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I speculate that not every aspect of the speed of light is regarded as "settled science". It has been delightful to read some different opinions on the subject. Anyone remember the old science fiction story about "slowglass" -- thru which it supposedly might take YEARS for light to pass? Fun! Speculation! Swansort, "Inertial frame". Is that anything that has mass and that thereby might have inertia? See, that is what got us off a century or two ago into the "aether" sidepocket. What you say is no doubt correct. The Aether thing (except poetically!) has been proven wrong. Please offer the appropriate explanations for us new guys.

If I say light is slowed down in a medium, that is speculation, because I have no supporting evidence. But now that you-all tell me so, it is no longer speculation, but settled science. And since you tell me light travels at c in a vacuum, that is settled science as well. In the professor's three-star story, does the same light travel at c RELATIVE to all three stars? He said it does, so that makes it sixty-year settled science, but what does it MEAN?

I speculate that my physics professor was correct sixty years ago about the variable speed of light. The evidence he showed us was a simple nine-dollar magnifying glass. He said light goes slower in glass than in air, and that's why its path is bent in the lens. I don't have any mathematics on that, nor any other evidence. It just makes sense. Maybe he had some more to show us on that, but he didn't. Maybe he had some math on the subject, but he didn't show it to us. But I speculate he was right. And if he wasn't, nobody ever showed up to tell us any different. And here's a further speculation: WestStar is going over half the speed of light away from CenterStar. EastStar is going over half the speed of light away from CenterStar in the other direction. And yet the light from EastStar arrives at WestStar at the speed of light. Hmmmmmmm? Come to think of it, that same physics professor told us this story that same day over sixty years ago. I therefore speculate that we don't know everything about the speed of light in all circumstances.

Apology. Apology. DNA is composed of amino acids. It is an array of amino acids. The information it carries is in its layout of amino acids. That had me fooled. DNA is not a protein, anyway. Man, oh MAN! I really thought I had lucked into something here. Thank you, Argent, for stopping me from being an idiot -- just after I fell into it. DNA is not a protein. DNA is not a protein. DNA is not a protein. I take it DNA is not the sort of thing that would come together spontaneously? I tried to edit that piece of foolishness. Too late. It's set in concrete. I tried to report it and remove it entirely. No answer. Hey, Everyone! DNA is NOT protein!

These speculations are only speculations. They are not theories nor even hypotheses. They hardly rise to the level of a SWEG. (Scientific Wild-Eyed Guess) I am like Alice, lost in Wonderland, asking the Cheshire Cat which way to go. SPECULATION ONE: Familiar old Jupiter is orbiting right where it has always been orbiting since it was formed from dust and gas from the protoplanetary disk. A real home-boy, Old Jove! It migrated from about where Saturn is now. The protoplanetary disk was dissipated by then and Jupiter stayed put. SPECULATION TWO: Jupiter was somehow formed right downstairs in the blazing heat next to the sun in a six-day orbit. (Some newly-discovered exo-Hot-Jupiters are found orbiting way close to their stars. This doesn't make sense, but there it is.) Just as the moon rises about an inch a year above the earth, Jupiter rose to its present position by raising a tidal bulge on the surface of the sun which converted some of the angular momentum of the sun into orbital energy for Jupiter. SPECULATION THREE: Back to forming Jupiter way up there where it makes sense for a gas-giant to form. At the same time, the protoplanetary disk was really thick with all sorts of stuff, from hydrogen molecules to planetoids. This formed a drag on Jupiter (and everything else) so that Jupiter lost energy to the gravitational pull of untold items, and lost Semi-Major Axis length to its orbit until it became like one of the now-famous exo-Hot-Jupiters -- right down on the deck -- until it was absorbed by the sun. The Jupiter we see in the sky now was next in line for the title, and there it is to this day. SPECULATION FOUR: Same as SPECULATION THREE, except Jupiter did not fall into the sun. About that time the protoplanetary disk was nearly gone. The stellar wind blew the faint pitiful remnants of it out beyond the Oort Cloud. Jupiter rose by tidal action as in SPECULATION TWO until it came to its present position, where, for all I know, it is still rising. SPECULATION FIVE: In SPECULATIONS ONE thru FOUR, Jupiter gained a lot of weight. Most everything it came close to fell into it. Plop! Just as we saw that comet fall into it about a generation ago. Plop! Plop! Plop! And, in SPECULATIONS TWO thru FOUR, Jupiter came close to any number of planetessimals, planetoids and even mature planets, and mostly swallowed them whole. It came close -- but not THAT close -- to Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and to an un-named planet that used to roll beyond Mars. [Mercury lost its mantle. Venus lost its rotation. Earth lost its atmosphere, ocean -- and a few tectonic plates, some of which stayed in orbit forming the moon. Mars was totally wrecked and never recovered. The un-named planet was swallowed up by Jupiter except for a tiny remnant which we call asteroids.] SPECULATION SIX: SPECULATIONS ONE thru FIVE are pure baloney, spun out of fantasy and Flash Gordon funny-paper adventures. They are for your amusement only, and are not to be printed in the next edition of your Science Text.

I was hoping someone would pick up on those details.

"In the beginning, God created the heaven (atmosphere) and the earth." When the earth cooled down enough so water could stand on it, the circus began. Under certain conditions, amino acids form spontaneously. The earth is large, the oceans are wide and eternity is long. Those necessary conditions are certain to exist here and there from time to time. Amino acids are almost famous for joining up with other amino acids to form proteins. Useless, worthless, nondescript, miscellaneous, no-account, stinking proteins. Only, among the kazillions of different useless proteins, one happens by pure chance that can replicate. Behold, a DNA molecule. A protein that can crank off a copy of itself. It is not good for anything. It can't do anything. It's too short to carry a single gene. But it's DNA. It isn't alive. It's just there. It doesn't do anything -- much. Oh, look! Now there're two. No. Four. No. Eight. No. Sixteen. Um, ah, I lost count. A million years later, the whole ocean is full of that stupid, worthless protein and the seven seas "gel" like that old-time Mad Magazine spoof about "Dormant Gookum". There are occasional mutations among so many individual molecules. A million years after that, there are a hundred billion varieties of the same useless gunk. One or two of each. No new ones can form until the needed amino acids are turned loose. But, among so many, by chance, there is one that digests the others. And the race is on, Survival of the Fittest comes to the forefront. It's Darwin to the inside. Evolution eats all, and then Itself is eaten by an Improved Variety which then Multiplies and fills up the Seven Seas. Still nothing alive here. Just useless random protein. Well, um, not all THAT random. " . . . and God saw that it was good."

Bishop Ussher neatly counted the ages and other indications found in the Bible and came up with a starting point, I believe, 4004 BC. Quite a work of scholarship, considering what he had to work with. [it must have been like working chest-deep in a swamp. Hebrew is not his native language. It is full of strange poetic forms, strange parables and parabolic forms, and strange allegories. The writers were familiar with goats and lions and buzzards, but not with planets and stars and DNA. The best they could do is recognized as garbage by modern English-speaking scientists. And it had been translated to King James' English by hired linguists who knew King James didn't like the previous translations.] But what was Bishop Ussher's starting point? Not the formation of the earth. (Genesis 1:1 ) The birth of Adam? (Genesis 2:7) But in Hebrew, "Adam" means "Mankind" as well as that specific man named Adam. When God said Now let us make Man, did he mean to wave a magic wand and POOF! There he was? Hardly. The record is in the rocks. There were men way before that. No doubt millions of men. Then it says God made man in his own image. (Genesis 1:27) Is that the starting point? When God made some portion of mankind to give birth to people who would LOOK LIKE HIMSELF? Probably not. Later, God did that famous and very important "Good and Evil" change in mankind. (Genesis 2:9 Genesis 2:16-17 Genesis 3:1-6) What EVER the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil might have been, this operation did a change in mankind (who already LOOKED like God). It made the descendants of some portion of them to know Good and Evil before they did it instead of only after (Whoops! Too late!) they DID it. We can tell God wanted them to do this because afterward He said, "Now that man has become as one of us to know good and evil . . ." (Genesis 3:22) Those are words of blessing. God married them (Genesis 3:16) and clothed them (Genesis 3:21). He took them to a promised land. (Genesis 3:24) They didn't like the promised land, but there it was. Now THAT may well have been the starting point from which Bishop Ussher counted. Not the physical birth of the man named Adam, but the year in which some portion of the human race was given the ability to know Good and Evil -- perhaps the same year He took some of them from Eden out into the more ordinary world. [While we are on the subject of the descendants of Adam and Eve, Genesis 5:4 specifies that Adam "begat sons and daughters". ]

At the risk of falling into Speculation again, the Earth was formed rotating as well as orbiting. At random. Whenever the Moon was formed, it, too, was rotating and orbiting. At random. Immediately the tidal thing kicked in and immediately the two bodies began influencing one another. There is tremendous energy in a rotating, orbiting planet or moon. This comes from the tremendous energy in the rotating, orbiting protoplanetary disk. (Not understanding this, some astronomic sketches from just a few hundred years ago depicted angels pushing the planets -- or maybe just push-starting them.) Energy is transferred from Earth to Moon in a rather complex manner by the tides they raise in each other. (Don't ask me about that, because I'd just start speculating again.) After millions of years of tidally influencing one another, a planet and its moon may become tide-locked, with the moon always facing the same side to the planet. Even more, the planet can do the same, in time.

This is NOT Speculations. I must NOT speculate. I must NOT guess. No SWEGs allowed here. How might we estimate how far a planet has migrated? How might we estimate how far it might yet migrate? We have any number of "Hot Jupiters" in very close orbits around other stars. They are not believed to have formed there, but way out -- several AU out. Are we to estimate they migrated five to ten AU to their present locations? Our own familiar Jupiter is said to have migrated. Is there a way to tell? When you all first told me this, I quit guessing and speculating that the no-doubt mythical "Niburu" had done certain damages in the inner SolarSystem. I started guessing and speculating that Jupiter (Or another, since-vanished giant) had. Now I shall have to wait another hundred years for clues about that.

Mordred, I see. At the same time every particle in the protoplanetatry disk is being dragged down starward by every other particle, there is a tidal effect turning the energy tied up in the rotation of the sun into a lifting energy, just as the moon moves away from the earth. So when the protoplanetary disk has faded to a mere shadow, then the tidal thing, which is always there, is stronger than the drag, and the migrating planets which before had been going to orbits with smaller semi-major axes begin to get bigger ones. And the migrating planets which had been migrating starward now migrate back out. Is this migration on the order of magnitude of an Astronomical Unit? Or does it depend on how large the planet was? Or how wide its semi-major axis? Or its mass?

f=ma. At last a math thingie that I can understand. Force equals Mass times Acceleration. If you push twice as hard (or twice as long) on an object suspended frictionlessly, it will accelerate twice as much. Of course, if the object is your car stuck in the mud, it likely won't move at all until you go borrow a tractor. But it seems to work for objects in space. Density waves? Why would there be density waves? Isn't density Mass divided by Volume? It just sits there being that big and that heavy. Where do density waves come in?

I was confused by the term escape velocity, as fifty years go we used it to mean the speed an object would be going in order to escape from the gravity of another object. No. That's not quite right. It meant, in those days, the speed Flash Gordon would have to get his rocket up to in order to coast away from Mogron and never be hauled back by its gravity. Now you are using it to mean whatever velocity an object has away, relative to another object. Got it. The lighter elements would naturally boil away and distill out farther away from the sun -- so planets formed way out there would naturally be less dense -- having less proportion of the heavy elements. Likely the giant planets have iron cores, too, little-bitty ones. The question I keep asking is how the material in the protoplanetary disk "drags" at planets, causing them to lose energy and therefore "lose altitude" and migrate star-ward. At any given location in the protoplanetary disk, everything is in orbit. Everything in the neighborhood is going the same direction and at the same velocity. A planet is not plowing thru this stuff like an airplane plows thru the air. It "goes with the flow". Now, it's a good thing we are in "Speculations" here, because I'm going to speculate. (Herewith a "SWEG": Scientific Wild-Eyed Guess): All the dust and gas and gravel and planetoids and planetissimos and planetessimals that happen to be orbiting close to each othe are NOT going in EXACTLY the same direction, because they are not in the same plane. Each fragment of whatever is in its own private orbital plane, at random, only in more-or-less the same average plane as the rest. Now you has drag. (Satchmo, in High Society: "Now you has jazz!") Even if all the fragments are within a fragment of one degree of the average orbital plane, every piece creates drag on every other piece because they bang into one another. Moreover, because their gravity fields pull and tug at one another as they move past one another, and the energy to do that has to come from somewhere, and it comes from the kinetic energy of all the participating pieces. It's a real DRAG, man!

First off, the slit experiment is extremely simple. Second, it is very reliable. Third, it is completely incomprehensible. Fourth, it is about photons, the last time I heard, not electrons. Fifth, it shows that light is not particles, um, exactly. Sixth, it shows that light is not exactly waves, either. Please do another thought experiment: figure out something ELSE light might be so as to make that neat pattern. Please.

The Hot Jupiters must be in declining orbits. There are no indications that they could have formed down close to their stars, but there they are. They must have been formed far up in the cooler regions, away from their stars, and migrated downward. In the early history of a star, the protoplanetary disk is loaded with, um, "stuff" -- which forms a drag on the orbits of the planets and slowly brings them down. Only, since everything is in orbit, it is not clear how it could cause a drag. Everything in a given area would be orbiting the same direction and the same velocity. That's the question I asked when I started this Thread. It's been a lot of fun, but nobody has answered it.

Technical stuff: I had really INTENDED for this to be in Speculations, because I don't know enough real science to keep it between the lines. I put it right next to my previous Thread, which had been moved to Speculations, in a section called Speculations. And that sentence about Flat Earth was only for humor, not to convince anyone of anything. When I came looking up this Thread to see if anyone had said anything on it, I asked for Speculations, and there it was in a section marked Speculations right alongside my Speculative Thread on some possible speculative effects of Roche's Limit. Now I just came from someone else's Speculative Thread on Aether, where I wrote considerable humorous speculations on that subject. I still want to know how to put my picture in the blank for putting pictures in.

Oh, GOODIE! An aether battle! And it's in speculations so I shan't be excommunicated again for taking part! First off, I have become completely orthodox now, as I have recanted the Articles of Aether for the reasons given against it in the replies to this treatise. Paraphrasing the Treasure of the Sierra Madre bandits, "Wee jus' don' NEEEED no steeenkeeng eeether!" HOWEVER, if there WERE aether, it would be like the air and the water that we consider to be part of the planet upon which we stand. It is a package deal. It moves with us. If you throw a rock, some tiny amount of aether (if there were any) would move right along with the rock. The earth likewise, drags a considerable volume of aether around with it. Now what we need is a scientific measurement of the difference of movement of the aether around the earth and around the moon. (WHOOPS! I meant "alleged aether"!) The car example is wonderful, even tho it is used against the existence of aether. If the car had an open sunroof, the rain coming in would, to some extent, in the time available, follow the movement of the car, as the air inside it does -- a little. You can physically SEE this when you drive in a light snowfall on a dark night. As you stand still, the headlights show the individual flakes drifting straight down. As you drive forward, just as one would expect, the snowflakes come back toward your eyes. However, as the air moves aside and upward for the car to come thru, the snowflakes rise just in front of the car and rise again (and move to both sides) just in front of the windshield. Just because air does that is no sign that the (alleged) aether does it, too. Everybody repeat with me, "There ain't no aether! There ain't no aether! There ain't no steenkeeng aether!" Now, sound waves cannot exist without air. Water waves cannot exist without water. Rope waves cannot exist without rope. Electromagnetic waves cannot exist without aether. Only, the aether in which they exist is a hard vacuum. Um, something wrong with THAT explanation. Ah, er, electromagnetic waves sort of unfold ahead of themselves, out of themselves, without having to disturb anything on the way. Maybe that's were their "particle" thing comes into being. (A shotgun does not depend on air for its operation. The pellets go about the way they were started out. Air slows them down. It doesn't assist them in moving.) Back to the double-slit exercise! Nobody ever explained THAT by means of aether! (Or anything else, either!)

"The moon is getting farther away from the earth because of tidal effects." At least that's what I thought someone said. Something about the tidal bulge leads the moon and therefore pulls it on. Na-a-a-a-a-a-h! I must have it all wrong. To form that into a question, izzat SO? The next question is, Do the regular planets make tidal bulges on the sun and cause them to migrate to higher orbits? Then there is the one about drag. How does the protoplanetary disk drag at planets? Everything in a given area would seem to be going the same direction and velocity, since all the little sky-thingies are orbiting. ?No? These are serious questions. Only, due to my immense lack of background I cannot even phrase them seriously. One more. How do I put my picture in that blank space?

Whoops! My bad. I thought it was Argent who locked my thread of a month or so ago and moved me to Speculations. (Just as well. I wanted to speculate and that was the right place for it.) And I thought I had started this thread in Speculations in the first place to forestall that. Am I in Speculations now? If not, I'm going to have to behave. Here's a funny story a chemistry professor told us all about three generations ago: "An old-time chemist (studying Phlogistine) very carefully burned some alcohol in a device in which he could trap the products of combustion. Of course, the "products" weighed more than the original alcohol. That proved to him that Phlogistine was real and that it had a negative mass, just as he had supposed. For further proof, he did the same experiment three more times and took an average to find a more precise value . . ." [see, the supposition was that fire distilled the phlogistine out of fuels.] Ha ha ha! In those bygone days, when the results of a lab exercise were not close enough to the calculated results, we pretended to blame the discrepancy on an excess of atmospheric phlogistine. About that same time, the asteroid question came up (not in a chemistry class) and we were plainly told that the asteroids were positively NOT from a former planet because (A) there were not enough of them in all to make up even a tiny planet, and because (B) there was no force in all the universe that could "blow up" a planet. Now, in this new century someone showed me the astounding fact that tidal forces could take apart a planet, and that newly discovered exo-planets indicated that some very heavy planets migrated toward their stars. I made a real jerk of myself trying to get Argent to put two and two together to make five. My apologies. Now, in case this thread IS in Speculations (as I intended) let me tell you some proofs of a Flat Earth. And if we AREN'T in Speculations, all that Flat Earth stuff was just liven up this conversation.

Swansont, Actually, I had better stick these questions in Speculations, because I plan to shortly bring up Flat Earth, Phlogistine, Aether, NIburu and other neat topics. Mordred, Thank you for a straight answer. Does the wreckage in the inner Solar System indicate that a Hot Jupiter (or something heavy) has long since migrated "down" thru here and been absorbed by the sun? Seeing that most all those sky-thingies in the protoplanetary disk are orbiting at the same approximate velocity as a migrating Hot Jupiter (at the same distance from the sun) how do they produce drag? Do the rocky planets migrate, too?

Since I don't have the background for this, Argent told me to put any of my unscientific speculations in Speculations -- in the form of questions. Big bunches of "Hot Jupiters" have been detected in this new century. (?) My understanding is that they were formed at a great distance from their stars and migrated, um, "down" (starward) because the protoplanetary disk was a drag on them in their orbits. Um, Question. Does the remaining protoplanetary disk bring forth replacement giant planets? Do they migrate back "up" when the protoplanetary disk has dissipated? These are not trick questions. I am an old man and these issues were never brought up in my youth.

Then we part. If not friends, somewhat better acquainted. You have been very helpful to me -- even kind. You have shown me somewhat of the current thinking on collisions, captures and asteroids. Thank you.

I looked up six articles (suitable for children) about the origin of asteroids. Not one said a single word about their shapes -- although any number of actual photos show many of them, um, ah, THAT shape.

Ah! Such zeal! Commendable. Thank you for continuing to answer me and educate me. As I said, "Ah ahm an 'ard case!" As I understand the Scientific Process, it goes something like this: 1. Observe something. 2. Scratch your head, wondering, "Now WHY would it DO a thing like that?" 3. Speculate how it could happen.. 4. Devise an experiment to de-bunk the speculation. 5. Speculate another way around the mulberry bush. 6. Repeat steps 2 thru 4 as necessary. Well, I'm stuck on step 3, because I have not devised an experiment to do step 4. So I just ask you, because you know a lot of things I don't know. Speculation A: Them there asteroids just always was there and that's all there is TO it. Speculation B: The asteroids came from collisions between any number of protoplanets billions of years ago. The pieces went all directions and at al velocities. Those that were going faster went farther and the giant planets got most of them Those that were slower stayed within the inner Solar System and the rocky planets got most of them. Speculation C: God put them there to sort out the Vile Heretics from the True Believers. Speculation D: Jupiter or some previous occupant chewed up a lot of planetesimals over time, but didn't spit out very much. Speculation E: They might have made a planet in time, but Jupiter's tremendous gravity kept them from accreting -- and most of them fell into Jupiter over the millions of years anyway. Speculation F: Some of them made up little bitty planetoids, heated up enough to melt themselves, then were disrupted when they smacked into each other or made really close misses. Speculation G: The devil made 'em do it. Speculation H: The asteroids were part of a planet or planets that got disrupted and scattered by unknown forces. This pitiful remnant is all that is it (them?) in the general area of its (their?) ancient orbit(s). Since I cannot do an experiment on the asteroids, I can only let them do such experiments as they do by themselves -- and watch the results. Experiment: See if they look like potatoes -- as tho they had been poured out molten and rotating -- and cooled and hardened accordingly. Hmmmmmm. I see. Some of them do. Inconclusive. Experiment fails for lack of a control group.

If Tectonic Plate movement were electrically-powered, the currents would be most shocking! Anyone within a hundred miles of such a boundary would be electrocuted. However, even an old-fashioned nine-dollar magnetic compass is hardly moved by them. What is the conventional explanation for Tectonic Plate movement?