Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id QAA07559 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Fri, 27 Apr 2001 16:22:53 +0100 Message-ID: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745E12@inchna.stir.ac.uk> From: Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> To: "'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Subject: RE: The Status of Memetics as a Science Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 16:19:05 +0100 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
I feel I'm getting myself into unfamiliar waters, but I thought that it
wasn't the amount of energy so much as the concentration of that energy in a
single point that would be needed to move the earth out of its orbit. Now
that's not very likely is it (that a significant proportion of the world's
nuclear arsenal would be detonated in the same place at the same time)?
The other stuff about destroying the atmosphere, I'll go along with though.
The 1950s UK sci-fi film 'The Day The Earth Caught Fire' (which is a lot of
fun BTW) has the premise (not unreasonable for many in those naive times)
that nuclear tests near the Earth's poles knocks the planet off it's axis,
and out of orbit sending it towards the Sun. The attempted resolution is to
detonate more bombs at the other pole to try and knock it back again. The
film doesn't end with a clear answer as to whether this has worked or not.
'When World's Collide' on the other hand, has a rogue planet flying towards
Earth, and causing all sorts of environmental disasters. The solution here
is to build a spaceship to take a small select group to the rogue planet,
and create a new life there, whilst everyone left on Earth gets killed.
Another fun 50s film, albeit extraordinarily ropey science.
Flash Gordon- the film from the 1980s anyway- seemed similarly to suggest
that 'Mongo' was a kind of rogue planet roaming the galaxy with Ming
attacking other world's at whim. Of course, I've been reading recently that
there's a view amongst astronomers that there may be many rogue planets not
orbiting stars, flying through space that may account for a lot of the
missing matter of the universe (since they don't give off light we can't
really see them at all).
Spot the S/F freak :-)
Vincent
> ----------
> From: Trupeljak Ozren
> Reply To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 6:09 pm
> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> Subject: RE: The Status of Memetics as a Science
>
>
> --- Vincent Campbell <v.p.campbell@stir.ac.uk> wrote:
> > Making the Earth move out of orbit?
> >
> > You've been watching either 'The Day the Earth Caught Fire' or 'When
> > Worlds
> > Collide'. Or maybe even Flash Gordon re-runs.
> >
> > Vincent
> >
>
> Erm, just try to calculate exactly how much energy is needed to move
> earth out of its orbit, and then look how much can be released by the
> nuclear arsenals of big powers. Last time I did that, a few years ago
> and with incomplete knowledge of exactly how big these arsenal were
> (they are much bigger then I thought then!), the order of magnitude was
> there. Interestingly enough, by the same calculation we did *not* have
> enough power to stop the Erath from rotating.
> And just a small fraction of that power is needed to burn our
> atmosphere down, in effect sterilizing the planet (it is dubious
> whether that would kill off all of the marine life, but there is strong
> evidence that it might; few hundred million years ago a catastrophe of
> far smaller proportions then burning down the atmosphere would be,
> destroyed about 95% of all the life in the seas).
> I haven't seen any of the above mentioned movies, though...are they any
> good :)
>
>
> =====
> There are very few man - and they are exceptions - who are able to think
> and feel beyond the present moment.
>
> Carl von Clausewitz
>
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> ===============================================================
> This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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