New Mars Forums

Welcome back, Robcwillis!!
    I don't remember seeing you here for quite some time now.
                                         

RobertDyck:-

    I assume from this that you are a supporter of the hypothesis of Dr. J. Marvin Herndon, which postulates an 8-kilometre-diameter ball of fissile material at Earth's core, mainly uranium.
    I began a thread about this idea here at New Mars last year, in "Science and Technology" (Sept. 24th '02) and extrapolated the notion somewhat in order to explain evidence for relatively recent outpourings of lava on Mars. As I understand it, the prevailing wisdom is that Mars should have lost nearly all its primeval heat due to its small size and lesser amounts of radioactive elements. But, paradoxically, the apparently recent volcanism there seems to indicate more internal heat than there ought to be.
    I went on to speculate that a nuclear reactor at Mars' core might shut down more frequently and for longer periods than Earth's reactor, due to size and gravitational differences. If so, then perhaps Mars still produces a strong global magnetic field at least some of the time but we just happen to have arrived during one of its lengthy quiescent periods.
    NuclearSpace (who started his own related thread in the same section on March 31st '03) was going to ask Dr. Herndon whether these ideas might be feasible but I haven't heard back yet. This is a disappointment for me because few things would please me more than to find that Mars is still capable of volcanism and still able to produce a magnetic field ... at least sometimes!

    You seem to have many notable contacts in scientific circles, Robert, and I was wondering whether you might have heard anything lately regarding Dr. Herndon's hypothesis?
    If so, I'd be most interested to hear about it.
                                         

You mean on each hand, or all together?

Free Spirit:-

    I believe this observation is very accurate, though I might be inclined to replace the word 'sometimes' with 'often'.

    Many are the gentlemen who, while seemingly unaware of impending difficulties at the beginning of a long evening of philosophical discussion with the boys at the pub, after some hours and several refreshing ales, become gradually and almost miraculously aware of the following insights:-

a) They haven't a clue how relativity works.
b) Their drinking companions haven't a clue about politics.
c) It's much later than they thought.
d) Their wife is in bed.
e) Their dinner is in the dog.
f) And they're in a lot of trouble!!
                                               

    Which only serves to underline the wisdom of Free Spirit's words, which describe the uncanny ability of beer to clear the head and elevate the human (or at least the human male) consciousness to a higher plane of awareness!
                                             

Hi Pat!
    I was wondering how long it would take before you spotted this little discussion and chimed in!
                                     
    It's good to have your input once again.

    It's an interesting discussion, for me at least, because it helps to resolve a few things in my own mind about how relativity works. However, it doesn't take long before you realise a complete understanding of General Relativity is essentially unobtainable unless you have a very high competency level in mathematics.
    At least the Special Relativity is a little more accessible!
                                          :;):

Cindy:-

    Amen to that!
                             

First of all, my apologies to Bill for any misinterpretation of his position on 'power-blocs', but still I doubt the elite have quite as much power and cohesion as is popularly believed. Just my opinion, that's all.
                                   

    Cindy, I fully understand your irritation with the 'weasels' who infest the human race. There are far too many of them and hanging's too good for 'em! But still, under all my cynicism (yeah, I often get bouts of cynicitis too! ), I believe there's probably more good in people than bad and, when the chips are down, most of us will do the right thing.
                                     

    Clark, your idea is a very practical one in that it analyses what drives the average politician and concludes that s/he is essentially just another of the 'weasels' mentioned above! Sad but true, I fear.
    I think you're 100% right in aiming for their weakest point: Their slavering addicted pre-occupation with the votes that get them their power. Little else matters to most of 'em!
    Why not see if you can get the ball rolling? It might actually work.
                                         ???

    Byron, I'm no economist but I read a lot of newspaper stuff about it and talk to a guy who's been in financial planning for many years. I'm led to believe that there's no particular reason to think the U.S. economy is headed for a permanent downturn - a temporary reversal is always possible at any time, of course, but nothing that can't be cured.
    Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the Bush administration saying they have plans to reduce government deficits by 50% over the next 5 years? Sounds to me like they're at least aware of the current problem and know it needs attention.
    Another background feeling about the world economy which I've picked up is that it's quite likely on the brink of an enormous growth phase. We may very well see wealth expansion, over the next 7 to 10 years, which will dwarf any other period of growth in the past century.
    I tend not to believe in the zero-sum games some people adhere to, with their doom and gloom scenarios. I agree with Bill (now I understand where he's coming from!! ) that global economic expansion is our best bet for a lot of things, as long as it fuels technological advancement and is prevented from damaging the environment. And I'm convinced this is not only possible but that it will happen.
    Many countries have debts but that isn't necessarily a major problem as long as the economies concerned can service those debts without long-term damage. The kind of economic growth many experts appear to be guardedly speaking of now, will serve firstly to decrease the actual dollar amount of, say, America's debt, and secondly to reduce it greatly as a percentage of GDP, thus minimising its effects.
    In other words, it doesn't really matter how many slices of pie you owe the person next-door, as long as you're constantly baking more pies! The zero-sum people always assume the last pie has already left the oven.
    Your ideas about easy access to space are great and I couldn't agree more. I'd love that space elevator to be built as soon as possible! But I do worry that the U.S. military will see it as undermining their pre-eminence in near-Earth space and covertly move to quash it. It will be interesting to see what progress the elevator makes over the next few years. If my worst fears are realised, we should notice more and more negative reports about the practicality of building it and a tendency toward fewer and fewer news items about it in general. It will simply fade away and then, one morning, we may read that Hi-Lift has quietly gone into liquidation due to lack of funds. I very sincerely hope I'm totally wrong about such a possibility but, as I've said, I do get cynicitis on occasions!
                                          :laugh:

I have great respect for your intelligence, Bill, which is displayed in everything you write.
    But you yourself admit to a degree of cynicism ("IMHCO", for example), which I fear is leading you to a rather more pessimistic outlook than is really necessary. In common with a few others here, you seem to have a certain bitterness about money and the people whom you perceive to be in control of great wealth, wealth you probably believe you should have more of (and 'them', probably less? ).
Quotes:-
1) " ... the masters of K Street or Wall Street/Fleet Street .. "
2) " ... the masters of Wall Street and K Street .. "
3) "The old order .. "

    I know where you're coming from on this; nobody is impervious to the human emotion of envy, not even me(! ). But, by the same token, I think we should be careful not to overestimate the human ability to form cohesive groups based on greed.
    I've often wondered about the standard notions of shadowy, cloak-and-dagger, elite groups of wealthy and influential people pulling the strings and creating a world which suits their purposes, usually at the expense of the average 'wage-slave'. It's a beguiling concept and it feeds on the human tendency to believe in conspiracies.
    God knows, as I've often said, I love a good conspiracy theory at least as much as the next man, an excellent example of which is the purported NASA cover-up of information about artificial structures on Mars. I've read extensively about this in the files of Richard Hoagland's 'The Enterprise Mission' and some of it is very compelling.
    How much easier is it to convince a struggling working man that he's worth more money than he's getting (isn't everybody?! ) and that the rest of the fruits of his labour are going to a secretive group of people intent on keeping him a permanently poor de facto slave?
    It's a cinch, right?! Especially if the embers of such suspicions are constantly being fanned by left-wing associations with their own control-driven agendas. Especially as long as people find it easier to sit back and say: "Hell, I could have been rich and successful if only I hadn't been the victim of conspiratorial circumstances", rather than take their own destiny into their own hands and do something about it.
    Yep! I'd say it's a self-perpetuating, gold-plated cinch!!

    So is it all true? Are we being manipulated by 'the Old Order'?
    My personal opinion is that humans are way too individualistic to cohere in such ways for very long, especially humans who, by definition in this case, are driven by unrelenting greed. This would have to be a perfect situation to which the old adage 'there's no honour among thieves' must apply. Imagine a group of people who've always had what they want, who've been brought up rich and spoilt and who think they're innately better than the next person. Now imagine the intrigues and back-stabbing that would inevitably arise in such an organisation of self-centred autocrats.
    My view is that such an organisation would have within it the ample seeds of its own destruction. Sure, it might last a few years but I submit that it's self-limiting and temporary, just like everything else created by mankind. Thank God, there are simply too many mavericks in the human race for one group ever to keep the upper hand for very long!

    I do worry, though, that you may be right about the Pentagon. At least temporarily, they may hold back the infant private space initiatives currently holding out such promise for the future of space accessibility for average people.

    But, as for conspiracy theories, I think we really owe it to ourselves to be careful we're not believing exactly what we want to believe because it helps us cope with frustration or some inner perception of inadequacy.

    Just a viewpoint!   

Hi again SpiderMan!
    Your quote:-

    I don't believe this is actually the case. As I understand it, Special Relativity specifically links time dilation to velocity, not acceleration.

    I think I also understand what you are referring to when you compare gravity and acceleration. Einstein did this in his General Relativity, where he established 'The Principle of Equivalence', which essentially states that the acceleration of a body being pushed faster and faster produces effects on that body indistinguishable from a gravitational field of equal strength in which that body is stationary. In other words, if you were in a box in outer space being accelerated smoothly and silently at 9.81 m/s/s, the sensation would be exactly the same as if you were in a box sitting stationary on the surface of the Earth.
    Einstein therefore established that inertial mass is identical to gravitational mass and, since photons have momentum and must therefore have inertial mass attributed to them, they must also have gravitational mass and should be affected by gravity. As we know, experiments seem to have confirmed that gravity bends the path of light. (Ether being the alternative explanation, as we've discussed.)

    I know Einstein maintained, too, that a gravitational field slows time just as velocity does. But I don't think he meant to imply that time dilation is caused by acceleration alone and not by velocity.
    If he had done so in his General Relativity, it would have been a direct contradiction of what he said in Special Relativity. Such an obvious contradiction would have been unthinkable and would have been noticed and pulled to pieces.

    Of course, I barely understand Special Relativity, and haven't the foggiest notion of how the mathematics in General Relativity works!!   

    So, if I'm missing something important here:-
a) It won't surprise me at all, and
b) I'm happy to be educated. (In accordance with the K.I.S.S.
    Principle, naturally! )
                                       

Hi Byron!
    Poignant words, indeed, about those "nine hours in there, in prison".
    But I think it's just a part of human nature to feel that way about anything we'd rather not be doing. I remember references to "9 months of the year chained to a desk", a child's view of having to go to school. I remember the "tyranny of examinations" and the endless weeks of studying (imprisonment) they imposed.
    I've hardly ever worked for anyone but myself, no "plant gates" involved, no boss but me, and yet there have been innumerable days when I felt trapped by the demands of my clients and by my responsibilities to my employees, not to mention my responsibilities to keep my family housed, fed, and healthy. And never a red cent in assistance from any government, just a relentless stream of tax bills largely designed to provide assistance to somebody else and his/her family.

    But people in all walks of life make prisons for themselves, even if somebody else isn't doing it for them! We're almost all trapped by circumstances of one sort or another, most often of our own making or choosing.
    No man or woman is ever truly free.

    Another of your posts in this thread, going back a bit, made comment about the Bible "Teaching people ... That homosexuality is an 'abomination?'"
    This attitude is hardly surprising considering the whole Judeo-Christian approach to sex in general. Our bodies are dirty, our minds are dirty, sex is dirty ... !
    We are all born in original sin (dirty), we sin nearly every day of our lives (dirty), and our consciences are, or should be, laden with guilt .. (more dirt)!
    And that's just the heterosexuals amongst us!!   
    Now imagine the people who dreamed up a religion like that, trying to get their minds around homosexuality!!!
    I suppose 'abomination' is the strongest word they could use without getting themselves into even more sin and guilt!
                                         :laugh: