Vulcan Scientific Fields

FIELDS OF STUDY Vunailar t'Orenaya In nearly all cases, it is easy to determine the Golic Vulcan name for a discipline or field of study in most of the scientific, technical and medical disciplines. In contemporary usage, all of these terms are formed from a descriptive root with "-tal" (meaning "study" or "-ology") suffixed. Here is a selection of examples: Acoustics -- Ralash-tal ("sound-study") Aerology -- Sov-tal ("air-study") Aerodynamics -- Sov-dvun-tal ("air-motion-study") Aeronautic...

 The Creation of Carbon in Stars

The first step occurs when older stars start to accumulate helium, which is produced when two hydrogen nuclei collide and fuse with each other. This fusion is how stars create the energy that warms us. Two helium atoms can in turn collide to form beryllium, an atom whose nucleus contains four protons. Once beryllium is formed, it could in principle fuse with a third helium nucleus to form carbon. But that doesn't happen, because the isotope of beryllium that is formed decays almost immediatel...

 What is a "Law of Nature"?

Our modern understanding of the term "law of nature" is an issue philosophers argue at length, and it is a more subde question than one may at first think. For example, the philosopher John W. Carroll compared the statement "All gold spheres are less than a mile in diameter" to a statement like "All uranium-23 spheres are less than a mile in diameter." Our observations of the world tell us that there are no gold spheres larger than a mile wide, and we can be pretty confident there never will ...