First Light

Robert Boyle is a name that I encountered early. His 'law' is so simple that it is one of the first to be taught in science classes. In words: 'For a given quantity of any gas, the pressure of the gas is inversely proportional to the volume'. In symbols: PV = k. In concept: it's the bike pump rule; put your finger over the end and the smaller you make the volume under the plunger, the harder you have to push

Boyle lived at a time when the science of Chemistry was first emerging from the mythology and occult practices of alchemy. He had a foot in both camps; at the same time that he was defining enduring first principles of science, he - along with a host of other alchemists - was searching for something called 'Alkahest', that I never heard of until today. I found it because I thought there must be some myth somewhere about a substace that cannot be contained in anything - a search that was started by this amazing story about transporting antimatter!

I had no idea it was possible to create persistent quantities of antimatter - that in itself feels like mythology, or even Dr Who science. What's more, someone is prepared to put a monetary value on it; how is that? Where do I buy some?! Anyway, obviously you can't put antimatter in a container - any contact with matter and they annihilate one another and release energy. Apparent you constrain it with electric and magnetic fields; yeah, simple. Someone called Johann Kunckel did point out this problem with Alkahest around the same time Boyle published his law. Good point, Johann

As a young man, Boyle wrote a list of ambitions for himself. One was to find Alkahest; another was to find 'perpetual light', by which he probably meant light for which no fuel was required. He never found that either but, as we enter the dark season of festivals of light, it's easy to see the allure. We haven't found perpetual light in any scientific sense, but we have created a world that is never dark. It's the sort of Mephistophelean outcome the alchemists might have anticipated