Project Ozma searched for intelligent life (SETI) by examining selected stars for artificial radio signals. It was run by the astronomer Frank Drake, who selected Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani as the first targets. Both are near the Solar System and are similar to the Sun. No artificial signals were found after 200 hours of observations. Subsequent radio searches of this star system have also turned up negative.
On December 19, 2012, evidence was presented for a system of five planets orbiting Tau Ceti. The planets' estimated minimum masses are between two and six times the Earth's mass. Their orbital periods range from 14 to 640 days. One of them, Tau Ceti e, appears to orbit about half as far from Tau Ceti as Earth does from the Sun. With Tau Ceti's luminosity of 52% that of the Sun and a distance from the star of 0.552 AU, the planet would receive 1.71 times as much stellar radiation as Earth does. This is slightly less than Venus, which gets 1.91 times Earth's. Some research places it within the star's habitable zone.
The habitable zone for a star is where liquid water could be present on an Earth-like planet. For Tau Ceti, this is at a radius of 0.55–1.16 AU, where 1 AU is the average distance from the Earth to the Sun.
The Expanse (TV): Destination of the Nauvoo, on a 100 year voyage. The ship is 500m cylinder, 2000m long. It would require a continuous acceleration of 0.05 m/s for 50 years, and an equal deceleration at the halfway point.
The Foundation book series by Isaac Asimov: The home star of the planet Aurora, first planet to be colonized by humans.
Oliver Jeffers
Oliver Jeffers (born 1977) is an artist, illustrator and writer from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from the University of Ulster in 2001. He creates art for children and adult alike.
His picture books, including 'How to catch a star, Lost and found, Stuck have been highly acclaimed. "This Moose Belongs to Me" won the Irish Book Awards Children's Book of
the Year, Junior category in 2012.
Originally from Belfast, Oliver now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His favourite colour is striped.
Here is a list of books that Oliver has illustrated:
The Day the Crayons Quit,
How to Catch a Star,
Lost and Found,
The Way Back Home,
Up and Down,
Oliver Jeffers presents the Incredible Book Eating Boy,
the Great Paper Caper,
The Heart and the Bottle,
Stuck,
This Moose Belongs To Me,
The Hueys in The New Jumper,
The Hueys in It Wasn't Me,
The Hueys in None the Number (A counting Adventure,)
Once Upon an Alphabet (Short stories For all the Letters.)
In 2013, Jeffers illustrated the vinyl record cover for the U2 song "Ordinary Love". It is a drawing of Nelson Mandela.
Blowfly (musician)
Clarence Henry Reid (February 14, 1939 – January 17, 2016), better known by the stage name Blowfly, was an American musician, singer-songwriter, comedian, rapper and producer. He released over 25 parody albums as "Blowfly" and another three albums as "Clarence Reid". He also wrote ten songs for Gwen McCrae.
Blowfly was born in Cochran, Georgia. His daughter, Tracy Reid, was a professional basketball player.
Blowfly died from liver cancer on January 17, 2016 in Florida, aged 76.
Bob Harkey
Bob Harkey (June 23, 1930 – January 16, 2016) was an American racecar driver. He was in the USAC Championship Car series. He raced in the 1963–1979 seasons. He had 85 career starts, including the Indianapolis 500 in 1964, 1971 and 1973–1976. He finished in the top ten 23 times. His best finish in 4th position in 1964. He was born in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Harkley died on January 16, 2016 in Indianapolis, Indiana, aged 85.
Nazi eugenics
Nazi eugenics were a set of beliefs and rules that were very important to Nazi Germany during World War II. These beliefs said that the Aryan race was the master race – the best race of all – and all other races were inferior (not as good). There were also many other people who the Nazis believed were "life unworthy of life," like people with disabilities. These ideas about eugenics were at the center of the Nazis' beliefs and eventually helped lead to the Holocaust.
Because they did not want these "inferior" people in German society, the Nazis decided to get rid of them, using many different strategies. They began with people with disabilities. The Nazis forced more than 400,000 people with disabilities to be sterilized (to have surgery that would make it impossible for them to have children). They also killed over 300,000 people with disabilities in a program called Action T4. In this program, the Nazis sent people with disabilities to places like Hadamar and Hartheim Euthanasia Centres to be killed. These people were killed with lethal injections and poison gas, in vans and gas chambers at the Euthanasia Centres.
Using what they learned by killing people with disabilities, the Nazis soon built extermination camps (death camps). The Nazis' goal was to use these death camps to exterminate (kill all of) the Jewish and Roma people in Europe. The Nazis also sent many other people who they thought were inferior to the death camps and to concentration camps, where they were forced to work as slaves.
The Nazis' ideas about eugenics said that many different groups of people were "inferior" or "unworthy of life." These included:
The eugenics movement was very popular in the United States by the time it spread to Germany. California eugenicists began writing things that encouraged eugenics and sterilization, and sent them to German scientists and medical professionals. By 1933, California had forced more people to get sterilized than all of the other U.S. states combined. The Nazis got the idea for their compulsory (forced) sterilization program partly from California's program.
In 1927, The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology (KWIA) was created in Berlin with a lot of financial support from the American philanthropic group, the Rockefeller Foundation. The KWIA's director was Eugen Fischer, a German professor of medicine, anthropology, and eugenics. Fischer said he had found scientific proof of the Nazis' eugenics ideas, and the Nazis used his work to justify their eugenics policies.
In 1934, California eugenics leader C.M. Goethe visited Germany. At that time, more than 5,000 people per month were being forcibly sterilized in Germany. Goethe bragged to a coworker:
""You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought . . . I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people.""
Eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin often bragged that his Model Eugenic Sterilization laws had been put into action in Germany's Nuremberg Laws. In 1936, Laughlin was invited to an award ceremony at Heidelberg University in Germany. (The ceremony was scheduled on the anniversary of the day Hitler fired all Jews from the Heidelberg faculty two years earlier.) Laughlin was offered an honorary doctorate for his work on the "science of racial cleansing." Laughlin could not afford to attend, and had to pick his doctorate up from the Rockefeller Institute. Afterwards, he proudly shared the award with his co-workers, remarking that he felt that it showed the "common understanding of German and American scientists of the nature of eugenics."
Adolf Hitler read racial hygiene books while he was in Landsberg Prison. "Racial hygiene" was a set of ideas that said that only certain people should be allowed to have children. People who belonged to races that were seen as "inferior" would not be allowed to have children. This way, those races would eventually die out.