Филип Керр - The Second Angel

The astronomical world’s largest reflector telescope, the three-hundred-inch Hawking telescope, is located at the Censorinus Space Observatory, just a few miles from TB.

The Moon has the largest solar-generating power plant: The Theophihis Crater, close to the Moon’s equator, contains over ten thousand photovoltaic cells, each of which is ten square meters in size.

The Moon has the largest sunspot study facility on either world. This is of key importance to predictions of Earth’s weather.

At the time of writing, there are over five thousand prostitutes licensed to work on the Moon.

Sadly, the famous campanile, built in 1185, collapsed in 2047, causing the death of ninety-three Pisan tourists.

After Charles Boyle, the 4th Earl of Orrery, for whom the first such object was made, in 1790.

The sole of each shoe contains as much as twenty-five pounds of lead, which occurs in considerable quantity on the Moon. Up to fifty pounds in weight can be added to a person in this way.

From ‘Auguries of Innocence,’ by William Blake. The quotation has been adapted by the authors of the Galileo Guide to Good Hotel Keeping. ‘Build our Nation’s fate’ should read ‘Build that nation’s fate.’ No doubt the people at the Galileo felt justified in this small alteration by virtue of the fact that the Moon exists as an independent nation-state, by the terms of the Treaty on Principles Governing the Colonization of the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies within Our Solar System, 2025.

Quantum theory. A theory in physics which refutes relativity by stating that an observer can influence reality and that events do occur randomly — an argument with which Einstein disagreed.

In other words, are the laws governing the behavior of the simulated system the same for an observer looking at the system from the outside as they are for the observer who is inside the system?

Holovision.

Named after Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon.

It makes no difference, for time is a quantum concept, and other times are merely special cases of other universes.

Richard Milhous Nixon, thirty-seventh president of the United States, 1969–1974.

Painted 1508–1512.

Indeed, as depicted by Michelangelo, God and Adam seem almost to be equal, for their bodies are quite complementary. Frankly, this particular detail has about it something more of the pagan than the truly Christian.

There are three hierarchies of angels, each of three orders in descending ranks. These are (1) seraphim, (2) cherubim, (3) thrones, (4) dominions, (5) virtues, (6) powers, (7) principalities, (8) archangels, and (9) angels.

For example, the Church of Sammael, the Sandalphonists, and the New Witnesses of Raguel.

Keeping things cool in space can be a problem, especially during Earth reentry, when outside temperatures can reach seven hundred four degrees Celsius. The answer is the space fridge, a combination of technologies that are several hundred years apart. Partly it is based on a mechanical cooler known as a Stirling cycle fridge, a device conceived in 1816 by Robert Stirling, a Scottish clergyman. This technology cools the contents to only 20 kelvins, still well above absolute zero. The final cooling stage, in which the temperature inside the fridge drops to 0.1 kelvins, operates using helium dilution, and was developed by Alain Benoit, in 1991. Without the space fridge, the transport of perishable materials in bulk, to and from the Earth, would be impossible.

Electron-beam welding was perfected in the Ukraine, during the late twentieth century and used on the Russian space program. Electrons are boiled off from a heated filament, accelerated, and then focused onto the target metal or rock. When the electrons collide with the atoms in the subject material, their kinetic energy is converted to heat energy. However, any gas will disrupt the beam, causing dangerous arcing between tool and surface. This makes the tool ideal for work in the vacuum of space.

The Prisoner of Chillon, i. (1816).

Rocket Control System.

Manufactured to withstand only eight hundred and sixty degrees Celsius.

Thermoluminescent dosimeter. This device measures cumulative radiation exposure through radiation-induced changes in a piece of crystal.

Aitken Basin is a giant impact crater — fifteen hundred miles in diameter and seven and a half miles deep — at the Moon’s South Pole. Here the temperature never rises above two hundred and eighty degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Ice has existed here for billions of years, likely the result of a huge frozen asteroid. Ice is mined by the Selenice & Methane Company.

A famous thought-experiment devised by Erwin Schrödinger, in 1935, describing the difficulties that are inherent in the field of quantum mechanics. A box contains a radioactive source, a gun (in some cases describing the paradox, a bottle of poison is preferred to a gun), and a live cat. The equipment is so arranged that the radioactive source may decay and emit a neutron, and in doing so will trigger the gun to shoot the cat. But if the radioactive source does not decay, the cat lives. Being a quantum particle, however, the radioactive source doesn’t have to choose between these two possible states: It may combine both positions — what is known as a superposition. If the experiment lasts just long enough for a 50 percent chance of radioactive decay then the nature of quantum mechanics suggests that the cat is neither alive nor dead until the box is opened — indeed that the cat occupies a ghostly position in a limbo between life and death. Some of the greatest scientific minds have wrestled with this paradox and failed to make sense of it. As Einstein said, ‘If quantum physics is correct, then the world is crazy.’

The Doppler effect describes the way in which stationary objects return a transmitted signal at the same frequency. Objects moving toward the transmitter return the signal at a higher frequency, whereas objects moving away return it at a lower frequency.