Letters from the Earth -Mark Twain
 

I get caught up every time I think to look at "Letters..." The Wikipedia gives some context of Twain's tone: He had lost a daughter and his wife in a short period. Also, for cryin' out loud, he was a pretty confirmed cynic on the human condition.
[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_from_the_Earth[/URL]


This is the actual text:
[URL]https://sacred-texts.com/aor/twain/letearth.htm[/URL]
Sample:

[QUOTE]Letter V

Noah began to collect animals. There was to be one couple of each and every sort of creature that walked or crawled, or swam or flew, in the world of animated nature. We have to guess at how long it took to collect the creatures and how much it cost, for there is no record of these details. When Symmachus made preparation to introduce his young son to grown-up life in imperial Rome, he sent men to Asia, Africa and everywhere to collect wild animals for the arena-fights. It took the men three years to accumulate the animals and fetch them to Rome. Merely quadrupeds and alligators, you understand -- no birds, no snakes, no frogs, no worms, no lice, no rats, no fleas, no ticks, no caterpillars, no spiders, no houseflies, no mosquitoes -- nothing but just plain simple quadrupeds and alligators: and no quadrupeds except fighting ones. Yet it was as I have said: it took three years to collect them, and the cost of animals and transportation and the men's wages footed up $4,500,000.

How many animals? We do not know. But it was under five thousand, for that was the largest number ever gathered for those Roman shows, and it was Titus, not Symmachus, who made that collection. Those were mere baby museums, compared to Noah's contract. Of birds and beasts and fresh-water creatures he had to collect 146,000 kinds; and of insects upwards of two million species.

Thousands and thousands of those things are very difficult to catch, and if Noah had not given up and resigned, he would be on the job yet, as Leviticus used to say. However, I do not mean that he withdrew. No, he did not do that. He gathered as many creatures as he had room for, and then stopped.

If he had known all the requirements in the beginning, he would have been aware that what was needed was a fleet of Arks. But he did not know how many kinds of creatures there were, neither did his Chief. So he had no Kangaroo, and no 'possom, and no Gila monster, and no ornithorhynchus, and lacked a multitude of other indispensable blessings which a loving Creator had provided for man and forgotten about, they having long ago wandered to a side of this world which he had never seen and with whose affairs he was not acquainted. And so everyone of them came within a hair of getting drowned.

They only escaped by an accident. There was not water enough to go around. Only enough was provided to flood one small corner of the globe -- the rest of the globe was not then known, and was supposed to be nonexistent. [/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=kladner;527708][QUOTE]... the rest of the globe was not then known, and was supposed to be nonexistent.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]Sounds not to dissimilar to the current physics/cosmology theories about anything that might be "outside" the universe is necessarily nothing because we don't know about it (yet).

Just in time for Halloween...
 

[url=https://www.apnews.com/4ea67dded47d4151bdde549a3e33c033]Iowa man finds 5 inches of animal blood flooding basement[/url]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;528188][URL="https://www.apnews.com/4ea67dded47d4151bdde549a3e33c033"]Iowa man finds 5 inches of animal blood flooding basement[/URL][/QUOTE]
[QUOTE]The waste is coming from a neighboring meat locker, where of blood, fat and other animal tissue from slaughtered animals was washed down a drain. Officials say a clog or break in the pipe sent the waste into Lestina’s basement through a floor drain.[/QUOTE]So the meat operation is dumping raw animal waste into municipal sewers.
:yucky: :censored: :raman: :sick:

[QUOTE=kladner;528399]So the meat operation is dumping raw animal waste into municipal sewers.[/QUOTE]

They are feeding the alligators.

Stars older than the universe, or the Hubble Constant varying
 

[URL]https://www.space.com/how-can-a-star-be-older-than-the-universe.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab[/URL]

Re: Stars older than the universe, or the Hubble Constant varying
 

[QUOTE=kriesel;528573][URL]https://www.space.com/how-can-a-star-be-older-than-the-universe.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab[/URL][/QUOTE]There is another fun aspect to the Methuselah star, AKA HD 140283. Apparently it has run its course as a "main sequence" star but is not yet a red giant.

Since I knew as a rule of thumb that the more massive a star, the shorter its life, it occurred to me to try to check the age of HD 140283 using its mass.

This is estimated as between 0.78 and 0.805 solar masses (figures I found [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_140283]here[/url]). Using the approximation

t[sub]MS[/sub]/t[sub]sun[/sub] = (M/M[sub]sun[/sub])[sup]-2.5[/sup]

found [url=http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/M/Main+Sequence+Lifetime]here[/url] gives between about 1.72 and 1.86 times Mr. Sun's time on the main sequence, estimated at a convenient 10^10 years.

This gives an estimate of 17.2 billion to 18.6 billion years on the main sequence. But HD 140283 has already left the main sequence.

Perhaps the figure for Mr. Sun's time on the main sequence is more convenient than accurate, or perhaps it is highly uncertain. Or the formula for age estimate based on mass may be highly uncertain, due to the uncertainties in star modeling, and perhaps to the vagaries of individual stars.

The lower age estimate of 17.2 billion years based on the upper mass estimate, is about 21% higher than the latest estimate of 14.3 billion years, and significantly higher than the initial estimate of 16 billion years for HD 140283's age. The age estimate based on the lower mass estimate is 30% higher. That's quite a bit of uncertainty!

The fact that the more-refined the models of the star became, the smaller the discrepancy became - now the estimated ages of the universe and the star lie within each other's likely error ranges - tells me that with further refinements in both ages, the seeming paradox will vanish, leaving just a first-generation star of outlier-age status. Always love how much wild speculation occurs within those error bars, though: time variation in dark energy, changes in the rate of acceleration, gravitation is not what we think it is, causal set theory, oh my! I see the dreaded names "Perimeter Institute" or "Kavli Institute", and I think "Oh, brother, here comes a load of string-theory-style unfounded speculation."

[QUOTE=ewmayer;528957]The fact that the more-refined the models of the star became, the smaller the discrepancy became - now the estimated ages of the universe and the star lie within each other's likely error ranges - tells me that with further refinements in both ages, the seeming paradox will vanish, leaving just a first-generation star of outlier-age status.
<snip>[/QUOTE]
I did the crude age estimate mainly because it's an easy check, and wasn't mentioned in the article. It answered the question, "Can a star of that mass actually [i]be[/i] that old?" with an emphatic "Yes!"

It would have been much more disconcerting if the simple formula for main sequence lifetime based on mass had indicated a much [i]shorter[/i] lifetime.

Minor nit-pick: The star HD 140283 is almost certainly not a "first-generation" (Population III) star, but a second (Population II). First-generation stars are thought to have had zero to very little metal, since standard cosmology indicates no elements beyond lithium existed before there were stars. No Population III stars are known to have been observed, but there are some possible candidate stars with extremely low metal content. Some Population III stars might have acquired heavier elements from [i]other[/i] Population III stars going supernova. A lot of them are theorized as having been very massive, so they lived fast and died young.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;528992]Minor nit-pick: The star HD 140283 is almost certainly not a "first-generation" (Population III) star, but a second (Population II). First-generation stars are thought to have had zero to very little metal, since standard cosmology indicates no elements beyond lithium existed before there were stars.[/QUOTE]Another minor nit-pick: Be-7 is predicted to have been created in primordial nucleosynthesis, which is an era long before stars existed.

However, it had decayed to Li-7 by the time stars formed.

[QUOTE=xilman;529011]However, it had decayed to Li-7 by the time stars formed.[/QUOTE]

I simply must share...

It's really, really cool watching guys like you discuss stuff like this.

I'll never get to your level in this space, but I learn a little bit every time! :smile: