More Chance & Necessity, Plus a Sky-Lapse

(Note: The camera data from my video are at the bottom. If you’re here for that, scroll down.)

I’m about halfway through the definitive work on the mainstream view of the Manhattan Project, a book called The Making of the Atomic Bomb, the audio version. Endless, over 40 hours, but very technical, which is what I was looking for.

I’ll have to get back to you on this, but so far the stuff that bothers me (stuff indicating hoax) remains the same as always: First, I don’t like coincidences and the big one is that they just happened to finish the project right at the end of the war, after more than three years of trying. Just in time to ‘use’ it to supposedly finish off the Japanese while showing the Russians how bad ass we are.

Three years and you juuuust get there at the last second. Perfect timing!

One thing I’m looking for (in the books, etc.) is a verification that they didn’t have enough Uranium 235 (enriched U-238) to make more than one Uranium bomb. This is important because they claim that the one they tested at Trinity was of the ‘implosion’ type with a plutonium core.

Think about it. The bombs used two different elements to ‘chain react’ and two completely different triggering techniques. It’s almost as if the two bombs had nothing to do with each other. Almost.  (The Hiroshima bomb was called ‘Little Man’, the Nagasaki bomb was dubbed Fat Man. This was based on their different shapes, and very different triggering mechanisms/theories.)

Point being that the first drop (Little Boy on Hiroshima) was of a bomb type that was never tested. This to me is the biggest red flag that something stinks. They claim they did it this way because they were so sure it would work. No testing needed. Keep in mind that one of the major issues was whether an explosive chain reaction was even theoretically possible. See, the chain reaction had to take place (completely)  within a few millionths of a second. If it was too slow the core material would expand (a minor explosion) before the fast neutrons could do their work in splitting the billions of nuclei in the U-235 core.

The core was about the size of a grapefruit, right? The U-235 atoms are packed very tightly; they had to stay that way for exactly the right length of time. If, in a millionth of a second after detonation the core has expanded to, say, the size of a basketball, the bomb might be a dud. A minor poof, if a nasty one. No ‘kiloton-class’ explosion. And they never did a full test until Trinity. And they had no way of knowing how much expansion would take place at the start of the chain reaction.

Before Trinity, they had only ‘tickled the dragon’ by zipping two sub-critical masses together for an instant — this is shown clearly in Fat Man and Little Boy, when, due to a (fictitious) accident, my old buddy John Cusack gets a dose of radiation trying to prevent an explosive chain reaction.

They never created an explosive chain reaction in the Little Boy bomb design (which was basically a cannon shooting one sub-critical mass into another) until Hiroshima. IMO it was nuts to drop the first bomb using a design that was never tested. Full stop. Period. And so forth.

Come to think of it,  what they’re saying — without actually saying it — is that they didn’t have enough plutonium for two bombs either. If they did, why wouldn’t they use the plutonium device (Fat Man) — which was supposedly tested at Trinity — at Hiroshima, since this first demonstration was supposed to be critical, not only to end the war (bullshit, IMO) but to scare the Russians? They knew that design would work because they had tested it! But, obviously, since the Trinity and Nagasaki bombs were both plutonium devices, they did have enough for two. Again, something isn’t kosher here.

This one really bugs me.

Anyway, their excuse that they didn’t have enough Uranium for two bombs had better hold up. So far in my research this isn’t clear. I’ll get back to you on it, but if the lack of Uranium turns out to be bullshit, logic tells us that in August of 1945 they didn’t really have a viable nuke. Trinity and Japan were faked.

There is other stuff to look into — plus the idea that nukes are impossible in principal (likely because an explosive chain reaction is impossible) — but for me the dearth of U-235 is the biggie, especially given that they started to make the U-235 isotope in 1942, three full years before the (as it would turn out) ‘deadline’ of the end of the war. As I say, I’ll get back to you. (If they faked Trinity and Japan, this would rival Apollo and 9/11 for the Biggest Lie of all time, even if nukes were eventually developed.)

Addendum: So far in my reading I’ve come across a bit of circumstantial evidence that gives me pause: In 1942 Oppenheimer informed General Groves that they’d need what turned out to be way more Uranium than was ultimately necessary (by a factor of 10, I believe it was). So Groves should have geared up the Oak Ridge facility (where they made the U-235) for waaaay more than the amount they really needed. See where I’m going here?

I mean the one thing that would kill the project completely would be ‘not enough’ core material. And with three years notice, they are claiming they had juuuust enough. Not sure that I buy that.

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I was a bit disappointed in the comments to my last post, as you may already know. I wish there was more thought on the real implications of The Moon Numbers (yes, some of you got it, I know). Someone was surprised, they said, that I already didn’t believe in a higher power. Talk about missing the point! First, at least for me, the difference between believing something and knowing it to be true is… fucking enormous. Secondly, the numbers tell us a lot about the nature of this higher power, stuff we did not know before. Also, that these numbers are so utterly obvious in their meaning begs another helluva question:

Why are you hearing this (presumably) for the first time from me? (I know, I ask this a lot.) I mean, isn’t this the ultimate in Big News? Why, at the very least, don’t religous/evangelical nutcases bring this up… at every chance they get?! Or even secular Intelligent Design believers (as I have been for a while)?

Seriously, think about it. This is about as strong a piece of empirical evidence as you can even imagine for the existence of an ‘Intelligent Designer.’ (Or, for me, evidence of Design, maybe without an actual Designer.) I’ve tried alerting the scientists who have proved neo-Darwinism to be a crock but have heard nothing back.

Addendum: Remember the movie Contact, with Jodie Foster. Remember how they knew that the message was from an intelligent source? Well this is exactly like that.

The problem with these guys is that they are almost all active Christians. Unfortunately, these very smart guys (they are all males) — like the folks at Electric Universe — talk a good ‘follow the evidence wherever it leads’ story, but they do not walk the walk.

They talk the talk about God creating us His own image, but they don’t really mean it. See, the Higher Power who is behind The Moon Numbers is not… Divine.  Whoever/whatever arranged those numbers so they could not be due to chance  or necessity  really does have characteristics similar to us, as in the same use of logic and math to understand reality.

How to explain this, and meanwhile get across what it has to do with human nature?…

Okay, I read this excellent book called The Privileged Planet, by an astronomer and a philosopher, and their premise is that the universe has been… created (for lack of a less baggage-laden term) by an Intelligent Designer, and part of their evidence is how we get full solar eclipses. Yes, an aspect of The Moon Numbers.

Addendum: There is no religious mumbo jumbo whatsoever in the book, and the authors claim that their ‘spiritual beliefs’ do not affect their ‘science.’ To which I say, Give me a fucking break! 

There’s an evolutionary biologist named Paul Nelson at the Discovery Institute, which harbors some very smart I.D. folks. You listen to him and he’s brilliant. Then you find out that ‘in his personal, spiritual life’ he believes in Young Earth Creationism. 

In a debate I watched him assure us that this belief has no effect whatsoever on his science. And he really is brilliant. What do we do about a guy like this? 

These guys make a big deal out of how unlikely it is that the moon and sun are of identical apparent sizes, which gives the perfect eclipse effect. They tell us about all the amazing science we get because of this ‘coincidence’ — the Intelligent Designer wants us to understand physics, is what they are saying. And yes, I agree with them.

They even mention the ‘400 number’ — the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun but 400 times closer, which gives the effect. Then not only do these ‘critical thinkers’ not go any further with the ‘coincidence’ that the number is a round integer but they seem unaware of the other ‘canon of 400’ numbers that litters the math relating the sun, moon, and earth.

What the fuck is wrong with these guys? The proof is right in front of them! Not only proof of a Designer’s existence, but proof that he/she/it wants us to know of his/her/its existence!

But see, they’re Christians, and the God of the Old Testament would not work that way. ‘Doing math’ would make Him too much like us. See, we’re supposed to believe in God via faith alone. They don’t want no stinkin’ proof!

This kind of bullshit drives me up the wall. Really does. And when I get it from folks on this blog… that’s no help.

Addendum: Chance & Necessity. Say you flip a coin ten times and it comes up heads each time. Could be chance, right? Say you do it 100 times and it comes up heads each time. You know that’s necessity, i.e., it’s either a two-headed coin or some other shenanigans are going on. And if so, we know there is an intelligent agent of some sort behind it. To put it another way: Any two or more events will either be causally related (necessity) or not (chance). If neither is the case we got a stinkpot intellect in the woodpile. Get it? 

Think of something that isn’t either chance or necessity and you will always come up with an intelligent agent of some sort as the cause. 

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Speaking of weird Higher Powers, two nights ago I did one of my night sky-lapses (I do it almost every clear night) and came up with an oddity. Take a look and then I’ll explain the camera/time details.

What would this have looked like if you were watching live?

Remember that this is a shitload of still images made into a video. Each ‘frame’ is ten seconds, with a one second break between frames. This is why you get a line, then a break, then another line.

You have to picture it as a little orb of light moving upward, as an airplane would. In fact, without that incredibly bright flare, I would pass this by as a plane. (Even though planes only show a steady white light when they are landing, and this object is not landing.)

In real life, this would have been in sight for about 40 seconds. It’s hard to tell how long the flash lasted, but no more than 2 or 3 seconds, otherwise it would be more elongated.

The other oddity is that whatever it is comes into view suddenly. If it was a normal aircraft it wouldn’t suddenly appear. I mean, Where was it before we start seeing it?

I have a lot of these. Some day I’ll put ’em together, make a movie.

Allan