escape velocity

"...how fast something must be going to escape the gravity of another body completely. Something thrown directly away from a body at escape velocity would never fall back. This value is important for more than just space travel! It's also one of the parameters that determines whether a planet can keep an atmosphere."

V_esc=√(2GM/r)=kr√p

where r is the radius of the planet, M its mass, p (Greek letter rho) its mean density, and G the gravitational constant. The escape velocity from earth is 11.2 km/s or 25,000mph. 

You might remember me talking about casimir forces and exotic matter, things I learned about while researching wormholes for my new project. The above definition of escape velocity comes courtesy of World Building by Stephen L. Gillett. It's an older book - 1996 - but it still has some pretty good information, like the fact that gravity forces planets (and suns) into spheres. Did you know that?

You can track my progress with my new work - tentatively titled NO REST - on my sidebar where I've added a widget.

What are you working on? Learned anything interesting lately?

The Calling Card - a lesson in social history

Did you ever wonder how people contacted one another before there were telephones? I mean, let's say you were in town and wanted to meet a friend for coffee or tea. These days you'd just call or text and set up a time and place. But back before there were such things as telephones and texts (The Regency specifically -  although Calling Cards were used throughout the 1800s*), you left a card at the house of those persons you wished to notify of your presence 'in town, ' with town being London during the Season and the Season being the months Parliament was in session (more on this next Friday...).

The leaving of cards was primarily "an activity of ladies" and generally took place in the morning. The protocol went like this: "At each house, the footman took a small card bearing your name and two cards of your husband's ... and gave them to the butler, who would put them on a salver inside the front hall, or, in less fancy establishments, perhaps on the mantlepiece. Visitors then had the chance to see whom the family numbered among its social circle and be suitably impressed." The idea was to renew - or solicit - acquaintance.

Now, if you were a bold person, you might forgo the card and simply call upon the person. However, by doing so, "you took a risk of rejection" since it was easy enough for the lady of the house to have a peek at you and then decide whether or not she'd see you. If she did, your visit was to be short and any conversation would be "light and touch on safe, general topics like weather." If this was someone you did not know well the call would made in the late afternoon and if "you were somewhat better acquainted, between five and six. These were all referred to as morning calls," even though they never took place in the morning and in fact "no one but a great intimate would presume to actually call in the real morning, i.e., before one o'clock."

These are my kind of people.


* according to WHAT JANE AUSTIN ATE AND WHAT CHARLES DICKENS KNEW by Daniel Pool

Alpha

In the phonetic alphabet, Alpha represents the letter A. According to my dictionary - a very old but perfectly serviceable American Heritage circa 1969 - Alpha is also 1. the first letter in the Greek alphabet 2. the first of anything; beginning 3. the brightest or main star in a constellation 4. first in order of importance. [Greek, from a Phoenician word akin to Hebrew aleph, ALEPH.]

Here are a few Alphas you may or may not be familiar with...


Alpha Centauri - if you're a Geek like me you know this is a double star in Centaurus, the brightest in the constellation, 4.4 light years away from Earth.

Alpha Crucis - but I'll wager you didn't know this was a double star, too, in the constellation Crux, approx. 230 light years away.

Alpha Leonis - Also a star, known as Regulus, in the constellation Leo.

Alpha particle - a positively charged composite particle.
Alpha privative - the Greek negative prefix

Alpha ray -  a stream of alpha particles
Apha rhythm - the most common electroencephalographic waveform found in recordings of the electrical activity of the adult cerebral cortex, characteristically 8 to 12 smooth, regular oscillations per second in subjects at rest. also called 'alpha wave.'

what I learned today

It occurred to me today as I was perusing the headlines on my homepage (Elizabeth Taylor dies, Jerusalem bus bombed, and this from Scientific American: ‘one pill makes you smarter.’) that I’ve actually learned some interesting things lately. Like the fact that it’s actually good for you to play computer games.


According to author Jane McGonigal at cnet, reality has ceased to engage us or motivate us sufficiently, hence the reason ‘we’re up to playing 3 billion hours playing online games per week.’ (Of course, if you think about it, it isn’t just games we escape to, right? There’s books both real and e, all the little devices – ipad , blackberry, bluetooth, tv, etc. – we can’t seem to disconnect from. I mean how much time do any of us actually spend in the here and now?) The good news is we don’t have to feel guilty about gaming because playing may actually be good for us and game designers could have the best chance of positively impacting the most lives. Read the full article here. It’s very interesting and confirms what I subconsciously knew all along.



Another interesting concept I discovered is technological singularity: a hypothetical event occurring when technological progress outpaces our ability to predict the future. 'Many of the most recognized writers on the singularity... define the concept in terms of the technological creation of superintelligence. Vernor Vinge predicts that “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.” Now there's an interesting albeit scary thought.

The last one I’ll mention is the one that got me thinking about what I learn as I click around the internet, the one I mentioned first about the pill that can make you smarter. The article in Scientific American mentions the pill because of the movie Limitless (which I still want to see), in which a pill suddenly makes a man a mental superman, this based on the belief that we only use 20% of our brains. This belief, however, is patently untrue due to default mode network, ‘a network of brain regions that are active when the individual is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest.’ You know, like autopilot, when you driving and thinking about how to extricate your mc from the predicament you put him/her in and realize you’ve traveled ten miles. So really we do use more of our brains than we’re aware of and the part that’s active when we’re daydreaming is ‘hypothesized to generate spontaneous thoughts during mindwandering and believed to be an essential component of creativity.’


What interesting facts have you find lately?

hey, not so fast

Ok, so it wasn’t exactly as easy as I made it out to be. I finally finished the chapter I was working on but it wasn’t a piece of cake, more like taffy. I’m not sure why these last few chapters are coming harder than the rest. Maybe it’s because I’m not feeling entirely well. I’m hoping this is the reason because I don’t like taffy.


Meanwhile the days are getting shorter and colder and tomorrow marks a holiday my characters would appreciate; All Hallows Eve, which has its origins in the Celtic holiday Samhain. According to Wikepedia “The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the ‘lighter half’ of the year and the beginning of the ‘darker half.’ The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the otherworld became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits (both harmless and harmful) to pass through.” At some point people began dressing like these spirits, costuming themselves, or ‘mumming’ as it was called. The modern practice of trick or treating is derived from mumming.

I live down a dark, dead end road and even though I’m only the second house no one has ever come trick or treating in the twelve years I’ve lived here. I still buy candy, of course (Reeses), and I carve pumpkins just because it’s fun. My son likes to bake the pumpkin seeds.

What are you doing for Halloween? Take your kids trick or treating? Haunted Hayride? Costume party? Or do you turn out all the lights and pretend you’re not home and eat all the candy you bought for the trick or treaters that never come.

My son had the sappy idea to carve a letter into each of the four pumpkins he and his gf got: L-O-V-E. 

 I carved the three faces.

Happy Halloween!

the most wonderful thing

I heard peepers.

crow

a crow in the wild lives on average 7-8 years vs 30 years in captivity.