong with our theories, that such a development would have been made.
So, hence my question to you is, what are similar developments that occurred in our timeline at a certain date, but which by all reason, "ought to" have occurred at a later, if not much later, date?
What I would, in this timeline like to discuss and seek examples of, however, are developments, discoveries, and innovations that in some sense developed at a much earlier date than they by all rights "should" have developed. As my go-to example, when I was at UCL, one of my lecturers, when treating special relativity, commented that it is truly bizarre that general relativity was developed when it was developed. That special relativity was developed in the early 20th century, that was straight-forward. The implications of the forms of Maxwell's equations, the failure of the Michelson Morley experiment to detect aether lags, and many other things, were indisputably hammering home that something was deeply wrong with our understanding of light and its propagation, and there was a deep urge to come up with a viable new model that could explain all our observations. Indeed, Einstein was far from the only one working on this particular problem, and many others had come very close to working it out when he published his paper. If, by a sad accident, Einstein was to have died in a train accident a few months before his great breakthrough, it is unlikely that it would have taken much more than an additional two or three years before special relativity would have been formulated. It might even have been merely a matter of months.
General relativity, on the other hand, now that is an entirely different matter altogether, since really, by the dawn of the 20th century, there really was only one observation we knew of that suggested that, in as far as the sphere of celestial dynamics were concerned, Newton's grand framework was not perfect. And this was a very, very tiny observation, an observation so tiny that unless you were actively looking for it, most people would never have noticed it with a telescope, which was why, for hundreds of years, it hadn't been noted. The orbit of Mercury was ever, ever so slightly off.
When you consider how much more sophisticated mathematics that is necessary to understand general relativity than special relativity (Einstein himself would later in his career sadly remark to the mathematician Tullio Levi-Civita how he envied him, who could actually discuss general relativity "in his native language"), it's actually somewhat astounding that it merely took us a decade to go from the special to the general case. After all, it was all done only in order to explain one very small and obscure detail!
However, the moment that the first satellites went up, and we began to communicate with them back and forth from Earth, suddenly then, on account of how radiowaves act, general relativity suddenly became highly relevant for practical purposes. As my lecturer would put it, it would to him have seemed far, far more plausible that it would first have been in the 1950s, when we began to see an avalanche of instances that showed that something more was wrong with our theories, that such a development would have been made.
So, hence my question to you is, what are similar developments that occurred in our timeline at a certain date, but which by all reason, "ought to" have occurred at a later, if not much later, date?