Oolite Bulletins

Commander McLane wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

Or, alternatively, the curtain is coming down on the whole shebang come 21 May.

Sounds like we'll have another religious group with a PR problem starting from May 22nd. (Although that has never prevented other religious groups in the past to happily outlive their end-of-the-world prediction dates. Some have done it repeatedly. New Apostolic Church, anyone?)

There is only one eschaton worth immanentizing, in my opinion: X-Day. "If you can't get off the planet, at least get off from work."

I liked that, though some Egos are evn larger.....

...and the bit at the end, I guess you'd be crazy to think we are the only sentient life form too.

Disembodied wrote:

There is only one eschaton worth immanentizing, in my opinion:

Time for the golden submarine Leif Erickson to appear.

Commander McLane wrote:

I
Years ago Ahruman (I think) posted a link to an article that explains how mind-bogglingly difficult it would be to destroy Earth. ('Earth' as in: this very tiny little planet; 'destroy' as in: really physically annihilate it.) So, talking about destroying the universe is indeed simply ridiculous.

Oooo you mean this one? http://qntm.org/destroy

"who claims the Bible as his source"

and that's where i stopped reading.

ClymAngus wrote:

Commander McLane wrote:

I
Years ago Ahruman (I think) posted a link to an article that explains how mind-bogglingly difficult it would be to destroy Earth. ('Earth' as in: this very tiny little planet; 'destroy' as in: really physically annihilate it.) So, talking about destroying the universe is indeed simply ridiculous.

Oooo you mean this one? http://qntm.org/destroy

Yeah, that's the one.

And talking of destroying the Earth! I foud this book, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_from_the_Skies, a very good read. And when you think of the possibilities of any of them happening it is comforting.

Fatleaf wrote:

And talking of destroying the Earth! I foud this book, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_from_the_Skies, a very good read. And when you think of the possibilities of any of them happening it is comforting.

Oh yeah! The bad astronomer. Makes for many a good read!

Off/back to topic.. A really super vid link, El Veijo. An excellent bit on perspective and relative size, etc.

I just watched this for the second time, and noticed that for all their fancy graphics and nifty calculations, they kinda screwed the pooch. Twice. Okay, one-and-a-half times. Maybe more.

The Earth is rotating in the wrong direction!
I don't remember enough of the little I've read about planetary rotations to say anything about the other planets, and I cannot be bothered looking it up. I seem to remember that all but one orbit in the same direction, but whether that hold true for rotation is another question.

I've no real issue with them all rotating at the same speed, it'd just look messy if they didn't, but Earth wrong way? Sloppy.

And they had the Moon rotating!

The moon does rotate... just at the same rate as its orbit around the earth so it always presents the same face to us. (Tidally locked, as is Mercury)

Arguably they should be rotating at different speeds as there is a huge variation but some would spin like tops in order to show the slower ones relatively. I'm guessing they didn't include Uranus as that rolls around on its side...

I believe all the planets orbit in the same direction (the gravitational effects of a major planet going the other way around would be drastic and shortlived!). I believe I'm correct in stating that Venus has a retrograde rotation though. It's a weird place, its 'day' is longer than its 'year'. Never buy a venusian calendar...

God obviously needs to sort it all out as it's a right mess.

Cheers,

Drew.

drew wrote:

God obviously needs to sort it all out as it's a right mess.

We just read above in this thread that he's going to on October 21st, this year.

I really hope you'll have finished Incursio earlier...

Commander McLane wrote:

drew wrote:

God obviously needs to sort it all out as it's a right mess.

We just read above in this thread that he's going to on October 21st, this year.

"Have you tried turning it off, and turning it back on again?"

Disembodied wrote:

"Have you tried turning it off, and turning it back on again?"

What, the planetary rotation? Now, why has nobody in NASA thought of that yet?

Perhaps they have. I'm sure this is what the LHC is really all about!

It can't hurt to check regularly.