"02 - Birth of an Age" - читать интересную книгу автора (BeauSeigneur James)
Mary confined her study to a small region on the edge of one of the voids of space located by the naked eye in the constellation Bootes. As she moved to the next image she found something unexpected. Three dots of light appeared not to be moving away from the earth, but toward it. Quickly she skipped ahead to two other images of the same area which had been taken two and four hours after the first. Both of them had the same three points of light. There was only one logical explanation, but when she checked a recent update of \\\Q Astrological Survey she found that no known major asteroids should have appeared in the area.
Looking at her watch, she decided this was as good a stopping point as any and shut off her equipment. In the morning she would report the discovery to her thesis advisor. For now she would celebrate her apparent find with a pizza. Identifying new asteroids was not a major discover}', but it was a first for Mary. No matter how insignificant to the body of science, the joy of discovery was the same.
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The next morning, Mary Ludford showed the images to her advisor, Dr. Jung Xiou, who agreed with her conclusion that the unidentified bodies were most likely asteroids. "It's not my specialty," Dr. Xiou admitted, "but they appear to be fairly large. When were these made?"
She checked her log even though she was sure of the answer. "Two weeks ago," she answered.
"Okay, you need to make out a report of the discovery and get a copy over to CBAT," he said, referring to the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams of the International Astronomical Union, which serves as a clearinghouse for astronomy reporting. "I'll call and let them know you're coming."
"Great," she said. "I'll get right to work on the report."
"I'll also call Dr. Waters at Mount Wilson to see if we can schedule some additional shots of it."
"Good luck. I understand they're pretty booked up."
"There would be something wrong if they weren't," Xiou responded. "So, how is the rest of your work progressing?" he asked, referring to her thesis project.
"Oh, plodding along. I should have another interim report ready to show you in about a week." Dr. Xiou nodded approval. "Let me know what you find out from Mount Wilson," she said, as she started to leave.
"Of course," Xiou answered, going back to his work. "Oh, Mary," he called, catching her before she got out the door, "have you come up with names for them?"
Mary Ludford knew that initially the asteroids would be assigned a code for the year and month in which they were first sighted Ч in this case, 2021 K for the first half of June in the year 2021 Ч followed by the order of the sighting during that period. Later, when the asteroids were sighted again on their next orbit, they would officially come to be known by the names she selected. She also knew that the convention for naming asteroids was pretty much left up to the imagination of the discoverer. There were some named for Greek and Roman gods, others for scientists, political figures, poets, and philosophers; a few were named for cities; there were even four discovered in the early 1990s named John, Paul, George, and Ringo. "I think I like Calvin, Hobbes, and Wormwood," she said with a smile.
32 Birth of an Age
The idea evoked only confusion from Dr. Xiou. "Calvin and Hobbes I think I understand. They're from that old comic strip. But Wormwood? You mean like in Hamlet?" he asked, referring to a line from the Shakespearean play.5
"No," Mary answered. ^Miss Wormwood. That was the name of Calvin's first grade teacher."
"Well, that's a trivia question I would have missed," Xiou confessed.
"I guess it's kinda silly, really," Man' admitted. "I tried to think of the name of the little girl in the comic strip but all I could think of was his teacher." Mary was becoming a little embarrassed. "If you don't like it, maybe I could ..."
"No, it's fine," he said reassuringly. "I was just sort of hoping you'd name one after me."
"Who could pronounce it?" she said with a laugh.
June 21,2021
It was two and a half weeks later before Mount Wilson Observatory in California could schedule another set of images of the three asteroids Mar)' Ludford had discovered. What the images revealed was significant enough to merit a face-to-face call. By a fortunate coincidence, Mary Ludford was with Xiou when the call arrived. At the request of Dr. James Waters at Mount Wilson Observatory on the other side of the country, the call was switched to Xiou's wall display monitor. In a moment the large flat board blinked on and Dr. Waters appeared life-sized before them. The clarity of the picture gave the distractingly persistent impression that he was in the next office and that someone had simply cut a window between the two rooms. The impression was dramatically reinforced by the screen's most remarkable feature: each hexagonal centimeter of the screen also functioned as a camera, sending its individual signal to the corresponding hexagon on the receiving screen. With some help from the system's computer, which compensated for the edges between camera tiles, the multiple angles of view made the image appear virtually three-dimensional. This impression was reinforced by the fact that as the viewer moved
6 Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2, William Shakespeare.
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