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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


The 17 equations that changed the world

Link here.

I sometimes think that the reason Einstein’s equation, E=MC (squared), is so memorable is that in English the sound of the equation, when spoken, has a poetic rhythm to it.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

6 comments

  • wayne

    Very interesting list!
    –pleased to know I am somewhat familiar with all of them, except the Shannon’s Information Theory equation.

    Referencing the Black–Scholes pricing equation— tying it to modern day financial “derivatives” is technically correct, but it is more accurately “famous” for determining the value of Options, which decay in price to zero, as they approach their exercise date.
    [“option,” the right but not the obligation, to purchase or sell something at a future date]
    –Also credited with being a fundamental concept underlying what morphed into “portfolio insurance.” [key aspect of which is there has to be sufficient numbers of people on the opposite end of any trade, or the “insurance” fails during high & sustained volatility.]

  • Nick P

    wayne

    Black-Scholes determines the theoretical ‘premium value’ of the option, not the total value which may include intrinsic value as well.

  • wayne

    Nick P:
    Thanks, it’s been a long time since I had any finance-classes!

    tangent– what’s the equation tying together energy, frequency & wavelength? (if I’m asking that anywhere nearly correctly.)
    You can substitute that into the “e” of e=mc(squared). (That’s about as ‘deep’ with the Maths that I can handle! Always impressed with people that can handle this sort of symbolic logic, Physics or Finance—“fascinating.”)

  • Cotour

    I think that someone is formulating a new 18th equation that applies to politics and economics.

    (CH) Divided by (T) X’s [Balls / Leverage Constant] = EE (Economic Equilibrium)

    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-china-idUSKCN0ZF17D

    Although not yet president someone is already negotiating with China, and they are paying attention.

  • Phill O

    Too bad biologists have never learned the second law of thermo-

  • wayne

    Phill O:

    “The law that entropy always increases, holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the Universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”
    -Arthur Eddington

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