Posted on 11/28/2002 4:41:17 PM PST by blam
Carried away by "photon fairies"?
Well, truth be known my primary interest is in threads about vibrating stimulation devices, but there's only so much you can say about that subject and not get arrested for public indecency.
So I bide my time on science-releated threads until another juicy "D*ldo Madness" thread pops up.....
My point is that your succinct (and accurate) description of the size of Jupiter would catch the eyes of our school children, and they would remember it. Then, when asked where Jupiter is, they won't say "Florida".
Don't know why this is significant.Me neither. I do know it's useful to physicists. It helps pry loose the next NAS grant. It gets tenure. And invitations to conferences.
My brother is at the fore of this type of research, into planet formations. He's an expert on black holes, and he is interested in dust particles. Don't ask me. We don't talk about this stuff at dinner. Tonight over turkey, for example, the closest we got to serious phsyics was the story that when Farraday was asked what in his life he might do differently, could he choose, he replied, "I'd learn algebra."
That wasn't much consolation to a moron like me, but it's nice to know that one of our greatest scientist punted the x's and y's, too.
My brother has made a career of the Hubble, Las Alamos & Harvard labs, and that really big computer in California. Or so he tells me. He's pretty good at math, too, which means that he's taken many a bath on the stock market. While phsycists can't figure out the universe (hell, they're still trying for some "unified" theory -- I've got a dozen of those), they think they can manage the cumulative output of the millions motivated by greed, taking advice from brokers motivated by greed, and buying stocks inflated by greedy CFO's. I hope that when they get their "unified" theories together they can account for human nature.
Meanwhile, it's kinda cool to think that Jupiter was formed in a few hundred thousand years. Time, as I understand it, aint' what it seems. But it's been a long time since my brother last tried to explain the theory of relativity to me. I couldn't get past the fare of those trains. And I could never figure out which way the wind was blowing, even though the smoke from the electric train was heading south...
I dunno. You tell me. I ain't gonna ask my bro.
· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · | ||
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.