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And what is Scotland most famous for?

Hang on I know this one... its inventing the Telephone? or is it TV? Anaesthetics? Hell I give up its a massive list

In conjunction with alcohol however the Scots are most famous for drinking the brewing is just the process you have to do to get to being drunk. Waiting to distil a decent malt is just a waste of time when their are cans of Special available.

Similar to the Four Nines Puzzle, and Four Fours Puzzle:

What numbers can be made with four copies of the number "pi"?
Jonathan's page hotlinked here includes a complete list of equations representing,
with four "pi", every integer up to 1,000, and many beyond that.

http://magicdragon.com/4pi.html

It is MUCH closer to the science of Fred Hoyle's great novel "The Black Cloud" [Harper & Row, 1964; Science Fiction Book Club; Signet]. Life evolved in Giant Molecular Clouds, became intelligent, one comes to our Solar System, blocks sunlight, causing predecessor to concept of nuclear winter; society restructured in face of climate change. Great, prescient novel by radical astronomer.

[Sir] Fred Hoyle, famous British astronomer, leading sceptic of (and namer of) the "Big Bang" cosomology and leader of the alternative "Steady State Hypothesis." With Wickramasinghe, originated the theory that bacteria and viruses come from outer space ("panspermia").

Novels by him and his son exist; now solo novels by his son. For more, see: Science Fiction Writers with last names starting "Ho"

Professor Jonathan Vos Post

Similarly, check out:

PERIODIC TABLE OF MYSTERY AUTHORS

... with rollover at each square of the Periodic Table, and lots of data.

-- Professor Jonathan Vos Post

The point of crashing a probe onto an airless surface, as with Luna, Mercury, comet, is "Artificial Meteorite Strike Spectroscopy" as invented, quantified, and first published in the following article.

http://magicdragon.com/ComputerFutures/SpacePublic ations/Mercury_Ice.html

Kelly Beatty, Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Sky & telescope, confirms that this was the first publication of the concept, a decade before the probe (not the silly movie) "Deep Impact."

-- Professor Jonathan Vos Post

The point is, the two Voyagers are the last of the first generation of robotic interstellar spacecraft. Interstellar 2.0 will use ion drive, nuclear electric, solar sails, magnetic sails, and other exotic propulsion technologies. Interstellar 3.0 will get useful paylods to other planetary systems, within the lifetime of some slashdot readers. Cost? Less than the Shuttle/Space Station welfare system. Payoff? Priceless! Starflight without Warp Drive Hydrogen Ice Spacecraft for Robotic Interstellar Flight

The point is, the two Voyagers are the last of the first generation of robotic interstellar spacecraft. Interstellar 2.0 will use ion drive, nuclear electric, solar sails, magnetic sails, and other exotic propulsion technologies. Interstellar 3.0 will get useful paylods to other planetary systems, within the lifetime of some slashdot readers. Cost? Less than the Shuttle/Space Station welfare system. Payoff? Priceless! Starflight without Warp Drive Hydrogen Ice Spacecraft for Robotic Interstellar Flight

This technology was first [1993] published as "Artificial Meteorite Strike Spectroscopy" to seek water at the poles of Mercury, now NASA will do it on the Moon. This paper referenced Bruce Murray et al. hypothesizing water at the Lunar poles. HUMAN AND ROBOTIC PRECURSOR MISSIONS TO THE POLAR ICECAPS OF MERCURY Proceedings of The High Frontier Conference XI: Bringing the Vision of Space into Reality, 11th in a series formally known as the Space Manufacturing Conference, Space Studies Institute, Princeton, NJ, June 1993 [and see also the reference to this in "The Ball-bearing Bowling Alternative: Wild Strikes for Polar Ice", Mercury Messenger, Issue 6, July 1994, p.4] Jonathan V. Post, "Mars Polar Cap and Mercury Polar Cap Manned Science Missions", unscheduled talk at Mars Session, Session co-chairman Willy H. Sadeh, AIAA 30th Aerospace Sciences Meeting & Exhibit, Reno, NV, 7 January 1992 [included 1st detailed public presentation of manned Mercury polar mission proposal] Jonathan V. Post, "Lunar Farside, Mars Polar Cap, and Mercury Polar Cap Neutrino Experiments", Proceedings of Space 92 (3rd International Conference on Engineering, Construction, and Operations in Space), pp.2252-2263, ed. Willy H. Sadeh, Stein Sture, Russel J. Miller, 31 May - 4 June 1992, Denver, CO, AIAA/American Society of Civil Engineers, New York [included 1st publication of manned Mercury polar mission proposal]

Altair obviously is not named after some star in Aquila. It is named after the MITS Altair 8800 which was an instant, overwhelming success and its bus became the de facto standard.. and the 8800 was in turn named after a star in Star Trek and not in Aquila. See the emulator. Though these guys think the 8800 was named after the movie Forbidden Planet, but it could also have been Altair sf magazine, which probably was named after a star in Aquila. Of course Altair also means "the flyer" in Arabic which is better than considering it an ill-starred lover. Though any of the above would provide for great mission logos too. Anyway it is difficult to work out who named what since the 8800 was named after the star Altair that the Starship Enterprise was heading for, but the Space Shuttle Enterprise was obviously named after the Star Trek Starship, or maybe after a balloon, or a seafaring ship, and probably not Branson's suborbital.

I also recommend:
* Capricorn One (1978) the paranoid premise here is that NASA fakes a manned Mars mission; whereas I'm apalled that many citizens believe this premise, it is done well in this film
* Conquest of Space (1955) from the Chesley Bonestell/Willie Ley book, produced by George Pal, directed by Byron Haskin, great special effects, with a somewhat muddied plot about a secret Mars mission pretending to be a Moon mission, but the space station and Mars ship look cool over 30 years later.
* Destiny in Space (1994) IMAX movie narrated by Leonard Nimoy (voiceover)
* The Dream is Alive (1985) IMAX movie narrated by Walter Cronkite, with various astronauts including Sally Ride
* For All Mankind (1989) 13 astronauts featured in this documentary with atmospheric Brian Eno soundtrack
* Hail Columbia! (1982) IMAX film narrated by James Whitmore
* Man in Space (1956) Short subject by Disney
* The Right Stuff (1983) Superb adaptation of Tom Wolfe's novel of Mercury 7 astronauts, warts and all. Several astronauts I've talked to resent the soap-operaization of exaggerated conflicts between eagle scout John Glenn and the more rebellious others, but appreciate the intensity of passion for the viewpoint of the test-pilot astronauts coping with the unknowns of space and the all-too-knowns of bureaucracy.
My slightly stale but more comprehensive annotated listing of this subgenre is at:
SPACE: MOVIES AND TV-MOVIES ABOUT SPACE
Updated 9 May 1997: 124 film hotlinks
Many of these also deal with aliens
Those that do NOT have aliens are marked with an asterisk (*)
Those that are particularly recommended are marked with an exclamation point (!)
(recommendations based on the Space content, not escapist entertainment value as such)
-- Jonathan Vos Post
former Adjunct Professor of Astronomy, Cypress College

My slightly stale but more comprehensive annotated listing of this subgenre is at:
SPACE: MOVIES AND TV-MOVIES ABOUT SPACE Updated 9 May 1997: 124 film hotlinks
Many of these also deal with aliens Those that do NOT have aliens are marked with an asterisk (*)
Those that are particularly recommended are marked with an exclamation point (!)
(recommendations based on the Space content, not escapist entertainment value as such) -- Jonathan Vos Post
former Adjunct Professor of Astronomy, Cypress College

If you're going to take that sort of attitude then have a look here

http://www.magicdragon.com/Wallace/thingscot.html

http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/home/scotland/greatscots.h tml

As a Scot I believe I'm entitled to claim "We innovated technology in the high-tech space which makes what we have today even possible."

I'll send you my bill later

Strangely, NASA does not give credit to the inventor of Artificial Metrorite Strike Spectroscopy. It was first published by Scientist and Science Fiction author Jonathan Vos Post. See: HUMAN AND ROBOTIC PRECURSOR MISSIONS TO THE POLAR ICECAPS OF MERCURY, Proceedings of The High Frontier Conference XI: Bringing the Vision of Space into Reality, 11th in a series formally known as the Space Manufacturing Conference, Space Studies Institute, Princeton, NJ, June 1993. Also cited in: "The Ball-bearing Bowling Alternative: Wild Strikes for Polar Ice", Mercury Messenger, Issue 6, July 1994] It was first suggested for the icy poles of Mercury, but was said to applicable for any airtless heavenly body. Sometime before the Mercury orbital insertion, the spacecraft would release a cluster of 5 "artificial meteorites" -- golf-ball- sized 1 kg spheres each of different dense metal rare on Mercury (Tungsten, Uranium- 238, Platinum, Gold or the like). These are spring- or pyrotechnically-released so as to separate from the spacecraft, not interfere with the spacecraft's orbital insertion, and be aimed to violently impact near the North Pole of Mercury. There being essentially no Mercurian atmosphere to slow them down, these spheres impact at various points, nearly simultaneously, at velocities approximately equal to Mercury's escape velocity of 3.476 km/s plus the approach velocity at the time of spacecraft separation. For back-of-the envelope purposes, let's estimate this impact velocity at 5.00 km/s. Each "artifical meteorite" at that velocity, with each weighing 1 kg, carries a kinetic energy of 1/2 mv2 = 0.5 kg (5x103 m/s)2 = 0.5 kg (25x106 m2/s2) = 1.25 x 107 kg m2/s2 = 1.25 x 107 Joules. Since 1 J = 0.2389 calories, each impact carries approximately 2.986 x 106 calories. Since it takes 1 cal to heat 1 g of water by 1o C, and 80 cal to melt 1 g of water ice at 0o C, and 498 cal to vaporize 1 g of water at 100o C in a vacuum, then it takes roughly 148 + 80 + 100 + 498 = 826 cal to heat 1 g of ice from -148o C to 0o C, melt it, heat it to 100o C, and vaporize it. Hence, if all the energy of each impact was used to vaporize ice, each "artificial meteorite" would vaporize 2.986 x 106 cal/(826 cal/g) = 3.615 kg of ice. In actuality, some of the impact would shatter ice, some would send fragments flying, and some would heat the water to a considerably higher temperature, i.e. into ionized gas (plasma). So, if all 5 spheres hit ice, we would get 5 bright flashes, each with a different spectrum. One would be of water with a trace of tungsten, one of water with a trace of gold, one of water with a trace of platinum, and so forth. Additional impurities in the ice would show as traces of other volatiles, such as carbon monoxide, methane, ammonia, hydrogen cyanide, cyanogen, and the like. The orbiting infrared CCD spectrascope could easily determine which of the 5 impacts struck ice, and what the chemical consituents of the ice were at each of the impact points. If the spectrascope were even more sensitive, we could release the same mass as a shotgun blast of 5000 1-g ball-bearings, and get a pretty good resolution chemical mapping of the polar caps.

"such are the problems of being over the hill. I.E., over 40."

One of the benefits of being over the hill is that you can still keep going even if you run out of gas.

No wait, it doesn't quite work like that now does it?

Columbo, Kojak, Mike Hammer, Cannon, Spenser, Baretta, McCloud, McMillan & Wife, Banacek, Barnaby Jones, Dragnet, The Equalizer, The Fugitive, The Green Hornet, Hart to Hart, Hawaii Five-O - I watched too much TV with my family growing up.

all the best,

drew

http://www.magicdragon.com/UltimateMystery/tv.html

With all due respect to Larry Niven, this was first proposed in fiction by William Olaf Stapledon [Star Maker, 1937]. TIMELINE COSMIC FUTURE

-- Jonathan Vos Post

Ex-Adjunct Professor of Astroomy, Cypress College

LOST LANDS/LOST RACE

Thomas D. Clareson ["Toward a History of Science Fiction"] suggests that the British writers, obsessed with the side-effects of Empire, specialized in the so-called "Lost Lands" and "Lost Race" subgenres. These reflect curiosity about archaeology, exploration, geology, and paleontology. Such tales may reflect a desire for the neo-primitive, as an escape from the pressures of modern industrial society. H. Rider Haggard was the first major author in this area, and perhaps introduced the notion to literature. Edgar Rice Burroughs used it again and again, with great success.

These stories typically presume that, although most of the Earth has been explored, there still remain some isolated remnants of an earlier culture such as Atlantis, Lemuria, or Mu. As exploration diminished the plausibility of such pockets of the past, lost worlds retreated to Africa, Australia, South America, central Asia, Pacific islands, the Arctic, the Antarctic, and finally more and more often under the sea or beneath the Earth's surface.

Before this, "travel tales" such as "The Travels of Sir John Mandeville" (1366), Thomas More's "Utopia" (1516), and Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" (1726) appealed to a public well-aware that much of the globe was "terra incognita."

See hotlink (loads slowly because 455 Kilobytes of text) for annotated list of 40 Major works on these Lost Lands/Lost Races themes, and a listing of 36 imaginary lands.

Professor Jonathan Vos Post

Hugo Gernsback, who founded "Amazing Stories" in 1926, was arguably the most important Editor in Science Fiction History, although John Campbell is neck-and-neck with Hugo, and has his own award, which is co-presented with the Hugo at the same World Science Fiction Conventions. It's instructive to put The Hugo Awards in context with all the other awards given to Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and related books, stories, and films of 2003, and other years of the decade. See: Best Books of 2003 although that page loads slowly, as it reviews many nominated books, short fiction, films, TV and other things of our decade. It's embedded in a site that comes up in the Top 5 according to Google and Yahoo for keyword "science fiction."

The idea that mathematics might be subtly different from one part of the universe to another was brilliantly explored by Greg Egan in his award-winning novella "Luminous."

The difference is enough to affect the stock market. Attempts to move the border between our math and the Other math backfire.

The theory that different cultures have different maths, equally valid, is a fad in Education now, under the name "Ethnomathematics." Google that for some interesting sites.

For more on mathematics in Science Fiction, see:

Rudy Rucker's anthology MATHENAUTS;

the two miscellanies edited by Clifton Fadiman, FANTASIA MATHEMATICA and THE MATHEMATICAL MAGPIE;

H.G. Wells' The Platner Story" [1896, 4-D rotation makes 3-D object mirror-reversed]; Robert Heinlein, "And He Built a Crooked House--" [1940, Tesseract house folds into 4-d); Arthur C. Clarke, "Wall of Darkness" [1949, a toplogical weirdness]; L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt, THE INCOMPLETE ENCHANTER [1942, mathematical logc equation is key to travel to alternate worlds]; James Blish "FYI" [1953, transfinite arithmetic]; David Duncan, "Occam's Razor" [1957, explains Calculus of Variations]; Robert Heinlein, "Misfit", [1939, math prodigy Libby]; Norman Kagan, various stories; William F. Orr, "Euclid Alone", [1975, in Orbit 16 anth., author a mathematician, too]; several books by Rudy Rucker; Sorority House by Frederik Pohl.

Another odd mathematical fantasy just: KANDELMAN'S KRIM, by the mathematician J. L. Synge. Not a particularly good story, but the Introduction has several wonderful bits on the nature of books, some of which I've quoted elsewhere. The story itself has too much math and not enough plot. Ah well. If you're collecting mathematical fantasies, though, it's an essential work...

For more on Science Fiction (9,300+ authors; chronology; films/TV; analysis by subgenre), see:

Science Fiction

Jonathan Vos Post

Professor of Mathematics

Woodbury University

Active Member, Science Fiction Writers of America

Well, you can read the definitions here. I wish the jury had read this little page before they voted.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Those who are unconvinced might be interested in searching some of his quotes, reading some comments he had written relating to some of Heinlein's predictions, reading this excerpt, or checking the ultimate SF web guide for more information.