The Sunset of Darwinism

tfp ^ | 06.04.08 | Julio Loredo

[mrjesse]

Welcome back, LeGrande! How was your flight?

Will you do this for me? Go outside and pound a stake into the ground pointing the stake at the sun in such a way that it doesn’t leave a shadow. Then 8.3 minutes later can you pound another stake into the ground at the same point as the previous stake, this stake too needs to not leave a shadow.

Then I want you to measure and calculate the angle between the stakes : ) Longer stakes will make the measurements easier and more accurate.

But this is just measuring one's own change in angle - just like sitting on a rocking chair and observing the whole world around you appearing to change position in relation to the chair. But remember you're arguing that the sun's actual and gravitational direction will be displaced about 2.1 degrees from its apparent position. But if I pound in the one stake as you describe above then 8.3 minutes later pound in the second, at each pounding, the sun's gravitational angle will still be about the same (and nowheres near 2.1 degrees displaced) as its optical position.

I would be most grateful if you would read my earlier post as I think it might help.

By the way, I'm pretty sure that X-rays are the same as light - just shorter wavelength. I take the difference between particles and electromagnetic waves to be that e.m. waves travel at about the speed of light only while particles can travel at any sub-C velocity or hover in space at zero velocity.

By the way, Please tell me where Pluto really is compared to where it appears in the night sky! I don't need to know exactly - just within the available accuracy of the data.

Thanks,

-Jesse

[mrjesse]

Check out my photos of Jupiter and its moons! Yeah yeah, so I used a kid's toy telescope and a lens from an old 8mm home movie projector. (The telescope is a Meade DS-90 refracting unit with about a 90mm aperture and 1m focal length.)



I ran the second two photos through several stages of blurring and unsharpmask to try to bring out the stripes. Also note that my camera was quite probably not very level.

-Jesse

[LeGrande]

The Moons came out nicely : )

I can remember the first time I took my wife to a star party and how blown away she was after seeing the rings of Saturn and Moons of Jupiter.

You do understand that to get good pictures, your telescope should be moving to keep the apparent position of the planets in the same place : ) At least for time delayed photographs.

[mrjesse]

The Moons came out nicely : )

I can remember the first time I took my wife to a star party and how blown away she was after seeing the rings of Saturn and Moons of Jupiter.

You do understand that to get good pictures, your telescope should be moving to keep the apparent position of the planets in the same place : ) At least for time delayed photographs.

Oh yeah I know about sidereal tracking in telescopes - but as I said, this is just a kids toy that was given to me by some good friends. It does have Meade's cheapest autostar star finder/tracking feature, but the construction is so cheap that it really doesn't track very well. So I just set my ISO to 1600 and gave it the best I could without sidereal tracking. One day I hope to build myself a better mount.

Thanks,

-Jesse