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Lunine[edit]

Complex hydrocarbons form on the surface; there should be more ethane produced than all other compounds combined.

There is only enough atmospheric methane to maintain such chemistry for 200 million years

Titan's atmosphere only 200 million years old?

Perhaps liquids are being sequestered beneath the surface

The arroyos are likely produced by heavy rainfall and flash flooding, as occurred in 2008

Methane worlds may be more common than water worlds

tidal lock flares and cmes are no problem at 1 AU

our life may be freakish; methane life may be the most common

Methane may have been underabundant in the solar disc compared to more oxidised forms of carbon- titan's formation around a gas giant may have been key to its possessing methane

A planet that formed around an M dwarf may have smaller methane reserves, but if larger than Titan might be able to produce its own methane through serpentization

heat flow and gravitational potential energy from formation may render the primordial environment of a Terratitan very different; a solid ice crust may not be viable under a denser atmosphere, and it is likely that water and methane would not be retained as strongly

A terratitan would have a mostly methane cycle, since its higher gravity and lower uv would mean less would be photolysised.

Ferreiro[edit]

Isaac Newton had predicted that Earth would bulge at the equator, due to its spin

The French had yet to fully accept Newton, and many stood by Rene Descartes when he said that the Earth was elongated at the poles

Accurate knowledge of the Earth's shape meant more accurate tracking of ships at sea

In 1734 the ComtFor e de Mauripas suggested a trip to Peru to measure a degree of latitude at the equator. Unfortunately, there are only three places where the equator crosses land: central Africa, which was both hostile and disease-ridden; the Indonesian archepelago, which was too far away, and the northern tip of South America. Since France was than allied with Spain through the Borubon monarchy, a plan was laid to send a scientific expedition to Peru.

For 20 years, the british had sponsored the longitude prize; a contest to determine a means to measure longitude at sea, which would ultimately result in Harrison's clock

France-Spain: first international expedition

Geodesic Mission to the Equator

Pierre Bouguer

measuring one length of a triangle, and two angles, you can construct the entire triangle using trig

chain of triangles hundreds of miles long

the mission would last a decade, five times longer than predicted

They had packed for the tropics, and forgotten that the Andes are freezing

The locals assumed they were treasure seekers and obstructed and even attempted to kill them

1666: in opposition to the Royal Society, which had no government support and was essentially a club of self-funding amateurs, Jean Baptiste Colbert established the French Academy of sciences, which would receive lavish government funding and be staffed by selected scientists

1671: Jean Richer was sent to Guyana to, among other things, map the southern sky and measure refraction in the atmosphere

He carried with him two pendulum clocks, but, despite being as tightly calibrated as possible for the time, the clocks refused to keep time, losing about two and a half minutes a day; to correct the error, he shortened the metre long pendulum by a 12/th of an inch

Huygens had shown that pendulums move more slowly in lower gravity and Newton had concluded that this meant that Earth's gravity was lower at the equator.

Earth had bulged out due to its spin

Descartes did not ascribe a non-spherical shape of the Earth, but others used his theory of vortices to conclude that Earth was elongated

Because Descartes explicitly tied his theory of motion to God as the prime mover, the battle for Newton's acceptance became not just a war between English and French but a war between faith and secularism

Descartes did not back up his ideas with math, which made them more accessible to the wider public

When his father died, Bouguer, at the age of 16, applied for his post as a professor of navigation, and got it.

Buguer realised there was no future in taking sides; he cast himself as the skeptical neutral

Condamine once stood on deck during a sea battle wearing a bright purple coat, and would not go below decks until ordered. A colleague and friend of Voltaire, an anglophile who endorsed Newton's ideas in France.

Godin, a ladies man, began flittering away the expeditition's money on prostitutes, including a $27,000 dollar diamond for one

Mauripas tried to sell merchandise to the Indians, leading the authorities to suspect them of smuggling

condamine decided to strike out alone across uncharted jungle without a guide. La condamine observed indians tapping rubber, leading to the European discovery. He was under orders to study the natural source of quinine. He eventually had to go out of pocket for the expedition

they suffered from yellow fever and altitude sickness

Jorge Juan and Ulloa, the Spanish addition to the team, had the added demand of documenting the plight of the Native Americans, though seemed less interested in the plight of black people. Their confrontations with the Governor of Quito (he had bought his commission, whereas they had earned theirs, and yet refused to see them as superiors) led to threats of physical violence

Bouguer attempted to measure the gravitational attraction of chimborazo (then believed to be the highest mountain in the world) with a pendulum, and achieved some results, though less than he'd hoped. His result was basically ignored by the French academy

Bouguer said that the Indians had no imagination, and were incapable of creating anything new

When Bouguer and Condamine compared their calculations, they found they differed by just 0.02%

"their dissentions mean they won't get anything done; I just hope one of them doesn't get his throat cut"

A man whom seniergues had been conned into asking for payment for a medical bill ordered a slave to slap Manuela and then decried the insult, claiming that he would now not pay, and that Seniergues save her honour. Seniergues, who was possibly bipolar or schizophrenic, challenged the man to a duel

checked the latitude of the top and bottom of the chain by measuring it against Alnilam, the middle star of Orion's belt

By measuring the angle between the star at zenith at both locations, they could measure the arc length of the distance they had marked and thus determine the length of a degree of latitude.

Finally, after 5 years of travel and labour, they had their result: Cochesqui, the southern tip of the measured line, was 1°36'38 south of the equator; Tarqui, the northern tip, was 1°40'37 north of it.

Except it wasn't. Godin complained of a variation in the position of the star and argued that they were due to error. In fact it was due to a phenomonon identified less than a decade previously called stellar aberration

Checking and redoing their astronomical observations would take three more years, thanks to faulty instruments rendering most of their results useless

Condamine delayed the results and spent vast amounts of money on projects, including building monuments to their achievement, which not only spiralled out of control but also insulted their Spanish colleagues by calling them "auxilleries"

The polar expedition had settled the matter of the earth's shape, but the navy still wanted the precise degree of flattening for navigation

Back in Paris, Buguer declared that the flattening of the curvature of the Earth was 1 part in 179, agreeing with the Polar expedition's result of 1/178 and removing suspicion that the numbers did not agree with Newton's prediction of 1 part in 230.

disputes over credit and the limelight led Bruguer and Condamine to declare war on each other in the public sphere

Terrall[edit]

Jacques Cassini had concluded from measurements around France that the Earth was prolate, but others argued that France's latitude was not sufficient to settle the matter

After the expedition, he challeneged the validity of their result, forcing the team to elaborate every action taken to ensure its accuracy

"Although one could hardly believe that six astronomers and mathematicians could be incapable of tracing a meridian, placing an instrument in the right position and calculating the right precision, here are the measures we took for this operation- such a simple one, by the way, that the details have never been demanded of anyone before." Clairaut

Cassini was allied to the Jesuits

Mauertuis refused a pension from the Minister of Finance, declaring it insultingly low

The English Graham sector had been used to verify Newton's mechanics, and thus was tainted to Cassini

celsius attacked cassini, his father, his observatory, and French instruments

A lapp woman who Clairaut's secretary bedded and promised to marry showed up at his door in Paris to see him honor his commitment

But after brown-nosing the court a bit he managed to get it knocked up to about 3000 livres a year, a very tidy sum indeed; about $35,000 a year in modern terms.

Gulf of Bothnia

1:310 (peru/lapland result) vs 1:229 (newton calculation) vs 1 part in 299 (actual number)

The self gravity of the bulge actually makes it bigger

Anders Celsius accompanied Marpurtuis to Lapland

He suggested waiting for winter and just measuring the entire gulf on the ice. The French were not having that

unlike the Peruvian expedition, the local government were positively giddy to offer support (Sweden and Finland were unified under a single government), though whether the Finnish-speaking peasants appreciated their roles as pack mules for the expedition went unheard, since no one spoke Finnish.

The spire of the church at Tornea was their first gnomon. Local soldiers cleared trees from hills for better visibility

nine geodetic points; as many angles as possible. Interlocking triangles which could be checked against each other

In modern terms, Marpurtuis expedition found that the length of a degree in Bothnia was, in modern terms, about 691 metres longer than a degree in France

At times, they pondered if they were attempting the impossible

Maupurtuis account depicts the hardship these Frenchmen faced working in the snow

Rickman[edit]

ESA giotto first spacecraft adoration of the magi

Halley Armada Japan ISAS, suesei and Sakigake USSR Academy of scie3nce Vega 1 and vega 2 (Veruna, galley)

solid nucleus as per Fred Whipple confirmed.

dirty snowball meant high albedo

Halley's nucleus was actually much larger than originally assumed, due to its dark surface

snowy dirtball

jets emerging from active spots over a presumably inactive surface

more dust released than predicted

three types of grains: silicates, chonic and mixed

this suggested that comets were unaltered samples of material from the coldest regions of the Solar System, supported by isotope ratios, which were clsoee to the most primitive meteorites

isotopes do vary amid teh grains themselves, suggesting they may have preserved fragments from before the Sun formed.

Deep Space 1 made a flyby of comet borrelly in 2001, first since halley

borelly is fairly inactive, which meant for excellent images

bond albedo of 0.01 (record)

Jan 2004: Stardust passed by wild 2

captured 10,000 comet particles in aerogel and returned them to earth

bond albedo fo 0.03

dimesnions 5.5 by 4 by 3.3

impact craters, preserved due to youth?

Wild 2's grains are heterogenous, indicating that it must have come from all over the solar nebula

the solar nebula must have been a "blender" mixing material from its innermost to its outermost regions

highly refractory materials like forsterite are combined with magnesium sulphates and organics

comet tempel 1 (declared gone, then rediscovered, found to have a librating perihelion due to a 2:1 resonance with Jupiter

4 july 2005: impact

2011: visited by Stardust

Jupiters have lifetimes of 30,000 years- enough time for an impact?

Pits can be due to outgassing

The surface temperatures are far above what would be expected for sublimating ice, so they cannot be ice

any sources for the outgassing must be subsurface

low to high inertia (conductivity) areas were seen, indicating some solid areas and some loose aggregates

h2o and co2 were among the first to be released in the impact; suggesting they are near the surface

the material ejeted from the nucleuis had almost no strength, indicating a tiny density of 400 kg/m3

hartley 2 was visited by Deep Impact (renaimed EPOXI)

ventng more h2o than an equivalent sphere of pure h20 at a similar distance from the sun

Co2 sublimates at a lower temperature, causing water above to break apart into tiny chunks, which then sublimate

van de kamp[edit]

Kaj aage strand 61 cygni sproule observatory telescope, swarthmore college, never confirmed. ditto 70 Ophiuchi

In 1973 An attempted by John Hershey to plot the motions of the star Gilese 793 using the Sproule telescope (Van de kamp's telescope) and uncovered an oscillation identical to that proposed for Barnard's Star

Hershey found that the star had jolted twice: once in 1949 and once in 1957- both times corresponding to years when the telescope had had its lenses replaced.

george Gatewood, while still a young student, had met van de kamp and greeted him like a movie star

For his PhD thesis, he decided to start with Barnard's star, as a shy astronomer, Nicolas Wigman, had found results that conflicted with Van de kamp's planets, and needed a recheck

So, using the telescope at the alehgeny observatory in Pittsbergh, he re ran a smaller version of van de kamp's survey, and found not a trace of his planets

gweorge gatewood would gain a reputation as a planet killer: lal 21185 61 cygni and Alpha Centuri all disproven

van de kamp refused to give in, even quoting John 20/29 in one of his papers, "Blessed are they that have not seen, but have believed!"

"which admit no simpler explanation then that of a perturbation by an unseen companion of Barnard's Star" van de kamp

"You could divide all the perturbations by 8.3 years"

1971, begins. Gatewood actually didn't want to tackle Barnard's star; he deemed it unimportant, and liked van de kamp, but was pressured by his professors at Allegheny astronomers

nicholas Wagman former director of the allegheny observatory, had found evidence vcan de kamp was wrong but didn't publish it (shy)

"WHO IS THE SEcond person to fly solo across the atlantic?" heinrich Eichhorn

Eichhorn and van de kamp had history: van de kamp, sore at eichhorn refusing to work for him, once referred to him as a "space cadet".

the data revealed itself within minutes

multiple studies duplicated the null result

van de kamp didn't speak to eichhorn for 10 years.

Piet "Peter" Van de Kamp born in Nederlands in 1901

Had a reputation as affable and friendly.

focused on astrometry, and searched for invisible stellar companions

Van de kamp considered that detecting planets around stars would be possible if the difference between the masses of the planet and the star were small and if the planet orbited far enough away from its star

In 1938, van de kamp made a list of stars to search for substellar companions

In 1944, after six years of studying Barnard's Star, he announced to the american philosophical society that he had identified a "planet" of 60 jovian masses

hundreds of images a year

in 1963, after taking 2400 images, Van de kamp narrowed his quarry to a 1.6 JMass object with an orbital period of 24 years

the "planet"'s orbit was highly elliptical, ranging from 270 million km to over a billion km

In 1969, Van de kamp claimed that what he had in fact found was not one planet with a highly elliptical orbit, but two planets whose combined orbits gave the impression of an ellipse

By the 1980s, the idea that Barnard's star had a planetary system was well-established, and others began publishing papers on it.

astrometry follows the path of a star through the sky, rather than simply observing its radial velocity Alpha centauri's gravitational house party

wobble was 100 times smaller than the star itself

Sheehan[edit]

Edward emerson Barnard was born in 1857, though he never learned precisely where. His mother once showed him a photo small brick hovel in the slums of Nashville, Tennessee, and told it was his brithplace, but he never saw it himself. Born essentially destitute, after his father had already died, he was left with a widowed mother and a possibly feeble-minded brother. By the time he was four, he was thrown head first into the bloodiest war in American history, and by the age of 12 saw his mother, his only contact and means of support, become permanently invalided. During the hellish years of the Reconstruction, his desperate family fled from cholera outbreaks and scavenged cracker boxes from wrecked steamboats.

jupiter solar camera JH von stavoren

nine until 25, only source of income

watching vega, stars were he solace

From this he learned that solar noon did not coincide with noon on the clock, mean solar motion vs the increase and decrease of speed over the year

His mother had been a commercial artist, and Barnard entertained following in her footsteps, but soon realised that he lacked the training

He recounted later how in 1876 a ne'er do well childhood friend of his who had spent his life thieving came to him with a request for two dollars (a not insubstantial amount for Barnard at the time) and offered a book as security. Barnard took the deal mainly to get rid of him, and never saw him or his money again

The book turned out to be the second volume of the works of the Reverend Thomas Dick, and amid the bombastic sermons and fiery accounts of others' sins, he found a whole collection of works on astronomy. It is now in the Yerkes University Library

Among his friends at work was a mechanic named James Braid, who fashioned Barnard's first telescope out of a Confederate military spyglass he'd found in the street; and then later a better one from an old ornamental ship's spyglass. The telescope, according to Braid, "game barnard more pleasure than anything else in his life," which to be fair, is not hard to believe.

Despite earning only $12 a week, Barnard went into heavy debt to purchase a $380 dollar telescope

Barnard and his scope, which he operated mainly on the roof of his photographic house, became a local celebrity (the only scope to rival it for hundreds of miles was in Vanderbilt university) and guests would often crowd him so forbibly they would nearly knock the scope from the roof. Barnard often worked his scope in such cold conditions his eye would freeze to his eyepiece

August 1877 AAAS meeting in nashville- simon newcomb, barnard asked how a young man with a small telescope might make himself useful. Finding comets, drawing nebulae and searching for double stars

Newcomb told Barnard he would never be an astronomer without mastering mathematics, so Barnard, devastated, hired a mathematics tutor and began studying alongside his job and his telescope

Later, on the dubiious advice of a phrenologist, Barnard was assured that astronomy was his natural study and that he should keep going.

Barnard corresponded with Lewis Swift a noted comet hunter who found comet swift tuttle

Swift encouraged the entrepreneur HH Warner, who had grown rich selling a "bowel hygiene" produced called "Warner's Safe Remedy" and had fronted $100,000 for the construction of Swift's Observatory in Rochester, establish the Warner prize of $200 for any new comet discovered by an American or Canadian in 1881. This was half barnard's annual salary, and he was newly married

Barnard's first attempt at comet seeking was never recovered, which led to some condescension on the part of other astronomers. Barnard, determined that others take him seriously, set to his eyepiece, and found what turned out to be a new nebula, and then, finally, a comet.

Impressed with Barnard's description of the December 1882 transit of venus, Olin Landreth offered Barnard a job as a fellow at Vanderbilt University. It was a pay cut, but it came with a house and free tuition. Like anyone would today, Barnard jumped at it.

Barnard's eyesight was becoming legendary. He observed that beta capricorni was in fact a double star even though confirming it strained the capabilities of far better telescopes

In 1889, at Lick observatory, Holden recommended he receive an MA for his remarkable photographs of the solar eclipse

In 1892 he found Amalthea at the Lick's 36 inch refractor- his discovery was hailed as the greatest of the 19th century- the last to be found by eye, without a camera

Despite barnard himself asserting that the satellite could not have been more than 100 miles across, the public flooded astronomers with letters wanting to learn more about it

A woman with his surname declared she would name her as yet unborn son after him. Mt Barnard, just summitted for the first time when the moon was discovered, was named by the climbers

Barnard never settled on a name, and eventually Amalthea, the nurse of Jupiter, suggested by Camille Flammarion, fell into use.

Barnard focused much of his attention on the dark nebulae of the milky way which were long thought to be holes since nebulae were thought to be luminous

Barnard at first thought he had taken images of several different stars, but they all lay in a straight line. He realised that what he was actually seeing was the same star zipping across the field in a very short time.

alder[edit]

June 1792 Delambre went north

Pierre-Francois-Andre Mechain went south

Paris meridian: Dunkirk, Paris Barcelona

cutomised carriage, advanced insturments, skilled assistant

Condorcet: "for all people, for all time".

France alone had a quarter million different weights and measures, under 800 names

seven years: Each travelled first outward, then back

1999 Mars climate orbiter

The metre is in error: equator to pole the Earth measures 10,002,290 metres

Mechain committed an error, covered it up, and died trying to correct it

"Conquests will come and go, but this work will endure"

As part of his mission, delabre attempted to light signal flares at strategic points across paris during what amounted to a civil war. After the monarchy ended, he stopped. After abandoning monmartre as his Paris station, he tried Mountjai, but the locals mobbed the carpeneter until he took it down. So Delambre tried chateau bell assise.

After lelande pestered him into going his own way, Delambre became one of France's leading astronomers in just 10 years

Barely had he left belle assise when he was stopped again. when the gendarmes couldn't comprehend why he would want to measure the earth, delambre was forced to give an impromptu seminar to the local population.

to the local crowd, however, he was just an aristocrat with a load of spying instruments. the rabble overturned his boxes and found a royal seal, obviously a traitorous attempt to carry messages from the imprisoned king.

To appease the crowd, delambre read every word of his royal order, and then a second and then a third; all of which were identical. Realising that breaking the seal made them void, delambre offered to give up his life if a final letter, chosen at random, was not identical. It was.

Feigning angler, a local administrator dragged delambre back into the town hall, and forced him to stay the night (very likely saving him from death) until the authority could be transferred from the king to the republic.

rumour spread that lalande had predicted a gravitational apocalypse by the close passing of a comet. when he finally published the paper, he gave the world ending scenario odds of 64,000 to one.

lalande smuggled out a description of harrison's chronometer; he claimed balloon flight was impossible, then when the mongolfiers managed it, claimed he had predicted it and demanded to be taken on the next flight.

he was a notorious insectivore; often dining on caterpillars and spiders.

He was notoriously ugly, and strangely proud of it; he vaguely resembled Ebeneezer Scrooge.

He was also a bit of a drooling lech who was attracted to academically minded women, often making rather obnoxious passes at them

lavoisier advocated for decimalisation

internal trade, mapping, taxation, all demanded a new standard measurement

land was often calculated in terms of productivity (six bushels vs 5) or in terms of how many men could till or pick it in a day

This assumed a "standard" productivity per person and allowed peasants to demand that they be paid according to that standard, rather than how productive they actually were

this created a demand for measurements based solely on distance

bakers could sell loafs in one standard size when grain prices were low and another, smaller standard by the same name when prices were higher and thus not precipitate a bread riot. monks could get around profit by making wine in one size of barrel and selling it in smaller barrels (same name, same price)

Cassini IV had been born in the Royal Observatory, which his father, grandfather and great grand father had all directed. His family had charted the Paris meridian in each generation. He fully expected to be the one chosen for the mission. But he had recently lost his wife and was a royalist, so it fell to delambre

to ensure that earnings continued during the mission, Mechain's wife, who was already his de facto assistant, continued his astronomical observations at Paris observatory

Two days after the fall of the Bastille a mob entered the observatory and broke into Mecchain's house, terrifying his wife. It took Cassini to lead the mob to the cellars and show the observatory had nothing of strategic value

Marchain had sold his astronomical equipment to cover his father's losses in a lawsuit; as it happened, the man who bought them was Jerome Lalande.

Mechain had a reputation for accuracy and almost pedantic exactitude, which allowed him to find eleven comets

Borda: arc 10 degrees of latitude, cross the 45th parallel, be already well surveyed and begin and end at sea level. the only candidate, according to Borda, was the Paris meridian from dunkirk to barcelona. He said it could be done in a year.

Upon hearing that the French would be employing their own meridian, Thomas Jefferson rejected the metric system.

Boda repeating circle had an accuracy of one arc second

The spanish were interested in the repeating circle, though they mistrusted the French, who they blamed for depressing wages. No maps of catalonia could be found, despite a two-week search of the archives.

Carriages and horses were useless on the twisting rutted paths; in the end the instruments were transported by mule.

France and Spain were at war, and Marchain was stranded; his geodesic data was seen as a potential profit to the French, and he had suffered a near fatal injury inspecting a water pump, and all his funds had been frozen.

Paul Marat called the Academy "cowardly lackeys of despotism".

300,000 livres for the project "a little cake they will share out among confederates."

some argued that the equator was a better measurement, and that it was always going to be arbitrary anyway, since it is an abstract length, not an actual sample of the meridian. Some also pondered why the metre was 10 millionth instead of 100 millionth, which would have been a more handy measurement for everyday use. A problem I have with the metre to this day

Delambre next went south from Dunkirk, outrunning the tide of war, but still accomplishing more in one month than he had in the previous year. The Academy of Sciences, seen by the nouvelle regime as a cadre of self-appointed elitists, was finally dissolved. (August 1793)

Delambre was eventually purged from the project. But at his pleading, they did allow him to terminate his work at a point at which he would not have to redo all his calculations.

Deambre had been purged for "lacking revolutionary zeal"

Cassini IV had been generally good, if patronising, at assigning credit for discoveries. In this febrile time, however, the perennial complaints of junior scientists carried more weight. Cassini was demoted, resigned, and then thrown in prison, only narrowly escaping death

Mechain was trapped in Catalonia, invalided with a crushed chest and useless arm, and contemplating taking a job offer from the Spanish government, which would have been treason.

Astoundingly, once he had more or less recovered, the Spanish government allowed him to continue his geodesic survey, which amounted to allowing an agent of a hostile power to survey their country in time of war. Naturally, he was not allowed to hand his results to the French, though his assistant did, since not to do so would technically have been treason.

Mechain and tranchot would often find themselves triangulating on tops of hills while battles raged in the plains below.

battle of the tech

clacluate lattitude mount jouy, six stars; kolchab, mizar, polaris, thuban elnath and pollux.for polaris, thuban and kolchab, the spread of results was 0.3 arcseconds. for mizar, however, it was 4 arcseconds.

refraction? farther north where the first results were taken, perhaps the circumpolar stars did not come as close to the horizon

from dec 1793 to mar 1794, mechain took 10 thousand observations

When he attempted to check his results, he found a colossal error of 5.4 percent. cut off by war and a testy Spanish crown, Mechain had no way to retake his observations.

Mechain was wracked by guilt over his inexactitude, and paranoia that others would discover it. He never mentioned it directly in conversation

By 1795 the Observatory and the Academy of Sciences were brought back into the revolutionary fold, though with Lalande at the head; Cassini retired to his chateau and never engaged in science again.

During the Reign of Terror, delambre kept his head down, only surfacing to correct an error in the new Republican calendar, apologising that his correction still left some uncertainty beyond 36 thousand years.

In June 1795, the metric mission was back on, and delambre was not only able to claim a salary, but back pay for the months of work he performed gratis.

When the new head of cartography, Etienne Nicola Calon, sought to locate delambre, he at first assumed he had to be in prison.

Printing more money to pay debt, the value of the franc imploded outside of paris. A horse rental in Paris cost 92 francs. two months later it had risen to 1400 francs

Mechain had not heard from Paris in a year, and did not even know if his wife was alive or dead.

Alexandre Ruelle had been shelted by Cassini after he deserted from the army, but then later betrayed him as an aristocrat and nearly got him, Mechain, and Lelande sent to the Revolutionary Tribunal, which would have meant death. Thankfully he was himself imprisoned.

Thankfully, the new student profs fell to bickering and, for the crime of making a ten arcsecond error in measuring the sun, and for belonging to the party of the now discredited and beheaded Robspierre, one of their number got the sack, leaving a position open for Delambre.

The machain family moved into the Cassinis' apartment at the observatory

delambre slept in stables and lived on cheese; he was obviously a sorcerer; why else would he have porters construct a pyramid on top of a mountain? He was blamed for every broken plough and milkless cow

Marchain was likely a manic depressive

"I will make every sacrifice renounce everything, rather than return to Paris without having completed my portion of the labnour. and if I am not allowed to complete it, I will never return. Either I shall recover the strength and energy I should never have lost, or I shall cease to exist."

To delambre this was a suicide note

In July 1798, Mechain saw his wife for the first time in six years. Why he hadn't seen her before then is a bit of a mystery. They spoke about him handing over his data, but Mechain dissembled and obfuscated, lying to his wife for the first time

Napoleon: "It was not enough for them to make 40 million people happy; they wanted to sign up the whole universe."

In February 1799, Delambre submitted his data to the International Commission of Weights and Measures, A month later, Marchain followed suit. the reception was ecstatic, with some claiming marchain's measuremetns were better than delambres. Mechain's attitude changed overnight.

the reult suggested that the oblateness of the earth was 1/150, twice the result of the Lapland and Peru expeditions

The commission decided to stick with the older data, and in the process shaved 3.25 mm off the official metre. seven years of work had made the official metre more inaccurate than the provisional metre

decimalisation is hard; certainly the war office had no interest in recalibrating all its canonball manufacturing machines to the new standard.

Eventually in 1800, Boney compromised; the metric system would be adopted, but the "frighening" Greek prefixes would be replaced with homier alternatives: the decimetre became the palm, the centimetre the digit, and milimeter the trait (trace)

Mechain was appointed head of the Paris Observatory and, to wash away his sin, focused on administration

Napoleon had appointed himself head of the National Academy of Sciences, and delabre its Pernanet Secretary

He was also tempoarily appointed president of the bureau of longitudes, making him Mechain's de facto superior. Soon Mechain was complaining about his lack of funds.

and yes, he felt he had stolen one of his triangles, specifically the triangle at Papignan

finally established with his family and gaining a stellar reputation at the Observatory, still suffering from the effects of his near fatal accident, Maachain decided to travel to the Baliearic Islands to extend the geodetic mission himself.

father salvador ximinez coronado, the head of the Madrid Observatory, hated France, the Revolution and the metric system, describing it as "a fantastical lie to pervert spanish virtue

yellow fever and Mechain's inability to delegate

He left in April 1803

The spanish had lied to him "I thumb my nose at them" he said

By September, Machain was invalided again, delirious with yellow fever and malaria, and this time he did not evade death

he had also managed to hit his head again, falling off his mule

treversing the marshes around valencia

____________

The metre is short by about 200 micrometres

dealmbre delivered his eulogy to the academy of sciences

but upon receving all of marchain's notes, delambre realised that his self-pity was really a mask for deception

Marchain had merged ill-fitting triangulations into larger ones

or simply discarded results that didn't fit with prior measurements

Marchain had doctored his measurement for the lattitude of the paris observatory to be closer to delambre's measurement, even though, according to modern measuremnts, his own was closer

Delambre's final publication made note of machain's descrepancy (he refused to call it an error) but omitted his attempts to cover it up.

delambre kept the evidence for machain's duplicity, buried in the Observatory archive