Rendevouz with Rama

Anybody read this? Arthur C. Clarke's book...the best hard sci-fi I read, but I have not read all that much hard sci-fi and there is quite a bit. I think Niven's Ringworld qualifies, although a lot of what is lost in Ringworld is the humor, and the aliens are characterized so well the hard bits de-magnify. Which is funny to say about Ringworld isn't it?

But the point is I met a Russian agent, here in the United States, stationed, as he was clearly military and in no way interested in becoming a citizen. In Houston, which is a strategic location as its a good part of the Oil that runs a modern military.

Yet, we loved him. I'll call him Ivan. He had his blood type tattoo'd to his chest, and behaved in the way a Vet does regarding his service...when it had been expected of him to do his worst, or best.

Ivan looked less fit than I. Being in Houston I also had a friend, well a few, that worked at NASA. Dan, one of the NASA friends, spoke Russian and so when I had a party Dan and Ivan really hit it off and Dan then later related that Ivan had flown Migs.
I went to work out with Ivan. I looking quite fit for having been a Jock pretty much the first twenty years of my life (I was in my mid thirties and indeed, keeping fit...). I was always one of the weakest in strength but then I played better than most and most of team sports really is "game head" and speed, not strength.
Ivan, again, looking not all that buff or fit, proceded to do, over a brief stretch of time, 18 reps with 200 pounds. He said he hadn't been there in months, but that also, and this is worth mentioning, that he had negotiated Bally's, which did indeed have these ridiculous negotiations, to a penny a day for the rest of his life.

The point is, Rendezvous with Rama was published in 1973, long after the conception of using gravity well to swing or fling satellites about the Solar System (and beyond), thus conserving fuel. Ivan, who was making a side living writing English papers for local University of Houston graduates, and otherwise was strinkingly intelligent, did not understand gravity assist.
I was really flabbergasted, but if one looks at the Russian space program, this seems evident.

Furthermore, I dont know if it was due to too many "Boy meets Tractor" social realistic strictures in storytelling, but Ivan did not understand "Good Cop vs. Bad Cop". Both of these I had to explain, and Ivan was tolerant of me, and otherwise didn't care to listen to me.
His girlfriend, owning some substantial piece of real estate, was using me to estrange him from her, a sorta of Jules and Jim situation, and furthermore, I had suggested to him that American were manufacturing chipped guns which would malfunction when receiving a satellite transmission, which was patent mis-information. So, he didn't really want to listen to me anyway.

But this indicates to me a clear advantage in general knowledge possessed by those who care enough to be literate, ask questions beyond the education provided in State school curriculum, naturally, as per the wisdom of the founders. It confirms the natural advantage of having a first amendment, and of course, the Scientific establishment benefitting from such a habit or custom...which it is indeed now.

This stand in contract, literally, the rest of the world.
And, it figures that in this dawn of a new age, a leap forward akin in writing, such a custom serves to create a trump in speculation, critique, debate and dissemination of ideas far beyond whatever secrecy all other states have grown to customarily value, including Europe. I might exclude France or Holland, or, the wisdom of Italy in creating the conditions of the scientific genius to thrive, or indeed the German value in scholarship above all else, including Germany (at least according to Nietzche), but, not having it part of the enforced Government policy, therein, creating a vigorous culture and custom, I would have to conclude that the United States gleans from this great cloud of sound and fury signifying nothing, great advantages in technical and scientific progress.

Which is also evident insofar as the United States founded and promulgated the Computer Industry and the Digital Age. Not that Europe at large contributed nothing...one thinks of CERN's own nascent network, but, one could transfer such accomodation and careful non discriminatory micro aggression to China and conclude otherwise that more minds would contribute more knowledge.

Its highly likely I am wrong about Russian science, as they all might have figured out Gravity assist and Ivan just was not informed. One did not have a Popular Science in Russia, but instead, an ideological editorial staff imposing upon the whole of Soviet publishing a blanket of prejudice meant to provide a sense of safety in its people.

Gravity assist is rather obvious from the Einstein observation of light bending, and inherent in any curvature there is acceleration. The whole of material reality then bends and accelerates about this increasing hierarchy of material...and invites a popular consumption of the eventual dumpsite of all acceleration, the popular black hole.
Oh, how I love the Goths of my GenX!

But regardless of my sentiments for belonging in time to a smarter generation of American yet, I wanted to then address the mystery of why a Galaxy spins without twisting, but, like a fat person snug in almost ill fitting suit...requiring a bit more effort but then also more evocative spin, the answer to this mystery, which makes Spiral Galaxies look less like they are material draining into a black hole and more like stable structures.

They explain this by dark energy and dark matter, two different things. Dark energy, according to a Goth interpretation, would be issuing from Dark Matter, but lets just keep with the Science!

Dark Matter is considered a accelerent along the outer edge of the galaxies and contribute the perfect amount of extra energy to make the edge of the galaxy spin around, like a LP record on a turntable, and not spin as one would intuitively assume, faster in the middle and slow outside.

I mean, the spiral shape otherwise makes this a foregone conclusion. But no, there is this accelerant around the galaxy that adds spin. There are a lot of satellite galaxies and even globular clusters, orbiting probably much like moons around Jupiter.
And, I may be too much given to popular science descriptions wherein the very detail, some of the galaxy does move slower, some moves faster. I do remember something about gravititational arms spiralling out, into which stars...bright indicators not necesssarily of gravitational increases...stars then flow down into and then bottom out and flow back up out of...as if the gravity well was not a singular point but a line issuing from the sheer power of Galactic central gravitation having folded over on itself over time to create a kind of criss crossing tornadoes of invisible galactic trenches not unlike the way the Sun's Heliosphere is manifolding.

The model then might mean that large gyros, perhaps counter rotating as they spin, exist as a galactic structure that stretches not too far beyond the evidential stars..again, the stars are not like pointillist "markers", wherein, we fill in the invisible shape as in connect the dots.
That just the prejudice of the human eye.

It might be hard to describe, while a drawing easy to make it clear, but the shape might look like, edge on from outside looking, that the Galaxy, spiral in general, is composed of so many, well, substantially gigantic, counter-rotating wheels, slightly bent upward and downward, which then funnel down, twisting on axes, to connect to the small black hole at the center.
Two shallow glass plates, places back to back, seen edge on.
The distribution of gravitation energy riding a carrier wave of the Black hole.

If you built a wheeled device, setting each wheel alongside each other, these would work together...(these theoretical wheels not of rubber!) to make its neighbor spin opposite. This so doing, creates a motion of material that would reach a point of homeostasis?

One mystery is the spinning black hole moving faster at its equator than at its pole.

It seeking to build a vision of the Universe we may look at the fine distribution of all matter in equal parts, then subject to initial spins and then later spins, which apply themselves in greater power until they, well, exceed human capability to measure.

Aren't we all looking out from the gravity of a local supermassive black hole? Sure, the distribution of matter might create a kind of ordinary state of super conductivity, insofar as all matter is lining up in straighter and straighter lines as we zoom out, but then within this black coffee we see the heat and pull of black holes creating shapes...increasing Ohms and distorting light trajectories.

To continue on, what would the straightest light would be the tiniest, but even as nuetrinoes are straighter line, something makes them shift in electrical potential, something imparts charge or spin...though, in detecting this probably slow spin we might have evident of gravitational effects from more powerful sources, further away.

That is, if the line of the trajectory of a neutrino could be drawn as three colors, so we can see the spin by it twisting..and the trajectory twists less than all other trajectories, and the twisting is not uniform...its not like one end it held over there and the other over here and we turn the threads in opposite directions! But, this twist occurs here....and over there, perhaps with a periodicty that is more symmetrical that any other spin, as its slight changes in potential/spin less effects, then becomes the basis of the extra influence creating variations in the heavier particles trajectories signature spin.

Because the spin is so much less the neutrinos signature is more legible.