A Lesson in Humility

As some of you may have heard, we're about to be taught a lesson in humility. On Halloween next week a significant piece of rock will go sizzling past out planet at a distance that qualifies it as 'bullet parting yer hair' miss.

The object is 2015 TB145. It will pass outside our orbit at an approximte range of 300,000 miles. They say that this rock is the closest thing to come near us until the scary one of 2027.

Now, why is this any kind of lesson? Simply that NASA didn't know it existed until 10 days ago.

So pardon me if I regard any such statements with the skepticism they deserve. Any time I learn of a 400 meter wide bullet aimed at Earth, I get a teensy bit nervous. What else don't they know? The only sane answer is 'almost everything'. That is not meant as a criticism in any way of the state of their knowledge! Given how few resources are being directed at the issue, it's a wonder we found it at all. Instead, my scorn is aimed at pronouncements like that one about not seeing anything more until 2027. That claim makes me want to run and hide. Preferably on the moon or maybe Mars...

Here's a little guide for those at NASA and JPL: keep your eyes open and always ask yourself what else you don't know!

Enough for a shower?

Water on Mars.

Until a few weeks ago, it was the very stuff of sci-fi. Then they found liquid water on the surface of Mars. Of all the discoveries made in the last century, this is the equivalent of having your face shoved in 'it' and then rubbed vigorously. If the 'experts' don't realize that their holy writ of infallibility is null and void, then what more can the universe do? Sadly, it also punches small holes in the latest stranded astronaut movie, but movies are works of fiction anyway, right?

To make up for that, it may also make colonization easier. Yes, I am in favor of colonizing, even though the main direction of this blog is interstellar. We need a dress rehearsal. Something easy, but not too easy, where we can test even more theorems. The most critical thing I want to see is some drive better than a toy rocket, They are leaning towards an ion/plasma drive, which is efficient, but slow. This baby step will no doubt help, but we all know it won't make the interstellar cut. Let's hope we can eventually test out a fusion drive.

Speaking of propulsion, it turns out that there is a very effective launch vehicle for heavy lifting to orbit. IF we can stand the secondary effects! It consists of digging a deep cylindrical hole, placing a metal plate over it with the load on top. Then firing off a nuclear bomb at the bottom of the hole(!). It gives the payload a final velocity of 42 miles per SECOND. Somehow I doubt that it will be useful for lifting poor, squishy people, though it may be possible to engineer around that. And then there's the mess left behind... Well, we chip the stone into a circle and grind a hole in the middle...

But let's spend a moment thinking about Mars. There are still things about the planet (it still is a planet, right?) that we can't explain. Certainly it's been a solar system's punching bag, much like our moon. I assume that there are plans at a high level to terraform the place. I have no idea what we could do to liquefy a planetary core and spin it.

Now we get to some things that scientific experts don't want to deal with!

Mars rotates. Is this a leftover from times of a liquid core? Is there a liquid core, but one too cool to generate a liquid mantle? We'll want to know. A fire is a lot easier to start if some coals remain. And Mars' rotational axis is tilted!!! I haven't heard anyone mention that! Supposedly, there is life on Earth because our moon stabilized our axis at about 23 degrees. Where is the moon that did that for Mars? No-one in their right mind had better suggest that those two little captured asteroids that pass for moons did the job! Yes, there are a lot of things that needs facts and not theories.

Speaking of asteroids, let's just touch on that. What happened to Planet 6? We know by math that there sbould be a planet there. My favorite theorem is that Jupiter made things too dicey for planetary aggregation. It would like trying to build a concrete block wall with a 7.0 quake every day at noon. Every time Jupiter passes, progress resets to zero. The jury is still out on the idea of it being enough to disrupt an already formed planet. It will take a survey of the number and composition of the asteroid belt to tell. If we looked and found the different pieces of a planet, then the question will need further attention.  I mean that should we see that there are certain proportions of core material to mixed materials to silicon/iron/carbon and other light elements, then the idea of a planet ripped apart becomes a possibility. I do wonder how big a planet it would have been.

Let's see what happens next in Mars: the soap opera.

An afterthought

There is one little theorem that infuriates me the way that taxes infuriate lottery winners: Why do we accept 14.5 billion years as the age of our universe? Because that's all we can see? Apparently. That is just plain sad!

That's enough. Chew on it a while.

Randomness, or is it chaos?

I really don't know the answer to that. As so many have observed, sometimes it's the right questions and the answers will come along in time. And then there's other times when you're left with questions and answers and the whole mess makes no sense at all. I know that it's been a long while between posts. That's because whatever time is, there isn't enough to go around.

Now, back to things we know and things we don't. There seems to be some confusion between the two in the minds of a great big bunch of 'scientists'. Or that's the impression I was left with after watching months of tv programs about our universe, its history, present, and future. Considering that quite a few of those people appeared on camera with their current theorems, I would like to plead that they should consult a dictionary for the differences between theorem, theory, and fact.

The latest thing getting airtime is planetary formation and that part that works at explaining why planets are what they are. All driven by the discovery of the hundreds (so far) of other planets in this galaxy. It seems a bit presumptuous to worry about other solar systems when they can't figure out why our own is the way it is. Did you all know that there's ANOTHER planetoid(?) out there buzzing around outside of Pluto? I think that's something my teachers failed to mention simply because they didn't know. And precisely why was Pluto demoted? There are moons out there that are bigger than our Luna. Should we then demote our moon to a moonlet because of it? This must be some kind of planetary snobbery.

And the worst part is that they seem to be totally blind to other possibilities. As we have seen repeatedly in the past, the only source for fresh ideas is old science fiction. There are so many examples that I couldn't list them all. I kind of like the concept of wandering planets being captured by a star's gravity well. Even that idea is suspect. Gravity will bend light, but so will a chunk of common glass. That seems a little limp a reason to assume that it's a case of gravity bending space. And then you get into "well, if space is the absence of anything, then how can you bend it?".

It's a mess and it's not going away. We need to accept the things we don't know and try to imagine some way to prove what we do. But can we? Where do stand in order to discover what space is?

I leave you with a final thought: 'we' have decided that nothing can go faster than light. Why that is, I don't know. Yes, our God of Science Albert Einstein has proclaimed it to be true. So, let me be a heretic. I have never heard or seen any proof that this is a fact. So... Prove me wrong. Don't throw math at me. You can make math prove that apples are diamonds. Show me proof that the speed of light is a cast iron speed limit everywhere. Then I'll apologize and shut up.