After a day of reading Ray Bradbury short stories

[cleolinda]

Sister Girl and I were talking just now, and I was telling her about this History of the Universe show Mom was watching (I think?), and how some of the people on it were, like, the dumbest people ever.

Comments

[word_herder]

I guess eggs really are hard to digest.

Eggs are the easiest protein to digest. Maybe they have some property that makes flu-stricken people queasy...?

[sucrelefey]

It's th egg yolk that gets most people being fat based and high in sulfur.

[last_archangel]

I feel so badly for those twins...how horrible!

[apey1013]

Steampunk can't be passe. I just got some totally awesome steampunk-looking boots. I deny it's application for so-five-minutes-ago status, dangit!

[theweaselking]

After years of study and astronomical head-scratching, these scientists finally--finally--turned to each other and wondered--no, it couldn't be--but perhaps... somehow... the planet had originally formed further away.

In their defense, do you have any idea how much energy it would take to make a planet the size of Jupiter fall into the sun?

And, worse, how much energy it would take to *stop* it in a roughly circular orbit, not a giant ellipse and not actually falling all the way into the sun?

They're thinking of that as a last resort because there's basically no known possible mechanism for it to happen. They're eliminating everything they think might be possible, before coming to what is, according to our knowledge of the universe, an impossible conclusion.

I mean, I'm an engineer, not an astronomer, but I can kinda understand where they're coming from.

[kvschwartz]

IAWTC

I didn't see the show, but I doubt it took years for the astronomers to come up with "maybe the planet moved to a lower orbit? " as a hypothesis.

But whereas comets change orbits all the time, vast planets don't. Anything cataclysmic enough to yank a planet out of its orbit is unlikely to deposit said planet in another nice, neat, nearly-circular orbit again.

Here are some wise & germane bon mots from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, via Sherlock Holmes:

"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts."

"When you have eliminated the impossible, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

[word_herder]

Also? Find815.com is AWESOME. *loves you forever*