The Hidden Forces Shaping Modern Warfare: Lessons from Physics and Society
Story by Mike Brown • 3w •
Up until Galileo, everyone knew that the heavier an object was, the faster it fell. Indeed, the principle was so well accepted that few people ever bothered to check. It was Galileo, however, with his experiments using inclined planes and rolling cylinders, who showed that falling objects fall with the same speed independent of their masses. This salutary lesson in the risks of assuming something to be true because many people believe it to be so has very real implications for the military strategist today.
Similarly, “ether” was also the scientific thought of its time. Since light was known to travel in waves-much like sound needed a medium, they reasoned. However, the experiments of Michelson and Morley in 1887 proved that light, too, travels through a vacuum, and the concept of ether had to be set aside. It was a classic lesson in the history of physics: established ideas have always to be questioned and should be supported by sturdy experimentation.
These theories have interesting parallels in the military context. Astrophysicists several decades ago realized that outer stars of galaxies were moving too fast to be held by gravity from their galactic cores. The hypothesis of dark matter was hypothesized to be an undetectable substance providing the missing mass. Considering all the efforts, including the Large Underground Xenon experiment, no direct evidence of dark matter has yet been found. That is similar to how the military works out the detection and study of new kinds of warfare and technology.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-hidden-forces-shaping-modern-warfare-lessons-from-physics-and-society/ar-AA1pHSYp?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=d0237bdfd5e2483f9dc64f4874255c99&ei=45
