TITLE: Aether
NAME: Jason Glover
COUNTRY: United States of America
EMAIL: jason.glover@worldnet.att.net
WEBPAGE: n/a
TOPIC: Physics and Math
COPYRIGHT: I SUBMIT TO THE STANDARD RAYTRACING COMPETITION COPYRIGHT.
JPGFILE: aether.jpg
ZIPFILE: aether.zip
RENDERER USED: 
    PovDos 3.0 and PovWin 3.0

TOOLS USED: 
    Corel PhotoPaint (to convert to JPEG)

RENDER TIME: 
    11 hours

HARDWARE USED: 
    486DX2 66 MHz with 16 Meg RAM

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: 

     One of the Most significant physics experiments of the 1800s was the 
     Michelson-Morley Experiment.  Light of a single wavelength (monochromatic
     LASER) is partially reflected and partially transmitted by a partially
     silvered mirror.  The two beams of light travel perpendicular to eachother
     and are subsequently brought back together and projected onto a screen.
     The interference fringes produced on the screen will change if the
distance
     traveled by one the beams changes by at least one wavelength.  If the
     theory of the aether was correct, then the motion of the earth through
     the aether would alter the path traveled by one of the beams.  As is 
     turned out, there was no change in the interference pattern, and the
     theory of the eather was discarded.  This experiment paved the way for
     Einstein's theory of relativity and all of modern physics as we know it
     today.

DESCRIPTION OF HOW THIS IMAGE WAS CREATED: 

     Used sky.pov to create a TGA file that fades from yellow to red to blue
     to black.  Used this (spherical_mapping) to create the sky.  Added orange
     clouds up high with black clouds down low.  All clouds fade to clear
     near the horizon.  Simple hexagon floor.  Used emitting halos to create
     lasers.  Used purple ground fog for depth.  Rendered image using AA.3 and 
     radiosity.  Used focal point to get cool camera effects.  
     Used Gamma correct 1.1 in corel photopaint.

