Amazing Science
C.E. "Bud" Brann
Staff Writer
cebrann@ruraltel.net
Have you thought about the incredible feats performed by scientists and engineers? When we hear about landing a space probe on another planet we kind of say, "Ho hum, big deal."
If we think about the complexities of such a feat in everyday terms we become astounded.
Suppose you were a baseball pitcher with an amazing throwing arm, able to hurl a baseball for fifty miles. Suppose you took a microscopic baseball and went to the state fair and took a ride on the tilt a whirl. Further suppose a friend just happens to be in a town 50 miles away and just happens to also be riding a tilt a whirl at the same time as you. Now somehow, (don’t ask me how) you can see that a bee has landed on your friend and is about to sting him. Your tilt a whirl is going up and down and spinning rapidly as is the tilt a whirl your friend is riding. You hurl your microscopic baseball 50 miles and manage to knock the stinger right off the Bee.
It’s too unbelievable to even consider such a silly notion you are probably thinking, but in essence space scientists have been doing just such difficult feats for years.
Every time a space probe lands on another planet, like Mars, the feat accomplished is as difficult as the baseball pitch, only worse. We have become pretty blasé about such events, but think about it. The distance from the Earth to Mars isn’t constant, varying from 36 million to 250 million miles. So to make the baseball feat more realistically, your friend would not be just 50 miles away but his distance would vary from 50 to around 347 miles as your hurl your pitch.
The Earth is rotating on its axis once every 24 hours, Mars every 24 ½ hours. Both planets traveling around the sun in an elliptic orbital, both are not just rotating but also bouncing up and down. To top it off the entire solar system is whirling like that tilt a whirl. Finally every planet, the Sun, and anything and everything else in space have gravity which affects everything else in space.
Actually, my tilt a whirl example left out another problem which scientists face. In order to make the “bee” a more realistic scenario, you and your friend could not be riding tilt a whirls at the same time. Your friend would have to ride his years after you hurled your microscopic baseball. It takes years for a space shot to reach Mars from Earth.
Yet that Mars probes will land in a precise spot at the north pole of Mars just at the selected time for Mars spring thaw. And almost equally unbelievable is, that if Phoenix performs as well as the two previous probes, four years later it will still be operating having endured temperatures which range from minus 30 to minus 200 degrees F.
Computers made such incredible feats possible. (Of course a lot of other scientific breakthroughs were also required.)
To old timers (that would be me), even those like me who have degrees in science, such advances in science boggle the mind. When I was in college we did our math with slide rules. I’ll bet there are people out there who have no idea what a slide rule is. Through seven years of chemistry and physics in both undergraduate and graduate work I used a slide rule. It wasn’t until a few years later while working on an MBA that I first had the opportunity to use, even to see, a computer. That was at the University of Chicago and that computer filled a good sized room. To say I got to use it is even a bit of an exaggeration for I wasn’t allowed to touch it. I had to write my program, put it on key punch cards, get in a long line and eventually, after a long wait, hand it to a computer operator to actually run it. The small desk top computer I am writing this on is probably at least 1000 times more powerful than that room sized computer at the U of C.
Incidentally, getting back to space, the day I ran my very first computer program was the same day man first set foot on the moon. (My professor showed up and asked why on earth we weren’t all gathered around a TV watching such an incredible event. I guess he forgot the tremendous computer work load he had given us.)
Staff Writer
cebrann@ruraltel.net
Have you thought about the incredible feats performed by scientists and engineers? When we hear about landing a space probe on another planet we kind of say, "Ho hum, big deal."
If we think about the complexities of such a feat in everyday terms we become astounded.
Suppose you were a baseball pitcher with an amazing throwing arm, able to hurl a baseball for fifty miles. Suppose you took a microscopic baseball and went to the state fair and took a ride on the tilt a whirl. Further suppose a friend just happens to be in a town 50 miles away and just happens to also be riding a tilt a whirl at the same time as you. Now somehow, (don’t ask me how) you can see that a bee has landed on your friend and is about to sting him. Your tilt a whirl is going up and down and spinning rapidly as is the tilt a whirl your friend is riding. You hurl your microscopic baseball 50 miles and manage to knock the stinger right off the Bee.
It’s too unbelievable to even consider such a silly notion you are probably thinking, but in essence space scientists have been doing just such difficult feats for years.
Every time a space probe lands on another planet, like Mars, the feat accomplished is as difficult as the baseball pitch, only worse. We have become pretty blasé about such events, but think about it. The distance from the Earth to Mars isn’t constant, varying from 36 million to 250 million miles. So to make the baseball feat more realistically, your friend would not be just 50 miles away but his distance would vary from 50 to around 347 miles as your hurl your pitch.
The Earth is rotating on its axis once every 24 hours, Mars every 24 ½ hours. Both planets traveling around the sun in an elliptic orbital, both are not just rotating but also bouncing up and down. To top it off the entire solar system is whirling like that tilt a whirl. Finally every planet, the Sun, and anything and everything else in space have gravity which affects everything else in space.
Actually, my tilt a whirl example left out another problem which scientists face. In order to make the “bee” a more realistic scenario, you and your friend could not be riding tilt a whirls at the same time. Your friend would have to ride his years after you hurled your microscopic baseball. It takes years for a space shot to reach Mars from Earth.
Yet that Mars probes will land in a precise spot at the north pole of Mars just at the selected time for Mars spring thaw. And almost equally unbelievable is, that if Phoenix performs as well as the two previous probes, four years later it will still be operating having endured temperatures which range from minus 30 to minus 200 degrees F.
Computers made such incredible feats possible. (Of course a lot of other scientific breakthroughs were also required.)
To old timers (that would be me), even those like me who have degrees in science, such advances in science boggle the mind. When I was in college we did our math with slide rules. I’ll bet there are people out there who have no idea what a slide rule is. Through seven years of chemistry and physics in both undergraduate and graduate work I used a slide rule. It wasn’t until a few years later while working on an MBA that I first had the opportunity to use, even to see, a computer. That was at the University of Chicago and that computer filled a good sized room. To say I got to use it is even a bit of an exaggeration for I wasn’t allowed to touch it. I had to write my program, put it on key punch cards, get in a long line and eventually, after a long wait, hand it to a computer operator to actually run it. The small desk top computer I am writing this on is probably at least 1000 times more powerful than that room sized computer at the U of C.
Incidentally, getting back to space, the day I ran my very first computer program was the same day man first set foot on the moon. (My professor showed up and asked why on earth we weren’t all gathered around a TV watching such an incredible event. I guess he forgot the tremendous computer work load he had given us.)
posted by Zach Becker at
5:21 PM
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