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Our Sun Is A Star !
Adam
post Mar 9 2006, 04:35 PM
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QUOTE (ljk4-1 @ Feb 24 2006, 10:05 PM) *
I recall reading about the early history of the telescope that when
Hans Lippershey started investigating its workings, the device was
known as and considered to be a child's play toy. So this may explain
why scientists and governments of the era did not delve into it until
roughly 1609.

The only wheeled vehicles ever found in Aztec culture were also
children's toys. Is this just more proof that when we grow up, most
people lose their wonder and natural inquisitiveness about the world?
That only those who don't go on to be the inventors and scientists?

The ancient Greek Heron invented the steam engine, but nothing major
came of it for ages. And a Roman actually built a small model of a bird
that flew around on a string using steam power, but the 747 did not come
right after that for at least several weeks.

I highly recommend the book The Ancient Engineers by de Camp and
Campbell.

I've heard of a working steam engine used during the reign of Trajanus, but it was only used to open temple doors (behold, the great god opens the door!). It's interesting nobody saw the potential, says alot about that time.
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Guest_Richard Trigaux_*
post Mar 9 2006, 09:26 PM
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QUOTE (Adam @ Mar 9 2006, 05:35 PM) *
I've heard of a working steam engine used during the reign of Trajanus, but it was only used to open temple doors (behold, the great god opens the door!). It's interesting nobody saw the potential, says alot about that time.


Yes indeed. Perhaps if somebody proposed to use steam power at work, the slaves trade unions would have yelled for the loss of their job. More seriously it was said by economists that machines were not economically interesting in Antiquity, when slaves were numerous and cheap. This was certainly one of the brakes to the development of industry and indirectly of science. In modern times in the countrary the will of the business class to develop technologies was a fuel for the development of science, for instance thermodynamics for the steam engine.


If this machine really existed, it was perhaps simply some leather pouch pushing the door when filled with steam, and releasing it when the fire was removed. I guess that many elements of a true steam engine where missing, taps, valves, rod and crankshaft, distribution cylinder, etc.


Your remark is relevant: there was in Antiquity many hints and opportunities to develop science and industry, but none seized them, or only as a trade secret lost at their death. On the countrary some basic devices such as pumps, railroads, cranes, etc appeared in the 18th century and even 17th century BEFORE the steam engine, so that using it appeared logical to everybody. As a recall of this, there is in France a little town called "la machine" a recall of mining times before the steam engine, there was here some crane or something which appeared huge for the epoch.

So it is a difference in the very psychology of the average person which allowed science and technics to develop in modern times and not in Antiquity, perhaps prior to any other political/economic conditions.
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ljk4-1
post Apr 6 2006, 03:36 PM
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IT'S THE SUN, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT (News in Science, 06/4/06)

Analysis of the first sample of lunar soil collected by Neil Armstrong has
thrown into disarray what researchers believe about the Sun, an
international team of scientists says.

http://abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1606906.htm


--------------------
"After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance.
I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard,
and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does
not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is
indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have
no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft."

- Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853

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