16 April 2019

Wikipedia, physics and men

One of my best friends, a German physics teacher, wanted to improve the wikipedia article (in German) about movement in physics. His improvements were reverted, because the German wikipedia physics editors - all are male - told him that "light does not move". This is not a joke. This did not happen in the year 800 BC, but in 2019 AD.

Then my friend provided the text of Einstein's 1905 paper on relativity, where the second principle states "Light always moves .... with velocity V". He also told them that Maxwell's equations are equations of motion of the electromagnetic field. He told them how moving light produces shadows.

That was not enough to convince the German wikipedia editors. They wrote: "Light does not move." And "You have not proven that it does."

The real world is better than any satire.