THE MOON AND THE SEX DRIVE (Oct, 1964)
In honor of yesterday’s Super Moon.
THE MOON AND THE SEX DRIVE
by Albert Abarbanel, Ph.D.
A discussion of theories about how the moon’s cycle affects the rise and fall of sex desire.
The moon has always played a prominent part in people’s beliefs about sex. Primitive tribes conduct elaborate fertility rites when the moon is full. The peasants of southern Germany, southern France and Spain believe that the best time to conceive a child is during a crescent moon. Police chiefs alert their sex squads for trouble when the moon is full.
TOEHOLD IN SPACE (Oct, 1954)
I’m pretty sure that if these existed, we’d have seen them by now.
TOEHOLD IN SPACE
Tiny moonlets, encircling our earth, might be used as jumping-off points for space travel.
By Stanley Carson
HOW many moons has the earth? If your answer is one, you may be wrong! Astronomers believe that there actually are one or several small satellites orbiting with tremendous speed between the earth and the moon.
If the predictions of our astronomers are correct, and there are a number of small moons circling the earth at short distances, then space travel may become a reality many more years sooner than is anticipated. For the moonlets which our government is now searching for can be used as ready-made stations in space.
The Artificial Satellite as a Research Instrument (Nov, 1956)
The launches he explains in this article were a rousing success. Explorer 1, the first successful U.S. satellite launch discovered the Van Allen Belt. So I guess that worked out pretty well for him.
I love the idea of crowdsourcing the task of actually finding the satellite once its in orbit to an army of amateur astronomers.
The Artificial Satellite as a Research Instrument
Its pay load of 10 pounds will telemeter information about conditions at the edge of space. When its batteries have run down, we can still learn much by observing its flight
by James A. Van Allen
Most persons interested in space travel will be willing to wait until the second or third spaceship has made it to the moon and back before booking their reservations. The artificial earth satellites are another story. If all goes well, the first of them will be on orbit by early 1958, during the International Geophysical Year.
Star Smaller Than the Earth (Apr, 1936)
I presume this article is talking about a neutron star, the idea of which was only about two years old at this point. Neutrons had only been discovered four years previously, in 1932.
However, since the first neutron star wasn’t discovered until 1965, it would seem that Kuiper was wrong. And yes, he is the person the Kuiper Belt is named after.
Update: As Jari points out in the comments, he was probably talking about a white dwarf star, not a neutron star. You’d think after listening to 200+ episodes of Astronomy Cast I’d have known better. It does, however, give me a chance to plug my favorite podcast, so that’s a plus.
Star Smaller Than the Earth
AFTER centuries in which they thought the Sun a very small body (one early scientist was banished for estimating it to be a hundred miles across) men reconciled themselves to the fact that it is more than a million times the size of the Earth. And the further shocking fact became apparent, that there are stars a million times larger (in volume) than the Sun. It is therefore somewhat reassuring to our pride that a star has been found, by Dr. Kuiper of Harvard, which he calculates to be smaller than
Armored Camera Survives V-2 Flight, Photographs Earth at 65-Mile Height (Feb, 1947)
Last year a group of high school students in Girona Spain launched a camera carrying balloon to over 19 miles in altitude, and got much better pictures.
The headline implies that the rocket went to a height of 65 miles, but the text says “65-mile flight” which is not exactly the same thing.
Armored Camera Survives V-2 Flight, Photographs Earth at 65-Mile Height
A motion-picture record of the 65-mile flight of a V-2 rocket launched in New Mexico, was produced by a standard American-made DeVry 35-mm camera. The camera was mounted in the midsection of the V-2 and aimed at an angle of 16-1/2 degrees to the axis of the rocket.