You
both had breakfast and read the Sunday paper. You cleaned up early and Carol is
washing her hair. Trash has to be taken out and the cats’ boxes tidied, fridge
water turned off and water heater turned down. Your bag is ready but for
shirts. You will leave about noon, stop and see Aunt Patsy and Uncle Ernie then
head up to Kim and Paul’s for the rest of the afternoon and tonight. Tomorrow
you meet with Andy and then have lunch with Kim before heading back to Mason.
You are surprised how excited you both get before Westerville and family. Going
home has never lost its excitement in all these years. – Amorella
0854 hours. We are happy
that Kim and Paul chose to live in the Lewis Center area. His family is in
Dublin and Kim’s is in Westerville where she has lots of genetic roots. Paul
too, although he was born in Michigan he went to Bishop Watterson High School,
less than a mile or so from Grandma Schick lived in Clintonville. Both he and
Kim did graduate work at OSU. They have several close friends living in the
area. And, we are not that far away. We decided to take the hybrid on these
trips and others and use the Accord around home. It works. Presently I don’t
see us getting another car unless the Honda starts to show troubles. It’s a
good car and now that it’s been majorly touched up, paint-wise, it looks fine
and not nearly its age. We love our hybrid though. Neither of us have any
regrets in purchasing it.
Later,
dude. – Amorella
0910 hours. I found a cool
article on the moon – one I have never encountered before, at least in active
memory. This one is from BBC Science.
SCIENCE
& ENVIRONMENT
5 June 2014
Last updated at 14:00 ET
Traces of another world found on the Moon
By
Pallab Ghosh
Science
correspondent, BBC News
Researchers
have found evidence of the world that crashed into the Earth billions of years
ago to form the Moon.
Analysis
of lunar rock brought back by Apollo astronauts shows traces of the
"planet" called Theia.The researchers claim that their discovery
confirms the theory that the Moon was created by just such a cataclysmic
collision. The study has been published in the journal Science.
The
accepted theory since the 1980s is that the Moon arose as a result of a
collision between the Earth and Theia 4.5 billion years ago.
Theia
was named after a goddess in Greek mythology who was said to be the mother of
Selene, goddess of the Moon. It is thought to have disintegrated on impact with
the resulting debris mingling with that from the Earth and coalescing into the
Moon. It is the simplest explanation, and fits in well with computer
simulations. The main drawback with the theory is that no-one had found any
evidence of Theia in lunar rock samples.
Earlier
analyses had shown Moon rock to have originated entirely from the Earth whereas
computer simulations had shown that the Moon ought to have been mostly derived
from Theia.
Alien
origin
Now
a more refined analysis of Moon rock has found evidence of material thought to
have an alien origin. According to the lead researcher, Dr Daniel Herwartz,
from the University of Goettingen, no-one has found definitive evidence for the
collision theory, until now. "It was getting to the stage where some
people were suggesting that the collision had not taken place," he told
BBC News. "But
we have now discovered small differences between the Earth and the Moon. This
confirms the giant impact hypothesis."
But
the difference, some say, could be explained by material absorbed by the Earth
after the Moon formed.
And
Prof Alex Halliday of Oxford University, is among many scientists who are
surprised that the difference between the Theian material found in the Moon
rock and the Earth is so small. "What you are looking for is a much bigger
difference, because that is what the rest of the Solar System looks like based
on meteorite measurements," he said.
Dr
Herwartz measured the difference in what is called the isotopic composition of
the oxygen contained in rocks on Earth and Moon rock. This is the ratio of
different forms of oxygen. Studies of meteorites from Mars and the outer solar system
show that these ratios are markedly different - rather like a fingerprint. So
Prof Halliday and others are puzzled by the fact that the fingerprints of Earth
and Theia seem almost identical.
Similar
composition
One
possibility is that Theia was formed very close to the Earth and so had a
similar composition. If that was the case, it raises the possibility that the
assumption that each planet in the current Solar System has a markedly
different fingerprint needs to be revisited, according to Prof Halliday.
"It raises the question of how well the meteorites from Mars and the
asteroid belt in the outer Solar System are representative of the inner Solar
System? We do not have samples from Mercury or Venus.
"They
may well be similar to the Earth. If that is the case then all the arguments
over the similarities of the Earth and the Moon fall away," he told BBC
News.
Dr
Mahesh Anand from the Open University described the research as
"exciting" but noted that the data was from just three lunar rock
samples. "We have to be cautious about the representativeness of these
rocks of the entire Moon, and so further analysis of a variety of lunar rocks
is required for further confirmation," he said.
Other
theories have been proposed to explain
why the composition of the Earth and Moon are so similar: one is that the Earth
spun much faster before impact, another is that Theia was much larger than
current models suggest. An alternative, controversial, theory proposed by Prof
Rob de Meijer of Groningen University in the Netherlands is that the Earth's
crust and mantle was blown into space by an accumulation of nuclear material
2,900km (1,800 miles) below the surface. It was this debris that clumped
together to form the Moon. He told BBC News that the new finding - demonstrating
that there was a difference in the composition of the Earth and the Moon - did
not change his view. "The difference is too small," he said. "We
don't know how the Moon was formed. What we need are manned missions to the
Moon and a search for rocks deeper under the lunar surface, that have not been
polluted by meteorite impacts and the solar wind."
From
BBC – Science and Environment
** **
You
love the probabilities, they excite your imagination and the memory of an old
fiction When Worlds Collide. - Amorella
** **
Adaptations
and influences
When Worlds Collide had far-reaching influences on the science fiction genre. The
themes of an approaching planet threatening the Earth, and an athletic hero and
his girlfriend traveling to the new planet by rocket, were used by writer Alex
Raymond in his 1934 comic strip Flash
Gordon. Jack Williamson’s 1934 short story "Born of the Sun" also
used the concept of a scientist and his fiancée escaping the destruction of the
Earth in a hurriedly-constructed "ark of space". The 1940-1941
newspaper comic strip Speed Spaulding, an adaptation credited to the
novel's authors, was more directly based on the novel. The themes of escape
from a doomed planet to a habitable one also can be seen in Jerry Siegel and
Joe Shuster’s 1938 comic Superman.
The novel was also adapted
as the 1951 film When Worlds Collide,
produced by George Pal and directed by Rudolph Mate.. The film inspired Deep Impact. Another film adaptation of When
Worlds Collide was in pre-production as of 2012.
The British composer Nigel Clarke
has also written a large scale work for Brass Band (2012) inspired by the film
and is also entitled When Worlds Collide.
From – Wikipedia – When Worlds
Collide
** **
0927
hours. I remember the cover of the novel, but the novel I read may have been
based on the film. I don’t remember. I did see the film though. I would have
been nine or ten and the chances we saw it at an outdoor drive in theatre are
about 9 to 1.
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