Re: Innovative paper on "Interstellar Night Sky"

From: Abdul Ahad (aa_spaceagent_at_yahoo.co.uk)
Date: 07/19/04 

Date: 19 Jul 2004 00:31:17 -0700

> AA Institute <abdul.ahad@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
> news:adbf5bc1.0407162234.309519da@posting.google.com...
> > I have produced a totally original paper that quantifies the
> > brightness of the interstellar night sky, something that I believe no
> > other science authority has yet done:-
> >
> > http://uk.geocities.com/aa_spaceagent/restricted/interstellar.html
> >
> > Is anyone aware of any other material out there in the big wide world
> > which illustrates, in reasonably straight forward terms, an effort to
> > answer this fundamental question in Astronomy: "How dark is the cosmic
> > night sky beyond the kindly influence of our Sun and its family of 9
> > planets?"
>
> This was first addressed (in print) by Halley, in 1720. And first solved by
> Olber (in print), in 1823.
>
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=vfsbqpr60h1p45%40corp.supernews.com
>
> First quantified by Eddington, in 1926.
>
> http://www.google.com/groups?selm=C66E1G.KM9%40well.sf.ca.us

Thank you (Greywolf?) for going into all the lengths to explain
Olbers' Paradox to me. I really appreciate you are trying to be
helpful and I've read the historical accounts you've supplied with
interest.

But I will point out a point in fact that Olbers' Paradox solved the
question "Why is the sky dark at night?". My *revolutionary* paper
addresses the question "How bright is the space *between* stars in the
solar neighbourhood? The two are fundamentally different lines of
scientific inquiry.

I have now posted my paper and its findings across 10 science groups,
inviting debate and any known references to prior sources which can
quash my claims about this work being "totally original". So far, in
the history of science it appears no such prior work was in fact
undertaken. Well, frankly I am most disappointed! How are we ever
going to reach out to the stars with manned voyages at this rate of
progress towards such a simplistic and obvious line of scientific
inquiry to understand the interstellar medium?

Well it appears that quantifying the level of cosmic sky illumination
that exists in the vast emptiness separating our lonely solar system
from our nearest stellar neighbours was a fundamental "gap" in our
knowledge and I, Abdul Ahad, of the United Kingdom and from my country
of origin Bangladesh, was the FIRST in scientific history to have
filled this "gap", since I have:-

==============================================================

1. Put forward an estimate for net integrated sky brightness of -6.5
magnitudes (equivalent to an approx. 1/300th of a full moon intensity)
that will be encountered when sailing a couple of light years beyond
our solar neighbourhood out into the great ocean of interstellar space

2. Define and practically demonstrate a totally original analytical
process of magnitude integrations using data in the star catalogues
that could lead to the ball park estimate stated in (1) above

3. Illustrate in intricate and elegant detail the full extent of that
dark, foreboding zone of 'perpetual' cosmic night that will exist on
every journey between any two given star systems. And, in the absence
of any hitherto given titles to this zone which I could use for
purposes of reference in my paper, I proposed it be called the zone of
'Ahad minimum illumonation' (AMI for short) in recognition of my
efforts!

4. Produce a paper entitled "The Music of the Night" on this topic of
interstellar night sky brightness that summarised all of the above.

(Incidentally, although throughout history many have poetically
referred to stars as 'camp fires', 'diamonds', 'pin pricks of light',
etc. I believe I was the first to analogise the aggregation of light
from each individual twinkling star as the collective "music" of the
night sky! I might be mistaken, but please advise if you know me to be
wrong in this claim.)

5. The first to define and quantify a theoretical solar "light
influence" boundary existing at roughly 11,500 astronomical units out
from the Sun where the total sunlight incident on a vessel would be
equal to the total flux of light coming from other sources in the
cosmic night sky external to our solar system.

Of course in the months and years ahead many far more esteemed
researchers and science institutes dotted around our globe will be
refining my results to far greater levels of accuracy, using the most
up to date information and ever advancing technologies of our golden
era. I will be thrilled to say that this is one piece of inquiry where
I was the *first*

To determine that I was "THE FIRST" in all of the above postulations,
I took a very hard headed scientific approach and conscientiously
exhausted a great deal of my own time and effort.

I published my research paper on the WWW encapsulating all of the
above with graphic illustrations and posted the link across 10
different news groups in the 'sci' category of USENET on the WWW. I
then sent it to the e-mail addresses of countless reasearch personnel
at NASA, ESA, Canadian Space Agency, and observatories and
astronomical societies across the world as far a field as Australia,
India and the Pacific. On each occasion, I asked the question: "Has
anyone done this work before or know of other existing material in the
public domain that can possibly give me any results along these
lines?"
I even wrote to the Royal Society in London, the Royal Observatory in
Scotland and the Astronomer Royal professor Martin Rees of the UK
Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University!

Reasonable amount of feedback from a few sources, but not even one
person came back with any pointers to other works in this direction or
even vaguely in this domain of intellectual inquiry.

So...world, I claim my prize: please name the minimum cosmic sky light
intensity "Ahad minimum illumination" (AMI for short) in recognition
of my efforts.

I'm off to see the new release movie Spiderman 2
now........Whaaaahaaayyyyy!!!!!

Sincerely,

Abdul Ahad
http://uk.geocities.com/aa_spaceagent/
The AA Institute of Space Science & Technology
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