[ Science/Technology ] [ Main Menu ]
4715
From: horst graben, [DNS_Address]
Subject: "Criticism and dissent ... indispensable antidote to major delusions."
|
Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions. -- Alan Barth |
4717
From: horst graben, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: "Quote from Carl Sagan, in his book Cosmos, 1980, page 91"
|
"The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that his hypotheses were wrong or in contradiction to firmly established facts, but that some who called themselves scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky's work." "Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science." |
4720
From: Nasirah, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: "Quote from Carl Sagan, in his book Cosmos, 1980, page...
|
CHAPTER IV Cosmos ,Heaven and Hell pages 90-91 Carl Sagan Major recent collisions from Saturn to Venus were alleged in a popular book, Worlds in Collision, published in 1950 by a psychiatrist named Immanuel Velikovsky. He proposed that an object of planetary mass, which he called a comet, was somehow generated in the Jupiter system. Some 3,500 years ago, it careered in toward the inner solar system and made repeated encounters with the Earth and Mars, having as incidental consequences the parting of the Red Sea, allowing Moses and the Israelites to escape from Pharaoh, and the stopping of the Earth from rotating on Joshua’s command. It also caused, he said, extensive vulcanism and floods.* Velikovsky imagined the comet, after a complicated game of interplanetary billiards, to settle down into a stable, nearly circular orbit, becoming the planet Venus - which he claimed never existed before then. As I have discussed at some length elsewhere, these ideas are almost certainly wrong. Astronomers do not object to the idea of major collisions, only to major recent collisions. In any model of the solar system it is impossible to show the sizes of the planets on the same scale as their orbits, because the planets would then be almost too small to see. If the planets were really shown to scale, as grains of dust, we would easily note that the chance of collision of a particular comet with the Earth in a few thousand years is extraordinarily low. Moreover, Venus is a rocky and metallic, hydrogen-poor planet, whereas Jupiter - where Velikovsky supposed it comes from - is made almost entirely of hydrogen. There are no energy sources for comets or planets to be ejected by Jupiter. If one passed by the Earth, it could not ‘stop’ the Earth’s rotation, much less start it up again at twenty-four hours a day. No geological evidence supports the idea of an unusual frequency of vulcanism or floods 3,500 years ago. There are Mesopotamian inscriptions referring to Venus that predate the time when Velikovsky says Venus changed from a comet into a planet. It is very unlikely that an object in such a highly elliptical orbit could be rapidly moved into the nearly perfectly circular orbit of present-day Venus. And so on. |
Responses:
None
4719
From: Nasirah, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: "Quote from Carl Sagan, in his book Cosmos, 1980, page...
|
Martyr complex In psychology, a person who has a martyr complex, sometimes associated with the term victim complex, desires the feeling of being a martyr for his/her own sake, seeking out suffering or persecution because it feeds a psychological need. In some cases, this results from the belief that the martyr has been singled out for persecution because of exceptional ability or integrity. Theologian Paul Johnson considers such beliefs a topic of concern for the mental health of clergy. Other martyr complexes involve willful suffering in the name of love or duty. This has been observed in women, especially in poor families, as well as in codependent or abusive relationships. It has also been described as a facet of Jewish-American folklore. The desire for martyrdom is sometimes considered a form of masochism. Allan Berger, however, described it as one of several patterns of "pain/suffering seeking behavior", including asceticism and penance. Taking the above into account - what is your prediction for when the Rosetta probe/ robotic lander, Philae, comes into contact with Comet 67P later this year? Also news just in: Ceres asteroid vents water vapour Observations of the Solar System's biggest asteroid suggest it is spewing plumes of water vapour into space. Ceres has long been thought to contain substantial quantities of ice within its body, but this is the first time such releases have been detected. The discovery was made by Europe's infrared Herschel space telescope, and is reported in the journal Nature. Scientists believe the vapour is coming from dark coloured regions on Ceres' surface, but are not sure of the cause. One idea is that surface, or near-surface, ice is being warmed by the Sun, turning it directly to a gas that then escapes to space. "Another possibility," says the European Space Agency's Michael Kuppers, "is that there is still some energy in the interior of Ceres, and this energy would make the water vent out in a similar way as for geysers on Earth, only that with the low pressure at the surface of the asteroid, what comes out would be a vapour and not a liquid." The quantity being out-gassed is not great - just 6kg per second - but the signature is unmistakable to Herschel, which was perfectly tuned to detect water molecules in space. |
Responses:
None
[ Science/Technology ] [ Main Menu ]