Somewhat eccentric New Zealand astronomer who revived the catastrophic
hypothesis of the origin of the Solar System, first suggested by Buffon,
by proposing that the planets were produced when the Sun underwent a grazing impact
with another star. In 1926 Bickerton exposed the limits of his predictive powers
when, commenting on the prospects for space exploration, he wrote that:
This foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example
of the absurd length to which vicious specialization will carry scientists working
in thought-tight compartments.... For a projectile entirely to escape the gravitation
of the Earth, it needs a velocity of 7 miles a second. The thermal energy of
a gram at this speed is 15,180 calories.... The energy of our most violent explosive-nitroglycerin-is
less than 1,500 calories per gram. Consequently, even had the explosive nothing
to carry, it has only one tenth of the energy necessary to escape the Earth....
Hence the proposition appears basically impossible...
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