Friday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”

                                           Bruce Lee

A while back a physicist named Higgs had predicted that there was such a thing as a “God” particle. This meant there is a particle that is the base particle of all others. Recently this particle was indeed found at a collider and was named the Higgs Boson. This collider is a device that is in a circle underground and about 13 miles in length. Using huge magnets particles of protons and anti-protons are accelerated around this circle in opposite directions until the they reach enormous speeds and eventually collide and shatter into their basic parts. The scientists have found particles called “quarks” but the particles that make them up are seen for a millionth of a second and then disappear. It is these particles that interest the scientists because they know that these particles are what all material is made of in its most basic form...or “the building blocks of God”. The Higgs Boson was identified using this process. Many of the physicists are sad because the search for this Boson took most of their lives...now it is over...or is it?

Speaking of the very small, here is something I read about the very big. Recently a group of cosmologists aimed the Hubble telescope at an apparent section of empty space and took a photo that was exposed for 14 hours. The space was nowhere near “empty”. There were swarms of galaxies so far away that “time and space were warped” and the light behind some of the galaxies was bent more that once. That is tough for me to wrap my mind around. They also said that the light from some of the further galaxies began their journey to Earth 5 billion years ago. The Earth is acknowledged to be about 4.3 billion years old. That is even tougher for me to wrap my head around because those galaxies were there before the Earth ever existed.

A US Marine Lieutenant named Sage Santangelo was recently interviewed about her try at being in command of a US Marine infantry unit. To qualify for a position such as this there is a severe field trial which Lt. Santangelo failed on the first day. She said that her body just could not hold up. She complained that the Marines did not prepare her for this crucible when they put her into an all woman unit where the physical requirements are not as stringent. She also said that she was not given a second chance like the male candidates. There is no question that women are hinged differently and normally do not have the upper body strength of males (see hunter/gatherer theory). There also is no question that women can and do have the mental toughness of males...but if I am a “grunt” Marine I want someone leading me that can do the same things that I am required to do. I admire Lt. Santangelo's determination and spirit but there is no changing the legendary physical strength and determination of a United States Marine....See Iwo Jima.

                This Date in History   April 24

1945 In 1939 US President Franklin Roosevelt had a meeting with Danish physicist Niels Bohr who stated that he believed the Germans were on the right track for the creation of an atomic bomb in a few short years and Roosevelt heard the same thing from Albert Einstein. It was then that Roosevelt tasked US General Leslie Grove with assembling a scientific community in total secrecy to formulate an atomic weapon. Grove chose the remote desert outpost of Los Alamos, New Mexico and hand picked the brilliant but eccentric nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to be lead scientist. Oppenheimer’s politics was way to the left and he might have been a Communist but he had the brains to get this job done and hand picked a staff to do the research. Roosevelt did not tell his Vice-President, Harry Truman about the project for fear of a leak to the press. After Roosevelt died, on this date Secretary of War Henry Stimson had no choice but to brief Truman on the “Manhattan Project” as the project to build the bomb was known. Truman was coming home from a meeting with Churchill, Stalin and himself when on July 16 he got word that “Trinity” was a success. Trinity was the code word for the testing of a nuclear weapon. Truman knew that they only had enough nuclear material for three bombs and they had already used one of them in this test. Truman responded that Stimson was free to use the bomb after August 2. Truman had negotiations that would end on that date. The first nuclear weapon used in anger was dropped of Hiroshima of August 6 and on Nagasaki on August 8. The Japanese government surrendered on August 14. The nuclear weapon attacks had a lot to do with the surrender but the Russians preparing to cross the Sea of Japan an attack Japan's northern Islands was the final straw.

Born today:

1911 US comic Jack E. Leonard when speaking to Ed Sullivan he said “There is nothing about you that reincarnation won’t cure.”

1934 US actress Shirley MacLaine. She said “I have been cast as a hooker so many times that they don’t pay me the regular way anymore; they just leave it on the dresser.”

     Thanks for listening   I can hardly wait until tomorrow