Re: Is Louis Savain the next Einstein??

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 15:00:08 GMT, The Ghost In The Machine
<ewill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>In sci.physics.relativity, Robert Kolker
><nowhere@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> wrote
>on Tue, 14 Jun 2005 06:10:10 -0400
><XfWdnamzEvVgMTPfRVn-vg@xxxxxxxxxxx>:
>> Uncle Al wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/savain.jpg
>>> He found it!
>>
>> You are a cruel man.
>
>The Universe is even crueler. Incoming muons routinely
>shatter peaceful atoms, somewhere in the upper atmosphere,
>leading to ions -- or worse. (The results are reputed to
>be very pretty, judging from photographs. I've never
>seen an aurora in person.)

Living at about 45 degrees north, I've got a lovely viewing position,
and my workshifts commonly leave me getting home during the night so I
have a reasonable shot at seeing them. And they are lovely. By sheer
chance I get to see them about half as often as I get to see ice fogs
(which are actually even prettier than auroras).

>A supernova blows away almost anything in its path,
>often with a colorful (but not candy-coated!) shell.
>Deadly ionizing radiation does a number on one's organs.
>Giant boulders can detach from a cliff and drop on
>unsuspecting passers-by, and the results will probably
>be far more gruesome than Wile E. Coyote's many mishaps.
>(In a way, his tanglings with the Roadrunner might be
>taken as instructive, though one suggestion as to why
>he appears so durable is suggested in one short when he
>dons a female roadrunner costume and a few thousand of
>his brethren show up, forks in hand. Perhaps there's a
>lot of indistinguishable stand-ins?)
>
>Burial in snow (an avalanche) can lead to asphyxiation.
>Lightning strikes can kill (though it's probably more
>likely one will be run over on a public thoroughfare,
>but I'd have to look up the CDC statistics). Drownings
>are routine if one runs afoul of an undertow. The Big
>Bang -- the biggest thing of all, or perhaps it was the
>smallest? -- destroyed everything before it, if there
>was anything before it; time before Planck time is a
>little weird.
>
>And of course peer review can destroy one's carefully
>crafted illusions, leading one to madness. (One hopes
>for more resilience in one's personality, of course.
>Nikolai Tesla ultimately went crazy, AIUI.)

Well, he also had things happening that were exremely strestfun and
unrelated to peer review, lilke Marconni's patent thefts. He also
seems to have invented SOMETHING that the Pentagon likes very much,
although there isn't much documentation on what it was. He CLAIMED,
near the end of his life, to have invented some kind of electrical
beam weapon. He DID invent all the basiv technology of both radio and
AC power equipment, though. It isn't clear how good a physicist he
was, but he was definitely a brilliant engineer.

>But the Universe just laughs (if one can call it that)
>at our attempts to populate it with deities, epicycles,
>monsters (first in the deeps of the sea, and then in the
>depths of space), hyperdrives, cybernetic killing machines
>intent on expunging Life (Saberhagen's Berserker saga),
>coal-burning stars [*], and other such.
>
>It would help if we didn't see the Virgin Mary in every
>salt deposit and Elvis in every jelly roll, though.
>However, I strongly suspect that that's the way of
>patternseekers; there is a malfunction in the brain AIUI
>that can lead to people seeing odd patterns in random
>TV snow. (This is only one of many malfunctions in the
>brain that can destroy the mind.)
>
>And we all crave surety, where there may be none.
>
>>
>> Bob Kolker
>>
>>>
>
>[*] There might be a burning object somewhere out there which has
> carbon and oxygen, reacting. It won't be a star, though.
> If we're really lucky there will be an extraterristrial
> nearby with a fork and some barbecue sauce, tending to
> his cooking in what passes for his backyard... :-)

.

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