For word was circulating that Michelson and Morley had found no difference in the speed of light coming, going, or sideways relative to the Earth speeding along in its orbit.
* * * * * * * * * *
This is one of those nice "Science Without Math" statements that we can all use from time to most-of-the-time. It simply sums up the experiment without getting in the weeds of the details (although the details are what make this whole Blinky Morgan and Edward Morley are the same person theory interesting). What was the experiment about? It was about measuring the speed of light in several different directions to see if the movement of the Earth changed the speed. A change would indicate that the light was moving through something which was also traveling at those speeds. It should be faster going in the direction of the Earth while slowing down going perpendicular to that direction (or against it, obvs!). Who needs to know how it's done? How the light from one source is split into different beams and bounced in different directions to eventually arrive at the same destination? And how arriving at the same destination in phase (since light was suspected to be simply a wave as sound (which is why is was suspected that it needed a medium to travel through)) would indicate that direction didn't hamper its speed. Only if each beam arrived out of phase would there be an indication that the movement and inertia of the Earth would be affecting it. And that out-of-phase bit was what made Merle's theory into a lengthy philosophical sidebar that Pynchon has spent an awful lot of time on. Which he doesn't do with all of his strange little tales so it must have been especially important to the overall themes of the novel. I suspect it backs up the idea that Lew has been split from another Earth to find himself on one where he has become a pariah among those he once knew and loved. But then I could be biased because that was my initial impression of my first reading of the Lew Basnight sections.
Maybe as Mark Z. Danielewski says in his new novel, Tom's Crossing, in the section where the mortician does the autopsy on Russell's body, I need to uninstall my initial bias of Lew's possible dimension hopping. Or, if I want to remain loyal to Thomas Pynchon here, I need to get beyond the zero to rid myself of not just the bias but the idea of the bias too. I think. Remember how not smart I am? I still have trouble with the idea of "Beyond the Zero"!
