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In article <56bg1q$22g@cardinal1.Stanford.EDU> John Ladasky,
ladasky@leland.Stanford.EDU writes:
>I don't think that we would gain much from yet more tinkering at
>the margins with questionable results from a one-shot experimental appar-
>atus 100,000,000 kilometers away.  It's much better at this point to bring
>the scientists and the rocks together, so that rigorous and flexible ex-
>periments can be performed.
Agreed. But rather than send men there for a one-shot look-see, why not
send a robot rover to gather up a whole bunch of interesting samples from
the surface and ship them back. You could even design a robot which
crushes up or probes lots of possible rocks in search for carbon-bearing
types, and only ships back potentially interesting samples. Surely the
cost savings of not having to send people/food/air/water, and the fuel
needed to send them back and forth, would be immense. And we could
examine these bona fide Mars rocks at our leisure back here on Earth. 
Even the recent discoveries of potential martian fossils would never had
been made without the ability for protracted, thoughtful analysis of
meteorite samples found on earth, using bulky and expensive equipment
which was built for other purposes. The proposed fossils on Mars would
likely never have been found by an astronaut or two roving around on the
martian surface for a couple of days.
And all this assumes that a search for ancient life on Mars (the
atmosphere is not compatible with life today) is worth the billions it
would cost even for a low-budget sample retrieval mission, never mind the
astronomical cost of a manned mission. You seem to forget that we have
been unable to balance the federal budget since we decided to send a man
to the moon. Perhaps we should attempt such earthly goals before we start
sending men to other worlds to "see what's out there". Just a thought.
*******************************************************************
* S Krueger (skrueger@arco.com)          *                        *
* This message is personal and does not  *   This Sace For Rent   *
* reflect the opinions of my employer    *                        *
*******************************************************************

>I can vouch that at the 1st quarter I see the moon's left side lit when
>I am standing up in Melbourne (but if I go silly and lay myself down on
>the ground, then depending which way my body is pointing, I can make the
>lit side be anywhere I want). 
There is one easy solution valid worldwide:
First Quarter has the lit side on the West,
Last Quarter on the East.
This is valid in the Northern Hemisphere, in the tropics and in the Southern
Hemisphere.
>As to the standard moon picture, I can't say that I recall but my guess
>is it would be pointing right.
>I might add that there is a map of the world which has been published
>with the south pole at the top (and Australia just below) just to
>confuse the northerners.
I like those things.
I think this is a different issue:
the geography is still too much based on the colonialism (from the North).
- *North* is up
- The zero meridian is in *Europe*, near London
- Some countries still bear colonial names: e.g. Aotearoa is still called
  "New Zealand" which is actually a nickname Abel Tasman, the first westerner,
  gave to these islands in the South Pacific in 1642 after the Dutch province
  of Zeeland which consisted of several islands in those days.
  He nicknamed Tonga as "Amsterdam Island" which is not in use anymore.
  Rapa Nui is still called "Easter Island", because the discoverer discovered
  it on Easter Sunday.
However, world maps are made in three ways: one with Europe in the center 
(another colonial remainder), with the Americas in the center and Asia split
and (the best I think) Europe upper left, Africa left and the Americas right
and split in the Atlantic. This kind I saw at most in Australia and the
Pacific.
Back to sky maps:
Most sky atlases show *always* North up.
However, in this case, the best should be:
North up for southern hemisphere sky maps and south up for N hemisphere maps.
Klaas

Leonard Erickson (shadow@krypton.rain.com) wrote:
: Erik Max Francis  writes:
: >>         14) Tool manufacture
: >
: > This is one of the big ones.
: They've pretty much given up on counting "use of a found object as a
: tool", since so *many* animals do it. Otters use rocks to crack shels,
: so do seagulls. 
: Modifying an object to make it a better tool occurs in chimps and
: several other species.
: *Keeping* tools, and using tools to make better tools seem to be the
: dividing line. A chimp may look for a good stick to fish for termites,
: and even strip leaves and branch stubs off, but once he's had enough
: termites, he throws away the stick.
I just love the way our definition of intelligence changes when we
discover other species qualify.
Karen
: -- 
: Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
:  shadow@krypton.rain.com	<--preferred
: leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com	<--last resort

In article <565v3n$k9q@lace.colorado.edu>, Frank Crary  writes
I am being a bit teleological here, I admit. Some writers have expressed
a growing negativism about the value of Intelligence and Science,
claiming that they are an evolutionary mistake, or even harbingers of
doom. I am suggesting that intelligence is providential in that it
offers  more coplex Life-forms the one chance of advancing beyond the
threat of periodic mass extinctions - the "snakes" in a cosmic game of
snakes and ladders; space colonisation offers us a unique chance to play
on a larger canvas; I admit this implies a rather religious view of
things, in a concept I have called "Creative Evolution" in my as yet
unpublished book, "Man, Medicine and Space",  but, at a time of
declining values and sense of Purpose in Western civilization , I offer
this new ideology (called by some,  Astronism) as a necessary bridge
between religion and science. 
        Human society and individuals, like it or not, find it difficult
to sustain hope in a valueless and purposeless Universe. I would wish to
see a new Faith at least compatible with the larger ideas of science,
based on astronomy and an expansive  human role in the Cosmos; the
alternatives, I very much fear, could be nationalistic intolerance,
fundamentalism, various superstitions based on astrology, earth magic(
extreme Greenery), or empty hedonism etc.
 Michael Martin-Smith

Aadu Pilt wrote:
> 
> I am looking for useful archaeoastronomy sites that discuss the dating of
> ancient events, such as eclipses, occultations, conjunctions, etc., and
> the accuracy with which this can be done. I understand that the main
> impediment to accuracy is imprecise information on a quantity known
> as "delta-T" which is proportional to the square of the time backwards.
> Presumably this is due to uncertainties in the earth's nutation and
> slowing down, since these effects depend on a detailed understanding of the
> earth's internal structure, whilst the precession depends primarily on
> the earth's oblateness and other spherical harmonics. Am I right in this?
> 
> --
> Aadu Pilt
> aadu.pilt@freenet.hamilton.on.ca
In first approximation you are rigth. Archeoastronomy requires to solve 
the problem of where were the Earth and the Starts at some moment of the 
past. This requires to take into account the movement of the earth 
including:
Precession
Nutation
Polar wandering
Variation on Earth rotation period
Precession and nutation are produced by the effect of the Sun and the 
Moon on the non spheric non rigid Earth. 
Polar wandering is produced by redistribution of mass over the Earth 
with time
The variation of the Earth rotation is produced by tidal effects. 
Detailled description of the issue can be seen in any good book of 
positional astronomy and/or geodesy
I have never seen an error analysis of the estimation but, of course, 
errors in our understanding of the phenomena mentioned above, i.e. Earth 
response to tides, will produce errors on archeoastronomy results. The 
error estimation will be much more complicated that a single delta-T 
proportional to the square of time backwards. I have the impresion that 
you are talking about the relationship between dynamic time and UT time.   
I have never do the calculation but I bet that the present level of 
knowledge allows a much more than acceptable reconstruction of the 
reference frames, but this will be a heavy task.

Hello;, I am sending this for a Russian amateur, please contact him at his
address...
Thank you 
Clear skies...
__________________________________________________________________
Michael Boschat ( Astronomer )    E-mail: andromed@atm.dal.ca
Atmospheric Sciences              Lab Phone: (902) 494-7060
Dept. of Oceanography             Fax: (902) 494-2885
Dalhousie University              
Halifax, Nova Scotia     
CANADA, B3H 4J1         My ASTRONOMY Web Page: http://www.atm.dal.ca/~andromed
==============================================================================
                  MESSAGE AS FOLLOWS:                                           
Hello , Australians!
I'm living in Moscow (Russia) but at the end of November I will be in
Australia (Sydney and Melbourne) for a few days. 
I'm looking for amateur astronomers in Australia to view deep-sky objects
of Southern Sky together.
My address:  stargaz@mx.iki.rssi.ru
Stanislav Axenov

: jburrell@crl.com (Jason Burrell)
: I was told by a high school physics instructor (a very bright man,
: incidentally) that, quote, "They tested this.  They took two clocks,
: one on the ground, and put the other in a 747 and flew it around the
: world a couple of times.  After 6 or 8 times around, there was a
: microsecond difference or so in the clocks." He might have been making
: up that anecdote to get the point across, though. 
Note [1], below.  There has been a recent criticism of the statistical
analysis of this experiment, claiming that the statistical analysis
by which the error limits were calculated are invalid, but most don't
take this criticism seriously.  Further, the GPS satellites are going
fast enough, and need enough accuracy, that their clocks need to be
rate-adjusted to account for time dilation (both gravitational and
traditional velocity time dilation).  See the book "Was Einstein Right"
by Clifford Will for other (mostly general relativity and gravity)
cases where relativity has been confirmed.
:: But what I don't understand is how people decided that, because of
:: that theory, we must be able to go forward and backward in time. 
: I believe people are assuming that since the time dilation follows a
: particular curve, and since Einstein theorized that time "stops" when
: you're at c, the natural progression is for time to regress when one
: is travelling in excess of c.  [...]
: Folks correct me if I'm wrong here. 
"You're wrong here."
The time experienced by an object traveling nearer and nearer lightspeed
does indeed approach zero as a limit, but above lightspeed, it becomes
imaginary, not negative.  Thus, the usual "FTL implies time travel" meme
is NOT due to extrapolating time dilation to FTL speeds.  It is,
instead, based on a *different* relativistic effect that most popular
treatments don't mention, what Feynman called "failure of simultaneity
at a distance" in his "Lectures on Physics". 
See also Hinson's FTL page and my own less detailed essay explaining this.
    http://www.physics.purdue.edu/~hinson/ftl/FTL_intro.html
    http://sheol.org/throopw/tachyon-pistols.html
--
Wayne Throop   throopw@sheol.org  http://sheol.org/throopw
               throopw@cisco.com
--
[1] Hafele&Keating;, Around-the-World Atomic Clocks Science, 1972 v177, p166-170
    Around-the-World Atomic Clocks: Predicted Relativistic Time Gains
    During October 1971, four cesium beam atomic clocks were flows on
    regularly scheduled commercial jet flights around the world twice,
    once eastward and once westward, to test Einstein's theory of
    relativity with macroscopic clocks.  From the actual flight paths of
    each trip, the theory predicts that the flying clocks, compared
    with reference clocks at the U.S.  Naval observatory, should have
    lost 40+-23 nanoseconds during the eastward trip, and should have
    gained 275+-21 nanoseconds during the westward trip.  The observed
    time differences are presented in the report that follows this one. 
    Around-the-World Atomic Clocks: Observed Relativistic Time Gains
    Four cesium beam clocks flows around the world on commercial jet
    flights during October 1971, once eastward and once westward,
    recorded directionally dependent time differences which are in good
    agreement with predictions of conventional relativity th eory. 
    Relative to the atomic time scale of the U.S.  Naval Observatory,
    the flying clocks lost 59+-10 nanoseconds during the eatward trip
    and gained 273+-7 nanoseconds during the westward trip, where the
    errors are the corresponding standard deviations.  These results
    provide an unambiguous emperical resolution of the famous clock
    "paradox" with macroscopic clocks. 

In article <3289F151.2289637F@alcyone.com>, Erik Max Francis
 wrote:
> Peter Kwangjun Suk wrote:
> 
> > A combination of the thermodynamic definition with a requirement for
> > reproduction and a capacity to "evolve" comes very close to a universal
> > definition of life.  So how about it?  I posit this as "THE definition".
> > This would include viruses, but preclude candle flames and formaldehyde
> > blobs.
> 
> Your requirement for reproduction is not required for life; it is required
> for naturally evolving life.  Individuals who cannot reproduce (through
> accident or genetic defect) are certainly still alive.
> 
> There are two types of "life" here.  The first, which I'll call
> "macrolife," is the characteristic that a species or ecology or biosphere
> exhibits over time:  [deleted]
> 
> Then there's the second type, which I'll call "microlife," which concerns
> the individual.  [deleted]
A good point.  However, "macrolife" definitions are probably going to be
more useful to scientists.  "Microlife" starts getting too much into the
metaphysical.  (It allows you to come up with conumdrums like "What if you
replaced someone's brain with...")  
If you limit your definition to the species level, and also posit
evolution and reproduction as requirements, then the thermodynamic
definition seems truly universal.  It includes not only all life on Earth,
but all imaginable life.  (Take that as a challenge.)  It also excludes
natural processes which might be included in other definitions or by the
thermodynamic requirement by itself. (growing crystals)
--PKS
-- 
There's neither heaven nor hell
  Save that we grant ourselves.
There's neither fairness nor justice
  Save what we grant each other.
Peter Kwangjun Suk 
Musician, Computer Science Graduate Student
[finger suk@pobox.com for PGP public key]

In article <3289FA22.5971@paragon-networks.com>, sci.astro,
sci.space.policy, sci.bio.paleontology, rec.arts.sf.science wrote:
> Erik Max Francis wrote:
> > Thus, my preferred definition of life is the thermodynamic one:  Any process
> > which involves a steady, local decrease in entropy*.  That is, anything that
> > gradually creates order from disorder would be considered alive.
[deleted]
> 
> Although I like the brevity, I for one am having difficulty with this
> I can't say absolutely that an organism is negative entropic.  They're just 
> so complicated that I would have to say they're positive if anything, or 
> at best very close to zero entropic at some point in it's lifetime. 
What about an organism's growth?  Going from a fertilized egg to a full
grown human strikes me as negative entropic.  
> And leaving a closed system for an open system would appear to 
> throw out lots of assumptions leaving the 2nd law open for debate, 
> i.e. you're ability to 'reclaim' energy, so to speak, is lost leaving 
> you with a positive entropic condition.  
Actually, that's part of the point.  There's only a *local* decrease in
entropy.  
--PKS
-- 
There's neither heaven nor hell
  Save that we grant ourselves.
There's neither fairness nor justice
  Save what we grant each other.
Peter Kwangjun Suk 
Musician, Computer Science Graduate Student
[finger suk@pobox.com for PGP public key]

steve eric cisna   wrote:
>> 
>> In article <32853A38.38E7@gte.net>, ashes@gte.net says...
>> >
>> >I read in a science book that there is a greater posibility of a
>> >printinng press exploding and forming webster's dictionary completly by
>> >accident; as opposed to the world being created from some dead matter.
>> 
>
>[...] I'm sure that the printing 
>press story does have about the same possibility as the earth exactly as 
>it is being formed.  But the way it is now is just one of many 
>possibilities.  It's just the one that happened.
  This is known as the anthropic principle.  Another way of looking at
it is to explode a printing press and see what comes out.  It won't 
be Webster's dictionary, but it will be something.  Take the result, 
hold it in your hand, and ask yourself "What is the probability of the 
exploding printing press giving exactly what I'm holding in my hand?".  
The answer is, of course, negligibly close to zero.  So, by this science
book's argument, what you're holding in your hand cannot therefore exist.
  The anthropic principle is a powerful argument, but it is easy to
abuse it.  Physicists -- I am reading this from sci.physics -- are often
asking "Why is such-and-such the way it is?".  The anthropic principle
is one way to answer the question (i.e. "if such-and-such weren't, then
we wouldn't be around to ask the question"), but there is often some
deeper connection that is waiting to be discovered.
  BTW, I have no feel for the absolute probability of an exploding
printing press producing Webster's dictionary, or for the creation of
the earth, so I can't judge the so-called science book's claim.  However, 
the book is implicitly asking the wrong question.  The question is not
what is the total probability of the earth being created from some dead
matter.  The correct question is, given the earth exists, what is the
conditional probability that it was created from some dead matter (just
what is "dead matter", anyway?).  The answer to the first question is
very small, whereas the answer to the second is very large.
    - Gordon
--
#include 
Gordon Long                      |  email: Gordon.Long@cern.ch
CERN/PPE                         |    
CH-1211 Geneva 23 (Switzerland)  |

Lew,
The peak is predicted for the morning of the 17th (16/17th), at 2am 
est.
Gregg Pasterick
http://pages.prodigy.com/daddy

Wayne Delia (redsox3@ibm.net) wrote:
: In <3286DD62.775C@eurocontrol.fr>, Steve Jones - JON  writes:
: >Small minds can never envisage change, they cling to the "now"
: >as perfect.  If you want a modern example, just look at IBMs latest
: >assertion that the year 2000 won't be a problem for them.
: On behalf of the company that employs me, I can assure you that the year 2000
: won't be a problem for IBM. It will, however, be a problem for anyone else who
: uses IBM hardware and software... wait a minute... IBM's the biggest customer of
: IBM hardware and software! Oh shit...
: (Actually, and officially, I do not presume to speak for the brilliant upper-level
: management of the I.B.M. Corporation, in whom I have the utmost confidence, as
: far as they know.) 
: I once worked on a PL/I program in 1993 along with a good friend who had 25 
: years experience with IBM, which required modifying a sorting routine based on a 
: date field in the format YY/MM/DD. I pointed out that we needed to take the
: turn of the century into account, but my friend said not to worry about it - 
: because he'd be retired by then. The scary part is he was dead serious.     
...And you all thought "Dilbert" was just a comic strip...
--
******************************
Czar
EAC Minister-without-portfolio
******************************
   Me fail English?
   That's unpossible!
             - Ralph Wiggum
******************************

David L Evens wrote:
> Erik Max Francis (max@alcyone.com) wrote:
> : David L Evens wrote:
> 
> : > The problem with these examples as arguments in favour of viri being
> : > considered alive is that they all are organisms which are, isiolated from
> : > other organisms, cable of carrying out life processes.  Viri don't do that.
> 
> : Such as parasites?  :-)
> 
> Nope.  A parasite doesn't HAVE to operate inside living cells (although
> some do).
So the ones that do; what about them?
You say that viruses (not _viri_, by the way) are not alive because they
cannot carry out life processes isolated from other organisms.  Neither
can parasites.  You may be able to classify parasites as alive by a
separate definition you gave, but not by the one you describe here.
-- 
                             Erik Max Francis | max@alcyone.com
                              Alcyone Systems |
http://www.alcyone.com/max/
                         San Jose, California | 37 20 07 N 121 53 38 W
                                 &tSftDotIotE; | R^4: the 4th R is respect
         "But since when can wounded eyes see | If we weren't who we were"

Judson McClendon  wrote:
>> Judson McClendon wrote:
>> >
[big snip]
>So the God who created this vast universe, and us, has put up with a
>rebellious bunch of humans for thousands of years, watching us kill,
>steal, lie, cheat and so on.  So He sends His own Son Jesus to take our
>sins upon Himself and die a horrible death on a Roman cross to pay the
>penalty for those sins.  Then He tells us that all we have to do is
>believe on Jesus and receive Him as Savior and Lord and God will
>completely forgive us all our sins and give us eternal life as a
>reward.  And you call that God a 'kill-joy'.
>-- 
Judson, god hasn't told *me* anything of the sort! If your post,
including the snip, were to have "God" replaced with ET, you would be
judged insane by many people. Myths hold no compulsion with me.
Slim
>Judson McClendon
>Sun Valley Systems    judsonmc@ix.netcom.com
Beowulf     How ceaselessly Grendel harassed.....

Michael D. Painter wrote:
> I'm more confused than ever now. If M = the solar mass then precession is
> independent of the mass of the object.
> This also implies that the orbits are circular? which they are not or
> precession would not exist.
Yes; in general relativity, more eccentric, smaller orbits have greater
perihelion precession.  In Autodynamics, supposedly, precession is
independent of eccentricity; it only depends on the Sun's mass and the
"orbital radius."  Whether or not the orbits are assumed to be circular or
whether or not "orbital radius" is another name for semimajor axis is
questionable.
> And where does this 43" come in there's no place for it in the equation
> unless the text says one thing and M is  the Mercury value.
The problem is that, supposedly (I keep saying supposedly since I have as
yet seen no derivation) in Autodynamics there is a proportionality law
(which was posted) relating the perihelion precession of a planet to the
"orbital radius" of a planet.  However, the constant of proprtionality
apparently is not calculable but instead must be gotten empirically.  In
other words, given that Mercury's perihelion precession is 43 arcsec/100 y,
they can then find their constant of proportionality is and tell you what
the predicted precessions are for Venus, Earth, and so on.
However, general relativity can tell you Mercury's perihelion precession
_from first principles_.  You don't need to plug in the perihelion
precession for another planet to "calibrate" the equation; general
relativity just tells you what it is (and what it is for the other
planets).
Furthermore, Autodynamics' supposed predictions of the perihelion
precession rates for the other planets are so high that I should think that
these would have been observed by now.  Have there been any dedicated
efforts to measuring the precession rates for non-Mercury planets?
> I make high school students show their work.
I guess they didn't learn that in the Autodynamics school.  (Amusingly
enough, there answers aren't even write.)
-- 
                             Erik Max Francis | max@alcyone.com
                              Alcyone Systems | http://www.alcyone.com/max/
                         San Jose, California | 37 20 07 N 121 53 38 W
                                 &tSftDotIotE; | R^4: the 4th R is respect
         "But since when can wounded eyes see | If we weren't who we were"

: >> There is a short answer, with reference to a longer answer, in the
: >> FAQ:
: >> http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/students/lazio/sci.astro.3.FAQ
: >> 
: >> Note that both obliquity of the ecliptic and eccentricity of Earth's
: >> orbit contribute to the shape of the analemma, with the former being
: >> slightly the larger effect.
: >I disagree with the word "slightly" -- the obliquity (tilt of the 
: >earth on its axis relative to the plane of the earth's orbit) component 
: >is actually much greater than the eccentricity (orbital speed of the 
: >earth) component, but for some reason the former seems to be unknown even 
: >to many astronomers.  
[description of length of day deleted]
In terms of the equation of time, 'slightly' is the correct word. The
effect (and they're not in phase) is 9.9 minutes for the obliquity and
7.7 minutes for the eccentricity. 
I'm stealing a march on Eric Werme and reposting his article from a few
years ago...
From cfanews!hsdndev!cmcl2!yale.edu!nigel.msen.com!caen!crl.dec.com!crl.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!alingo.zk3.dec.com!werme Fri Dec 10 08:17:12 1993
Path: cfanews!hsdndev!cmcl2!yale.edu!nigel.msen.com!caen!crl.dec.com!crl.dec.com!nntpd.lkg.dec.com!alingo.zk3.dec.com!werme
From: werme@alingo.zk3.dec.com (Eric Werme USSG)
Newsgroups: sci.astro
Subject: Re: Why do sunset and sunrise change in a non-uniform manner?
Date: 8 Dec 93 15:08:53 GMT
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 143
Message-ID: 
References: 
Reply-To: werme@zk3.dec.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: alingo.zk3.dec.com
fagin@coos.dartmouth.edu (Barry S. Fagin) writes:
>Why is it that at certain times of the year (like now), the time of sunset 
>remains the same over the course of a few days while sunrise gets later 
>and later?  Does it have to do with the eccentricity of the earth's orbit?  
>Any help would be appreciated; I've lost too much sleep over this one.
I used to post this every year or so when the Equation of Time comes up.
However, The question of the earliest sunset pops up almost every year, so
I figure if I post this in early December, it might save a little net
traffic.  I was going to post this with the appropriate dates, but you
beat me to it.
In the northern temperate zone, the earliest sunset of the year occurs a
couple weeks before the winter solstice, and the latest sunrise occurs a
couple weeks after the solstice.  (Stranger things happen at the poles and
near the equator.)  The reason for this involves the Equation of Time.
Noon used to be when the sun crossed the meridian, the line going from the
North horizon, through the zenith (the point overhead) and down to the
south horizon.  The difficulties this caused with train schedules led to
standard time and the Earth's time zones.  I don't know who came up with
daylight time, but double daylight was installed during WWII as a conservation
measure.  Along with the transition from telling time with sundials to
telling time with clocks, people realized that the time from one noon to the
next was not constant.  Part of the jargon invented to deal with the situation
is "sun time", the time a sundial would tell, and "mean time", the time an
accurate clock would tell.  The varying part of the error has come to be
called the "Equation of Time", even though it is usually described as a
graph of error vs date, or as error vs. the sun's declination, or just as
a table.
It looks like:
                                                           **** +16:25
                                                        ***   ***
                                                       **       **
                                                      **          *
                                                     *             *
                                                   **               *
                                                  **                 *
                       ******** +3:43            **                  **
  Jan   Feb   Mar    **       ***     Jul   Aug **                    **
|-----|-----|-----|**---|-----|-**--|-----|----*|-----|-----|-----|----*|
*                 ** Apr  May  Jun***        ***  Sep   Oct   Nov   Dec *
**               **                 ****   ***
 **            **                      ***** -6:28
  **          **
   **       ***
    ****  ***
       ****  -14:16
The resolution is two minutes per line and five days per column.  The numbers
are the maxima and minima in minutes:seconds.  For the above, I used the
equation:
	E = E1 + E2, where
	E1 = -7.64 * sin(d - 2)
	E2 =  9.86 * sin(2*(d - 80)), where
	d is in days and sin() expects days (convert to rads by d*2*pi/365.24)
Please note this is a crude approximation and leaves out lots of detail.
In particular, the functions are not really sinusoids. They are
periodic, so they can be described by fourier transforms.  All I've done
is used the first term, which is accurate to a few seconds.  Just don't
try to reverse engineer the theory from my equation!
The E1 component is due to the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit.  The d-2
term reflects the perihelion early in January.  When the Earth is near
perihelion, its angular velocity with respect to the sun is higher than
average and the Sun's motion in the sky lags a bit.
The E2 component is due to the tilt of the Earth's axis.  The d-80 term
reflects the vernal equinox about 80 days into the year (31 in Jan., ~28 in
Feb., ~21 in March).  If the Earth were in a circular orbit, each sidereal day
the Sun's subsolar point would just under one degree.  When the sun was on the
equator, its motion would be 23.44 degrees off the equator, so the
longitudinal component would be cos(23.44).  When the sun was on the Tropic of
Cancer, then it would be moving at right angles to longitude lines, but they'd
be closer together and the sun would make up the lost time.  The effect is
exactly analoguous to the problem a universal joint has going through a large
angle.
An interesting thing about this component is what happens with increasing
tilt.  The real equation involves transforming the motion of the sun in the
ecliptic (which would be constant were the Earth's orbit a circle) into the
apparent motion relative the equator.  This transformation is:
	Q = atan( cos(tilt) * tan(C) ), where
	C is the position on the ecliptic (degrees from the spring equinox)
	Q is the equivalent motion along the equator
	tilt is 23.44 degrees, the tilt of the Earth.
cos(23.44) = 0.917, so Q and C don't differ by much.  However, the cosine
falls off rapidly with greater angles, and a greater tilt would result in
a highly disproportionate increase in its effect.
Is any of this worth remembering?  Beats me.  I got interested for reasons
too complex to go into here.  The points I like are:
1) If you apply the equation of time to sundial time, the result is remarkably
   accurate for a well designed, properly installed sundial.
2) The rate of change is greatest around the beginning of winter (both E1 and
   E2 have negative slopes) so the delay between earliest sunset and
   latest sunrise is greater than between earliest sunrise and latest sunset.
3) The effects the eccentricity and the Earth's tilt are comparable, with
   the tilt being the greater.
4) On the equator, the equation of time is the only significant adjustment
   in the time of sunrise, sunset, and the meridian passage.  This leads to
   one earliest sunrise, but two local minima.
5) I plotted the equation of time with minutes as a function of date.  If you
   plot it with minutes on the X axis and the sun's declination on the Y axis,
   you'll get an analemma.
Further references:
Mills, HR "Positional Astronomy and Astro-Navigation made Easy",
Stanley Thornes (Publishers) Ltd, ISBN 0-85950-062-4
   This is designed for people with calculators.  Mills doesn't carry the
   theory as far as I'd like, but the drawings and practical applications
   make this my main source of information.
Bate, RR et al "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics", Dover 1971 ISBN 0-486-60061-0
   Heavy on the theory, designed as an Air Force text, so there's a sizable
   emphasis on orbit determination, rendevous, etc.  In one of my postings a
   while back, I forgot to include an anecdote from here on why orbits are
   ellipses.  I should quote that whole section someday.
Menzel, Donald & Pasachoff, Jay "A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets",
(Vol. 15 of the Peterson Field Guide Series), Houghton Mifflin 1983,
ISBN 0-395-34835-8
   Color plate 71 is that great "natural" analemma photogragh by Dennis di
   Cicco, page 417 has a analemma with the dates marked along the figure 8.
Meeus, Jean "Astronomical Formulae for Calculators", Willman-Bell, Inc. 1982
ISBN 0-943396-01-8
   All numbers (like for the coeficients I skipped).  All facts, no theory.
   Velikovskyites: The eccentricity of the Earth's orbit is:
	e = 0.01675104 - 0.0000418T - 0.000000126T^2
   Where T is centuries since 1900.  I don't know the corresponding equation
   for Venus, but I'm sure a similar equation applies.  I don't know if this
   is accurate for more than 10 Kiloyears.
See also: The Old Farmer's Almanac, Byte Magazine (a few years back),
   publications of the US Naval Observatory.
-- 
Eric (Ric) Werme		| werme@zk3.dec.com
Digital Equipment Corp.		| This space intentionally left blank.
--
Bill Wyatt  (wyatt@cfa.harvard.edu)
   Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory  (Cambridge, MA, USA)

yep.... for first 1/4  it is the left side that is lit up in the sthrn hemis.  
I'm surprised to hear that it is opposite in the nthrn hemis....
 Dave      Dunedin     New   Zealand
In article <567lfc$2g7@lori.albany.net> rsmith@clysmic.com writes:
>From: rsmith@clysmic.com
>Subject: Moon Phases Inverted in S. Hemisphere???
>Date: 11 Nov 1996 16:49:48 GMT
>This has been diving me crazy! I need astronomical advise ...
>My question: are moon phases really "inverted" in the southern hemisphere?
>In other words, at the First Quarter moon, which side is lit, the right or
>left?? In the northern hemisphere, it's the right side. Is it really the
>left in Australia and points south? Do the local almanacs/calendars all reflect this, or use a 
>"standard" moon picture (i.e. always the right side)?
>Thanks...Any help appreciated!
>Ralph Smith
>Albany, NY, USA, Northern Hemisphere where it's getting colder every day...

Jonas Mureika wrote:
> 
> Along I-15 between LA and Las Vegas (and I assume further?), distances
> are given both in miles and km.  Is there a reason for this
> (e.g. military purposes?  The Mojave Desert is full of bases).
> Also, the mileage sign for Pasadena as you get off the 110 freeway
> at Orange Grove Blvd. says "<- Pasadena 2  (3.2 km)", for
> all metric people at Caltech?
On September 30, 1996, the California Department of Transportation has
completed its transition to the metric system.  As all plans for new
highways are now drawn in metric units, it only makes sense to give
metric distances on road signs.  You'll probably see soon many more
metric road signs, not only in California, as most other departments of
transportations have already converted, too.  The U.S. government is
clearly going metric.
For more information about the California Dept of Transportation Metric
Program:
  http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/metric/metricprg.html
Markus
-- 
Markus Kuhn, Computer Science grad student, Purdue
University, Indiana, US, email: kuhn@cs.purdue.edu

Observatory Techniques is a quarterly magazine published by amateur
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Hallo...
ich erlaube mir, deutsch zu schreiben.
Ich glaube nicht, daß das so möglich ist, wie Du schreibst. Die Sonne wird eher noch abgebremst, indem durch die Einwirkung 
der Planetenkräfte die Sonnenmaterie gezeitenartig verschoben wird, ähnlich wie der Mond die Erde bremst.
 Dieser Effekt dürfte aber sehr, sehr klein sein.
Ich denke nicht, daß sehr masserarme Körper größere Kräfte auf einen viel massereicheren Körper übetragen können! (Das widerspräche den
elementarsten physikalischen Gesetzen...).
Grüße,
Stephan R.

>> What a bunch of moronic blather. The most stringent test of the perihelion
>> advance predicted by GR is the Taylor-Hulse pulsar. You might recall that
>> the discoverers of this pulsar (Taylor and Hulse) were recently awarded Nobel
>> prizes. This system has a much larger perihelion advance than
>> mercury. Observation and analysis of pulsar timing has yielded fantastic
>> agreement with GR. End of discussion.
>Of course - I forgot ... everyone who is awarded a Nobel prize is
>correct by default.   Certainly, if they were handing out such
>awards in the days of Ptolemy, then he would have received a few.
No, it's the universe itself which hands out the prizes. General
relativity predicted the perihelion precession precisely. Auto
fellatio^H^H^H^H^H^H^HDynamics gets it backwards. But thanks
for sharing.

Lawrence Crowl wrote:
> 
> In article <327DEFA2.71B0@sni.de>, Volker Hetzer   wrote:
> >Lawrence Crowl wrote:
> >> I don't remember the numbers, but both are close (+/- 20%) to 100
> >> pounds.  Why do you care what the exact number is?
> >Because, I might have to pay for it.
> 
> You'd only ever pay for one particular size for one particular
> commodity.  E.g. a hundredweight of silk always weighs the same.
> Likewise, a hundredweight of wool always weighs the same, though
> different from that of silk.  You'll always get what you pay for.
Maybe a hundredweight is always the same (what about wet silk?), but
if you are putting your weight from a freighter (measuring your silk
in some big unit, for instance 1.5 standard freighter fillings), put
it on several lorries (each carrying several hundredweights), selling
it by the ounce (the special dry american silk ounce of course) and
use it by the grain, a lot of people have to do a lot of odd
calculations.
With the SI-System you do nothing but shifting the decimal point or
do an occasional change of the prefix.
> 
> >> Fine.  Note however, that bushels don't measure volume, they measure
> >> dry capacity.  Hogsheads don't measure volume, they measure liquid
> >> capacity.  Until very recently, you wouldn't use the same container for
> >> storing dry and liquid commodities, so there was no need to have the
> >> units be the same.
> >Yeah, you buy always two different pots. One for dry goods
> >and one for wet goods.
> 
> People _did_, because wet goods containers were much more expensive.
> Even today, we buy different containers for the stovetop and the
> refrigerator.
Of course, but when I fill something from the stovetop pot into
the fridge pot I don't want to calculate stovetop-hogsheads into
fridgepot-hogsheads, just because they are made with different materials
or from different companies.
> >Just by the way, how wet has dough to be in order to count as wet?
> 
> Does it drip out of the holes in the basket?
Depends on the dough and on the size of the holes in the basket.
Is there perhaps some special ANSI basket for comparing?
> 
> >And what's capacity other than volume (except electrical capacity of
> >course)?
> 
> Containers have capacity.  Objects have volume.
There is no difference. A container has some volume, because
it takes space (in a freighter). Whatever is in the container
has a volume, because it fills all space in the container.
And the freighter itself has several volumes, according what you
want to measure.
It is impractical to measure the "capacity" of a container in one
set of units but measuring the "volume" of the things you want to put
into
the container in a completely different set of units.
> How is our proverbial medieval farmer going to measure the contents?
> He's going to use a standard container.  Probably the one designed
> to hold the stuff he's measuring.  He has no means other than the
> standard container to measure anything.  He probably doesn't understand
> the length cubed equals volume concept.
No problem. Call your container a con.
Define:
	One con is the inner volume of the international con-prototype
	in Hinterschlumpfsdorf. The inner volume of the international 
	con-prototype forms a perfect cube in the geometrical (euklidean)
	sense. One con of platinum forms the mass-prototype. The third
	root of a con forms the length prototype.
	So lengths are measures in con^(1/3). Use the time
	it takes the platinum prototype to fall from the clock tower
	of Hinterschlumpfsdorf to its base (in vacuum) as the basic time
	unit.
	Then define your prefixes as powers of 10 and you've got a unit
	system that is almost as good as the SI one. 
> >> I hope you aren't refering to the metric system.
> >>
> >>    unit of length (meter) cubed != unit of volume (liter)
> >Wrong. There is no "Unit of volume" per se. You can measure
> >Volume in cubic meters, cubic centimeters or cubic light years.
> >And one of these units (cubic decimeters) happens to have a second name
> >(liter).
> 
> There is (as far as I know) only one volume measure with its own name,
> the liter.  It was clearly intended as the unit of volume in the original
> metric system.
You are talking about medieval farmers, and predeccors of the SI-System.
I don't want the US to change to the earliest unit system that uses the
meter,
and I don't want it to change to some old cgs-System. We are talking
about
the SI-System.
> >>    unit of mass (gram) is offset by a factor of 1000 from the standard
> >>        (and nowhere close to the mass of a unit of volume of water)
> >What has the mass of gram has to do with water?
> 
> The mass of a liter of water is very close to one kilogram.  A more
> rational system would have the mass of a liter being one gram.
A liter doesn't have mass. You measure volume in liters.
Volker

In article <56d0tk$rmk@geraldo.cc.utexas.edu> Jeramie.Hicks@mail.utexas.edu (Jeramie Hicks) writes:
>>If you smoke but are concerned about the health risks of inhaling 
>>combustion byproducts, check out http://www2.paltech.com/pure-vapor.
>2) Isn't the POINT of smoking to inhale combustion byproducts? Isn't
>that what SMOKE is?
Nicotine is not a combustion byproduct.  It is a volatile plant component.  
Combustion by products are things like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and 
particulate matter, all of which, taken together, are riskier than inhaling 
nicotine vapor. 
                           Bob

In article , minnie@mail.pe.net (Gary/Robyn Goodwin) writes:
> In article ,
> pcp2g@karma.astro.Virginia.EDU (Twisted STISter) wrote:
> 
>> >
>> >That may be true, but if you check the website, there is a release date of
>> >1 year after the date of observation. I think it's a dumb idea myself,
>> >but that's what I found. 
>> 
>> Data taken by HST is indeed held private for 1 year. This 'embargo' gives 
>> the astronomer that made the proposal a chance to reduce and analyze the data.
>> Time (and money!) on HST is very competitive, so it is in the community's
>> best interest to put the data on hold for a year. Getting a proposal passed
>> to observe on HST is an arduous and time-consuming task. If they simply
>> released the data immediately no one would ever propose anything!
>> 
> Maybe I'm confused here... you're saying that knowledge is postponed in
> favor of competition?
No, what he is saying is that knowledge is INCREASED by the embargo.
As he said, to get observing time takes a great deal of effort.  If the
data became public as soon as it was obtained there is a good chance
someone else will analyze the data.  So the astronomer invested time
with no benefit.  If that were the case, no astronomer in their right mind
would propose for HST observations, no pretty pictures would be obtained
and no HST would exist.  While I do what I do because I love it, I still
have to secure an income in a very competive field and plan for a future
career.  The data will come out eventually - and whats more, instead of it just
being a pretty picture there will be analysis with it that will give
us all a great deal of interesting new information.
So it really benefits everyone - just takes a little time.  Typically,
it takes a year or more from the time an astronomer writes a proposal
requesting observations before they even get the data.  Then it takes
awhile to analyze and publish the results.
Now, there are cases (e.g., the Hubble deep field) where the data are
released to the public right away.  Also, sometimes some images are taken
only for planning purposes.  IN these cases, of if the astronomer can
analyze the data quickly, the data are released faster.
____________________________________________________________________________
Robert C Dempsey                                      (410) 338-1334
Space Telescope Science Institute - OPUS              3700 San Martin Dr.
http://icarus.stsci.edu/~dempsey/                     Baltimore, MD 21218
Do not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
 - Thurber
____________________________________________________________________________

Readers who will be in Tokyo November 23rd might be interested in this 
bit of news from the Tele Vue web-page: 
-----------------------
                            To our friends in Japan:
                      We are pleased to have organized the
                    "American Telescope Manufacturers Show"
                            Saturday, November 23
                                    at the
                          World Import Mart in Tokyo
Tele Vue, along with other American Manufacturers, will display a large 
variety of equipment.
For more information, call Mr. Morikawa of Tele Vue Japan at 03 3497-0941
David and Al Nagler, along with Mr. Morikawa will be pleased to
demonstrate our latest products. 
-- 
                              Mark Wagner
>"The Astronomy Club" for active observers - www.rahul.net/resource/sjaa<
>The Fremont Peak Observatory Association  - www.rahul.net/resource/fpoa<

Sorry for beeing off topic, but I miss her in this thread.
Has anybody heard, what happened to her?
Volker

pmaker@eskimo.com (Brian Pickrell) writes:
> I think it will be even harder than you appreciate.  What about a
> non-tool-based technology?
Sorry, but "non-tool-based technology" is an oxymoron. If there aren't
tools involved, it isn't technology. That's the way the term is
*defined*. 
-- 
Leonard Erickson (aka Shadow)
 shadow@krypton.rain.com	<--preferred
leonard@qiclab.scn.rain.com	<--last resort

maguirre (maguirre@eoppsun.estec.esa.nl) wrote:
: In first approximation you are rigth. Archeoastronomy requires to solve 
: the problem of where were the Earth and the Starts at some moment of the 
: past. This requires to take into account the movement of the earth 
: including:
: Precession
: Nutation
: Polar wandering
: Variation on Earth rotation period
: Precession and nutation are produced by the effect of the Sun and the 
: Moon on the non spheric non rigid Earth. 
: Polar wandering is produced by redistribution of mass over the Earth 
: with time
: The variation of the Earth rotation is produced by tidal effects. 
: Detailled description of the issue can be seen in any good book of 
: positional astronomy and/or geodesy
: I have never seen an error analysis of the estimation but, of course, 
: errors in our understanding of the phenomena mentioned above, i.e. Earth 
: response to tides, will produce errors on archeoastronomy results. The 
: error estimation will be much more complicated that a single delta-T 
: proportional to the square of time backwards. I have the impresion that 
: you are talking about the relationship between dynamic time and UT time.   
Yes, this is the delta-T I was referring to. There is a paper on the Web 
by K.D. Pang, K.K.C. Yau and Hung-hsiang Chou entitled "The need and 
opportunity to develop more accurate 4000-year ephemerides using ... 
ancient eclipse and planetary data."
: I have never do the calculation but I bet that the present level of 
: knowledge allows a much more than acceptable reconstruction of the 
: reference frames, but this will be a heavy task.
Could be. I guess the question really is: Assume that an ancient manuscript 
could be interpreted to read that a total solar eclipse was observed at 
location "x" on, say, a date that can be correlated to 14 November. 
Someone claims to do a "retrocalculation" using a planetarium programme 
and comes up with the date 1499 BC. What is the "error" (uncertainty) in 
this determination? [Ignore the other possible solutions which must be at 
least a couple of hundred years away].
Thank you for your assistance.
--
Aadu Pilt
aadu.pilt@freenet.hamilton.on.ca

In article , minnie@mail.pe.net (Gary/Robyn Goodwin) writes:
> In article ,
> pcp2g@karma.astro.Virginia.EDU (Twisted STISter) wrote:
> 
> > In article <01bbd0cf$ef55b5c0$98462399@default>,
> > Ray Laliberty  wrote:
> > Data taken by HST is indeed held private for 1 year. This 'embargo' gives 
> > the astronomer that made the proposal a chance to reduce and analyze the data.
> > Time (and money!) on HST is very competitive, so it is in the community's
> > best interest to put the data on hold for a year. Getting a proposal passed
> > to observe on HST is an arduous and time-consuming task. If they simply
> > released the data immediately no one would ever propose anything!
> > 
> Maybe I'm confused here... you're saying that knowledge is postponed in
> favor of competition?
No, it's the *dissemination* of the *raw data*.
Look at it this way.  You're a research astronomer specializing in globular
clusters (say), and you've just had a proposal accepted to look at a few
globulars in the Andromeda Galaxy.  You're going to do star counts all the
way into the heart of the cluster, something you can't do from earth because
the atmosphere gets in the way.  So HST takes your images, and a week later
you get a tape from STScI.  Now you get to spend some time looking at the
images, you fire up your star counting software, you get a result, and you
write up a journal article for publication.  The work is done, and you've
got another paper to add to your C.V.
Now suppose that one of your colleagues across the country, who shares your
research interest, gets wind of your proposal.  (Not hard to do -- check out
sci.astro.hubble some time.)  He too has a nifty software package that does
the same thing yours does -- maybe even the same code (IRAS or DAOPHOT or
whatever).  Suppose there's no embargo -- then all he has to do is to send
a letter to STScI, they'd send him another tape, and the two of you get to
race to see who gets their results published first.  Lots of sleepless nights
and 100-hour workweeks, no time for the kind of studious reflection that
makes for good science -- no, you've got to beat the other guy to the punch.
And if you lose, why then your proposal has gone sour, because your paper,
being received second, might not even get published at all.  Surely that is
not right.  And the scientists, well aware of these consequences, would be
less likely to propose anything.
So the way I see it, the one-year proprietary period helps to *attract* good
proposals, which in turn does indeed help further our knowledge.
Besides, once the principal investigators are finished with their analysis,
they're not going to wait until the year has expired to make their results
known, in the form of preprints of journal articles, press releases, etc.
-- Bill Owen, wmo@wansor.jpl.nasa.gov

In article <56b6ru$jp4@herald.concentric.net>, rgiaquinta@mailzone.com wrote:
~ I assume that the fact that there are 360 degrees in a circle is based
~ upon the number of days in an earthly year.  But what happened to the
~ extra five plus days?  Is the number just an approximation?  I'm using
~ this information for a short story and need to make some sense in the
~ mind of my character.  Any ideas why there are 7 days in a week or 24
~ hours in a day?
7 Days is JudaeoChristian -- God created the earth in six and rested on
the seventh.
As for 360 degrees -- there was a large debate (many-articled thread)
going on in the sci.math group, but I didn't see any definite answers.
Some said it was arbitrary. Some even said it had something to do with the
Aztec calendar (which was 360 days, plus 5 "unlucky" days or something
like that) Most kind of aggreed it had something to do with the days in a
year. Maybe it was estimated from 365 to 360 so it could be divided into
halfs (straight angle) and quarters (right angle) without having a
remainder. If a circle was 365 degrees, then a straight ang would be 182.5
degrees and a right angle would be 91.25 -- not that nice to work with.
As for 24 hrs ina day, I don't know. Since this was developed long before
metric, it makes sense (it fits in with the 12 inches/foot, 36 in/yard, 3
ft/yard, 6 ft/fathom setup -- divisible by 3, 6, 12 or the like.)
Actually, I know there was at one time someone tried to introduce a metric
calendar and time system (but it never worked out). I don't know much
about it, though.
Speaking of metric, I think the "grads" system (400 grads in a circle, 200
str. ang, 100 right ang) is the metric way of measuring, instead of
degrees. This, really, is a better way of working than 360.
Hope this helps.
Jeremy J. Olson
olson@ici.net
http://www.ici.net/cust_pages/olson/olson.html

In article <56fbjd$akg@news.sas.ab.ca>, czar@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca () writes:
>...And you all thought "Dilbert" was just a comic strip...
>
Actually, "Dilbert" is reality, while what we refer to as "reality" is 
a comic strip.
Mati Meron			| "When you argue with a fool,
meron@cars.uchicago.edu		|  chances are he is doing just the same"

Dick Brewster wrote:
> 
> Marc-Etienne Vargenau wrote:
> >
> 
> > One of the problems with the US adopting the SI is that they do not understand it
> > and often break the rules. I visited the Petrified Forest National Park this summer.
> > The signs giving the distances inside the park were given in both SI and obsolete
> > units, and the SI units were even given first. Good. Unfortunately, the sign read :
> > "16 KM, 10 MI" (instead of "16 km").
> 
> Good God!  What a terrible event.  Let me apologize for my entire country.  I
> sincerely hope you weren't caused any permanent emotional damage from that
> experience.
WeLl LeT mE aSk My LaWyEr AbOuT tHaT. (BuT i gUeSs It DoEs DePeNd On
WhEtHeR yOu WrItE uPpEr Or LoWeR cAsE, No?)
- Balthasar
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------
Balthasar T. Indermuehle
INside Corp. (Switzerland)               TINKERO ERGO SUM
Personal E-mail: bi@inside.net       http://www.inside.net
----------------------------------------------------------

Perhaps the 24hr day comes from the twelve zodiacal signs? It takes two 
hours for each to cross a point, and perhaps the time interval was long
enough that breaking the time up into halves was convenient?
In edited-for-brevity article ,
Jeremy J. Olson  wrote:
>As for 24 hrs ina day, I don't know. Since this was developed long before
>metric, it makes sense (it fits in with the 12 inches/foot, 36 in/yard, 3
>ft/yard, 6 ft/fathom setup -- divisible by 3, 6, 12 or the like.)
>Actually, I know there was at one time someone tried to introduce a metric
>calendar and time system (but it never worked out). I don't know much
>about it, though.
-- 
 Dale Gombert, dwg5400@saul.u.washington.edu 
     All expressed opinions are my own. 
============================================

> Does anyone know of any mailing lists?  If so, e-mail me-
I know of some.
Jeremy J. Olson; olson@ici.net
http://www.ici.net/cust_pages/olson/olson.html

In the Daily Mail (a British newspaper) on Wednesday 13 November
there was a short letter answering the question "has any couple
made love in outer space?"  The affirmative answer, from a Mr/Ms
M. Zastava was:
Further to the earlier answer in which NASA was a bit prudish
about the subject of sex in space, the Russians have been rather
more forthcoming and admit that intercourse took place in their
spaceships, in particular in June 1982 when cosmonaut Svetlana
Savicka shared the confines of Jaljut 7 with two colleagues
from the Russian space headquarters.
The Russians had given themselves the far more ambitious plan
of conceiving the first space child but this scheme remains
unfulfilled.  Svetlana Savicka gave birth to two healthy
daughters but neither was the longed-for space child.
The letter says nothing about how sex in orbit differs from the
same activity on earth.  It would be impossible for the woman 
to lie back and think of England (as Queen Victoria was advised 
to do) because a weightless person cannot lie on anything!  The 
nostalgic postion would work on the Moon or Mars (despite their 
weaker gravitational fields) but not in orbit.  Therefore female 
passivity or complete male dominance would seem to be ruled out.
Another difference is that in a weightless environment "up" and "down"
are meaningless terms.  How (not) on earth can the couple know who is 
on top?  If they are not even sure what position they are in the risks 
of incompatibility are presumably greater. 
Sexual disorientation in space is a new field waiting to be studied by 
psychologists, agony aunts, television chat show hosts, ministers and 
theologians.  Space research has suffered in recent years as the Americans, 
Europeans and above all the Russians have been unwilling to devote the 
necessary financial resources to it.  NASA, the European Space Agency and 
the Russian space authorities could recapture public support by promising 
to go where few couples have gone (or come) before!
_____________________________________________________________________
Roy Davies           | e-mail Roy.Davies@exeter.ac.uk                |
Science Librarian    |                                               |
University Library   | History of Money URL                          |
University of Exeter | http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/llyfr.html |
Stocker Road         |                                               |
Exeter EX4 4PT       | Financial Thrillers URL                       |
UK                   | http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/linda.html |
----------------------------------------------------------------------

In article ,
S Krueger   wrote:
>In article <56bg1q$22g@cardinal1.Stanford.EDU> John Ladasky,
>ladasky@leland.Stanford.EDU writes:
>>I don't think that we would gain much from yet more tinkering at
>>the margins with questionable results from a one-shot experimental appar-
>>atus 100,000,000 kilometers away.  It's much better at this point to bring
>>the scientists and the rocks together, so that rigorous and flexible ex-
>>periments can be performed.
>
>Agreed. But rather than send men there for a one-shot look-see, why not
>send a robot rover to gather up a whole bunch of interesting samples from
>the surface and ship them back.
	Notice that I said "bring the scientists and the rocks together."  
I did not specify whether Mohammed would go to the mountain or vice versa.
In an earlier post in this thread, I expressed support for a sample-retrieval
robot.
>You could even design a robot which
>crushes up or probes lots of possible rocks in search for carbon-bearing
>types, and only ships back potentially interesting samples. Surely the
>cost savings of not having to send people/food/air/water, and the fuel
>needed to send them back and forth, would be immense. And we could
>examine these bona fide Mars rocks at our leisure back here on Earth. 
	I'm waiting with interest for the results from the Russian "golf
tee" probes that are expected to penetrate into the Martian soil.
>Even the recent discoveries of potential martian fossils would never had
>been made without the ability for protracted, thoughtful analysis of
>meteorite samples found on earth, using bulky and expensive equipment
>which was built for other purposes. The proposed fossils on Mars would
>likely never have been found by an astronaut or two roving around on the
>martian surface for a couple of days.
	But if we bother to send humans to Mars, a trip which would take
several months each way, we surely wouldn't spend a mere few days on the
surface.  A month, at least?  If we send some equipment that allows for
preliminary analyses, we would probably get a better feel for where to 
look for more evidence.
>And all this assumes that a search for ancient life on Mars (the
>atmosphere is not compatible with life today) is worth the billions it
>would cost even for a low-budget sample retrieval mission, never mind the
>astronomical cost of a manned mission. You seem to forget that we have
>been unable to balance the federal budget since we decided to send a man
>to the moon. Perhaps we should attempt such earthly goals before we start
>sending men to other worlds to "see what's out there". Just a thought.
	Err, no, I haven't forgotten about the federal budget.  (Aside -
is scientific research a primary, or even secondary, cause of the budget
crisis?  *Hardly.*)  But I can think of a lot of places to get, say, $50
billion over the next ten years that would not bust the budget.  This is
only a fraction of the present NASA budget.  And with the international
cooperation that everyone says will be required to fund a Mars mission,
we should be able to double this, at least.
-- 
Unique ID : Ladasky, John Joseph Jr.
Title     : BA Biochemistry, U.C. Berkeley, 1989  (Ph.D. perhaps 1998???)
Location  : Stanford University, Dept. of Structural Biology, Fairchild D-105
Keywords  : immunology, music, running, Green

In article <56f1g8$j9m@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
   mjh22@mrao.cam.ac.uk (Martin Hardcastle) wrote:
>In article <56dhjo$1nho@news.gate.net>,
>Stephen  Bennett  wrote:
>>I have no idea how, as another respondent posted, an observational
>>group could pin down the Hubble constant to even one decimal place,
(snip)
>Ah -- that was me, I think, and I may have been exaggerating for
>effect, though the evangelists of COBRAS/Samba do make some quite wild
>claims. The published documentation that I have found, which is quite
>old and so may be out of date, claims a more reasonable accuracy for
>H_0 (and q_0) of one to a few per cent. (Still quite impressive.)
>You can look at this in more detail at http://astro.estec.esa.nl/SA-general/Projects/Cobras/cobras.html>
>
>Martin
Thanks for the tip.
Steve

Erik Max Francis  wrote:
>Mules can't reproduce at _all_, period.
But their constituent cells can, given a suitable medium, such as the
inside of the mule. Or an agar plate for that matter.
So a living creature can then be a constituent of a dead one. And
presumably vice-versa.
Nobody's mentioned prions yet. So, prions.
Or artificial von Neumann machines, for that matter. They certainly
decrease local entropy but I don't think I'd call them alive.
Methinks this one will run and run.
Dr Jim Davies...idiot in disguise

In article <56ejee$ohu@cardinal1.Stanford.EDU>, John Ladasky (ladasky@leland.Stanford.EDU) writes:
>       Mr. Baalke's press releases are one of the best things in sci.astro.
>Thanks, Ron!  So, now about this scientific applications satellite; is it a
>candidate for a shuttle rescue?  Could the vehicle be stabilized and separ-
>ated from the stubborn upper stage of the booster rocket?
>
Pegasus is supposed to be a low cost launch vehicle and I suspect
it would be _much_ cheaper to launch a new satellite. Anyway, if the
satellite is without power it is probably getting sicker by the
hour.