November 6, 2025
Taste the science drama
Phantom in the Light: The story of early spectroscopy
From God’s bow to nerd beef: who really owns the rainbow
TLDR: Newton split white light, later scientists found dark lines that let us “read” starlight—early spectroscopy in a nutshell. Comments erupted into credit wars (Newton vs Wollaston vs Fraunhofer) and prism-vs-grating memes, proving even rainbows can spark turf battles while explaining why this science still matters.
The comments turned a gentle history of rainbows into a full-blown credit brawl. Newton stans rolled in waving prisms like victory flags—“He split white light and recombined it, case closed!”—while history nerds fired back that William Hyde Wollaston spotted those spooky gaps first, and Fraunhofer actually measured them. Cue the Great Man vs Messy Lab fight, with people dunking on the “white light purity” myth and dropping Skittles memes like confetti. One commenter deadpanned that we went from gods’ covenant to “nerds with slits,” which somehow became the line of the day.
Amid the chaos, folks helpfully explained the basics in human language: Newton showed white light is a mix of colors; Wollaston saw dark lines; Fraunhofer used a super-precise “comb of tiny slits” (a diffraction grating) to pin down wavelengths. Those lines? They’re like barcodes of stars, letting us read what’s in the Sun without touching it. Newton’s Opticks and Fraunhofer lines got linked, while Team Prism vs Team Grating argued whether bending light (refraction) is cooler than spreading it (diffraction). The hottest take: the rainbow went from myth to measurement—and now to meme, with commenters chanting, “Taste the science!”
Key Points
- •Newton’s 1672 prism experiments showed white light is composed of multiple colors and can be recombined into white.
- •Newton published Opticks (1704) and coined the term “spectrum,” foundational to modern spectroscopy.
- •Wollaston observed dark gaps in the solar spectrum in 1802 using an improved lens-based spectroscope.
- •Fraunhofer introduced diffraction gratings to spectroscopes, achieving higher resolution and enabling wavelength measurements.
- •The article explains refraction, diffraction, and dispersion, noting light’s constant speed in vacuum and wavelength-dependent speed in media.