The Worlds of Jack Vanth

Yesterday, I did some back-of-the-napkin exercises (with the aid of Wikipedia) related to my Teylothia 'verse. When I created it, the Pluto-Charon system was (to quote a favorite series) "all alone in the night." This isolation required that I create a string of O'Neill stations at the Lagrange points. I named them thematically after Greek words beginning with "far." Now, however, this setup is no longer feasible (I'm not referring to the space station design, which was always a stylistic choice). If the Orcus-Vanth system were the only other system in the classic Kuiper Belt, I could have reduced the five stations to four and rested. There are, however, an abundance of minor planets which occupy what I once called "Pluto-orbit." The name "Hadean League," however can remain, since IAU naming rules still allow it to be appropriate. The minor planets under the (provisional) version of the Hadean League, in order of perihelion, are:
1. Pluto (29.65 AU)
2. Orcus (30.27 AU)
3. Makemake (38.509 AU)
4. Ixion (39.68 AU)
5. Varuna (40.494 AU)
6. Quaoar (41.69 AU)
7. Haumea (43.132 AU)
That makes seven worlds, rather than my original six. Sedna (76 AU) is too far out, even at perihelion. Eris is a toss-up. It is certainly within the sphere of the Hadean League at perihelion (37.77 AU), but at aphelion (97.56 AU) it is much farther out. Perhaps that is the key to Eridian conflict with the Hadean League. Scenario: the Eridians are proud of being big and different; the Plutonians are proud of being the first-discovered, but resentful of the demotion; the Orceans think the Plutonians are full of BS, and prefer to side with the Eridians; the Eridians, however, have almost as much contempt for the Orceans and the other Hadean League members as they do for Plutonians. The Quaoarites (Quaoarians) are stereotyped as prudish and judgmental, the Ixionidae are back-stabbing, ungrateful philanderers, the Varunans are good upright people, the Makemakeans are the most attractive, and Haumeans are short, fertile, intensely loyal people.

If the chronology of the Teylothia 'verse remains the same, Sedna is at about 160 AU, or a journey of over three decades by my original reckoning, in which Luna to Pluto is a five-year journey.

Take Me To The Stars

The discovery of a another new planet around Gliese 581, just a score of light-years away from terra firma, shot my mood through the roof. The hyperbole of the astronomer making the announcement (assuming that the journalist did not strategically edit the quote) may be forgiven, since it is tremendously exciting news. The interested public, however, does need a reminder that most life is not on the human scale, and that Kal-El's homeworld probably wasn't in the greatest shape before it exploded.

The casual dismissal of planets unsuitable for sustained human existence, under which category most of the Gliese planets fall, distresses me and strikes me as ridiculously anthropocentric. Already in our system there are worlds covered in ice which may have life in hidden oceans, and if so, it won't be humanoid. Even if such planets lack life until a contaminated probe burrows into their subglacial depths, and even if the worlds of Gliese 581 lack any life, the study of these worlds is valuable in itself. If humanity ever does escape Earth's gravity well, it would be useful to know what sort of resources exist in the great beyond - any interstellar colony would only have what was in the system, after all. Even if humanity remains within the SOlar System and eventually dies out as the nineteenth race on Neptune, study of other worlds would inform us about geology, chemistry, and meteorology. Too bad teleportation is still at the sub-atomic stage!

Ra, Set, Russkiy!

  I don't have any profound spiritual commentary for the end of 2009, so in terms of another year around the Sun, this news seems appropriate. The Russians have devised a scheme to try alter the orbit of Apophis, the near-Earth asteroid which in 2004 was calculated to have a 1-in-37 chance of hitting the Earth (That figure was later revised to less panic-inducing odds). The timing of this announcement, just as NASA's shuttle program is expiring, appears to be a bid for the space portion of the news cycle, and fits well with Russia's "muscular patriotism". The plan does sound heavily inspired by movies, but then many space scientists have been inspired by science-fiction movies and stories, and quite a few science fiction authors have worked for NASA. On the positive side, Russia is the country over which the "path of risk" is imminent and the only country in which a large meteorite has exploded in recent times (I do not believe that the Tunguska Explosion was an exploding alien spacecraft). That experience does give it a little more authority than other nations in this matter, just as Japan has more authority than other nations when it comes to suffering nuclear attack.

Apophis appears to be an appropriately menacing name for the asteroid, but is less so if one has sufficient familiarity with Egyptian mythology. The namers of the asteroid seem to be bigger fans of Stargate than Sinuhe. Apophis is the Greek name for the Apep serpent, the cosmic embodiment of all that is evil, which threatens the sun god Ra as travels nightly through the Duat, but is always defeated by the god Sutekh/Set - despite his use as a Satan-equivalent in fiction, that is not his primary role in Egyptian cosmology-cosmography. Sometimes the struggles of Ra, Sutekh, and the Apep serpent resulted in earthquakes, storms, and eclipses when the Apep serpent got the upper hand, but Ra was ever victorious.Apophis, therefore, is a good name for an object in the darkness, be it Duat or Outer Space, which periodically threatens, but never prevails.

Book review: Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan, Courtney Humphries

Book review: Superdove: How the Pigeon Took Manhattan … and the World, Courtney Humphries

Most of us think of the rock dove (aka the pigeon) as merely an urban pest, on par with rats and Woody Allen; this book fleshes out the history of the pigeon. In religion, the rock dove has fallen from the status of a divine bird in the walled cities of Sumer to the feathered equivalent of a noxious weed. Many factors contributed to this descent; including the careful word selection of the Bard and the decline of doves as a food source. The biological history of the rock dove involves an unusual course of domestication, in which the rock dove’s homing ability negated the need for secure pens and inderctly allowed them to survive better than other feral species. I don’t want to spoil any more of this book, insofar as science books have spoilers, so I will say this: reading Superdove has made me appreciate to a much greater degree this inevitable avian companion of mankind.

Archeology, Anorexia, and Apes

I went to Carey Perloff's Luminescence Dating at the Magic Theatre at Fort Mason. I greatly enjoyed the play, but I doubt that any who had not suffered through the Classical college curriculum could appreciate the subtler references within the work.


Thumbs up to Italy, which has joined the war against stick models, along with Spain and Brazil.


There is a plague among the gorillas of Zaire, not unlike the Ebola virus which has effected the humans of that region. There are two possible disease vectors: other gorillas and fruit bats. I am inclined to believe that the latter is the true vector. Ebola acts through contaminated bodily fluids. Gorillas do not gather in large groups, which limits the effectiveness of the disease vector. Fruit bats, however, could fly between tree before perishing, and their corpses would remain in the copse from which the unfortunate primates dined.