"Edition 35: The Hairy Star"

[master_q 0]

Another blast from the past @ startrek.com:

 

Star Trek & Physics Weekly

Edition 35: The Hairy Star

 

The new topic in ST & Physics Weekly is comets! We will explore what they are, where they came from, there inner workings, connections with Star Trek, and more.

 

What do you think?

 

Do you think one reason the Chinese developed fireworks are because of comets?

 

How do you view or see Aristotle? What do you think of him?

 

What do you think about people looking to the heavens as there guide to the future?

 

 

Edition 35

-- The Hairy Star --

In this weeks edition of Star Trek & Physics Weekly by Master Q we are moving on to another topic! In this topic we will be looking at comets! In this edition we will look at how it was looked at through history. We will also look at parallaxes.

 

~~THE WORD “COMET” & CIVILIZATION~~

The word comet comes from the Greek word hair.

Comet:

“A celestial body consisting of a dense nucleus of frozen gases and dust, which develops a luminous halo and tail when its orbit approaches the sun”

For the Tshi people of Zaire they called them “hair stars”, to the Chinese “broom stars”, to the Tonga “stars of dust”, . . . In the early times they also referred a comet as having a tail and we still do today. As you know back then people looked at the heavens & stars as a guide. A guide that helped them determine what there actions were going to be and what there gods were trying to tell them. The same thing went for comets, but in this case most people thought they were a bad sign.

 

~~THE CHINESE~~

One of the first people to record and observe comets were the Chinese since 1400 BC. They even classified them by there tails! :

4 Tails - signifies disease in the world

3 Tails - calamity in the state

2 Tails - promises a small war

One thing that the Chinese are known for are there fireworks. If you think about fireworks they do resemble comets. Not only that but if we apply the Chinese observing them and taking them for sings for the next day then maybe one reason we have fireworks are because of comets. We can only wonder!

 

Li Ch’un Feng wrote “Record of the World’s Change”

“Every time they appear in the south, something happens to wipe out the old and establish the new . . .” This goes on to say that comets that appear near a specific star means such in such will happen. If you would like to hear all of it then just ask and I’ll post a reply under this topic. (Its not long)

 

1456: During this year the Chinese saw a large comet & thought that it was a omen that supported the Turkish cause. Because of this the Chinese sent around 40,000 soldiers to there boarders and then a battle began between them of things to come.

 

~~GREAT MINDS & THE COMET~~

Seneca born in Spain studied philosophy, law, and rhetoric. In his latter life he studied comets. (details to come in the future)

 

Aristotle said that a comet is basically see-through like a cloud, but Seneca said that only its tail would be like this and not its head.

 

**A person named Tycho was trying to imagine how you could tell a comet is right in the atmosphere vs fair away.

Parallax: This is a change in the direction of an object that is caused by a change from the observer’s frame of reference.

So lets say that one person is far away from the other person on Earth, but both could see the comet. [Like person A is in LA and person B is in England] If both people see the comet in reference to the same stars then that comet is not in Earth’s atmosphere!

 

Until Next Time I’ll See you in the Q Continuum

 

 

--Probably posted around Dec. 2002

 

I think this was a good intro edition to the comet topic. Any comments on this edition?

 

Master Q

StarTrek_Master_Q@yahoo.com