01 JAN 2012 by ideonexus
Sports on Phobos
Because of their small sizes, Phobos and Deimos have very low gravitational
accelerations. Their gravities do not pull very hard. The pull on Phobos is only
about one one-thousandth of that on Earth. If you can perform a standing high
jump of two or three feet on Earth, you could perform a standing high jump of
half a mile on Phobos. It would not take many such jumps to circumnavigate
Phobos. They would be graceful, slow, arcing leaps, taking many minutes to reach
the high point of the self-p...How the low gravity and tiny size of Mars' moon would affect the game.
12 APR 2011 by ideonexus
The Natural Law Argument
We now find that a great many things we thought were natural laws are really human conventions. You know that even in the remotest depths of stellar space there are still three feet to a yard. That is, no doubt, a very remarkable fact, but you would hardly call it a law of nature. And a great many things that have been regarded as laws of nature are of that kind. On the other hand, where you can get down to any knowledge of what atoms actually do, you will find they are much less subject to l...Many of the things we consider natural laws are really just human conventions.