Latest Update:  January 4, 1993

RAMBLING THOUGHTS by a cosmogonist, Number 39

Here are some bits and pieces that have piled up on me. Number 39 is a
patchwork:

Walter and I, some months ago, got into a discussion that led me to
 walk four feet from the computer (Walking; what a drag!) and get my
 Latin dictionary to look up something and advise him of my findings.
 The subject isn't important; that being an analysis of his company
 name; he wanted to know if he should change it and I advised him not
 to.

 The reason I'm bringing this up is to ask a question:  How many of my
 readers *have* language dictionaries at hand? Yeah, I know, you can
 go to a library but think about the waste of time doing so. In the
 December 1992 issue of _Scientific American_, pg 162 is the French
 word _aujourd'hui_. I never heard of it so this time my trek was
 five feet to the French dictionary. It means "now" or "the present."
 
Readers of my RTs know that I have been saying that I believe our time
 is moving backwards, instead of forwards. I came across an inter-
 esting quote on that subject:

        All I proposed was that the unused part of the human
        brain might not share the one-way view of time that
        the gray matter is used to. The so-called `arrow of
        time,' which points forward only, is a sort of myth
        that we grow up with; people didn't always think of
        time that way. The Greeks, for instance, thought of
        themselves as traveling _backwards_ through time,
        with new events coming into view in the present just
        as objects come into view from behind when you're
        riding backwards in a train. Some American Indian
        families or tribes don't think in terms of past and
        future at all, but only in terms of some kind of ever-
        changing present that it's difficult for our minds to
        grasp--just because we weren't raised in that attitude.
        (Blish, James. _ESPer_ [original title:  _JACK OF
        EAGLES_]. Avon Publications, Inc. New York: 1952, pg 82.)

That struck a chord with me.

In _Astronomy_, June 1992, pg 30, Barry Parker says:  "Issac Newton
 was convinced that time was absolute, that it ran the same for
 everyone throughout the universe."  However, when I saw that I
 swooshed over to my Chapter 14 to see what I'd written on that
 subject. I certainly didn't remember saying that Issac believed
 that. Here's the quote from my text, along with its Biblio entry:

     As Newton stated, time doesn't flow equally.  When energy
     in a system increases, that system becomes more massive, its
     spatial dimensions slightly change, and the flow of time
     decreases. (Kahn, 1954)

Kahn, Fritz. _Design of the Universe_. New York:  Crown Publishers,
Inc., 1954.
 
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FROM   : FRANK SNIVELY                          RECEIVED : YES
TO     : DONALD ROSENFIELD                      PRIVATE  : NO
SUBJECT: huh?                                  THREAD   : YES

Doonald, my boy, I dunno how to write this tactfully, so I won't. As
an evolutionary biologist, you'd better stick to cosmology. The line I
take exception to is: 
>series of events that turned what were the dinosaurs into what are now
>the birds.
First, and most important, in the traditional scheme of classification, 
birds co-existed with donosaurs. Archeopteryx greatly pre-dates the
end of the Cretaceous. And there have been other, less spectacular,
finds of feathered, winged creatures. The extinctions at the end of
the Cretaceous wiped out ammonites and dinosaurs; birds and mammals 
went on evolving. Your phraseology implies that late Cretaceous
dinosaurs somehow evolved into birds. Huh uh.
 
Second, taxonomists are slowly coming around to the notion that 
dinosaurs have been mis-classified, and should be grouped with Aves, not
Reptilia. To the extent that _that_ scheme is accurate, the "bird-
dinosaur" order kept right on going, though one of the lines got wiped
out.
 
Incidentally, it's possible to agree that the Alvarez asteroid impact 
caused a lot of disruption without buying the entire set of arguments, 
which are based as much on "nuclear winter" alarmism as on solid data.
I've yet to see any plausible explanation of why the ammonites, which 
were in oceans, got wiped out, while the terrestrial birds and mammals 
weren't. Of course, I gotta admit that I'm prejudiced by the shoddy
work which was the basis of the "Seven et.al.'s and Carl Sagan" paper 
that gave much popular support to the meteoric impact extinctions as 
well as to the nuclear winter brouhaha. Won't be the first time people
had a good idea for the wrong reasons, if there _are_ some good ideas 
there.

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FROM   : DONALD ROSENFIELD                      RECEIVED : NO
TO     : FRANK SNIVELY                          PRIVATE  : NO
SUBJECT: huh?                                  THREAD   : YES

But where did Aves come from? There's too many physiological simi-
 larities between first the reptiles and then the dinosaurs and the
 birds. Archeopteryx was a reptile/dinosaur with feathers. Sure, not
 all birds developed from a late dinosaur. There was development all
 along the Age of Dinosaurs leading to our feathered friends, enemies,
 or food, depending on your point of view.
 
On the subject of what closed the Upper Cretaceous, there are many
 things that went on at once, not least the fact that there is a
 repeating 28.6 million year extinction cycle. We lost not only the
 ammonites, except the pearly nautilus, but 199 out of every 200
 species of flowering plants.
  
As the plants died so the giant herbivores lost their food supply. As
 went the herbivores so went the carnivores. Yes, some lived into the
 Paleocene, but not very many. The birds, mammals, and reptiles such
 as snakes, turtles, and alligators plus the small dinosaurs survived
 that lived in burrows underground. After the dinosaur die-off the
 mammals spread widely to fill the niches left empty.
  
"But Uncle Don, what caused that 28.6 million year cycle?"

Comets, young lady, comets. There are ten trillion comets in clouds
 surrounding (and part of) our solar system. Every 28.6 million years
 there is a disturbance in the comet cloud (the Oort cloud) that
 causes perhaps a million comets to shower into the inner solar system
 over about a 3 million-year period.

 You easily can see the result of the pursuant collisions when you look
 at the surfaces of Moon, Mercury, Mars, and many of the pock-marked
 asteroids. Venus and Earth, with their constant weathering have
 erased most of the craters. To that we should add plate tectonics on
 Earth which buries craters located on subducting continental plates.

Fortunately we are in an interstitial between both the 28 million year
 cycle and the 6 million year cycle of our solar system passing above
 and below the Milky Way arm in which we travel. This part of the arm
 has little debris in our passthrough or humans probably wouldn't have
 developed.

The cause of the periodicity of the comet showers is theorized to be a
 red dwarf star of about 11th magnitude that is in a double star
 relationship with our sun. It is being searched for from about 5,000
 candidates.

Two craters, one of about 35-kilometers diameter and one about 193-
 kilometers diameter resulted from comet falls at the time of the end
 of the Upper Cretaceous, about 65.7 million years ago. The larger
 one is a kilometer underground and underwater; it's half on land in
 the Yucatan and half in the Caribbean Sea. At the time of the Upper
 Cretaceous that spot was fully underwater. The other is in Iowa,
 covered by glacial detritus. Another large crater from that time is
 underwater in the Atlantic off the coast of Newfoundland.

Before those falls, the eggshells of the dinosaurs were about 3-5
 millimeters thick. After the falls the eggshells were 1-millimeter
 thick. They couldn't supply enough calcium for the skeleton of the
 growing fetus. They died, whimpering, in their shells, in the words
 of Adrian J. Desmond.

As to the ammonites, they were the cream of society; they wore top
 hats to social functions. They were at the top of the invertebrate
 food chain. There was a tremendous loss of plankton--those guys at
 the bottom of the food chain--as, disastrously, they lived near the
 surface, processing sunlight into food. The loss of sunlight fol-
 lowing the comet strikes killed many species that required food to
 eat. (Do you know any species that didn't?)  The ammonites went from
 the leaders of invertebrate society to a single creature that not
 many now let in the door, top hat or no, the pearly nautilus.
 
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FROM   : ROB MATSON                             RECEIVED : YES
TO     : DONALD ROSENFIELD                      PRIVATE  : NO
SUBJECT: Earth-Moon CG                          THREAD   : YES

Picky, picky. I'm sure *you* know that *I* know the sun-moon Center
of Gravity revolves around the sun -- I was concentrating on the
inverse-cube law business...
   
In unrelated news, I'm looking at a clipping from the Business section 
of the Orange County Register dated June 27, 1991 (yes '91). The
article was discussing the Alpha chemical laser that TRW was then 
developing for Zenith Star (part of SDI). Get a load of this direct
quote: "The Alpha facility stands more than four stories tall. The
laser itself, suspended in a 50-foot test chamber, takes up only a 
small part of the facility. The remainder of the structure is
essentially a giant pump designed to suck gravity out of the air...."
If TRW has figured out how to "suck gravity out of the air", then all 
our problems are solved!! They must be keeping it a secret...

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FROM   : WALTER CLARK                           RECEIVED : NO
TO     : ROB MATSON                             PRIVATE  : NO
SUBJECT: 100 IQ Average                         THREAD   : YES

   Wow, you sure have a great deal of confidence in the ability of the
average American, especially after uploading to us the note about
sucking the gravity out of the air. . . maybe they meant humidity?
 
   I'd like to hear more optimism about Americans, because all I hear
in my contacts with the Youth Science Center (I'm president) is that
we are beyond redemption. Here's an example:

   Several years ago some state was concerned about the low marks in
science and increased the minimum requirements for a teaching
credential from no science to 3 units. Any science. After several
years, they noticed no change in the attitude or the performance and
some fellow decided to find out if the science class they were taking
were inappropriate for kids, like physics or astronomy instead of
things having to do with animals and the environment.

   Well, was he in for a surprise. Without any of these students
telling each other, they all, that is 90% of them signed up for human
sexuality to meet the minimum science requirement. Those 10% that
didn't, just couldn't get in before they graduated and had to take
general science and half of that group changed their major. In the
words of a lecturer I heard last Tuesday night, our teachers are
preselected for their hostility for science.

[A note on the above from Donald:  I took a Human Sexuality course in
college. It was part of my major in psychology. It had nothing to do
with my major in science.]

   Here's another statistic:

   Of the 22,000 high schools in America, there are only 7,000 that
offer physics and of that, only 2,000 of those teachers wanted to
teach physics. Most physics teachers were roped into it in order to
have a position on the PE staff. Well, Physical Education, it's like
Physics I guess.
 
   Oh, Another fascinating statistic. The publication of the Skeptics
Society, what is it _Inquiry_, I think, had a campaign where they
would write to newspapers to put a little disclaimer in the astrology
section that this is "for entertainment purposes only"  but very few
would. One of the newspapers did a little research on the amount of
[astrology] paraphernalia and books and readership in newspaper columns
and it turns out there is more money spent on astrology than on NASA
if you take away the Shuttle.

   Rob, there is no doubt about it, you are the most educated fellow
on the board here, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a mystery to
you how small the NASA budget is. The average person feels that
military and NASA are the same order of magnitude. Both have to do
with space stuff and technology, it is even assumed that if someday
Russia is no longer an enemy, we just move the engineers over to NASA
type work as DOD gets smaller.

   NASA is 0.7% of DOD. That means that if we were to absorb all the
laid off Northrop workers, and soldiers and convert existing nuclear
and conventional equipment to space use the president would have to
make the famous Kennedy Moon speech sound something like this:  "...
before this century is up we will have embarked on 37 1000-man
colonization projects to the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy."

   One project I have in mind that would be world class is to build a
5-mile long spacecraft while a chain of 10,000 satellites dip into the
atmosphere of Jupiter to mine it for deuterium. When the spacecraft is
done 30 years later it would be moved to Jupiter to pick up the
million tons of nuclear fuel for a trip into the future. After 50
years of 99% light speed the 9-person team would then turn their
spacecraft around and come back. On their trip they would of course be
the space end of a multi-point interferometer for mapping the galaxy.
I guess we'd have to get them to leave telescopes in a skein to have
an array. Oh yea we'd have to send such a spaceship in three different
directions.
 
 Walt
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Back to the Rambling Thoughts:

Astro-Physics Inc. has an ad in _Sky & Telescope_, July 1992, pg 51,
 in which they tout their "Starfire EDT Triplet Apochromats" as having
 five times the correction of a fluorite doublet. No doubt, no doubt.
 But corrections of one kind get ruined by distortions of another
 kind.

What I don't understand is "Triplet Apochromats."  As an apochromat is
 a three-lens system, is a triplet apochromat a *nine* lens system?
 Don't fall off your telescope stool. Camera lenses *are* made that
 way, with sometimes over 15 individual lens elements, each correcting
 for the various types of aberrations introduced by the preceding
 lenses.

**WE SEE WHERE YOU ARE GOING WITH THAT, YOU SILLY LITTLE CARBON.
 YOU'RE SAYING THAT OUR COUSIN SILICONS (in the glass) AREN'T FIGURED
 TO YOUR IMPOSSIBLE STANDARDS. KEEP TO THE FACTS, MAC, OR WE'LL SHUT
 OFF YOUR ACCESS**

Let's go back to the RMS discussion. I got told I had to use the RMS
 method of figuring the wavefront accuracy instead of adding the dis-
 tortions. I objected because the same telescope or optics manufac-
 turer would have some great (Hah!), some poor and some average
 optics. Why take a chance? Of course there's one manufacturer that
 figures to only great surfaces.

That's Questar. They make three sets of optics for each Questar. The
 buyer must pay for all three sets. Two sets are discarded and the
 best set goes into your Questar. How could Celestron and Meade do
 that? They would price themselves out of the amateur market. After
 all, they are after the nonobserver market--Walter Clark says that
 over 90% of their market are professional people such as doctors,
 lawyers, engineers, etc. They buy the instruments, are dissatisfied
 with them and give up on astronomy. They just aren't aware that
 something better exists or even could exist.

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SPLEENS ANONYMOUS

Spleens . . . what an interesting topic. Do you have a spleen? Do I?
 Does Vigoro? What happens if you lose your spleen? What about the
 spleens on the loose? Do they have a union? . . . a spokesperson?

"What a horrible concept, Uncle Don? Why are you going on and on
 about spleens?"

One holiday in Midland, Michigan, a neighbor agreed to feed and water
 Vigoro so he could stay home. When we returned after a week away he
 ran towards our car in greeting. I thought he was clear but the next
 thing I heard was a squeal. Vigoro had run into and was run over by
 our front tire. We thought we had lost him. Quick; grab the cat and
 rush to the vet.

 The vet *removed Vigoro's spleen*. At the time we were astonished
 that a mammal could live without a spleen; now, Chris says any mammal
 can live without a spleen. She had forgotten the spleen episode with
 Vigoro, some 26 years ago. After a week in cat hospital he came home
 and after taking it easy for about a month he was healed; he then
 returned to his normal life of moving ponderously around and purring
 mightily when things went his way. You couldn't tell he no longer
 had a spleen. The laboratory that bought him from the thieves who
 stole him from us musta been mightily confused when they did an
 autopsy, to find no spleen.

 --by don rosenfield, asst. general sysop/cosmogonist/spleen knocker
                  All Rights Reserved