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The current situation is that the Edgar Mitchell will arrive and tomorrow evening’s presentation will go ahead as planned.
The evening meal originally scheduled for tonight will take place on Saturday evening for those who can make it.
To repeat this is the current picture. I’ll post further updates as I recieve them.
The recent volcanic activity in Iceland has resulted in high levels of volcanic ash in the higher atmosphere over many parts of Europe. The prevailing weather has pushed dangerous amounts of it over the UK. Flights over Scotland have been grounded since this morning and now the aviation authorities have called for an end to all air traffic (except emergencies) for 6 hours in UK airspace from midday until 18:00 (BST) today.
One of the fligfhts impacted has been Dr Ed Mitchell’s from the US. He should be in the UK now but is not. Thus the program for today has been cancelled. Volcanism and weather are highly unpredictable. I hope to get an update later today regarding the program for tomorrow.
By Gurbir 5 Comments
Despite the now 50 years of the space race, only 24 men have left Earth orbit on a journey to another world. Between 1968 and 1972, nine Apollo missions went to the moon. Of the 24 men, 3 went twice and 12 landed on the lunar surface. Of those 12, only 9 remain and one of them, Edgar Mitchell, will be visiting Yorkshire next week.
Edgar Mitchell was the Lunar module pilot of Apollo 14, the first Apollo mission after the unsuccessful Apollo 13. The crew of Apollo 14 included Alan Shepard and Stuart Roosa both have since died.
This is the fifth astronaut that has come to Pontefract, a visit arranged predominantly with the sole effort of Ken Willoughby. The evening of Friday April 16th at 19:15 is the formal event but a smaller select group will meet for dinner on Thursday 15th, tickets are currently available for both days. Download this document for all the details including Ken’s telephone number.
A short additional presentation on the Bloodhound SSC will open the evening event on Friday 16th.
Who is coming next year? Preparations are in the early stages but one of the following
If you had the task of gathering all of humanity’s knowledge of cosmology in one place, how would you do it? Answers to questions such as, How big is the Earth? At what date and time will the Moon be full again? What makes the Sun shine? How old is the Universe? Today a good place to start the project would be to scour the sources online. In about 150AD Claudius Ptolemaeus, better known as Ptolemy, a Greek national with Roman citizenship living in Egypt, attempted to do just that. He is best known for his encyclopaedic work written in ancient Greek “Syntaxis Mathematica”, perhaps better known as the Almagest from the Arabic Al magisti “the greatest”. He was an industrious author of many scientific and mathematical treaties but he also collected works going back hundreds of years.
The Almagest was the premier source of knowledge for describing the cosmos for almost two thousand years. Nothing of the original survives, only hand written copies of hand written copies.
Today’s episode is partially about one such copy, A seven hundred year old manuscript identified recently in the special collections of the Brotherton Library in the University of Leeds. Only parts of it is the Almagest. The manuscript was kept by Anthony Askew, Joseph windham and then lord Brotherton who donated it to the University of Leeds.
This episode is also about how information is transmitted through history. The value that successive individuals, societies and civilisations put on them. The inevitable errors in the mishmash of translations over hundreds of years from one language (Ancient Greek, Syriac, Arabic, Latin and English) to another or the periodic attempts by one scribe to diligently copy the work of another. In early 2009 Dr Regine May and Professor Malcolm Heath came across a 14th century manuscript catalogued as a work of Astrology and discovered it contained elements of Ptolemy’s Almagest. The manuscript in three volumes has yet to receive detailed scholarly scrutiny.
In today’s episode there are 4 contributors. Dr Regine May outlines how the almost accidental discovery of this manuscript came about and Dr Oliver Pickering, the keeper of the special collections describes how the library acquired the manuscript. A live recording of Professor Malcolm Heath, Dr Allan Chapman and Dr Oliver Pickering inspecting the manuscript in the Brotherton Library.
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Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who read and wrote about the ancient Greek culture. Perhaps it was the writings from the ancient Greek civilisation which lead him to conclude The future influences the present just as much as the past.
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