Word: length
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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After 13 years of experimenting, Cage has managed to weld together ten works (Construction in Metal, Second Construction, etc.) for pipe-length, brake-drum orchestras, and, with six different "preparations," nine major works for piano. Necessarily expressionistic, one of his sonatas last week moved the New York Times to get a faraway look in its good, grey eyes: "The fourteenth sonata . . . suggested burro's hoofs on far-off cobbles, while a gentle church bell sounded sadly in the distance...
...ghosting another surefire script for 150 newspapers: the story of Robert E. Stripling, longtime chief investigator for the House Committee on Un-American Activities. As usual, Considine faced a deadline that would have daunted a less workmanlike writer. The first of his 28, "as told to" articles (average length: 1,800 words) would go to press next week, just a month after he took on the job. As usual, Considine's first version would be the last...
...fourth corner post of physics, still unknown, Gamow says, will probably be an "elementary length" which will divide space into "smallest" units, just as Planck's Constant divided the flow of energy into "smallest" bursts (the "quantum" of the quantum theory). Gamow suspects that this missing length may turn out to be about 10 -13 centimeter (one ten-trillionth of a centimeter). A length close to this shows up as the radius of an electron, and as the effective range of forces in the atomic nuclei. "All kinds of physical considerations," says Gamow, "become senseless when...
Physics still has its work cut out for it, however. It will take about 50 years, thinks Gamow, to complete a theory of elementary length. Then the physicists can explain everything physical, from atoms to the universe, in tidy, clean-cut mathematics...
Some sentimentalists may be sorry to see the earth discarded as a timekeeper. But there are consolations. If the world's official time is kept by the atom clock, the length of the day, in atomic hours, will increase as the motion of the earth slows down. Eventually man will enjoy a 25-hour day. This will happen, according to some calculations, in about 1,800,000 centuries...