Minotaur:  Monstrous Birth

Minos' story is a cautionary tale about the dangers inherent in defying divine dictates.  Minos, king of Crete, possessed the world's most beautiful white bull.    Poseidon bestowed this magnificent creature onto the king with the expectation that the latter would eventually sacrifice it back to him.   Unfortunately, King Minos was so enamored of this bull that he couldn't bear to part with it, much to Poseidon's chagrin.  Instead of smiting the defiant king with a blazing thunderbolt, Poseidon devised a more creative and considerably more cruel punishment.   The sadistic ocean god cast a spell on Minos' wife Pasiphae that caused her to develop an insatiable lust for the bull her husband stubbornly refused to sacrifice.  The desperate queen secretly went to Daedalus, the King's master craftsman, and pleaded with him to make her a cow suit.   Though he considered this request quite strange, such was the earnestness of her appeal that he dared not refuse.     "I beg you to say nothing to my husband," she said when retrieving the suit.   Daedalus assured her he would remain silent.  (As he had a sudden notion as to why she so ardently requested the suit, he wasn't about to utter a word of the matter to Minos, anyway.)    Enclosed in this suit Pasiphae successfully seduced the bull and in so doing conceived a monstrous hybrid: a half-man/half bull child.    Sporting a taurine-head and torso attached to a human's body, this creature's birth horrified both the queen and king, the latter of whom quickly surmised that he could not have been the father.    He interpreted the ghastly child's arrival as a sign of Poseidon's displeasure and immediately sacrificed the bull to him.    Though inclined to slay the beast at once, Minos permitted it to live as he feared divine retribution.*  The distraught king consulted Daedalus about the matter.  "We must house it so as to prevent its escape," Daedalus told him.  "Leave the matter to me."   Daedalus constructed a vast labyrinth in which the king imprisoned the queen's bestial son.    There, the neglected monster remained, friendless, unloved, and displaced from all human sympathy; not that he would have elicited much of it had he been at liberty.    All the Minotaur, as it would eventually be called, ever received was sustenance. Under Minos' orders, various animals were released into the labyrinth at infrequent intervals.     Unable to escape, these hapless critters wandered aimlessly through the maze until the Minotaur found and devoured them.      So, the pathetic Minotaur knew only prolonged periods of privation punctuated by odd moments of quick satiation.     A most deplorable existence within inescapable confines.   Once a year, however, the monster's misery was mitigated by the arrival of fourteen Athenian youth.       Having lost a war to Crete, Athens was required to annually supply Crete with this peace-sustaining tribute.   The condemned fourteen -seven boys; seven girls- were delivered to Crete and immediately sent into the labyrinth.    The Minotaur knew of their arrival almost at once, for though a lifetime within the labyrinth's shadowy windings had impaired his sight, his sense of smell had grown all the keener.  As soon as he detected the presence of those humans, he immediately rushed forward in the direction where the scent intensified. By this practice he soon encountered at least one victim.   The little thing then invariably screamed and hastened away in a clumsy stumble.  Within a brief moment, the immense and prodigiously strong Minotaur bound forth, captured and rapidly consumed the blubbering child.    Then, it was a matter of locating the others, which often required the better part of the day.  The horrified shrieks and anguished cries made the pursuit all the easier, despite the twists and turns of the unending corridors.    This annual chase became something of a game to the Minotaur.    The sport combined with the taste of delectable flesh provided the beast with the only delight he had ever known.   So, it was with relish that he rushed forth on that particular day when the next fourteen tributes arrived.  Recent deprivations -ordered by the King- had rendered him all the more eager for flesh.    Such was his speed that he rapidly came upon not one, but all fourteen, tributes in a cluster.    His arrival caused thirteen of them to immediately scatter in a furious panic.   Curiously, one of them stood fast.  Instead of screaming, the young man looked up at the approaching Minotaur and gripped a shimmering object in his right hand.  Only for a fleeting moment was the beast perplexed by this unusual behavior. He then roared triumphantly as his arm reached down for the immobile Athenian.    The next moment he roared with rage while snapping the arm back.     He looked down to behold geysers of blood issuing from his fingers.  The Minotaur staggered slightly in response to a sensation he had hitherto never experienced:  physical pain.  Before he could recover his senses, the once inert young man rushed forward with the shimmering blade poised like a catapult behind his left shoulder,  He struck the stone-hard legs with an unconstrained fury: slicing the flesh again and again and again, all the while running in wide circles around the enraged Minotaur.    Producing a horrid sound that was one part scream, one part whimper, the monstrous creature twisted around in a desperate effort to crush his minuscule attacker, but to no avail.   The swifter Athenian adroitly evaded each swipe while continuing his unrelenting assault on the Minotaur's hemorrhaging legs.   After a fast pivot, the Minotaur stumbled back and collapsed onto the ground.    Seizing his sudden advantage, the Athenian hopped onto the Minotaur's head and plunged his sword into one of its eyes and then the other as the creature shrieked with horror and anguish.   Now blinded, the Minotaur writhed violently, his arms flailing in all directions.  The Minotaur then swatted his own body as he felt multiple stabbings along his bulging chest and torso.    The furious screams devolved into despairing cries as blood gushed forth from the hundreds of gaping wounds inflicted onto its quivering body.    After stopping briefly to observe the monster's violent convulsions, his assailant raised his blade high above the Minotaur and plunged it deep into its throat.   The creature's only reaction to this final assault was a barely audible gasp followed by silence.

*The gods hardly ever countenanced outright infanticide.    Consequently, an unwanted child was often abandoned in the wilderness.   This "exposure" increased the probability of the infant's death, but didn't ensure it.   Parents could therefore dispose of a child in this manner while avoiding the ramifications of child murder.   

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2020-2021:  XXXIII

THE DAILY ASTRONOMER

Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Remote Planetarium 111:    More Relativity Questions

Welcome back!

We continue our relativistic discussions today by addressing some of the questions we received during our unexpected hiatus.    

"I am confused.     You said that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light,    However, I read that a certain type of light is produced by particles that move faster than light speed.    How is that possible?"   -M.H.

The confusion is understandable.    According to Special Relativity, nothing can move faster than light moving through a vacuum.  This speed is about equal to 300,000 kilometers per second.      However, a light beam's speed changes when the beam moves through different media.      For instance, light speed in water is 225,000 kilometers per second; light speed in glass is 200,000 kilometers per second.     The refractive index determines light speed through any media according to the equation:

                                       n  =  c/v   

where n = refractive index; c = speed of light in a vacuum and v = the phase velocity of light in a given medium.  

So, while it is not possible -as far as we know, Picard,- for a massive particle to equal or exceed light speed in a vacuum, it is possible for such a particle to exceed the phase velocity of light within another medium,     To find a good example of this phenomenon, one should look inside a nuclear reactor.

These reactors are routinely submerged in water where, as we just learned, the speed of light is 225,000 km/sec. Emitted electrons will often surpass this speed. These superluminal electrons produce a deep blue light called Cherenov radiation named for the Soviet scientist (1904-1990) who, along with Ilya Frank (1908-1990) and Igor Tamm (1895-1971), discovered this radiation.      

Massive particles CAN exceed the phase velocity of light in different media.  No  particle can achieve, let alone surpass, light speed in a vacuum.    

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A brief history of the meter for subscriber J.V.

The unit of length known as the "meter" is now precisely defined as the distance that light travels in 1/299,792,458th of a second.   This definition was established in 1983.    The speed of light is based on this measurement.   That entire matter seemed a bit circular to JV, understandably.

The meter first appeared in the late 18th century.  In 1793, it was defined as 1 one-ten millionth of the distance separating the equator and north pole along what we now call the Prime Meridian:

 

In 1799, the platinum bar standard was established for the meter.   However, due to temperature-based length fluctuations, this standard was slightly imprecise.  In 1889, the length of a meter was set by a Platinum-Iridium bar at 0 degrees C (Ice's melting point).  In 1927, another improvement was required:   the meter was defined as the length of a Platinum-Iridium bar at 0 degrees C at 1 atmospheric pressure.   In 1960, a meter length was based on radiation, namely  1,650,763.73 wavelengths from a specific transition of Krypton-86.    Now, the meter's length is precisely defined as the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458th of a second.  

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"How do they know that light speed can't be exceeded in the Andromeda Galaxy or somewhere else in the Universe?"   -S.C.

The Fundamental Law of Astrophysics asserts that physical laws govern the rest of the Universe just as they do here on Earth.    In fact, astrophysics wouldn't truly be possible without this fundamental assumption.       All observations made so far support this "law."     For instance, the orbits of all multiple star systems conform to the gravitational models.    It is reasonable to assume that physical laws, including those pertaining to Relativity, are the same throughout the cosmos.    

"Do tachyons actually exist?"

-C.B.

Most likely not.     Tachyons are hypothetical particles that always exceed light speed.      They have never been detected.  No evidence has been found to support their existence.    The vast majority of physicists do not believe that tachyons exist because they would violate Special Relativistic speed limits.    In 1967, Gerald Feinberg (1933-1992) proposed the theory of faster-than-light particles that he called tachyons.   He explained that such particles consisted of "imaginary mass," and so would not be limited by the same speed limits that constrain massive particles.    While the concept has proven quite popular with science fiction authors, the scientific community doesn't regard it seriously at all.

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