Why do scientists insist that so-called "shooting stars", which are visible every night of the year, are rare?
Science Daily: Hubble Captures Rare Jupiter Collision.
ScienceDaily (July 25, 2009) — The checkout and calibration of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been interrupted to aim the recently refurbished observatory at a new expanding spot on the giant planet Jupiter. The spot, caused by the impact of a comet or an asteroid, is changing from day to day in the planet’s cloud tops.I love how the article says that worlds in collision are "new science" even though Democritus and Plato said so in the 4th century B.C.
For the past several days the world's largest telescopes have been trained on Jupiter. Not to miss the potentially new science in the unfolding drama 580 million kilometres away, Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, allocated discretionary time to a team of astronomers led by Heidi Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
"I was raised a uniformitarian, but through the course of my research I have come to doubt the dogmatism that seems to be central to so much of what currently passes for science." -- Robert M. Schoch, geologist, 1999
"With the collision of the Shoemaker comet into Jupiter, the era of uniformitarian orthodoxy must come to an end. Minds that have been closed for nearly half a millennium can now be opened to see what really has happened to our planet in the past -- and that past is not as distant as we might suppose." -- Vine Deloria Jr., historian, 1997
Apparently Dr. Deloria was being too optimistic since it appears scientists still haven't learned anything.
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19 comments:
They were certainly ahead of their time, but they didn't have the Hubble. This is new science because we don't get many chances to see this.
What is this? The 3rd impact we've had a chance to view?
Jeffery,
If you go out into the mountains where there is very little light pollution, in Yosemite National Park for example, you will see giant fireballs the size of basketballs on a nightly basis. This has been so for the past several billion years and Homo sapiens have experienced and observed these phenomena for at least that long. It is pure unfounded arrogance to suggest otherwise.
"Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it." -- George Orwell, writer, 1945
I wish they (the scientists of the past) could see what we see. To them, Jupiter was a bright spot of light in the sky. To our generation, it is a place.
True understanding, genuinely surpassing any that have come before us in written history, is within the grasp of our instruments.
I do not mean to undermine the work of folks from thousands of years ago, you know I respect them for rising above the savagery of their ages. What gets me down is the suggestion that they understood these events the way we do. If they knew that Jupiter was a vast, amazing, awe-inspiring ball of hydrogen, helium and ice... they didn't mention it.
Jeffery,
"I wish they (the scientists of the past) could see what we see."
Cruel. I would never wish that sort of ignorance on someone, even on my worst enemy.
"To them, Jupiter was a bright spot of light in the sky. To our generation, it is a place."
Are you saying that Zeno and Aristotle didn't know that Jupiter is a place?
"If they knew that Jupiter was a vast, amazing, awe-inspiring ball of hydrogen, helium and ice... they didn't mention it."
You're only mentioning one material aspect of Jupiter. The ancients worshipped Jupiter as a chief deity.
Catastrophic impacts have been experienced and observed for billions of years. They have happened on Earth, e.g. the Chicxulub meteorite impact crater, even in the historical memory of man, e.g. the Pleistocene impact crater known as Meteor Crater in Arizona. In the Holocene, the annihilation of the Clovis people and the woolly mammoth, Democritus's worlds in collision, Plato's Timaeus, the comet Phaethon, the destruction of Atlantis, The Great Pit in Sar el-Hagar, Sacred Pond in Delos, Lovers Lakes in China, are all evidence of this.
"He [Democritus] said that the ordered worlds are boundless and differ in size, and that in some there is neither sun nor moon, but that in others, both are greater than with us, and yet with others more in number. And that the intervals between the ordered worlds are unequal, here more and there less, and that some increase, others flourish and others decay, and here they come into being and there they are eclipsed. But that they are destroyed by colliding with one another. And that some ordered worlds are bare of animals and plants and all water." -- Hippolytus, priest, 2nd century
"...and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit." -- Revelation 9:1-2
"...the Lord cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died..." -- Joshua, 10:11
Observed? For Billions of years? By animals, perhaps. Humans (genus Homo)have only been around about a million.
As for Democritus... he had no way of knowing this. Let's just count him as the world's first Sci-Fi author.
It took a huge imagination for him to write that. That makes him, possibly the most creative person of his time. Note that I say this as a complement. Most folks would have considered this heresy or insanity in his age. I mean, predicting rogue planets (neither sun or moon?) is a giant, remarkable leap for that age. We've lost a lot since that time, and regained it, I think. Especially since we no longer have to guess. We can see the things he suggested. That he was right about it is awesome. Just like his thoughts on atoms. Newton, to his great embarrasment, thought Moses came up with atoms.
Democritus was perhaps the greatest scientist of his age. But the stuff about planets? Very good guesses.
Unless {in your infinite ability to quote-mine) you have proof that the guy had a spaceship, orbital telescope or an ET in his closet, they must remain guesses.
Jeffery,
I find your thesis that Democritus was a clairvoyant prophet and seer with extra sensory powers of perception to be somewhat dubious.
I believe wisdom comes from observation and a posteriori experience, not extra sensory perception and clairvoyance.
However, you can take comfort in the fact that mainstream Democritus scholars like Paul Cartledge and James Warren support your view that Democritus possessed miraculous prophetic powers of clairvoyance and paranormal extra sensory perception.
You said that just to piss me off. I said guesses. Not ESP.
You should try to type non-inflamatory remarks.
It's that nutball Cremo who beleives in psionics.
Try again.
Jeffery,
So in your opinion Democritus was the best prophet in the history of the universe because he guessed an accurate cosmology even though modern cosmologists can't even get it right after observation.
Do you also believe that Kepler "guessed" Jupiter had a red spot that rotates mathematically and that Jonathan Swift "guessed" the exact orbital periods of Deimos and Phobos?
So let us hear your lucky guesses. What can you guess about the planets orbiting Sirius A and B?
[Galileo] secured his secret by locking it in a cryptogram of a mere collection of letters—so many A’s, so many B’s, and so on. Kepler again tried to read the cryptogram and came up with the sentence: “Macula rufa in Jove est gyratur mathem etc.” which in translation reads: “There is a red spot in Jupiter which rotates mathematically.”
The wondrous thing is: how could Kepler have known of the red spot in Jupiter, then not yet discovered? It was discovered by J. D. Cassini in the 1660’s, after the time of Kepler and Galileo. Kepler’s assumption that Galileo had discovered a red spot in Jupiter amazes and defies every statistical chance of being a mere guess.
--Immanuel Velikovsky
But that's all it is. A guess. He didn't have but a handful of letters, and he gave it a good try. Anything other than a guess implies just what you did. Psionics or alien visitation.
There is no evidence that he knew anything other then Galileo's cyptogram. Not a whit.
Incredulity =/= evidence
As for Sirius... I got nothing.
Excellent job ignoring Jonathan Swift.
And if you can't guess anything about Sirius, then why do you believe Democritus precisely guessed the deepest truths of the universe?
Democritus lived in a time when a great deal of inquiry was done by thought experiment. He could have, freed from the every day concerns of his day, turn his thoughts to the cosmos.
Looking around himself, he would have seen what the world was like and extrapolated that perhaps other worlds existed. From there, it is no small leap for a clever guy like him to add and subtract details to get his suppositions on the other worlds of the universe.
As for Swift.. I didn't think it worthy of comment. Swift described Mars as having two satellites orbiting at distances of 3 and 5 Martian diameters, and periods of 10 and 21.5 hours.
This corresponds to the actual orbital distances and periods of Phobos and Deimos of 1.4 and 3.5 Martian diameters, and 7.6 and 30.3 hours.
Is that your idea of "exactly?"
That would explain a lot.
OIM,
It's been a while since I've been on your site, but I saw an interesting bit and decided to share it. I don't think you'll be disappointed in this...
See! Moments of brilliance! Abiotic oil is one area where Oils has his head screwed on straight.
He may also be onto something regarding the Electric Universe... but then again...
This research was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Nuclear Security Agency through the Carnegie/DOE Alliance Center, the National Science Foundation, the W.M. Keck Foundation, and the Carnegie Institution.
A quote from Science Daily. Hmmmm! Carnegie. An old rival of Rockefeller. But the NNSA? And the DoE, too. But they published it! Marvellous! Another supporter of abiotic oil was Joe Vialls, RIP. He worked on a Russian/Ukr rig once, he said.
Jeffery, were you an advocate of abiotic oil? When did you first come across the theory, or the reports of refilling wells?
I first encountered AO on this website. Sort of a lucky break since I was exploring the ns of woo surrounding Expanding Earth and Plate Tectonics Denial.
First blush for any new idea for me is always skepticism. After digging a bit, I found Abiotic Hydrocarbons to be easily supported by mainstream science.
(i.e. Titan, Mars and everywhere else in the universe shows that ethane and methane must have an abiotic origin). From my perspective, oil may be the end product of another process that combines abiotic hydrocrabons with organic residues.
Kinda cool.
Jeffery
Were you aware of the controversial nature of saying that hydrocarbons were not fossil fuels, running out and unreplenishable? Can you see how the scientific agenda was cutting across other agenda? Do you see evidence that while you believe this to be possible, others still deny it citing science?
Fungus,
I get all that. I understand that if something is of limited supply, its value increases.
I can see how vast numbers of people would do anything to ensure they stay in control of oil.
I understand what infinite oil might mean to the world if it is true.
I also understand that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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