🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <130@cpro.UUCP> asgard@cpro.UUCP (J.R. Stoner) writes:
>
>No.  The famous story was about John Glenn's ride into orbit in the Gemini.
>He noted that sparkling objects were hovering outside the viewport of the
>capsule and speculated on what they could be...

>				....They could not have been Cerenkov
>flashes, as those are photon events and therefore could not be objects
>maintaining an orbit.

Don't be so fast with your conclusions. Let me remind you that the eye
is a very very bad optical device. It is the brain what makes you see
so clearly! I'm not going to start the never ending discussion about how
all the neurons in the brain get hold of the information necessary to process
the images. The fact is that once you grow up, it's there and it enables
you to understand what you see. But the brain can deal only with known
objects and only in a limited way. So if the receptors or the optical nerves
are stimulated in a new and unknown way, there is not too much the brain
can do. As a result you "see" something, but that something is not necessarily
a real object.

To conclude:

	1. When the visual cortex tells you, that you see something,
	   that information alone doesn't enable you to tell, whether
	   the object you "see" exists.

	2. Since you don't even know if the object exists, it doesn't
	   make too much sense to speculate if the object is "here" or 
	   "there", let alone if it's maintaining an orbit.

And the moral of the story - When you perform any measurment in physics,
use only instruments you understand. If you have to use an unreliable
device, consider it before making the conclusion.

zdenek

 -------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Men are four:
 He who knows and knows that he knows, he is wise - follow him;
 He who knows and knows not that he knows, he is asleep - wake him;
 He who knows not and knows that he knows not, he is simple - teach him;
 He who knows not and knows not that he knows not, he is a fool - shun him!

 zdenek@CS.COLUMBIA.EDU  or 	...!seismo!columbia!cs!zdenek
 Zdenek Radouch, 457 Computer Science, Columbia University,
 500 West 120th St., New York, NY 10027