Copernicus, the Universe and the Church

Astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Torun, Poland in 1473. He laid the foundation for modern astronomy by disputing the widely held belief that the Earth was the center of the universe. Instead, he pronounced that Earth, and the other planets, revolved around the Sun. This theory caused profound shock and a revolution in scientific and philosophical thought.

The Christian Church, Protestants, and Catholics alike believed that God had created the Universe just for mankind and so the Earth must be the center of it. That did not fit with what Copernicus knew about physics and the motion of the planets. With that belief, he couldn't make the math work or match his observations. He realized that if he created a new model and moved the Sun to the center, the equations all functioned much more smoothly.

Sometime between 1510 and 1514, Copernicus published his "Little Commentary" on his new model, a 40-page outline of his heliocentric — sun-centered — universe, which he sent to various astronomers while he continued working on a much longer, more detailed discussion of the idea. 

The expanded work was On the Revolutions (1543), which Copernicus dedicated to Pope Paul III, hoping the Pope would protect him from vilification for having removed the Earth from its sacred place. On the Revolutions hardly created a revolution when he wrote it; it was groundbreaking and controversial but, contrary to popular lore, the Church didn't immediately condemn him for it.

There were also those before Copernicus who had posited similar theories. Philolaus (c. 470 – c. 385 BCE) described an astronomical system in which a Central Fire (different from the Sun) occupied the center of the universe, and a counter-Earth, the Earth, Moon, the Sun itself, planets, and stars all revolved around it, in that order outward from the center.

Heraclides Ponticus (387–312 BCE) proposed that the Earth rotates on its axis. 

Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310 BCE – c. 230 BCE) was the first to advance a theory that the Earth orbited the Sun. Further mathematical details of Aristarchus's heliocentric system were worked out around 150 BCE by the Hellenistic astronomer Seleucus of Seleucia. Though Aristarchus's original text has been lost, a reference in Archimedes' book The Sand Reckoner (Archimedis Syracusani Arenarius & Dimensio Circuli) describes a work by Aristarchus in which he advanced the heliocentric model.

Try Balancing An Egg On Its End

Some people believe that the Sun's gravitational pull during the spring and fall equinoxes can help keep an egg standing on its end. You might try that today as we tilt into spring.

The balancing egg trick is often demonstrated at El Mitad del Mundo, a monument in Ecuador that celebrates the imaginary line that divides the Earth's Northern and Southern hemispheres. However, the true location of the equator is a couple hundred meters down the road.

However, this idea is not science and there is no gravitational change during the equinox that would help an egg balance. In fact, eggs can balance anywhere at any time of year. The egg-balancing trick is an old idea and it has no connection to the gravitational force of the moon or sun.

Here is a nice simple explanation of the equinox and the egg.

JFK, James Bond and the Movies

I have a friend who has become in his late years a real conspiracy theory believer. He doubts that people were ever on the Moon and subscribes to many theories about politics and culture. He gets a lot of his information from what I consider spurious sources - and he laughs at me because I believe in the big, established media news sources. 

He doesn't believe most of the popular theories about the JFK assassination a,nd the Warren Commission Report is total fiction. He does believe he was assassinated.  A recent podcast on who killed JFK has made me more of a believer in the JFK assassination conspiracy.

John F. Kennedy was quite a reader. Part of that came from his many long hospital stays in his youth because of colitis, and Addison’s disease and with his back issue during his Presidency. Doctors doubted that he would make it into his 30s. One of his favorites was Ian Fleming's James Bond novels. Do a search on JFK + James Bond and you'll find many articles connecting the two.  

Did Kennedy use Bond to fight the Cold War?  You can imagine why something like From Russia, With Love would appeal to him.   

Kennedy proclaimed his love for James Bond in a 1961 LIFE magazine feature at the height of his political popularity. At that time Bond was not popular in America but JFK's endorsement led to Fleming’s first significant sales in the U.S. Then United Artists secured the film adaptation rights. They rushed Dr. No. United Artists’ movie adaptations did not follow the order of the novels. It went from Dr. No to From Russia with Love perhaps based on JFK's reading list. 

Fleming even had Bond say “We need more Kennedys’ in the next book, The Spy Who Loved Me in 1962. 

There were three books that Lee Harvey Oswald had at the time of his arrest: 2 Bond novels, The Spy Who Loved Me and Live and Let Die and a non-fiction book about the USSR and Communism. Legend has it that Lee Harvey Oswald and Kennedy were both reading Ian Fleming the night before the assassination.

Trivia: The film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) was the last movie watched by Elvis Presley. 

President Kennedy watched 81 films at the White House cinema. The first was The Misfits, starring Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable. They watched 13 foreign-language films (probably Jackie;s choices). JFK liked Fellini’s La Dolce Vita but walked out after 20 minutes on Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad, which I totally understand.  They keep track of these things at the White House. President Dwight Eisenhower's favorite movie was High Noon. 

Before becoming a senator, papa Joseph Kennedy had been a successful Hollywood producer who was said to have had an affair with Gloria Swanson. She is best remembered for Sunset Boulevard, which is one of Trump’s favorite films and was the most repeatedly screened film during his time in the White House. The first film he watched? The animated Finding Dory.  

Before JFK knew Marilyn, he had a poster of her upside down (so her legs were akimbo) on the rear of his hospital door as he recovered from back surgery in 1954. Jackie complained about the poster. The poster image was from Niagara. That was the film that really made her a star. Warhol stole the image for his Marilyn silkscreens from that film. In From Russia, with Love, there is a chapter called “The Mouth of Marilyn Monroe.” While in the hospital, Jackie gave him a copy of Fleming’s first book, Casino Royale. 

Tom Jones may have been the last film JFK saw, though on November 20 he was briefly back in DC for brother Robert’s birthday party and they had a copy of From Russia with Love then. The film differed from the book with SMERSH, the Red Army’s real-life counter-intelligence unit, replaced with a Russian crime syndicate. We didn't want to stir up the Russians. Kennedy had already seen it, getting an advance copy back in October. He watched it with his brother and Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post who reported later that “Kennedy seemed to enjoy the cool and the sex and the brutality. He seldom sat through an entire film, but he watched this one to the end.” 

United Artists released the film on a double-bill with War is Hell. That was the film that Lee Harvey Oswald saw part of as he hid at Dallas’ Texas Theatre, where he was apprehended shortly after the shooting of the President. 

According to The Washington Post, Kennedy’s admiration of Bond was also political. “Kennedy deliberately used Bond to project an image as a heroic leader who could meet any challenge in the most perilous years of the Cold War.”

JFK didn't get to read all 14 Bond novels which were published through 1966. 

The Immortal Jellyfish

 

Jellyfish have been working their way through the Earth’s waters for 600 million years. That is before the dinosaurs, before flowers or fungi. They have survived five mass extinctions.

They don’t have a brain or heart, just a nervous system. Is that part of the way they have survived? I am so hung up on the idea that our nervous system is intimately connected to our heart and brain, I cannot grasp their separation.

They exist in every ocean, from cold Arctic waters to the tropics and in freshwater ponds and lakes. Very adaptable. 

Have you heard about the immortal jellyfish? Not truly immortal but when something bad happens to it it reverts to an earlier stage. (For a moment, I thought about rolling back your operating system to an earlier version because the current one is broken in some way. But that is a crude comparison.) The jellyfish is hurt, has an illness, or becomes too old, it can revert to an earlier stage of development.

How amazing that it can transform its own cells so that it goes from its fully grown, sexually mature state back into its fetal form (which is a colony of polyps). And then, it starts over again. It is some wild version of time travel, except it is still in the same time. 

Theoretically, the jellyfish can do this forever, so scientists consider it biologically immortal.