Less A Marathon, More A Stroll

You'll See What I Mean

It’s all relative.  To you, EBLM JO555-57Ab is pretty big.  Bigger than Saturn, at any rate.  However, to VY Canis Major, Ol’ EBL is very small potatoes indeed.  In just this way – sorry?  What?  O good grief, don’t you keep up with your astronomy? 

     Really!

     EBLM JO555-57Ab is the smallest star discovered so far, and Ol’ VY is the largest one, over 2,000 times bigger than your Sun*.  Quite the disparity, eh?

Thank you, Art

     Now, time for us to shift literary gears and ask if that nice Doctor chap – it is still chap, isn’t it?  Until further notice?  - if we can hitch a ride in his big blue box and travel to the Battle of Marathon circa 490 BC.  I did describe this in some detail earlier this month SO I EXPECT YOU TO BE FAMILIAR WITH IT.  But because I am merciful a brief recap won’t hurt; a heavily outnumbered Greek army raised by Athens took on a Persian invasion force and gave it a right tonking (sorry for the technical language).  The Persian cavalry had earlier embarked and most of the ships also escaped.

Marathon man!

     This is where relativity comes in.  Athens lauded this victory to the skies, a battle for the ages, dancing in circles, drinking wine undiluted, etcetera.  Seriously, the Greeks always watered their wine, because it was frightfully crude and unmannered to consume it neat.

Marathon man!

     Enough of wine!  Back to the Persians.  They hadn’t been completely ransacked; as mentioned above their horsemen were all safely embarked, and prior to this unedifying defeat they had spread dread, havoc and Persian rule over several major islands in the Aegean.  Their Emperor, calling himself King of Kings (no false modesty there!) dismissed Marathon as a minor border skirmish.  Six thousand casualties?  Pah!  A drop in the ocean**.

Marathon man!

Today We Abuse The Atomic Muse

Yes indeed!  I like to go with a theme in BOOJUM!’s clerihews, so today it’s famous people associated with the development of the Tube Alloys project.  I put it that way (the wartime euphemism used by Perfidious Albion) rather coyly, as I’m typing this at work and yarking on about atomic foofoodillies might get picked up by IT ….

Enrico Fermi

Was rather germy.

So he irradiated himself with an isotope.

“It’s cheaper,” he said, “Than using soap.”

     I should say none of this is true.  Nobody I’ve ever read has remarked on how unpleasantly nay disgustingly dirty and infected Ol’ En was.  He definitely didn’t irradiate himself to sterilise those nasty germs, because it may be a cheaper process than using soap – I am not willing to try it myself and strongly advise you not to, either – but it is also a far more lethal one.  It would solve the problem of greasy hair, though, because it would all fall out.

Don't do it, Enrico!  The soap is safer!

Nils Bohr

Made his tongue sore.

He shouldn’t have licked that plutonium;

It also zapped his duodenum.

     There’s a smidgeon of truth here, as the famous Danish physicist was renowned for being a mumbly old git, so he may have had a sore tongue.  Definitely not from licking plutonium, as the stuff would have rendered him like unto bacon – dead and cold.

Edward Teller

Was a clever feller.

He was full of Continental aplomb,

And helped invent the hydrogen bomb.

     Some people might jib a little at being associated with a weapon that, in sufficient numbers, could end all life on your big blue blob; not Ol’ Ed!  He was a raving right-winger who possessed a splendid Doctor Strangelove accent and a hatred of the Sinisters.  He and Mister Ulam came up with the design of the fusion bomb, which is quite a footnote in your CV***.

Next time I'll work in something about eyebrows ...

A Mess At The Ness

Further to yesterday’s post about Dungeness, there are some rather unusual concrete installations at Denge, just down the coast a bit from the Dungeness promontory.  These are ‘sound mirrors’ designed in the late Twenties, with the intent of hearing approaching aircraft before they became visible.

The henge at Denge

     No, it’s not as barmy as it sounds.  They did work, for a couple of years at least, until aircraft began getting too fast to track.  Also, that spoilsport radar came along in 1932 and killed their raison d’etre stone dead.

With humans for scale

And there we are for today – off for lunch now!

*Not adopting first person perspective here, as I’m not local.

**Yes, he would say that.  I bet he’d be crowing loudly if the Persians had won, eh?

***Or “Resume” as you South Canadians say