Return-path: X-Andrew-Authenticated-as: 7997;andrew.cmu.edu;Ted Anderson Received: from holmes.andrew.cmu.edu via trymail for +dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl@andrew.cmu.edu (->+dist+/afs/andrew.cmu.edu/usr1/ota/space/space.dl) (->ota+space.digests) ID ; Fri, 26 May 89 00:20:36 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: Reply-To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU From: space-request+@Andrew.CMU.EDU To: space+@Andrew.CMU.EDU Date: Fri, 26 May 89 00:20:24 -0400 (EDT) Subject: SPACE Digest V9 #458 SPACE Digest Volume 9 : Issue 458 Today's Topics: Article by Karl Hess Rate of Extinction (was Re: Asteroids and Dinosaurs ) re: Space food sticks Re: Sun's invisible partner NEMESIS Re: Minimalist design Re: asteroid almost hits earth Re: Extinctions: Asteroids and Dinosaurs (WHY?) Re: Extinctions Sci.Space.Shuttle (?) Memes: can memetic theory explain this episode? Re: Sun's invisible partner NEMESIS Spencer Report ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 22 May 1989 16:16-EDT From: Dale.Amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Article by Karl Hess FYI: Libertarian Party News, May/June 1989, p3 ++++++++++++++ Tools of Technology are Tools of Liberty by Karl Hess Never has it seemed more clear that the tools of technology are indeed the tools of liberty. Look at the major advances swirling radiantly on the edge of our futures: cold fusion, superconductivity, practical space travel, nanotechnology, genetic engineering, and the endless bounty of information storage, retrieval and transfer. The list alone is enough to cause a libertarian to cheer. Every one of those advances has come farthest in those places where people are the most free to pursue independent and individual research. None has emerged specifically because of a socialist or command economy or social system. The space travel item, admittedly, is a bit iffy. It has in fact, been a scoialist enterprise so far even in this country. But what of @i(practical) space travel, the sort of technology that will get the next century's pioneers out into the asteroid belt to mine and build? The age of non-state space travel is just beginning. There's no reason to believe that the efforts of independant people will not exceed the efforts of bureaucratized people in space travel as they have in every other area where the two have contended. Think of the libertarian implications of the whole array. Cold fusion opens up a vast energy base that should end the politics of petroleum and uranium and put energy squarely back into the free market. Superconductivity envisions ways to use and move energy efficiently, everywhere and anywhere - perhaps dealing new blows to the increasingly useless notion of national boundaries. Nanotechnology, manufacturing at the atomic level, envisions a world in which purpose can quickly and materially turn into plan by rearranging and and redirecting the basic particles of the inorganic world, in ways roughly comparable to the already burgeoning pricesses of doing that in the organic world through genetic engineering. The wonderfully "subversive" impact of information-spreading, even in socialist lands, or in the private and public bureaucracies of democracies, is well known and does not seem stoppable. For members of the Libertarian Party, whose work, by definition, is political, these matters may seem uselessly distant from the immediate concerns of repealing bad laws, defeating worse ones, and getting our neighbors even to listen. Everyone certainly senses how greatly the world is changing and how rapidly. Libertarian common sense is more and more a shared common sense. Yet it certainly cannot hurt to have at least in our own minds a vision of the future that takes all of the magnificent technology into consideration. Libertarians can surely and passionately expand on the old adage and proudly say that we "think galactically and act locally." ------------------------------ Date: 22 May 89 22:22:09 GMT From: xanth!nic.MR.NET!thor.acc.stolaf.edu!larsonjs@g.ms.uky.edu (James S. Larson @ St. Olaf College) Subject: Rate of Extinction (was Re: Asteroids and Dinosaurs ) There has been recent discussion as to the rate of extinction of species. Some sources said that the rate was only a few dozen a century. While that may have been true in the past, the rate has increased dramatically this century. According to Gaia: An Atlas of Planet Management (edited by Dr. Norman Meyers, 1984), the annual rate of extinction was less than 1 before 1900. In 1950 it grew to 6/yr. In 1975 it was 400/yr. The projection for 1990 was 10,000/yr. and the forecast for 2000 was 50,000/yr!!!! They say "Current estimats suggest that we are losing one species a day from the 5-10 million species thought to exist. By the time human populations reach some sort of ecological equilibrium with their one-Earth habitat, at least a quarter of all species could have disappeared." (p. 155) This is getting off the topic of the newsgroup, but it illustrates that we don't need to wait for a one-in-a-million-years asteroid in order to destroy life on earth. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Jim Larson | "What? You mean behind the rabbit?" | | larsonjs@thor.acc.stolaf.edu | -Monty Python and the Holy Grail | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Mon 22 May 89 16:00:56-PDT From: Brian Keller Subject: re: Space food sticks < vax5!myk@cu-arpa.cs.cornell.edu talks about getting the recipe for space food sticks > Yummy!! I just barely remember eating space food sticks when I was real little, but they sure were good. Remember how they had peanut butter, chocolate, chocolate fudge, and another flavor or two! My mom says they became more and more expensive until nobody bought them anymore, so Pilsbury stopped making them. Hard to believe they could be very expensive. If you ever find out a recipe, let me know. Maybe that's how I first became interested in the space program - eating astronaut food as a little kid! Brian S. Keller ------- ------------------------------ Date: 22 May 89 21:45:48 GMT From: oliveb!tymix!3comvax!michaelm@apple.com (Michael McNeil) Subject: Re: Sun's invisible partner NEMESIS In article <11740@well.UUCP> Jef Poskanzer writes: }In the referenced message, henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) wrote: }>Last I heard, this idea was no longer taken seriously by most people. It }>appears unlikely that Nemesis's orbit would be stable against perturbations }>by other stars over billions of years. } }It doesn't have to be stable for billions of years, just for the few }hundred million that we can see in the fossil record. This specious }objection comes straight from a Nature editorial, by the way. } }Read "The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the }Ways of Science", by David M. Raup, 1986. Read "Nemesis: The Death Star", }by Richard Muller, 1988. Then decide. I haven't read these books, admittedly. However, would you mind informing me how Nemesis could possibly have gotten into a stable (or otherwise) orbit around the sun, if it *wasn't* an original companion of the sun since the sun's formation? > Jef Poskanzer jef@helios.ee.lbl.gov ...well!pokey -- Michael McNeil michaelm@vax.3Com.Com 3Com Corporation hplabs!oliveb!3comvax!michaelm Mountain View, California work telephone: (415) 969-2099 x 208 But what comes after? What passes when all Creation is destroyed, when the gods are dead, and the chosen warriors, and the races of men? ... Will there be gods again; will there be any earth or heaven? *The Ragnarok* ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 89 06:11:34 GMT From: voder!berlioz!andrew@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Information @ Any Price ) Subject: Re: Minimalist design In article <8905222149.AA25332@cmr.icst.nbs.gov>, roberts@CMR.ICST.NBS.GOV (John Roberts) writes: > ...The device is essentially a bare chip, > glued to the back of the bee. A portion of the chip is doped to act as a solar > cell, providing power... > It is hoped that eventually various kinds of miniature "machinery" can be > built onto the surface of a silicon wafer. Ahhh - the primitive beginnings of miniature robotics glimmer dimly. Soon roaches, wasps and hordes of safari ants under radio control descend upon the unwitting.... It sure beats having to develop one's own actuators and stabilisation equipment. Now hand me that mantis neuron map...!!....what's that on my leg? is it wired? -- Andrew Palfreyman USENET: ...{this biomass}!nsc!logic!andrew National Semiconductor M/S D3969, 2900 Semiconductor Dr., PO Box 58090, Santa Clara, CA 95052-8090 ; 408-721-4788 there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 89 06:39:41 GMT From: agate!shelby!Portia!hanauma!joe@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Joe Dellinger) Subject: Re: asteroid almost hits earth In article <8946@xanth.cs.odu.edu> aiko@cs.odu.edu (John K Hayes) writes: >Would this not create the greatest of all earthquakes? I have read >people's comments on meteor hits in the past, but have not seen any >reference to this aspect of it. I'm not sure about REALLY big hits, but I can tell you that with ordinary Earthquakes there is a practical upper limit to the amount of shaking possible, at around 9.2 or so on the Richter scale. A very few earthquakes achieve this (Alaska, 1964; Chile, 1963 (hope I have the dates right)). If you pump in more energy beyond this it goes into locally tearing up rocks, and doesn't propagate away as seismic waves. So I wouldn't expect meteors to cause damage far away from the impact site by standard earthquake-style shaking. Incidentally, some geophysicists are waiting quite impatiently for another mag 9 mega-quake. Such quakes excite the normal modes of the Earth. For the Chile quake instruments were still recording the ground all over the Earth moving up and down, up and down, about a millimeter every hour, a month after the quake. The instruments are _much_ more sensitive now! Piddling quakes like magnitude 6 or 7 aren't much good. All the magnitude 7 quakes together sum to only a tiny fraction of the energy release of one 8 or 9 quake. (Energy goes up about a factor of 32 with each step on the Richter scale. Don't believe the papers when they say 10. That number is for ground motion.) \ /\ /\ /\/\/\/\/\/\/\.-.-.-.-.......___________ \ / \ / \ /Dept of Geophysics, Stanford University \/\/\.-.-....___ \/ \/ \/Joe Dellinger joe@hanauma.stanford.edu apple!hanauma!joe\/\.-._ ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 89 13:31:47 GMT From: titan!phil@rice.edu (William LeFebvre) Subject: Re: Extinctions: Asteroids and Dinosaurs (WHY?) In article <4792@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM> timothym@tekigm2.UUCP (Timothy D Margeson) writes: >The current issue of Scientific American has an excellant article on the >extintion matter. So why is this stuff still being cross-posted to sci.space.SHUTTLE? Is the shuttle going to become extinct because of an asteroid? William LeFebvre Department of Computer Science Rice University ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 May 1989 12:54-EDT From: Dale.Amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Re: Extinctions > I've read that the current rate of extinction is about 15 species/century -- This number has got to be wrong. Maybe 15 Chordata species per century. There are probably more than 15 insect species lost per year in the Amazon ALONE since the Brazilian government started shipping its "surplus population" out to slash and burn. ------------------------------ Date: 23-MAY-1989 15:35:57 GMT From: ZDAC131@OAK.CC.KCL.AC.UK Subject: Sci.Space.Shuttle (?) Site: Topical Paradise, KCL London, England Sender: Malc I've just finished wading through 40 of the latest back issues, and I found and subsequently lost ;-) a reference to Sci.Space.Shuttle. Please would someone send me the subscription e-mail address for it. Re: UFO saga. The highly credible British Newspaper the "Sunday Sport" regularly carries stories of UFO contacts and ET wierdness. (Usually sandwiched between pictures of topless 'ladies') "How to tell if your Grandmother is an Alien" "World War II bomber found on Moon" So let us PLEASE confine UFO 'discussions' to such reputable and respectable publications, and spare our humble Sci.Space. :-) Malc Disclaimer: My friends may purchase items of the above mentioned, I just read what they stick on my door ;-) ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 89 02:54:15 GMT From: amdahl!drivax!macleod@apple.com (MacLeod) Subject: Memes: can memetic theory explain this episode? From my modest readings in Memetics I think that the writers are reifying significance out of little real substance. But I could be wrong. In any case, I'd like to see a memetic analysis of one of my favorite stories in cultural anthropology. Aside from any facts I may have garbled, the story is real. The US maintains one or more isolated research stations at or near the South Pole, where they recieve few visitors and where radio conditions are such as to prevent contact with the rest of the world for long periods. According to the story, there are two shifts sent there, a summer shift and a winter shift. The winter shift has, as one might imagine, the harder time, spending virtually six months underground in artificial conditions. One fall the winter team was checking in. They arrived with their personal gear and a supply of cultural artifacts designed to entertain and divert them during their stay. VCR machines and videotapes were very popular. After some time the crew had looked at all the available tapes, theirs and their friends, and were starved for input. Then some genius took three of the VCRs and the stack of tapes and began to create a sort of vernacular art-form consisting of snips of this and that. According to the story, he used westerns, Disney movies, pornography, and recordings previously made from television, among other sources. It was spliced together to form a two-hour long, uh, "media event". From reports, it was hilarious, and the crew watched it over and over. And over and over. Soon the dialogue which accompanied various scenes began to creep into conversations at the base; doings and events were described in terms of events from the tape. The tape soon became the yardstick with which life and activity was explained and rationalized. One sees the punchline coming. When the summer shift arrived, according to the story, they could *hardly communicate* with the inhabitants. Some synergistic effect of the isolation, the mad genius of the tape's author, and the personalities of the crew members had generated mass schizophrenia. It might be instructive to get parallel analyses of this even from a fundamentalist Xtian, a Scientologist, a General Semanticist, a Freudian psychoanalyst, a memeticist, and Buckminster Fuller. I wish it were possible. Michael Sloan MacLeod (amdahl!drivax!macleod) ------------------------------ Date: 22 May 89 18:11:24 GMT From: mcvax!ukc!strath-cs!glasgow!bru-cc!me85mda@uunet.uu.net (M D Ayton) Subject: Re: Sun's invisible partner NEMESIS >Oh, come now! I take it, Ed, that you will not consider Nemesis to >exist unless/until it is directly observed. Does this mean you won't >accept the existence of electrons until someone takes a photograph of one? No, and photographs can be faked - I may not even believe my very own mark I eyeball! B-> Martin. me85mda@me.brunel.ac.uk me85mda@cc.brunel.ac.uk (PS For those who missed the smiley - I am joking) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 23 May 1989 12:46-EDT From: Dale.Amon@H.GP.CS.CMU.EDU Subject: Spencer Report > NASA picks Martin Marietta to build the Flight Telerobotic Servicer for > the space station. [For those who don't know what this is, it's the > $297M effort mandated by Congress to duplicate Canada's contribution to > the space station. Such wonderful things happen in times of tight budgets.] I'm not sure which stench is stronger here. The smell of Pork or the smell of Nationalism. ------------------------------ End of SPACE Digest V9 #458 *******************