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austin_dern) wrote2005-02-18 07:38 pm
You might see celestial light
I'm not an amateur astronomer. Given all the hobbies I haven't time to do right that might not be surprising, although my long fascination with space (the first books I remember reading were about astronomy and astronauts) suggests I might have anyway.
Still I imagine anyone who knows it finds the discovery of Neptune about the coolest mathematics thing ever. John Couch Adams studies anomalies in the movement of Uranus and projects a new planet beyond it; while the Royal Observatory sits on the request to look, Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier makes a similar projection, sends it to Johann Gottfried Galle, who finds Neptune in one hour. (Maybe more amazing, Adams didn't resent Le Verrier.) No wonder astronomers went crazy seeking anomalies in Neptune's and Uranus's orbits and convincing themselves they'd seen Vulcan inside Mercury's orbit.
I can't say I studied mathematics and physics just because of the romance of the discovery of Pluto, and that Pluto moved inside Neptune's orbit while I was young and impressionable, but Pluto certainly helped. I always wanted to do something that cool.
Trivia: The Percival Lowell observatory took pictures of Pluto on 19 March and 7 April 1915, while Lowell was preparing his memoir A Trans-Neptunian Planet. Source: The Explorers of Mars Hill: A Centennial History of Lowell Observatory, 1894-1994, William Lowell Putnam.
Currently Reading: I, The Machine, Paul W Fairman. Lee Penway is a relentlessly average shlub in a hedonistic world where every whim is satisfied by nigh-omniscient giver The Machine. In a unique development, he falls in with a bunch of rebellious sorts (the women wear nothing; the men wear only spray-on jock straps) and learns The Machine is covering up severely dysfunctional behavior. Now he wonders helplessly how The Machine's robots keep finding and shredding his new fleshy friends while he holds telepathic conversations with a taunting Machine. Meanwhile he heads for a shocking discovery all sentient readers and some advanced forms of moss spot a hundred pages before.
You know you're in for a good ride when on paragraph six it's mentioned Lee keeps such good care of his body ``he still had, at thirty, his original sex organs.'' Still, it's got -- for 1968 -- a nifty bit of miniaturization, as the brain-wave patterns of all the residents of what becomes of the United States fit in one box four feet long.
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as the brain-wave patterns of all the residents of what becomes of the United States fit in one box four feet long.
And yet, somehow, the New York subway remains packed regardless.
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I didn't know of that story, but I haven't read more than the faintest skim of Tintin ... there's actually something of a faint pattern in the names of planets and asteroids, in that the asteroids first noted to have strange orbits -- like the earth-crossers, or the Trojans -- tend to get male Greek or Roman names, so just on hearing the name Adonis one would expect the asteroid to do something unusual. (The names don't start becoming fanciful or pop-cultural until you've got hundreds in similar orbits.)
And yet, somehow, the New York subway remains packed regardless.
Actually, they don't get to that; the book's a bit vague on just how life is topside. The author just ordered the ``utopia'' right up out of central casting and put the usual late-60s gloss (lots of sex, ready drugs, regular visits to the psychologist computers) on it. The protagonist seems to start out somewhere near Chicago or Cleveland, and there are rocket tubes. Past that it's anybody's guess. The only streets seen are in hallucinations or dreams.