Normally, through the night, I listen to London based radio station LBC, but recently I've been so incensed by one particular extreme left wing, republican, misogynistic, Scottish, uber opinionated, Corbyn loving, sun hating, football hating, Mrs May obsessed, snowflake, presenter, that I've changed my early morning allegiance to the BBC's World Service.
The other morning I came across a short 10 minute item called 'More or Less'; a programme dedicated to numbers.
The proposition was Carl Sagan's 'There are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the world's beaches'.
Well, impressive calculations were made, and huge figures bandied about, and the conclusion was that Sagan's statement was correct.
In fact they even came up with an estimation for the number of stars in the sky as being....
10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
That's a 1, followed by 22 zeros. About one zero above the calculation for the grains of sand.
p.s. If the programme is on iPlayer; I recommend.
29 comments:
It's a good thing you've got all that off your chest in the first paragraph Cro. Otherwise you may have had an apoplexy!
Alphie
I am always surprised by the many topics we can learn about.
I'm sure I left out a few of his qualities.
It was only a short 10 min programme, but totally fascinating.
Big numbers confuse me.
Greetings Maria x
Especially when they have 22 zeros!
Have been an admirer of Sagan for decades. His tv series Cosmos was groundbreaking. Hard to believe there is still so much willful ignorance in the world with hundreds of millions of our fellow humans being kept in the dark and fed on primitive nonsense.
That's exactly what it is Gwil; primitive nonsense!
You're not too keen on that LBC presenter then?
Not terribly. Does it show?
I listen to LBC in the night too. I quite like Ian Collins who is on 10/11pm til 1 / 2 I think. Some of the later ones really annoy me! Never can quite make my mind up about Steve Allen, though he does make me smile when he is being particularly rude about people. Too much repeating with him though.
I like the image you have chosen with this post. It reminds me of the periphery vision test at the opticians.
I really don't like either Darren A or Matt S; they both get on my nerves with their continuous Leftie bias. As for Steve A he repeats himself almost every day, and keeps having silly conversations with his 'producer'; but as you say he can be very funny when slagging-off celebs. Nick Abbott is funny.
I was looking for an image of the Milky Way as we see it from here, but I couldn't find one.
More or Less is one of the best factual programs on the BBC. They investigate spurious bullshit mostly. I have a feeling that the Universe is limitless, so I would keep adding zeros until I reached the other side of it.
Can’t stand James O’Brien but, Steve Allen makes me laugh and we’ve listened to Clive Bull and Nick Ferrari for years. That info about the stars v grains of sand is pretty mind blowing ! XXXX
James obrien is an intellectual bully
I think they did quality it as 'OUR Universe'; or some such.
For a 'phone-in' station, they do prefer their own opinions to anyone else's. The worst is probably 'lightweight' Matt Stadlen. Dreadful.
All this listening through the night business - I always thought going to bed meant one of two things - going to sleep or making love. Listening to the radio is quite foreign to me but the ideas of that comparison between grains of sand and the stars is absolutely amazing. The one thing that trouble me though Gwil - surely the number of grains of sand is constantly increasin - I always thought sand was constantly being made by the breaking down of rocks by the sea and the wind.
The grain of sand idea is an old one. They now say that there are as many stars in the universe as there are atoms in your body, Pat.
Weave, I actually sleep for about 4 hours each night, the rest of the time I am awake and listening to the radio. I have never taken sleeping pills; maybe I should.
It's nice when you come across a programme that really makes you listen. It's a little gem.
This programme certainly was. It was how they calculated everything that was so fascinating.
There's more than one?
Love that programme, have listened to it on BBC Radio 4. There's an old Science Fiction short story along those lines. Monks in some obscure monastery possible high in a Greek mountain, whose God given task was to count all the stars. Two visitors who had taken refuge and had set off on their onward journey looked up in the night sky and saw one by one the stars disappearing. Wish I could remember who wrote it.
BBC Radio has always been good, but I tend to just listen to the 'Radio 4 Extra' these days.
OUR galaxy maybe?
If you were "incensed by a snowflake", you are my kind of man!!!!! ,-)
Thank you for commenting in my blog. Thus, I found yours, set in a lovely area, which I will greatly enjoy visiting.
'Nana Nanci'
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