The name change worked!!
Thank you so much!!

On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 9:43 AM, James Gleason <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
> 207-780-4249         www.usm.maine.edu/planet
> 70 Falmouth Street     Portland, Maine 04103
>                 "Gee....we wonder what the number one movie this weekend
> will be?"
>
>
>
> THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
> Wednesday, December 16, 2015
> Star Wars Astronomy
>
> ------------------------------------
> Two personal notes:
>
> Happy Birthday, Brother Richard!
>
>        ++++
>
> As for the name "change," this new e-mail system is using my first name,
> James, instead of my middle name, Edward, which I have used as my primary
> name since I was 15. (My wonderful mother still thinks its a phase I'm
> going through.)
> ------------------------------------
>
> We just cannot resist any type of hype.  This week, the planet's seven
> billion plus inhabitants are all camping out in front of theaters anxiously
> awaiting the opening night for Star Wars VII "The Force Awakens."  From the
> children desperately engaged in light saber battles to the dyspeptic uncle
> who, having seen Darth Vader's face on a espresso flavored Coffee Mate
> container, now thinks the world could only be improved with a proximate
> supernova, Star Wars pervades the planet and nobody can escape from it.
> The current mania is somewhat reminiscent of the hysteria that attended the
> 1977 movie "A New Hope."    Therefore, we want to join in the "fun," with a
> DA article pertaining to both the science and the fiction behind the Star
> Wars Universe.      After all, Star Wars hasn't received nearly enough
> attention lately.
>
> A LONG TIME AGO IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY
> This famous opening line prompts the question:  could alien life have
> existed a long, long time ago?   We know that advanced life forms cannot
> exist without an abundance of complex molecules that, themselves, are
> composed of "heavy elements," such as oxygen, phosphorous, carbon, and
> others.*      Only the simplest elements, primarily hydrogen and helium,
> existed during the Universe's infancy.     The first generation of stars
> manufactured the "metals," defined astronomically as the elements heavier
> than helium.   These stars, being the highly massive population III, would
> have exploded as supernovae, thereby enriching the galaxy with an infusion
> of all the heavy elements.     This chemically rich material would have
> then become incorporated into other star/planet systems. On these heavy
> element laden planets the first life might have developed. The life might
> have evolved from the simplest prokaryotic cells to a galaxy-dominating
> empire. We assume, based on Earth's evolutionary time frame, that such a
> process would have required at least five to six billion years.   As humans
> haven't yet become a star faring race, we haven't the faintest idea how
> long such a progression would require.   After all, humans haven't yet
> ventured more than a quarter of a million miles from Earth. We're a long
> way from zipping between star systems.
>
> The upshot of it all is that the Universe might well have produced mighty
> empires in distant galaxies that have long since vanished.  We can't know
> if they existed, of course, but we can at least be confident that the
> necessary chemical building blocks have existed in the cosmos for billions
> of years.
>
> The assumption we've made is that we're actually now observing the "Star
> Wars" galaxy as it was when all that transpired on film was happening.   If
> it all occurred a billion years ago, the galaxy is a billion light years
> away from us.    Then, again, there is a slight possibility that we're over
> thinking it.
>
>
> LASER GUNS
> As impressive as these weapons appear, we certainly hope they weren't
> expensive, because they truly don't work well.     Let's assume you are
> surrounded by a doom of storm troopers,** but, fortunately, you're armed
> with a laser gun.   You fire indiscriminately at your assailants, some of
> whom deftly dodge the rays, while others are slain by them.    Then, of
> course, you realize: these accursed beams are moving very slowly!   A beam
> of light travels at more than 186,000 miles a second in a vacuum and at
> nearly the same speed in air.  If the storm trooper can avoid the beam, it
> is traveling thousands of times slower than lasers actually travel.     It
> is true that a laser pulse can fry a nervous system and make short work of
> storm troopers, even though they are completely enclosed in the most
> expensive armor the Empire can buy.   However,  someone should tell the
> Empire engineers to remove the anchors from the beams because the light is
> moving like its 145 years old and doesn't really care any more.
>
> WARP SPEED
> Remember that scene when Han Solo was piloting the Millennium Falcon and
> then floored it to light speed?  Well, how could one forget!    The
> pinpoint stars rapidly elongated to luminous lines converging to the middle
> distance.    If I might include a brief personal recollection.   I remember
> my brother, Richard, took me to see the 1977 Star Wars movie and just
> before Han et al accelerated to warp speed, he nudged me and said, "Watch
> this!"    I did and was, of course, astonished and said, to the delight of
> nearby viewers, "Wow, Dic, tell him to do that again!"    Now, had I known
> then what I pretend to know now, I would have instead said, while
> pedantically waggling an index finger, "Now, Richard, you realize that if
> those oddly dressed people were actually traveling on board a vessel
> traveling at light speed, they wouldn't be able to converse because time
> stops at light speed.   The Theory of Special Relativity tells us that time
> dilates on any moving object and that dilation relates directly to the
> speed.  The faster the vessel, the greater the dilation.   If the
> Millennium Falcon had achieved light speed, time would stop.   Of course,
> the ship's mass also increases with increased speed, so its mass would
> essentially become infinite at light speed, which would preclude it from
> attaining that velocity."
>
> And, we agree....the "Wow, Dic, tell him to do that again!"  was the far
> less annoying thing to say.
>
>
> RULING THE GALAXY
> Alexander the Great would have liked this: he would never have run of out
> worlds to conquer.   In the Star Wars Universe, the Empire ruled an entire
> galaxy with a particularly hard iron fist.     Such domination would have
> necessitated the development of a particularly advanced hyperspace travel
> and communication infrastructure.     Let's imagine that someone wants to
> govern the Milky Way Galaxy.   According to recent estimates, our one
> galaxy contains more than 200 billion stars and, perhaps, an equal or even
> greater number of planets.    Quite a lot of real estate to have under
> one's dominion.  One would require untold trillions of minions to do one's
> bidding and one would also need the means by which to convey the latest
> dictates instantaneously to all your myriad underlings.     If you were
> constrained by light speed, you wouldn't be able to maintain order.  Let's
> just say a planet full of troublesome upstarts on the other side of the
> galaxy starts to go all Libertarian on you and resists the Empire.    You
> decide to send them a placating message of "Shut up and deal with it!" Even
> if the message travels at light speed, it would require tens of thousands
> of years to reach them, by which time the original agitators will have long
> since perished. So, too, would you.
>
> Of course, there is always the Von Neumann machine method.     An advanced
> alien race constructs a vessel capable of traversing great distances and
> self replication.  As it travels through the galaxy, it visits various
> planets and mines raw materials from which it manufacturers components to
> construct a copy of itself.  Once completed,  this copy proceeds to also
> make copies of itself.  These, in turn, would be self replicating so that
> after a comparatively brief time, perhaps 200 million years, Von Neumann
> drones could be swarming through the galaxy.     Let's be cheerful and
> further assume they've also been programmed to conquer inferior races
> (i.e.  all of us) and, being incapable of empathy, have no compunction
> about slaying the disobedient.    Perhaps through the agency of these
> surrogates, a race could conceivably become both prevalent and
> domineering.   Good luck collecting the taxes, though!
>
>
> Then again, maybe the Star Wars franchise is just brilliant science
> fiction designed to delight audiences, inflame imaginations, and enrich the
> movie studios.  That is just fine by us because there is nothing more
> electric and elating than escapist escapades into the remotest hollows of
> outer space.
>
>
>
>
> *The vast majority of life forms consist primarily of six elements:
> carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur.   As we lack any
> knowledge of extra terrestrial life forms, we cannot know if these elements
> will be as predominant in alien beings.
>
> **Yes, there are collective nouns specific to storm troopers and yes, I
> actually took the time to look it up and yes, somebody else took the time
> to make one up and then post it on line and yes, if you were a socially
> awkward geek type you'd also have plenty of spare time at night to learn
> collective noun words such as a doom of storm troopers, a shortage of
> dwarves, a debauchery of hedonists, a metamorphosis of ovoids, a wiggle of
> Elvis impersonators (you can't unsee that), a tabula rasa of empiricists
> and, G-d help us, a handful of palm readers.
>