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  • The length of a year is not one orbit of the Sun

    From kelleher.gerald@gmail.com@21:1/5 to All on Fri Feb 11 04:30:44 2022
    This deserves a topic on its own

    https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/content/webbLaunch/whereIsWebb.html

    A year has two distinct values of 365 days and 366 days within the confines of the calendar system which begins March 1st one year and ends 4 years later on February 29th.

    Using a 24 hour watch or clock to create different types of 'years' is at variance with the fundamental timekeeping principles which are bound by the 365 day and 366 day principles covering 1461 days across 4 years or its dynamical equivalent of 1461
    rotations in proportion to 4 orbital circuits. The framework for the year is within the calendar and not dictated by the 24 hour clock.

    Do researchers really wish to start off a new era in space exploration using flawed concepts inherited from less considerate eras?.

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  • From Quadibloc@21:1/5 to Quadibloc on Sat Feb 12 19:06:58 2022
    On Saturday, February 12, 2022 at 7:35:49 PM UTC-7, Quadibloc wrote:

    There certainly is a place for just lying back and soaking up the wonder of the skies. But
    your viewpoint is just not one I can relate to at all. We would still be living in caves - or, at
    least, getting from place to place on horseback and in wooden sailing ships - if this mode
    of thinking were generally adopted.

    And there is more to this than the crassly material.

    I hold - firmly, and beyond any need for argument - that the work of Newton and Einstein,
    whom you so constantly disparage, like that of Adams and Leverrier, and many others in
    the physical sciences,

    and that of Karl Friedrich Gauss, Leonhard Euler, and even Kurt Godel and Georg Cantor
    in mathematics,

    just like that of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart in music (or are they too modern for you?
    Perhaps I should have cited Palestrina instead...)

    are what give meaning and purpose to the entire existence of the human race - or,
    as you would be more likely to put it, are ways in which Man gives glory to God.

    Thus, your wholesale rejection of the human enterprise of science, in my eyes, is a denial of a major and vital part of what makes us human. That's why I am "dour" - why I am so deeply unsympathetic to the fundamental basis of your views.

    John Savard

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  • From Quadibloc@21:1/5 to kellehe...@gmail.com on Sat Feb 12 18:35:47 2022
    On Friday, February 11, 2022 at 5:30:46 AM UTC-7, kellehe...@gmail.com wrote:
    A year has two distinct values of 365 days and 366 days within the confines of the calendar system which begins
    March 1st one year and ends 4 years later on February 29th.

    Using a 24 hour watch or clock to create different types of 'years' is at variance with the fundamental timekeeping
    principles which are bound by the 365 day and 366 day principles covering 1461 days across 4 years or its dynamical
    equivalent of 1461 rotations in proportion to 4 orbital circuits. The framework for the year is within the calendar and
    not dictated by the 24 hour clock.

    Do researchers really wish to start off a new era in space exploration using flawed concepts inherited from less considerate eras?.

    I must agree with you, because every year, I celebrate the arrival of the New Year at midnight on the night
    of December 31st. So that would indeed mean that each year lasts either 365 days or 366 days.

    None the less, I find this posting amazing even from you.

    Why?

    Surely it must be obvious that the _civil calendar year_ is a *conventional* thing. A calendar year is
    built up from whole days because that's the convenient way to do it for purposes like, say, writing
    the date on a cheque.

    But if you're doing scientific work with the motions of the planets, the orbital period of a planet
    is the time it takes for the planet to return to the same degree in its orbital path, with its
    rotational period being irrelevant. That too should be obvious - attempting to complicate matters
    by introduing irregularities from the civil calendar convention would serve no rational purpose,
    and be utterly useless.

    It is hard for me to even believe that even you can't see this. Of course, I guess it is consistent
    with your apparent stance on scientific work with the motions of the planets, which seems to be
    that it just shouldn't happen. We should all just lie back and soak up the wonder of the skies,
    without daring to apply mathematics to it.

    There certainly is a place for just lying back and soaking up the wonder of the skies. But
    your viewpoint is just not one I can relate to at all. We would still be living in caves - or, at
    least, getting from place to place on horseback and in wooden sailing ships - if this mode
    of thinking were generally adopted. Of course, I suppose it _is_ possible to think that
    this would not be a bad thing, if one accepts the 99% probability that one would be among
    those who was never born because one's great-grandparents had starved in a world without
    the ability to feed as many as it does... although when looking into the future and not the
    past, I certainly can agree that making the world as crowded as possible is not the best
    thing to do.

    But you were the one who was just complaining that Malthus was racist!

    John Savard

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