Space Forum / Space Science / September 2005

Thanks for clarifying.

Regarding Venus, couldn't the internal heat levels have more to do with
gravity than solar radiation?

-> Regarding Venus, couldn't the internal heat levels have more to do with
-> gravity than solar radiation?
 
What internal heat levels? Everything that is said about the interior
ov Venus is pure speculation. No measurements whatever have been done.
 
It is plausible that the interior of Venus is hot, like the interior of
the Earth, and for the same reasons - a combination of energy released
as the planet accreted, more energy that came from the segregation of
the materials of the planet, with the denser materials sinking toward
the centre and the less-dense ones floating to the surface, and energy
produced by radioactive decay of elements such as potassium, uranium,
and thorium. Venus has a lower mean density than Earth, so it would
have produced less heat from segregation than Earth. It probably also
has smaller amounts of radioactive heavy elements. So my guess (and
it's *only* a guess) is that Venus's interior is less hot than Earth's.
 
What does this have to do with anything?
 
                            dow

-> >From my understanding, Venus is molten enough to completely resurface
-> on a regular basis.
 
Maybe. The scarcity of craters on Venus's surface has been interpreted
as meaning that the surface melted, erasing any previous craters, only
about a billion years ago. There is speculation that, if such melting
occurred once, it may have occurred many times, at fairly regular
intervals. But all this speculation is based on a single observed fact
- the scarcity of craters. It's a rather elaborate construction on a
very flimsy foundation. My feeling about it is that a lot of scepticism
is in order.
 
                        dow

-> Couldn't the reason that there are so few craters on Venus be the same  
-> reason that there are few on Earth: because of a thick atmosphere that  
-> roasts meteors?
 
Meteors that are big enough to make large craters are hardly affected
at all by passage through Earth's atmosphere, or even Venus's. The
reason why there are few large craters on Earth is that weathering and
tectonic movements erase them in times that are short compared with the
age of the solar system. It is thought that Venus does not have plate
tectonics, and the rate of weathering, in the absence of water or any
other liquid, may be much slower than on Earth. So, according to some
people, another reason must exist to account for the paucity of craters
on Venus. Hence the hypothesis of periodic melting.
 
But there are other possibilities. Although Venus appears not to have
tectonic movements now, they may have occurred in the past. If Venus's
interior is cooler than Earth's, the tectonic movements may have
stopped there. But, in the past, they erased most of the old craters.
 
Or maybe the dense atmosphere does erode the surface fast enough to
have erased craters.
 
Time will tell. Right now, I prefer not to commit to any hypothesis
about this.
 
                              dow

-> > Couldn't the reason that there are so few craters on Venus be the same  
-> > reason that there are few on Earth: because of a thick atmosphere that  
-> > roasts meteors?
-> >
-> no, it doesn't roast the big ones; ever been to Arizona?
 
Approximately, meteors (small asteroids, really) can punch through an
atmosphere that is thin compared with the dimensions of the meteor
itself, if both are reduced to the same density. So, for example,
Earth's atmosphere exerts a pressure roughly equal to 10 metres of
water, or 3 metres of rock. Any meteor that's much larger than 3 metres
will hurtle through the atmosphere without being greatly slowed down.
The Venusian atmosphere is about 100 times denser, but even so, a
meteor much larger than 300 metres will punch through it, and hit the
ground hard. Anything the size of the Chicxulub asteroid, which hit
what is now Mexico about 65 million years ago, probably contributing to
the extinction of the dinosaurs, and which had a diameter of about 10
kilometres, would have slammed through Venus's atmosphere as easily as
it did Earth's.
 
The Chicxulub crater had a diameter of around 150 kilometres. However,
it is now completely invisible on Earth's surface. It was in a shallow
sea, and a thick layer of limestone was deposited over it, completely
obscuring it. It was discovered by accident a few years ago by an oil
company which was drilling test wells in the area. The outline of the
crater was obvious when the drill cores were compared.
 
                            dow

-> It hardly needs pointing out that the high surface temperature of Venus
-> has already been nicely accounted for without the need for any goofy
-> interplanetary scenarios.
 
Quite so. Crew's watered-down version of Velikovsky's fantasy fails to
explain some things that the original does explain (the alleged racial
memories of the formation of Venus), and explains nothing that is not
already perfectly well explained by conventional theory. It's an
explanation in search of facts that need explaining. It is worth
absolutely nothing.
 
                          dow

-> but they don't hit the surface intact unless they are quite large, as the  
-> Tunguska
-> one exploded in the air, what a few kilometers above the surface? And the  
-> one
-> over Canada a couple yrs ago, that was picked up in pieces all over the  
-> frozen lake.
 
It's not just a matter of being large as of being strong enough to withstand
the deceleration without being ruptured. Meteors that are very large
don't decelerate much, and so are likely to survive. Smaller ones
aren't. But a lot depends on whether the original meteor was a solid
rock, or something more brittle.
 
I'm pretty sure that the total mass of the Canadian meteorites
corresponded to an initial size much less than 3 metres in diameter. I'm
not sure about the Tunguska one.
 
                        dow

-> I've got Eric kill filed, but I'll just note that as his somewhat rusty  
-> professional qualification is in electrical engineering, I'd be  
-> interested to know how he thinks you can get charge separation in the  
-> dense conductive plasma of the Sun. The metallic hydrogen in Jupiter is  
-> similarly conductive  -  it may even be a superconductor in some  
-> conditions.
 
His days as an electrical engineer were long before hydrogen was known
to become metallic under extremely high pressures.
 
But he should be able to figure out that, if some material is ejected
from Jupiter, moving at essentially the same velocity as the planet,
but is repelled from the sun by an electrostatic force, the net force
attracting it to the sun will be *less than* the gravitational
attraction, so it will move *outward* from Jupiter's orbit, not inward.
If it later loses its charge, the furthest in toward the sun that it
will fall will be the radius of Jupiter's orbit. It won't fall into the
inner solar system, possibly striking Venus.
 
But consistency has never been Eric's strong point.
 
                       dow

-> The evidence supports my views, but you obviously avoid the evidence if  
-> it conflicts with your beliefs.
 
I've seen people say this to you many times. Apparently, it's sinking
in, but you still haven't figured out that it's addressed to yourself.
 
Of course, you have avoided the scientific criticisms of your "theory"
that have been put forward here: that Jupiter's motion would be
measurably affected, the ejected material would move outward toward
Saturn rather than inward to Venus, the charge separations could not
occur in conductive bodies, the high temperature of Venus's surface is
already well explained in other ways, a continuous spiral stream of
material would collide with Mars, Earth, etc., before reaching Venus,
and so on. Unless and until you can answer each and every one of these
in some way that is scientifically plausible, you cannot expect people
to take your idea seriously. It's just a ridiculous fantasy.
 
                           dow

-> And I've just realised that both David and I missed the fact that an  
-> object ejected from Jupiter would be moving at escape velocity - 59.6  
-> km/s according to  
 
If an object were shot out from Jupiter's visible surface, then it
would have to be moving at at least 59.6 km/s *at the surface* if it is
to escape from Jupiter's gravity. But, as it climbs out of Jupiter's
gravity well, it would slow down (relative to Jupiter). If has only
just enough energy to escape, then it will slow down to essentially
zero speed, relative to Jupiter, by the time it gets far enough from
Jupiter that the planet's gravity essentially stops affecting it. So,
at that point, it is moving, relative to the sun, at the same velocity
as Jupiter.
 
According to Crew's speculation, material is shot out from Jupiter as
soon as it has enough energy to escape. So his charged projectiles *do*
end up travelling at the same velocity as Jupiter just after they
escape.
 
What happens then? Crew says that the sun and these projectiles repel
each other electrostatically, so the net attractive force between them
is smaller than the attraction due to gravity. So, after they have
escaped from Jupiter, and are travelling at the same speed and distance
from the sun as Jupiter, the ejected bodies are not attracted to the
sun strongly enough to be kept in circular orbit. A bit of math shows
that if the electrostatic repulsion is greater than half the
gravitational attraction, the expelled body will not be held in the
solar system. It will escape into interstellar space. If the
electrostatic repulsion is less than half the gravitational attraction,
then the body will go into an elliptical orbit around the sun, with its
perihelion (closest point to the sun) at the distance of Jupiter's
orbit, i.e. about 5 AU, and the aphelion (most distant point) further
out. The distance of the aphelion depends on the strength of the
electrostatic repulsion.
 
Crew fantasizes that the expelled body slowly loses its charge (he
doesn't say how or why), and that this causes its orbit to spiral
inward toward the sun as the net attraction between the sun and the
body increases. In this, Crew is qualitatively correct. The dimensions
of the orbit will decrease in inverse proportion to the net attractive
force berween the sun and the object. But, since the object has not
escaped from the solar system, the attractive force cannot increase by
a factor of more than two. This means that the smallest possible
perihelion distance that the object's orbit can reach is half the
distance of Jupiter from the sun, i.e. about 2.5 AU. This distance is
well outside the orbit of Mars, somewhere in the asteroid belt.
 
So, far from being able to reach Venus, Crew's fantasized projectile
cannot travel closer to the sun than the asteroid belt. It can,
however, travel out to very great distances from the sun, but this
isn't what Crew wants it to do.
 
As usual, Crew's half-baked fantasizing totally lacks mathematical
rigour. If he bothered to do the calculations before writing about his
ideas in public, there would be a lot less egg on his face.
 
                          dow

-> It would take too long to answer this in detail but an actual collision  
-> with Mars and Earth would be very unlikely. However there is evidence of  
-> near encounters. My computer studies have also thrown some light on this  
-> process.
 
You take inordinate amounts of time and computer space attempting to
browbeat us into accepting your delusions as real, without showing any
worthwhile evidence. So why not devote some time to showing the
evidence, if you really believe it exists?
 
Should be amusing...
 
                        dow

-> >As usual, Crew's half-baked fantasizing totally lacks mathematical
-> >rigour. If he bothered to do the calculations before writing about his
-> >ideas in public, there would be a lot less egg on his face.
-> >
-> >                           dow

-> The egg, dear boy, is on your face. I have done the calculations and  
-> computer studies as well as studying the relevant literature, but I  
-> cannot afford to waste time commenting in detail. Someone sometime will  
-> probably teach you.
 
As usual, you pretend that you have some source of knowledge which the
rest of us lack and that you are not prepared to share with us. We
don't believe you. We think you're a tiresome, ignorant crank. Several
of us have done calculations - one set of which I outlined here
yesterday - that show your conclusions to be physically impossible.
Calculations that are shown in public are a whole lot more convincing
than ones that are shrouded in secrecy. Show us yours!
 
                         dow

-> You have to provide some evidence first before it can be ignored. So
-> far all we have (as usual) is your absolutely unsupported word for your
-> claims (you say repeatedly that you have made the mathematical analyses
-> and computer studies---but can't be bothered with showing them to
-> anyone; doesn't that sound as lame to you as it does to everyone
-> else?).
 
I have thought of several possible reasons why Crew may be unwilling to
share his calculations with us. In order of increasing kindness to him,
they are:
 
(1) He is an outright liar. He never did the calculations.
 
(2) He is afraid that, if he were to show the calculations to us, we
would find fatal errors in them
 
(3) He did the calculations long ago, and subsequently lost them. Now,
in old age, he finds that he cannot reproduce them.
 
(4) He did the calculations long ago and still has them. But, in his
dotage, he cannot now understand them. He is aware of this, and knows
that he would be unable to defend them against any criticisms we might
make of them.
 
I am inclined to think, or at least to hope, that reason (4), or maybe
(3), is correct. They would be compatible with the fact that he seems
to be unable to follow the logic of the arguments that we have made
against his "theory". His mind is a mush. It's a sad, but very common
consequence of extreme old age.
 
Oh well...
 
                            dow

-> You should get medical advice before your condition gets worse.  
 
This kind of childish insult does nothing to enhance your reputation.  
 
                         dow  

-> You should get medical advice before your condition gets worse.
 
This kind of childish insult soes nothing to enhance your reputation.
 
                         dow

-> What makes you think it would be amusing?  Your superior wisdom?
 
Actually, yes. Compared with your wisdom nowadays, my own is certainly
superior. Compared with your intelligence when you were young, there is
no way of telling, and no point in trying.
 
                        dow

-> So you think the ancients who made these cup and ring symbols on hard  
-> rocks with terrific labour were just doodling do you?  Isn't it time you  
-> grew up?
 
There are huge numbers of ancient rock carvings that were essentially
just doodles - grafitti made with the materials to hand. If spray-paint
had been available back then, no doubt it would have been used instead.
 
What makes you think that the cup and ring designs had anything to do
with your Jovian projectile fantasy, or with anything astronomical?
 
Insulting people, such as by telling them to grow up, just reveals your
own intellectual weakness.
 
                        dow

-> > This kind of childish insult soes nothing to enhance your reputation.
-> >    
-> >                           dow

-> What reputation?
 
The only way it can go is up, but he keeps pushing it against the
bottom.
 
                             dow

-> >carvings were created for purely aesthetic reasons. If you disagree,
-> >give me your reasons why.
-> >
-> >RM
-> >
-> Of course you may be right. But it seems to me more likely there was  
-> something very unusual and striking in the sky that led to the  
-> production of these remarkable artefacts in hard exposed rocks. To  
-> describe this as doodling is as ridiculous as supposing that random ink  
-> blots could simulate the solar system model on Mars which I have  
-> described.
 
Ancient people have done some very laborious things for reasons that
nowadays strike us as not worth the effort. Look at the Egyptian
pyramids, for example. Was burying a pharoah's body really that
important? Were the Easter Island statues made for a purpose that
justified the effort? How about Stonehenge, or the Nazca lines, or the
Uffington White Horse? Ancient cultures had their own priorities, which
led people to expend immense amounts of effort for reasons that we find
obscure. Your ancient rock carvings, like the Peterborough Petroglyphs
(which are located near where I live), need not have had anything to do
with anything. They could easily have been just abstract art.
 
And how much effort would have been needed to make them anyway? Bashing
rocks against each other doesn't take much work. Yesterday, I saw a TV
program in which a man, using technology which would have been
available in ancient times, raised a rock as big as the ones at
Stonehenge into a vertical position *single handedly*. It took him a
while, but he didn't need any help. We tend to over-estimate the labour
that would have been needed to make ancient artifacts. With ingenuity,
many of them could have been made quite simply.
 
Their existence certainly does not validate your speculations about
projectiles from Jupiter.
 
                         dow

-> It took only a few minutes to find extensive (and scholarly)
-> information about the "cup and ring" carvings that have you so excited.
-> What was particularly interesting was the discovery that these markings
-> are not at all isolated. That is, they exist among and within a great
-> many other carvings.
 
A similar situation existed a few decades ago, when Von Daniken
published "Chariots of the Gods". One of the images that he used to
justify his hypothesis of ancient astronauts appeared to show a man in
a spaceship with rocket exhaust coming from it. Some friends of mine
had an opportunity to find the actual carving, an Inca sculpture in
Peru. It was a large work, depicting an agricultural scene. In a
corner, a man was shown carrying a bundle of straw or reeds. This was
the "rocket exhaust". Other parts of the "spaceship" were just features
in the background.
 
Selecting little bits of pictures can make them appear to show almost
anything.
 
                            dow

-> >I have thought of several possible reasons why Crew may be unwilling to
-> >share his calculations with us. In order of increasing kindness to him,
-> >they are:
-> >
-> >(1) He is an outright liar. He never did the calculations.
-> >
-> >(2) He is afraid that, if he were to show the calculations to us, we
-> >would find fatal errors in them
-> >
-> >(3) He did the calculations long ago, and subsequently lost them. Now,
-> >in old age, he finds that he cannot reproduce them.
-> >
-> >(4) He did the calculations long ago and still has them. But, in his
-> >dotage, he cannot now understand them. He is aware of this, and knows
-> >that he would be unable to defend them against any criticisms we might
-> >make of them.
-> >
-> >I am inclined to think, or at least to hope, that reason (4), or maybe
-> >(3), is correct. They would be compatible with the fact that he seems
-> >to be unable to follow the logic of the arguments that we have made
-> >against his "theory". His mind is a mush. It's a sad, but very common
-> >consequence of extreme old age.
-> >
-> >Oh well...
-> >
-> >                             dow

-> Thanks for the friendly comments.
 
So which of them were true?
 
                        dow

-> Boy oh boy! Did you ever call this one! You got Excuse Number Three
-> right on the nose.
...
-> > -> >(3) He did the calculations long ago, and subsequently lost them. Now,
-> > -> >in old age, he finds that he cannot reproduce them.
 
Actually, I find his account highly plausible. When my father died, a
few months ago at the age of 91, it fell to family members including
myself to go through his papers. He had a room in his house that he
used as a study/office, which was filled with mountains of papers. For
the last few years of his life, he had been unable to organize his
affairs, and had just been adding to the mountains, occasionally
stirring them in (usually unsuccessful) efforts to find things. It took
us about two months to go through them all. If Crew's papers are in a
similar state, and if he is as frail as his accounts of his age
suggest, then I'm not at all surprised that he cannot find these old
calculations.
 
Of course he remembers the conclusion he came to, decades ago, that his
"theory" is possible, but he cannot now justify it.
 
What he should do is to ask his younger relatives to sort out his
papers now, while he is still around to give some kind of explanation
and assistance, rather than leaving it until after his death. When they
come across the calculations, or the draft article that he submitted to
the magazine, he should scan them and post them on his website. *Then*,
and only then, he should try to persuade us of their validity. Until
then, he should just shut up about this "theory", since he is in no
position to justify it.
 
                           dow

-> Exactly---he should simply keep his mouth shut unless he knows where
-> his papers are and can back up his statements. Insulting people because
-> they question his conclusions is not a viable alternative.
 
He obviously has a very high opinion of himself as a logician and
mathematician, at least when he was young. And, to a degree, this may
be justified. Apparently, he graduated as an electrical engineer in
1938. In those pre-computer days, large amounts of sophisticated
mathematics would have had to be done by hand by any electrical
engineer. If he could handle that, Crew must have been a very competent
mathematician.
 
But 1938 was 67 years ago. If he was, say, 22 years old then, he must
be about 89 now. Having watched my father age, I can only assume that
Crew's abilities have declined hugely. Even if he did the calculations
concerning his "theory" 20 years ago, he would already have been well
past his intellectual prime. The mathematically sophisticated Crew of
the 1930s and '40s had already faded 20 years ago, and has essentially
ceased to exist now.
 
He should recognize that time has overtaken him, as, unfortunately, it
will overtake us all.
 
                              dow

-> You're right about the Egyptian pyramids. Other writers have stated that  
-> there is no firm evidence that they were solely for the purpose of  
-> providing places for dead pharaohs. A more reasonable theory is  
-> described in The Giza Power Plant by Christopher Dunn (1998). Others  
-> have said they were made to provide off agricultural season employment  
-> tasks.
->   Stonehenge seems to have been constructed for astronomical predictions  
-> and religious ceremonies.
 
The "power plant" idea is utterly ridiculous.
 
(I should confess that I have my own unconventional hypothesis about
the pyramids. I suspect that they were used to collect dew-water, which
would have been a source of potable water in an area that is notably
short of it. (Drinking from the Nile would be like drinking from the
streets of New Orleans right now.) The inhabitants of the town at the
base of the Rock of Gibraltar get water from dew that is formed on a
large area of concrete that has been applied to part of the Rock. It
works very well. I suspect that, with appropriate surfaces which have
long since vanished, the Egyptian pyramids could have served the same
purpose. This idea seems reasonable to me, but I confess that there is
no real evidence for it. I certainly wouldn't stake my reputation on
it.)
 
Stonehenge would have served its astronomical purposes just as well if
it had been a lot smaller.
 
                           dow

-> His Mars website is apparently down. A Google search (which used to
-> find it right off), no longer shows it. Sadly, the third item that
-> comes up lists Crew's site on a page devoted to science cranks.
 
I don't think we should be surprised by that.
 
                      dow

-> Thank you for the comments. The problem has been that I chose to aim at  
-> a professional career in electrical engineering and obtain a far better  
-> salary than that of most scientists of the same age. Astronomy was an  
-> absorbing spare time job and I had some papers accepted in the  
-> professional journals but many were rejected. I expect future  
-> astronomers to pursue subjects which are now generally considered  
-> unorthodox. I have a son who supports my views but he is fully occupied  
-> in running a business concerning DNA investigations.
-> It is just as well that some other people outside academy in the past  
-> did not shut up about their views or what you call theories.
 
In recent centuries, i.e. since the major universities have existed in
more or less their modern form, there have been precious few people
outside academe who have come up with any worthwhile unconventional
theories. The overwhelming majority of ideas that are dreamed up by
people working on their own are detached from reality to a marked
degree. People who propose unorthodox theories, and then refuse (for
whatever reason) to produce calculations, computer simulations, etc.,
that are essential to the justification of the theories, are
particularly suspected of being mere crackpots.
 
I don't know about your son's motivations. Family dynamics are often
very complex. But I do not know of *any* other scientifically-literate
person who supports your views. Most of us have very solid reasons not
to do so. If you want to convince us, dig until you find the
calculations, then show them to us. I suspect we will then find
fallacies in them. But at least you will have made an honest effort to
convince us.
 
                           dow

-> They are not conclusions. Conjectures is a better word and I support  
-> discussion of subjects often considered unorthodox, not belief for or  
-> against. You do not understand how science progresses.
 
No. YOU do not understand how science progresses, namely by *full*
revelations of the logic underlying hypotheses, so that they can be
examined and discussed by everyone in the field.
 
                         dow

-> Velikovsky claimed that Venus was expelled from Jupiter and I agree with  
-> your criticism of this. I have stated clearly that a more reasonable  
-> idea is that a much smaller body or stream of material was probably  
-> ejected from Jupiter by repulsion of positive electrical charge after a  
-> long period when electrons were expelled from the core by the pressure  
-> of light in the incandescent interior. This applies even if the core  
-> material is "conductive". Jupiter is so massive in comparison with the  
-> ejected material that disturbance ti its motion would be negligible. I  
-> have described why the charged material would spiral inwards as its  
-> charge leaked slowly away as it would in the near-vacuum of space. This  
-> also explains the near- miss events and the final glancing collision and  
-> amalgamation with Venus.
 
You have NOT recognized that the charged material would initially move
*outward* from Jupiter's orbit, since the net attraction beween it and
the sun would be too small to keep it at Jupiter's distance from the sun.
Later, if the charge "leaked away", it would indeed spiral inward, but
the limiting dimensions of its orbit would have a perihelion out in the
asteroid belt, more than three times as far from the sun as Venus.
 
Face reality.
 
                           dow

-> >But 1938 was 67 years ago. If he was, say, 22 years old then, he must
-> >be about 89 now. Having watched my father age, I can only assume that
-> >Crew's abilities have declined hugely. Even if he did the calculations
-> >concerning his "theory" 20 years ago, he would already have been well
-> >past his intellectual prime. The mathematically sophisticated Crew of
-> >the 1930s and '40s had already faded 20 years ago, and has essentially
-> >ceased to exist now.
-> >
-> >He should recognize that time has overtaken him, as, unfortunately, it
-> >will overtake us all.
-> >
-> >                               dow

-> Now you're getting personal.
 
Yes. But the facts I mentioned are highly relevant to your credibility.
 
                       dow

-> will tell you. And you still have to explain Venus's currently  
-> near-circular orbit, and its odd relationship with Earth.
 
What's this "odd relationship"?
 
The only Earth-related thing that I know about Venus's motions is that
its period of rotation, as seen from Earth, is very closely (but not
absolutely exactly) related to its synodic orbital period, also as seen
from Earth. This relatioship causes, for example, Venus to show the
same hemisphere toward Earth every time it passes through inferior
conjunction.
 
If the relationship were exactly precise, it would demand some sort of
explanation. However, since it is not, it is probably no more than an
accidental near-coincidence. It's an example of what we have been
trying to tell Crew: that if you look at a lot of random things, you
will find some that appear to be related, just by chance.
 
                        dow

-> But is the 13:8 ratio of the years of Earth and Venus also a  
-> coincidence?
 
13:8 is 1.625:1. Using figures from the "Rubber Bible", I just
calculated the ratio of Venus's and Earth's orbital periods as
1.62553:1. So the periods are close to the 13:8 ratio, but not quite
equal to it.
 
If you look hard enough, you can find a ratio of whole numbers that
almost exactly equals any fraction. For example, 355/113 is equal to
"pi" to seven significant digits. There is no logic underlying this
near-equality; it's just a coincidence. It's the kind of thing that
Crew loves to make much of, but really it means nothing. The same is
true of the 13:8 thing.
 
                              dow

-> You're probably right, but I like that coincidence - and so do radar  
-> astronomers, I gather!
 
The coincidence of Venus's rotational period and its synodic orbital
one means that radar astronomers can see only one hemisphere of the
planet. I'm not sure why they would like that.
 
                             dow

-> I agree - no need to keep trying. But there's a limit to what random  
-> events can achieve.
 
No, there isn't! If you look for a number that's close to some "target"
one, and you demand 300 significant digits of accuracy, if you look for
long enough at random numbers, eventually you will find one that
matches your target. If you want 500 digits, you will probably have to
look for longer, but eventually you will find what you want, and so on.
 
In your fantasies, you have been content with numbers that match to
only a couple of significant digits, if that. Not surprisingly, you
have found what you wanted quite quickly.
 
                         dow

-> Sorry, but I don't agree. There's a big difference between using  
-> numerical coincidences to argue for intelligent design, and spotting  
-> whole-number ratios in the solar system, especially when they are  
-> accurate to four decimal places. Look at Kirkwood gaps, for instance. Of  
-> course, the best argument against the ratio being significant is that an  
-> orbit in a Kirkwood gap is unstable, not favoured!
-> Unfortunately the most relevant item I found in a search is at  
-> <http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.aa.16.090178
-> ..000341?journalCode=astro> and I don't have access to the full article -  
-> all I can see is the Google quote "Since Earth and Venus have a  
-> near-commensurability of 13: 8".
 
Note the "near".
 
Very roughly, if you make a ratio using integers that are X and Y
digits long, so 13:8 would have X=2 and Y=1, for example, you can
expect to be able to match any "target" ratio to a precision of X+Y+1
significant digits. So there was quite likely to be some ratio in the
form AB:C, where the letters represent digits, that would match the
ratio of Venus's and Earth's orbital periods to four significant
digits.
 
If the ratio had been absolutely exact, to an infinite number of
significant digits, then some sort of causative explanation would have
been needed. But it wasn't.
 
                             dow

Oops! It's too early on a Sunday morning...
 
-> Very roughly, if you make a ratio using integers that are X and Y  
-> digits long, so 13:8 would have X=2 and Y=1, for example, you can  
-> expect to be able to match any "target" ratio to a precision of X+Y+1  
-> significant digits. So there was quite likely to be some ratio in the  
-> form AB:C, where the letters represent digits, that would match the  
-> ratio of Venus's and Earth's orbital periods to four significant  
-> digits.  
->    
-> If the ratio had been absolutely exact, to an infinite number of  
-> significant digits, then some sort of causative explanation would have  
-> been needed. But it wasn't.  
 
What I should have said was that a causative explanation would have
been needed if the ratio was exact to a number of significant digits
that was considerably greater than X+Y+1. So if the ratio of Venus's
and Earth's years were 13:8 to six significant digits, for example,
then I'd start looking for an explanation, but I wouldn't lose sleep if
I couldn't find one. If the match was good to 10 significant digits, I
would be pretty well convinced that *some* physical explanation must
exist, even if I couldn't find it.
 
                            dow

-> If there were other factors supporting the figures 355 and 113 and 13:8  
-> then the ratio probably would have some significance
 
Agreed.
 
When I was at high school, we were taught that the fraction 355/113 was
easy to remember because, if it is read bottom-line first, it consists
of pairs of consecutive odd digits: 1,1 - 3,3 - 5,5. I can still
remember it, some 50 years later, so I guess the mnemonic works.
 
                          dow

-> If there were other factors supporting the figures 355 and 113 and 13:8  
-> then the ratio probably would have some significance except for the  
-> crackpot philosophers who are like the clever guys who refused to look  
-> at Jupiter in an early telescope because they "knew" it could not have  
-> moons.
 
Would you care to re-write that sentence so it makes sense? "Some
significance except the crackpot philosophers"? It's a string of words
that, in total, means nothing.
 
                         dow

-> I apologise for my impertinence, but I have a wayward thought I can
-> bottle up no longer: maybe he already has a prime candidate for this
-> task.  I say this, because I've had growing inklings that many of the
-> postings from eric@brox1 over the past year have been made per-and-pro
-> Eric (postings concentrated around UK school/college vacation times,
-> ones which have more regularly been baldly impertinent than those from
-> eric@brox1 of old, and which have mostly been separated from each other
-> by gaps of only a few minutes - gaps much shorter than anything we saw
-> from eric@brox1 in previous years, or indeed as I would find surprising
-> from any octogenarian poster).

-> But like most wayward thoughts, it weakens with inspection.  Even if he
-> has an occasional secretarial assistant like that, would they find the
-> prospect of sifting through a mountain of papers anywhere near as
-> engaging as firing off volleys of postings which they might imagine as
-> getting up the noses of "old fuddy-duddies" on this newsgroup?

-> [By the way, I'm not saying my inklings envisage that all of this year's
-> postings from eric@brox1 were written by or with the help of a
-> secretary.  Some, such as <WnXI8bCaRM9CFw6+@brox1.demon.co.uk> "More
-> Mars matters" 6 Aug 2005 15:08:26, look clearly to me like one's
-> produced by Eric alone.]
 
I have wondered in the past, and I think I have suggested here, that
there may be two Eric Crews. Maybe the (near-)nonagenarian has a
grandson or great-grandson who is also named Eric Crew, and who
impersonates the elder Crew from time to time. But the elder one must
surely be aware that this is happening, and must tolerate it, or even
collaborate in it.
 
->    |        Peter Munn              problems, please mail to newsreply
->    |      Staffordshire UK          @pearce-neptune... instead.
 
Crew has told us that he was raised in Stoke on Trent, but moved south
at some point in his life. If you're near Stoke, maybe you could look
up some members of the Crew Family in the phone book, and find out
more.
 
                              dow

-> If you are sufficiently interested I am a direct descendant of Joshua  
-> Wedgwood's father.
 
You have told us that you are related to the Wedgwoods.
 
But who was Joshua? The founder of the famous pottery company was named
Josia Wedgwood. He lived from 1730 to 1795, so presumably his father
was 20 or 30 years older. Let's say, roughly, that he was born 300
years ago. If there have been four generations per century, on average,
with each person having four children (families were larger then), then
there are probably about 4^11, or more than four million, people who are
descendants of Josia's dad. Maybe I am one of them too.
 
                        dow

-> >If you are sufficiently interested I am a direct descendant of Joshua  
-> >Wedgwood's father.

-> Was Joshua the Wedgwood who was Labour MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme round
-> about the 1930's? - I recall you having expressed your own strong
-> support for the Labour cause.
 
Since Crew was at university in the '30s, he is probably of the same
generation as the MP, or one generation younger. So Crew is either a
brother or a nephew of the MP. Since their surnames are different, it
would be logical to think that Crew's mother was the MP's sister.
 
But no. I am sure that Crew simply got confused, and used the name
Joshua when he meant Josia, who was the founder of the pottery company
back in the 1700s.
 
                               dow

-> Sorry, I should have written Josiah (not Joshua or Josia).
 
Right. I copied it down wrongly when I looked up Josiah's name in an
encyclopedia. Sorry about that.
 
                             dow