Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

The Cassini People -- Part II

There's all kinds of stuff allegedly happening up there in space. Or so they say. And they say that little insurgency over there in Iraq is going well, too. Who you gonna believe?

First off, we got what's revolving around Saturn ... the Cassini spacecraft, which, if you didn’t know, is loaded with plutonium, 72.3 pounds of plutonium-238, to be exact, installed in a thing called a radioisotope thermo-electric generator. Let’s not panic though, plutonium-239 is the type used in nuclear weapons; but, on the other hand, plutonium-238 is the most lethal substance known to man. Plutonium-238 is so toxic that less than one-millionth of a gram, an invisible particle, causes cancer. Inhaling the stuff invariably causes lung cancer. The funny thing about the plutonium was that NASA couldn’t buy plutonium-238 in the United States because nobody, not even the government makes plutonium-238. The manufacturing process is too dangerous, so NASA bought the stuff from Russia.

We got pictures coming from Titan, a moon out there orbiting around Saturn. It’s cloudy, but here’s a drawing from one of the top secret pictures that Sam, a close friend of mine, shared with me. He’s got one of those satellite dishes we hear about all the time. Obviously, I'd be in big, big trouble with the Kerry campaign if I posted the picture:

And here’s some good news in Physics, depending on your point of view. Isn't that how it works, though? There's always that point of view that changes your perspective. That's like part of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, I think. Or was that Hawk's Constant? I can never remember which is which; but isn't that just like physics, with those scientists always changing their minds. Anyway, some physics guys in Italy have "proven" that the Earth spinning around at about 1000 miles an hour causes a disturbance in the area, the "spacetime," around the Earth.

It's kind of like when you get some people together in a pool and go around and around and the water starts going around and around and eventually the current you've created drags you along. Well, it seems that things get dragged around the Earth a little ... about 9 miles an hour ... depending on how close they are to the Earth.

I'm just thinking that the Earth isn't just spinning around at 1,000 miles an hour; it's also traveling through space at about 65,000 miles an hour going around the Sun, that is itself spinning around. Then the Sun and the entire array of planets, moons, and other things that are in our solar system are flying around the Milky Way galaxy at a speed of about 486,000 miles per hour.

What does all this mean?

All the numbers make your head spin, but you know it doesn't mean jack-shit to anybody. It is one more thing on which to spend government money. How is this information, which will have "important implications for our view of the cosmos" going to benefit the inner-city mother of three working in an office as a filing clerk for $8 an hour without any health insurance or other benefits? Will the warped spacetime generate any significant disposable income for her?

I don't know. Maybe that is the question physicists should answer before they get their government hand-out and the money gets sucked into a black hole.

Posted by Bill at October 27, 2004 01:08 PM