Numberphile – The Strange Orbit of Earth’s “Second Moon”
An evening pause: There is joyful art hidden in all existence. You simply have to have the open-mindedness to look for it.
Hat tip Tom Donohue.
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 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
Great video, thank you for posting it. I’m not sure how I missed this one.
I remember, from about a year ago, Brady Haran of Numberphile posted a lengthy interview with Sir Roger Penrose – entertaining and occasionally thought provoking, worth a listen.
Sister channels Sixty Symbols and Deep Sky Videos also highly recommended.
Ben–
Love me some Roger Penrose!
Is this the one?
“Why Did The Mathematician Cross The Road?”
Numberphile with Roger Penrose (Aug 2020)
1:05:17
whoops, the link would help incredibly…..
https://youtu.be/JiDWGbsVEno
https://youtu.be/JiDWGbsVEno
Love the visuals, so much better then the paper representation by the Vatican of how earth is in the center of the universe before Galileo. Similar unexplainable loops in the planetary orbits that was just excepted as the way things are… Like sailing off the edge of the earth.
(Even though the circumference of the earth was accurately measured 200 years before Christ)
I’ve spoken of this before, I had a friend who had retired from JPL is now deceased. He was very proud of his accomplishments developing instrumentation, soldering the boards on the Mars Lander that lasted years beyond its expectations. He also marketed the atomic clock in which he had to take frequent flights to China to resolve problems just to find out Chinese had developed their own version and was using him to resolve their problems, while stealing his intellectual property.
That’s a pill they developed a more sensitive mass/gravity detector. They pointed it at the Moon and it worked perfectly. They directed it towards the Sun, and it was slightly off center. They re-calibrated and try it again with the same results. Then one of them had an idea where they put you at the sun and locked it’s position at the same time starting a stopwatch. Detector was pointing at the exact center of the sun at eight minutes after lock proving gravity is a force that is instantaneous and does not move at the speed of light. point?
I would love for the computer model in this presentation to adjust its parameters according to the gravity at the speed of light to see what would happen to the planets in 1 billion years having a gravitational delay to see if the planets would spin themselves into deep space… Which by extension, unraveling entire fabric of the universe.
Oh my, I forgot to proofread.
That’s a pill… Should read, “at JPL”
Where they “put you” at the sun, should read where they “pointed it” at the Sun.
He had many other inventions that are still classified. I do miss the guy.
Max, your description of the mass/gravity detector reminded me of this tale from my stepfather-in-law; a retired engineer who worked with the second stage of the Saturn V, back in the day.
As with any aircraft/spacecraft, keeping the hull “true” and straight (as opposed to even slightly bent) is essential for proper operation. As he related it, the straightness specification for that stage was +/-0.1 inch of deviation from straight, over its entire 80-foot length.
But they were having problems with meeting that – they would adjust the stage in their assembly fixturing, only to come back a few hours later and find it out-of-spec. Repeated attempts to bring the stage “true” ended with the same result.
Then someone realized, that their factory was in Seal Beach, CA, very close to the coast – and got the “outlandish” idea that the ever-changing pressure of the tide against the land might be subtly causing differential shifts under the various fixture elements, producing the errors.
So, they coordinated the repeated measurements with the local tide table – and the out-of-spec condition went away!
Those tight tolerances, though, made me appreciate the difficulty and risk inherent to spaceflight, especially in the 1960’s … and the willingness of intrepid men to ride those rockets into orbit and beyond.
That’s amazing, that the tide would have such an influence on the rocket.
It does make sense, although what’s right in front of your eyes is the hardest thing to see…
We’ve discussed earthquakes on this site being influenced by the title affect, but it’s the opposite of what you might think… At “high Tide” when the sun and moon are overhead, does not have near the influence of “low Tide” when the sun and moon are on the horizon. Some of the largest earthquakes have been during low tide.
I’ve speculated that gravity decreases allowing water to “rise up” during high tide.
While gravity “increases” during low tide at a 90° angle of the gravitational pull of the sun and moon. Dropping the water level, not to an average height of sea level, but “below sea level”.
The influence is not as great near the equator but Hudson Bay and Cook Inlet near Anchorage can see a rise as much as 20 feet.
That would make it very difficult to keep a rocket true in the north, without placing it on a turntable.
I often wondered if “the heating of the sun” on one side, how much distortion takes place?
Is it corrected while being fueled, or the cold fuel just makes the distortions worse?
wayne –
That is the one.
I’ve always respected Sir Roger’s persistence in continuing to use those old school transparency projected slides for his lectures.
Ben K.
Thanks for bringing up that Penrose interview, I can’t believe I missed that one! Fascinating chit-chat of his life story.
And yes, he is The Master of the Overhead Projector.
“Before the Beginning and Beyond Eternity”
Conformal Cyclic Cosmology
Roger Penrose (IST Lecture May 21, 2015)
https://youtu.be/kbtxndUJHZI
1:24:22
Jester Naybor: best story I’ve heard this year. And have to echo Max’s comment’s first paragraph.
Rocket science is hard. As with everything else, you have to be really good, to make it look easy. .
It helps to overbuild things. One good thing about doing things by hand…and NOT relying on automation…it keeps you honest.