Word: toward
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Even to scientists of the day, these theories seemed patchwork: they dealt with nagging questions, but in an artificial and contrived way. Yet they contained seeds of truth. Science was groping toward the answer to the ether dilemma and the limitations of Newtonian physics. And even without Einstein, someone eventually would have solved the puzzle...
...demolishing New ton's basic assumption that time is absolute, that it is universally the same, and that it flows steadily from the past toward the future, Einstein used the following thought experiment: an observer standing next to a railroad embankment sees two bolts of lightning strike the tracks at the same time and thus concludes that they occurred simultaneously, one far to the east, the other an equal distance to the west. Just as the bolts hit, a second observer passes directly 'in front of him on a train moving at high speed from east to west...
...second observer, the bolts do not seem to strike simultaneously. Rea son: because he is moving away from the bolt in the east, its light takes slightly longer to reach him. Similarly, because he is moving toward the bolt in the west, its light reaches him earlier. Thus what the stationary observer sees as simultaneous lightning strikes, the moving observer sees as a flash in the west followed by one in the east. If, on the other hand, the bolts had struck at different times, it could well have been the moving observer who saw them simultaneously...
Meanwhile, Einstein's restless mind had turned from special relativity's uniform motion to the greater complexities of accelerated movements. These are motions involving changes in velocity: as when the earth's gravity draws an object toward the ground, the object's velocity increases by 9.8 meters (32 ft.) per second each second. Einstein took an approach entirely different from Newton. The 17th century master had noted what seemed to be a remarkable coincidence: gravity acted in the same way on all bodies, regardless of their mass. That could be shown by an apocryphal experiment of Galileo's in which...
...tional, Blue Cross-Blue Shield ? could save hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Instituting the economies will f not be easy. As Walter J. McNerney, national Blue Cross-Blue 1 Shield president, explains, "Doctors must change their practices." Trouble is, in recent years the trend has been toward more tests. "Fearing malpractice suits, many physicians defensively order diagnostic tests simply to get them on the record even if they provide no information that will affect the patient's care. Also, with the introduction of expensive new diagnostic devices like computerized X-ray scanners, many doctors have come...