July 2002
Space, instellar flights becoming popular?
Well not quite popular, but up to now there have been 2 fare-paying tourists to travel into space: U.S. millionaire Dennis Tito and South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth. And, if he successfully completes
training, Lance Bass from N'Sync will be the third, although he's currently just a candidate for the mission. It costs about $20M to make the flights, which is enough to cover the costs of the entire mission. And it is a
mission; it's a Russian mission to the international space station. All Lance has to do is learn a few key words in Russian, complete regular cosmonaut training, and learn what not to touch inside the space station, and he's set.
Oh yea, and pay 20M$. wow. Imagine being able to afford that! Apparently this is a new spin on funding space flights. Why raise the
money through taxes and other hard work, when there are wealthy people with money to spare?
Discounted golf rates
A letter circulated at work today. "Discounted golf rates" were listed throughout the Kantou region (area
surrounding Tokyo). The cheapest round of golf was 5500yen (~50$US) and the most expensive round was 33500yen
(~300$US). You know, this puts my budget into perspective. It's cheaper than flying into space, but I still can't
afford to play golf (in Japan, anyhow). The few rich people I know don't complain about their problems at home. People always say that money
isn't everything, and that people with money have problems, too. Yes, I agree--I'm sure they do, and so do I. But
at least money isn't one of their problems, as it is mine, so they're at least one up on me.
Distance depends on speed
I'm reading a biography on Einstein--now before you go thinking I'm trying to improve my brain or status, or am
just a geek, remember I travel for about 1.5 hours to work by train everyday, and there's nothing else to do but
read, and there's only a limited variety of English books available at the library in Japan.
That said, it's quite interesting, as might be expected, the topic being Einstein.
After reading through the pages of his troubled youth, it finally came to where it was plainly stated: a rod
contracts as it speeds up. Length is not a property of the rod itself, but rather of the observer.
It's one of those statements that I learned in OAC Physics (Grade 13 High School physics for you non-Ontarians),
discussed again at university (again, inevitably in physics class), and haven't had any contact with since around
1995 (the last of my physics dealing with Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity).
It's been so many years since I've learned it, that it seemed strange again to hear that statement: "Length is
not a property of the rod." I thought to myself, "What the hell?" Then I thought--oh yea, I knew that already.
Just that living in the world at speeds far less than the speed of light, we people don't physically notice any such
contractions due to speed. However, if that rod were to achieve 0.9c (90% the speed of light), it would contract to
half its length...
weight?
time?
Time slows down as speed increases. Thus a clock would slow down if it were to travel very quickly. And this
has been proven! That's the catch--this is proven, not just a theory. They've taken synchronized atomic clocks,
sped one up for a duration, then compared the times, and the one that was traveling fast was now behind the other
clock.
If a clock could reach the speed of light itself (which it can't), time would stop for it. But nothing can
travel at the speed of light except light itself. Anything that approaches the speed of light gets shorter, time
gets slower, and the object itself gets heavier until it just can't accelerate anymore.
The fact that the fastest anything could possibly travel is the speed of light renders most of Star Trek
impossible. (Warp 1 is, after all, light speed; from there on, Warp 2 goes up in exponents of light speed).
And there's another nice catch about simultaneity.
First, things which 'appear' simultaneous to one person, may not be to another.
ship, sailors, midway sailor, light travelling--different time frame
It was quite a breakthrough at the time, because everyone believed in classical Newtonian physics which states
things in terms 'absolute time' and 'absolute space', indicating that regardless of the observer, the observations
wouldn't change, because time and space are constant. Lorentz later came up with some equations that allowed
Einstein to make calculations which could calculate results based on a particular observation point (ie: relative
speed). Newton wasn't necessarily wrong--just incomplete. His theories hold for speeds far less than the speed of
light, which holds for most of our everyday activities. But for things beyond that, we require the Lorentz
equations and Einstein's theories. Einstein claimed that all that was necessary to make these calculations was
Lorentz's equations. The rest was just the missing theory that time and space are not constant, that they do vary
relative to each other, and the applications of Lorentz's equations.
Smoking
A US health agency aims to reduce smokers to 12% of the population by 2010.
Data from National Health Interview Surveys show that over a 35-year period, from 1965 to 2000, the percentage of
adults who smoke steadily declined, from 42 percent to 23 percent. That's kind of nice, isn't it?
Unfortunately, this is only US statistics, and I don't know how that applies to Canada or elsewhere in the world.
I'm sure things probably haven't changed in Europe or Japan, where everybody seems to smoke beyond one's belief.
Environmental friendliness
Coal is bad for the environment, right? Did you know that coal is used to generate more than 50 percent of the
US's electricity? US has been called the "Saudia Arabia of coal". Coal is a cause of various sicknesses such as
asthma, lung cancer and mercury poisoning and ~100,000 people die each year from the usage of coal.
But coal is cheap, and there's about another 275 years' supply of it left in the US, so despite the problems,
it's full forth. Oh yea, there's actually a law that the heat in the Capitol must come from coal power electricity.
Insane amounts of money in the world
Michael Jackson lives on a 2700 acre 'ranch' called 'Neverland', which has a private zoo and mini-amusement park,
mainly fror visiting kids. Neverland has a full-time staff of more than 50 employees. He's said to have the most
'overhead' costs of any superstar ever. Well, yea--50 full staff is expensive! That works out to 844800.00$US per
year at 8$US/hour (minimum wage must be somewhere around there). And I bet some of those get much more than minimum
wage, people like bodyguards, security staff, etc. Not to mention his assets. Did you know he owns the rights to
251 Beatles' songs, and co-owns 300,000 other songs with Sony? His 'ranch' is rated to be about 50$US in value.
Strange fact about whales
Whales getting beached is not at all rare. It happens numerous times a year, and whales, dolphins and other
types of sea creatures, all beach themselves, and there are certain 'popular sites' around the world where this
frequently occurs. Also, for reasons that are not at all understood, whales returned to deeper water will sometimes
turn right around and beach themselves again, although sometimes at a different location.
Sports drinks
They taste good. But your body, in order to sweat enough to lose the amount of sodium that sport drinks are
replacing, needs to do something like the iron man, where you're exercising for ~12 hours straight.
For most people, water's going to be just fine. It'll replace everything you need, and your body will actually
accommodate all the losses of sodium and potassium and things like that. If you're someone who gets cramps after
exercising, you might need a bit more potassium and sodium. You could eat bananas. You could drink a sports drink,
but for the most part, most people will just need water for regular exercise.
On Earthquakes
Seismic waves are the vibrations from earthquakes that travel through the Earth recorded on instruments called
seismographs. The Richter magnitude scale was developed in 1935 by Charles F. Richter of the California Institute
of Technology as a mathematical device to compare the size of earthquakes. The magnitude of an earthquake is
determined from the logarithm of the amplitude of waves recorded by seismographs. Adjustments are included for the
variation in the distance between the various seismographs and the epicenter of the earthquakes. On the Richter
Scale, magnitude is expressed in whole numbers and decimal fractions. For example, a magnitude 5.3 might be computed
for a moderate earthquake, and a strong earthquake might be rated as magnitude 6.3. Because of the logarithmic basis
of the scale, each whole number increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in measured amplitude; as an
estimate of energy, each whole number step in the magnitude scale corresponds to the release of about 31 times more
energy than the amount associated with the preceding whole number value.
Earthquakes with magnitude of about 2.0 or less are usually call microearthquakes; they are not commonly felt by
people and are generally recorded only on local seismographs. Events with magnitudes of about 4.5 or greater - there
are several thousand such shocks annually - are strong enough to be recorded by sensitive seismographs all over the
world. Great earthquakes, such as the 1964 Good Friday earthquake in Alaska, have magnitudes of 8.0 or higher. On
the average, one earthquake of such size occurs somewhere in the world each year. The Richter Scale has no upper
limit. An earthquake in a densely populated area which results in many deaths and considerable damage may have the
same magnitude as a shock in a remote area that does nothing more than frighten the wildlife. Large-magnitude
earthquakes that occur beneath the oceans may not even be felt by humans.
However, the method developed by Richter was strictly valid only for certain frequency and distance ranges.
body-wave magnitude, mb, and surface-wave magnitude, MS
magnitude scale was referred to as ML, with the L standing for local = Richter (scale) magnitude
moment magnitude, or MW blends the above 3 and is the most accurate, particular for large scale earthquakes
'abecedarian' is a real word
Here's the entry from the Merriam-Webster's online dictionary:
abecedarian \ay-bee-see-DAIR-ee-un\ (adjective)
*1 a : of or relating to the alphabet b : alphabetically arranged
2 : rudimentary