Abstract
SOME of us may remember the story of the children who played truant in order to explore the regions where the rainbow ends. After travelling all day, up hill and down dale, they had to admit failure of the most thoroughgoing kind-the rainbow was, to all appearances, no nearer than when they started. Really scientific children might have thought of estimating their rate of approach to the rainbow by measuring the angle it subtended. If they had measured it in the morning it would have been 42° 23′; it would have been 42° 23′ at noon, and again at night it would still be precisely 42° 23′. If they had done this they must have felt that they were the victims of extreme bad luck, for they had clearly seen the rainbow in front of the nearest hill when they started out; could there be some sort of conspiracy on the part of rainbows, hills, and indeed the whole scheme of Nature, to prevent their getting close up to that rainbow?
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JEANS, J. Space, Time, and the Universe1. Nature 117, 308–311 (1926). https://doi.org/10.1038/117308a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/117308a0