Hamara Blogger

Henna History

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:43:00 +0000

"Believe it or not, the practice of Mehndi started out as an answer to the need for air-conditioning in the desert. The Henna plant, whose botanical name is Lawsonia Inermis and which comes from the Loosestrife family, has several medicinal properties, chief among them its ability to cool down the human body.

When the desert people of Rajasthan, Punjab, and Gujarat became aware of Henna's cooling properties, they dipped their hands and feet in a mud or paste made with the crushed leaves of the plant. Even when the mud was scraped off, they noticed, as long as the color remained visible, their body temperatures stayed low. Eventually some women grew tired of bright red palms and found that one large central dot in the palm of the hand had the same effect, while being more pleasing to the eye. Other, smaller dots were placed around the center dot, which gradually gave way to the idea of creating outright artistic designs. To that end, a thin instrument made of silver or ivory (in India) or wood (in Morocco), then most commonly used for applying kohl to the eyes, became the instrument of choice for Henna applications, and it is still in use in desert villages today. Only in the last decade or so have the popular Indian cone (see Page 44 in Mehndi, the Art of Henna Body Painting) and Moroccan syringe, both of which are able to deposit the thinnest filaments of Henna onto the skin, come into play as modern counterparts of the simple.
Black henna In Africa and in Medieval Persia, black henna is considered the most beautiful. In India, red henna is more auspicious. Both come from the same plant, but are obtained in slightly different ways. If you have absolutely fresh henna powder, and apply it in very hot weather, with an overnight wrap, to your palms and soles, the color may go nearly black with no extra effort. The perspiration and heat will darken the henna. to deep burgundy or near black in many people, especially if they have calloused skin, and have skin that is very warm to the touch. To get henna velvet black on palms and soles in the traditional way, the skin may be treated with something with a very base pH just after the henna paste is removed. There are several things which will accomplish this, but all of them can be harsh on the skin, and should be used with caution. Email us for more information on this, and photographs of the results. . There are many products on the market that are labeled black henna. MANY PRODUCTS LABELED AS BLACK HENNA ARE VERY HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH!! Natural henna is very safe.
Black henna In Africa and in Medieval Persia, black henna is considered the most beautiful. In India, red henna is more auspicious. Both come from the same plant, but are obtained in slightly different ways. If you have absolutely fresh henna powder, and apply it in very hot weather, with an overnight wrap, to your palms and soles, the color may go nearly black with no extra effort. The perspiration and heat will darken the henna. to deep burgundy or near black in many people, especially if they have calloused skin, and have skin that is very warm to the touch. To get henna velvet black on palms and soles in the traditional way, the skin may be treated with something with a very base pH just after the henna paste is removed. There are several things which will accomplish this, but all of them can be harsh on the skin, and should be used with caution. Email us for more information on this, and photographs of the results. . There are many products on the market that are labeled black henna. MANY PRODUCTS LABELED AS BLACK HENNA ARE VERY HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH!! Natural henna is very safe.

Henna is the Arabic name of a bush of the botanical name, lawsonia inermis. Leaves are harvested from this bush, dried and powdered to make henna powder. The paste made from this powder, used to dye the skin, is henna paste. The pattern on the skin resulting from the application of henna paste is called a henna. If you have henna patterns on you, you have been "hennaed". Since many countries from the Atlantic coast of Africa to Malaysia use henna, there are many other words for both the bush and the adornment; though in every country, the plant and the skin pattern are known by the same name. In India, there are several words for the plant and the art, because there are many languages and dialects in India. Since the words in these languages were not originally written in a Roman alphabet, there is a great deal of difference in translation of the word from those languages to English. Mehandi is the translation favored by several companies who publish henna pattern books in Delhi and Mumbai. Mehndi is a translation favored in Hindi. There are over 20 variations of the word for the henna plant and art that have been used in publication...all are equally correct.

Chances are you do not have the proper henna for Mehndi. Only certain areas of the laminus plant (henna plant) can stain your skin. Most henna powders come from the whole plant being ground up. These powders contain spores, which take on a sponge like consistence when mixed. Mehndi powders come from the top of the plant, the blossoms. This powder is very smooth and lays on the skin easily. We only carry such powders.

Black henna powders are toxic. Because they contain para phenyle diamine which can break the skin out in lesions. We do carry a safe black henna and other colors for the skin. None of our products contain para phenyle di amine Most designs of henna are very intricate, where do you begin? Begin in the middle, of circular designs, and simple work your way out. Break down the design, what every you do to one side do immediately to the other. This avoids getting lost in the design.

short history of henna. There is very persuasive evidence that henna was used by the Neolithic people in Catal Huyuk, in the 7th millennium BCE to ornament their hands in connection with their fertility goddess. The religion these people practiced was the predecessor to the religions of all the people in the ancient Middle East, and henna seems to have been used by all of these people as part of their adornment and belief system. The earliest civilizations that can be proved to have used henna include the Babylonians, Assyrians, Sumerians, Semites, Ugaritics and Canaanites. The earliest written artifact that mentions henna being used specifically as an adornment for a bride or woman's special occasion is in the Ugaritic legend of Baal and Anath, inscribed on a tablet from about 2100 BCE, from north west Syria. Anath was a goddess of fertility and battle. In the legend, she adorned her hands with henna before battle, and brides ornamented their hands with henna as a preparation for wedding. As henna is mentioned as a part of a legend, may be inferred that henna was in use by the Ugaritic people, as a bridal tradition, and as a women's celebratory cosmetic along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean for many centuries prior to 2000 BCE. There are many statuettes from Crete and Mycenae from the period 1700 BCE to 900 BCE that show goddesses synchronous with Anath, with raised hands that appear to be ornamented with henna. Several of these goddesses also have facial patterns that are identical with scarification that was used to honor the goddess Anath, and identical to patterns are made in harquus (a cosmetic closely related to henna) have been used until the present time by Arabs, Bedouins and North African tribal groups. There are numerous artifacts from Iraq, Palestine, Greece, Egypt, Crete and Rome from 1400 BCE to 1AD that show women with henna patterns on their hands. The early center of the use of henna as a woman's adornment seems to have been the eastern Mediterranean, where it grows wild. It is mentioned in the Bible as "Camphire" in the Song of Solomon, and was used by the Canaanite women in pre-biblical times. A Roman wall fresco, "The Aldobrandini Wedding" from 30 BCE, shows a scene identical with a "Night of the Henna" celebration, in which the Mother has henna patterns on her hand. The Canaanites spread their traditions, including the use of henna, across North Africa between 1700 and 600 BCE, specifically establishing the Berber traditions of henna in Morocco. Henna was used in Palestine from the earliest historical period, and there are Roman records of henna being used by Jewish people living in Jerusalem during the historical period of the birth of Christ. When Islam began in the 6-7th centuries AD, henna was incorporated into the customs of Muslims from the western Middle Eastern women's henna traditions that were widespread and long established. As Islam expanded quickly into other countries, the use of henna went with it. Henna was grown and used in Spain, by Christians and Moors from the 9th century AD to 1567 when it was outlawed by the Spanish Inquisition. All of the countries that were part of the Islamic world have used henna at some time, most frequently as part of wedding celebrations. Most of them continued to celebrate the "Night of the Henna" and regard henna as a beautiful and suitable ornament for women until the present. The most complex and elegant henna patterning in the Islamic world was from 900 to 1550 AD in Persia, Turkey and Iraq. There are many miniatures and pottery pieces showing elegantly patterned black henna from this period. Such delicate and expressive patterning did not reappear in henna until late in this century. Henna use in all the Middle Eastern and North African countries continued, though it fell out of favor early in the 20th century as women sought to emulate European and American fashions. The earliest artifacts showing henna in India, that I have found, are from about 400 AD, in the Ajanta caves. Though there are several figures in the Ajanta caves that have henna, they are only a very small percentage of all the people depicted. Therefore, though henna certainly was used from an early period in India, it was not widespread. Also, the henna appearing in Ajanta appears equally on men, women and servants, and was done as dip henna, without patterning. Bright red dip henna, made from a paste of fresh leaves was used, not the orange / brown/ black/ patterned henna made from dried and powdered leaves as appears in the Mediterranean and Middle East. From 600 AD to 1300 AD, bright red dip henna appears frequently on Boddhisattvas and Buddhist clerics depicted in sculpture and wall paintings in Northern India, Nepal, Tibet, Ceylon and Burma. After 1500 AD, henna is seen frequently on women in miniature paintings in India, though patterning is very rare until after 1700 AD. In Hindu India during this period, henna certainly is part of the cosmetic routine used by wives and concubines to look their best. Henna is also depicted on Kali and other Hindu deities during this period, and up to the present day. By 1700, the bridal celebration of the Night of the Henna was a well established part of Muslim India's traditions, and married Muslim women in India frequently used henna to ornament themselves. A portrait of Mumtaz Mahal has one of the earliest patterned henna on her hands that I have found in India. During the 1800s patterned henna is seen frequently in Indian artifacts, though the henna is always represented as red and never black. Dip henna and simple patterns adorn most women portrayed in Indian art since 1800, as well as many Hindu deities. Henna patterning in India has become very complex and beautiful in the 20th century, and is used as part of the celebration of almost all holidays. Timeline This is a list of countries where women traditionally used henna to beautify their hands for celebrations and luck, during some period between 7000 BCE and 1900 AD. These dates are approximate, but are supported by literary or artifact evidence, direct or indirect. Henna use may greatly predate earliest artifact evidence of henna use..... also there may be other uses of henna that predate women's celebration use. Turkey 4000 BCE to present (very compelling evidence of use as early as 7000 BCE) Syria 3000 BCE to present (possibly as early as 5000 BCE) Israel 2100 BCE to present (possibly as early as 8000 BCE) Jordan 2100 BCE through Ottoman Empire (possibly as early as 3000 BCE) Lebanon 2100 BCE through Ottoman Empire (possibly as early as 3000 BCE) Arabia 1700 BCE through present (possibly as early as 3000 BCE) Crete 1700 BCE to 900 BCE, and when under Moorish influence Cyprus 1700 BCE to present, when under Moorish influence Greece 1700 BCE to 1400 BCE, occasionally under Moorish or Turkish influence Libya 1700 BCE to present Tunisia 1200 BCE to present Egypt 1400 BCE to present Iraq 1300 BCE to present (possibly as early as 2500 BCE) Kuwait 1200 BCE to present (possibly as early as 2500 BCE) Iran 1300 BCE to present (possibly as early as 2500 BCE) Morocco 1200 BCE to present Western Sahara 1200 BCE to present Algeria 1200 BCE to present Mali 1200 BCE to present Sudan 1200 BCE to present Yemen 1200 BCE to present United Arab Emirates 1200 BCE to present (or earlier) Italy 100 BCE, and occasionally through Moorish influence Afghanistan 100 AD to present (probable use much earlier, perhaps to 1200 BCE) Pakistan 100 AD to present (probable use much earlier, perhaps to 1200 BCE) India 100 AD to present (probable use much earlier, perhaps to 1200 BCE) Nepal 600 AD to present (probable use much earlier) Sri Lanka 700 AD to present (probable use much earlier) Turkistan 800 AD to present Uzbekistan 800 AD to present Tibet 900 to 1300 AD Burma 800 Ad to present Thailand 800 AD to present Ethiopia 800 AD both Muslim and Christian communities Nigeria 800 AD to present Armenia 900 AD to present, both Muslim and Christian communities Azerbaijan 900 AD to present Sicily 1000-1200 AD Spain 900 AD to 1560 AD Portugal 900 to 1550 AD China occasionally 1000 AD to present, in Muslim population Sub-Saharan African countries, in Muslim influence Bosnia during Ottoman Empire and in Muslim influence Malaysia 1200 AD to present, Muslim and Hindu population Indonesia 1200 AD to present, Muslim and Hindu population South Africa 1800 to present, Indian and Muslim population Gypsy populations (dispersed) used henna when in Muslim or Hindu countries 1100 AD to present.

In English, there are no useful words to describe a henna stain ornamenting the skin, so henna are frequently called "henna tattoos". Hennaed skin is not tattoed. A tattoo is a permanent design in the skin, made by forcing pigment into the underlying layers of the skin, usually with a needle. Henna is a dye that colors the outermost layer of the skin. It does not go into the blood bearing layers. The skin is not pierced. It will not bleed. It cannot hurt. It feels about like having your skin decorated with pudding. Henna contains hennotannic acid, which dyes collagens (skin cells) and keratin (hair and fingernail cells) very easily. The dye is released from the vegetable matter and made available to dye skin at pH 5.5 or more sour. It takes time for hennotannic acid to bind with cells, so the henna paste must stay moist and in contact with the skin for a while. Heat makes the dye darker. The henna stain will last until that top layer of your skin exfoliates. All the skin on your body gradually exfoliates and is replaced by new skin in 1-12 weeks, depending on individual factors. The henna, then, will last as long as 8 weeks on the thick soles of your feet, or go away as quickly as 3-4 days on very thin parts of your skin. The newly grown in skin will not have a henna pattern on it. It is very very unusual for anyone to have an adverse reaction to natural henna, but it does happen. Henna is one of the safest cosmetics ever used, but a patch test is a good idea if you're unsure.

Henna is done by women to ornament and beautify themselves, and it is also done for special celebrations. Betrothals, weddings, the eighth month of pregnancy, at birth, 40 days after a woman gives birth , naming ceremonies and circumcisions, are all events celebrated with henna. Ids, and other religious holidays are occasions to be hennaed. There are also some healing ceremonies associated with Zar in North Africa which include the use of henna. Women henna themselves and their friends and relatives for most festivals in India, as part of the celebration....along with dressing beautifully, partying, and taking a break from work. It is especially a relief during very hot weather, as henna is cooling. It is certainly a part of wedding traditions for both women and men, best known in the "night of the henna" parties. It is used by Hindus as a part of preparations for weddings, as well as throughout the Islamic world. Sephardic Jews used henna in a night of the henna party, and in Armenia, Christian women and men also adorn themselves with henna. In the "night of the henna" parties, the bride is ornately adorned with henna, and instructed in the duties of her new status as wife. All the bride's friends and relations join to help her make this transition to womanhood auspicious and successful, wishing her many children and all happiness. In the groom's party, his friends and relations wish him wealth and prestige, as well as many children. There are a great number of henna traditions, of a wide variety over all the centuries that henna has been used. So, art of henna is expressive of the human love of beauty, and the hope for an abundant, loving life.

You can prepare your own fresh henna paste and henna yourself very easily with things you already have in your kitchen. Exotic ingredients are part of many people's recipes, but are not absolutely necessary. Purchase the best quality and freshest henna you can. If the henna powder is green and richly fragrant, it is fresh. If it is tan and odorless, it is stale. If your henna is fresh, you will get a dark brown or burgundy stain. If your henna powder is stale, you will get a pumpkin-colored stain. A fancy recipe will improve stale henna somewhat, but not much. If your henna is fresh, a simple recipe is all that's needed. Sift your henna powder through a tea strainer. Henna powder often has twigs and plant scraps left from processing, and some henna powders have sand and dirt in them. If you want to make henna patterns with fine lines, sift the henna powder again through the control top part of pantyhose. When you are sifting henna powder, avoid inhaling the henna dust. When your powder is sifted, mix enough fresh lemon or lime juice (strained) into it to make the power into a paste as thick as mashed potatoes. Let that sit at cool room temperature over night. This will make the plant cells release the hennotannic acid. After the thick henna paste has begun to release its dye, thin it out so it's easier to draw with. The best consistency for henna paste for decorating is softer than toothpaste but thicker than stirred-up yogurt. You can thin it out with more lemon juice, you can use coffee, tea, or you can make your own special mixture. If you boil cloves with strong coffee, and strain that and mix it into the henna paste, the cloves will make the henna slightly blacker. Cloves contain gallotannic acid, which helps the hennotannic acid make a darker dye. Coffee and tea contain tannin, but not in sufficient quantities to change the color of the henna stain very much. There are many other things that henna artists add to their henna pastes, and there is no one perfect recipe. Try things and develop your own recipe! Stir your henna paste well to get out all the lumps! When your henna paste is at room temperature and at a useable consistency you can make patterns on your skin with it. Many traditional henna artists apply henna with a thin twig, porcupine quill, kohl stick, or wire. Just dip the stick into your henna paste, and draw with it....the henna should be a little viscous so that you can pull out a line as you draw it along your skin. Many contemporary henna artists use little squeeze bottles with metal tips, that fiber artists use for gutta lines on silk. Many on-line henna suppliers and fiber arts suppliers carry these bottles. If you haven't done henna before, practice drawing with henna on a paper towel to get used to medium. If you're unsure what you want to draw on yourself, or if you're not confident that you can get it right on the first try, sketch in the pattern on yourself with washable children's markers first. You can henna over the marker lines. If you want to practice hennaeing without wasting henna, try using your cones or sticks with toothpaste or cake decorating gel. Wash your skin with hot water and soap to remove lotions, oils and dirt before you henna. If your skin is clean, oil free and warmed it should take henna well. If you are trying to henna skin that is naturally oily, like a man's upper arms or back, you will need to use rubbing alcohol or witch hazel to remove as much of the skin oil as possible. Henna will stain darkest on palms and soles. The skin there is thickest and most absorbent. Where the skin on your body is thin, henna does not stain as well. The poorest places for henna staining are chests, heads, oily skin or sunburned skin. If you make a mistake with your henna on your skin, scrape off the mistake quickly with a toothpick, or wash the area. Henna begins to stain your skin within the first minute. Let the henna dry on your skin. Be very careful to keep the henna pattern perfect as it dries. You will need to keep the henna on your skin for at least 6 hours, very warm, and slightly moist to get a good henna stain. If you can keep it on overnight, and get it hot, that is best. There are several ways you can accomplish this. Try different ways and see what works best for you. You can sit perfectly still in a very hot humid room. This is traditional, and works very, very well, but is inconvenient and uncomfortable. Here are some ways that are more compatible with contemporary urban life: You can seal the henna with New Skin spray to prevent smudging, and wrap the henna with toilet paper, plastic wrap and tape. This is very effective where the weather is cool, and where it is difficult to get the skin really warm. Your perspiration under the wrap will rehydrate the henna, and the wrap will darken the henna color by warming the skin. There are many variations on wrapping, try several to see what is most suitable for you. The most important things are that the henna must remain undisturbed, even through sleeping overnight, and that the skin be warmed and slightly moistened with perspiration. Other useful wrapping materials are cotton, gauze, paper tape, ace bandages, and liquid latex. Each is wonderfully useful for some specific purpose. Liquid latex is especially useful for bosoms and navels, and other places where wrapping would be clumsy or impossible. You can also seal the henna by dabbing it with a lemon juice and sugar mixture that has been boiled into a syrup, going over it several times carefully until there is a sugar-candy crust holding the henna in place. This is most effective in very warm climates, where a wrap would quickly become uncomfortable and overly sweaty. If you warm your hennaed skin near a fire, or rest for an hour or two with a heating pad over your wrapped henna, your henna will be much darker. Your henna will be darkest in hot summer weather. It will be most difficult to get dark henna when the weather is cold. After the henna has been on your skin several hours or overnight, you can remove the green paste to see the orange-brown stain underneath. If your water supply is not strongly chlorinated, you can just rinse off the henna paste, and the henna will darken with exposure to air. Rain water and distilled water will not harm your henna. If you suspect that your water has a lot of chlorine, scrape the henna off with a dead credit card, and let it darken without rinsing. As your henna stain is exposed to the air, it will oxidize and darken gradually over the first 48 hours. If your henna paste was made from really fresh henna, it will darken on your skin easily, and with no particular assistance. Oil may help your henna look its best, but it does not actually make the henna darker. If you have used New Skin to seal your henna and prevent smudging, oil such as cocoa butter will remove it easily.

Though henna is used in the context of many celebrations, some of which religious, henna is not in itself sacred. Henna is applied by mothers, sisters, and friends, rather than by clergy. Henna it is most frequently applied in a home, rather than in a church, synagogue, temple or mosque.... The application of henna is considered auspicious and lucky, but is not required as a sacrament in any religion. Henna is a cosmetic women use to make themselves attractive to their husbands, for good luck and as a part of looking their best, rather than as a sacred decoration for a spiritual purpose. Henna is part of the social celebration of life's events: weddings, births, naming, circumcisions, festivals, funerals....and is very frequently used between the women of a family to strengthen friendships and familial bonds. Henna is nearly always regarded as beautiful, blessed and lucky, even as being effective in repelling malevolent spirits, rather than being specifically sacred. Henna is a part of the world of household magic, not religious sacrament. In all of the countries that have traditionally used henna, it has been sometimes very fashionable as women's adornment, and sometime out of fashion. The patterns used in henna generally reflect the interests and tastes of women at the time, and are not usually regarded as magical, though they may be considered lucky. Women have changed the use of henna every time it has moved from one country to another, to suit their tastes, needs and sense of beauty. There is no one correct tradition of henna. Henna has changed many times over the last 5000 years, and been used in many ways by very different people. The resurgence of henna in the late 20th century, and its introduction into Euro-American culture is just one more phase in the history of henna. The contemporary use of henna as a body art, at its best, is no less valid than at any time before...it is just very new, and still taking shape.

The best henna is made fresh from the freshest henna powder, finely powdered, and free from twigs and crud. The more quickly the henna gets from the bush to your skin, the more dark and beautiful the color. If you purchase henna at a store, its hard to tell how long the box has been on the shelf, and how long it was in warehouses before that. If you can get henna from an Internet supplier who is getting it straight from the growers, that is probably your best source, unless you have a friend or relative who can bring you some directly from the country where it is produced .... or ... if you can, grow your own. If you do have very fresh henna powder, you can prolong it's usefulness by keeping it enclosed, lightproof and damp proof in your refrigerator. In a store, look for 100% pure henna powder with no added ingredients, that is meant for skin, not hair. Do not purchase any powder labeled "black henna" that seems to be a hair dye. It will not dye your skin black, it will just leave a grubby smudge.

The green in the henna paste is chlorophyll. The hennotannic acid stains your skin some color in the range of maple leaves in the fall. Maple leaves are green in the summer, when you see the chlorophyll. In the fall the green is gone, showing the other colors. When the green leaf paste is removed from your skin, you see the stain color. Why is my henna stain a whimpy orange? If the henna powder sat for a long time in a shop window, (prominently displayed because it is so trendy), in a warehouse, in a customs depot, or on a store shelf, it will become very stale. Whimpy henna color comes from stale henna.

For our premixed henna colors only leave the color paste on for ONE HOUR. If using the henna powder kit, we recommend at least four hours for paste on or around the hands or feet. Areas other then hands and feet, like navels and biceps leave the paste on for 6 hours. The reason for leaving the paste on longer for parts that are not hands and feet is henna works off the heat of your body. The hands and feet loss a lot of heat, therefor making the henna take faster. So keep those henna areas.

If you need to get rid of your henna pattern quickly, you will need to bleach and exfoliate that area. Acne medications that have alpha-hydroxies and anti-bacterials will help remove henna. Facial scrubs with exfolients will help. Frequent washing with bleach will fade henna quickly from your hands. It is better to wash and exfoliate several times gently over 2 or 3 days than to try to remove the henna all at once. Do not scrub so hard that you hurt yourself.

Very, very few things will easily dye skin. None of the above will improve or significantly change the color of your henna pattern. They might stay on top of your skin briefly, but they will not dye your skin as henna does.

Oil your skin frequently to deter exfoliation. Go over the henna patterns with new henna every several days, carefully retracing the lines. In many traditions, a bride does no housework as long as her hands are ornamented with henna. In Rajasthan, women who always excuse themselves from doing housework to preserve their beautiful henna are referred to as "Mehndi spoiled".

Henna mehndi

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:36:00 +0000

For thousands of years man has wanted to paint his body. Before even primitive clothing came about mans means of being part of a tribe or to be dramatically different would be to stain the body with plant dyes.

The results were fantastic and henna alongside other dyes like indigo was a temporary yet extremely satisfying way of creating a deep colour on the skin.

Henna (from the plant lawsonia inermia) is known as many names and is predominantly found in North Africa, Eygpt, India and parts of the Middle East. It is best known for its dried, ground leaves that produce a colourfast dye in shades varying from pale brown through to dark russet reds. It can be used to dye hair, skin, clothes and even finger nails, and has long been used as a treatment for sunburn, for its astringent qualities and also as a sedative.
The art of Henna has been practised for thousands of years in the countries mentioned above but in the last 5 years there has been a surge of interest from Western countries. It is now widely accepted as an art in self expression and individuality.
There is evidence of tattooing dating right back over 5000 years and the Egyptians were the culture that totally embraced it. They were probably the vainest of cultures when it came to beauty and personal hygiene. Henna was used in many ways to stain hands, hair and nails.
Henna is a life giving and therapeutic experience for anyone who wants to get in touch with their inner self. It has a history of spirituality and is linked with marriage, birth and death, and is probably the oldest art form known to man.
There is something deeply satisfying for an Indian Bride to have her hands and feet painted on the day before her wedding with beautiful intricate Menhdi designs. She is revered by the wedding party and henna is used as a means of idolising her. She is not allowed to do any work before or after her wedding until all the stain has disappeared.

Using henna for many women in poor countries was an inexpensive way of adorning herself and becoming exotic, to set herself apart from others. To paint ones friends was also very popular and the ritual that went with it drew you closer to them.
In the Middle East it is said that Arabs will not present their hand for henna if they are not speaking the truth and it is generally brides who are painted. Henna is known as a symbol of good luck in countries such as Turkey, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
In Morrocco there are unique designs used for many different things. Pregnant women have designs painted on their ankles to protect them throughout childbirth and designs are passed down within the families, secret styles being kept in families for generations.
African designs have a geometry to them that is quite distinct and are less intricate than the very ornate and floral Indian or mehndi designs.

Celtic Art has beautiful intricate knots and animal designs that are more complicated to do in henna but can be mastered. Celtic designs are very spiritual and magical and have many deep meanings to many anglo Saxons.
Japanese and Chinese Art is used by western countries practising henna bodyart and the Japanese symbols are probably some of the most in demand designs for henna. The yin yang sign and all its variations is also very popular. Henna influences reach far and wide and never more so than in the fashion fields. Look at all the crazy designs of designers in the late sixties and early seventies such as Ossie Clarke and Zandra Rhodes. Their flamboyant textile designs are making a huge comeback on the catwalks today and the new 'hippy chic' looks that incorporate not only henna body art but rich textile designs pulled from many cultures... menhdi designs in particular... show that henna bodyart is not dead!
Many professional henna artists today work from designs pulled from all these cultures and infuse their work with a modern slant of their own.

Henna

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:34:00 +0000

Africa and the Middle East.There is some documentation that it is over 9000 years old. Because henna has natural cooling properties, people of the desert, for centuries, have been using henna to cool down their bodies. They make a paste of henna and soak their palms and soles of the feet in it to get an air conditioning affect. They feel it's cooling senstaion throughout the body for as long as the henna stain remains on their skin. Initially, as the stain faded away, it left patterns on the skin surface which led to ideas to make designs for decorative purposes. In the ancient Egyptian times mummies wore henna designs and it is documented that Cleopatra herself used henna for decorative purposes.

Henna was not only a popular adornment for the rich but the poor, who could not afford jewelry, used it to decorate their bodies as well.Henna in the West Cultural & Medicinal Uses medicinal Properties. Today people all over the world have adopted the ancient traditions of adorning their bodies with the beautiful natural artwork created from the henna plant. It became a very popular form of temporary body decoration in the 90's in the US and has become a growing trend ever since. Celebrities like Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Yasmine Bleeth, Liv Tyler, Xena, and many others proudly adorn their bodies with henna and show them off in public, movies, videos, etc. People throughout the west have adopted the eastern tradition in their lives by having their hands and feet painted for weddings, bellies painted while in pregnancy, heads adorned with henna while going through chemotherapy, scars camouflaged to make them unnoticeable, etc.

Henna is used for many reasons including: self-expression; celebration of special occasions like weddings, holidays & birthdays; inspiration; reminders; beauty; cosmetic treatments; medicinal uses; blessings & well-being; to be part of an ancient tradition; and an alternative or precursor to a tattoo.

It can be found in the hot climates like Egypt, Pakistan, India, Africa, Morocco, and Australia. The plant grows best in heat up to 120F degrees and contains more dye at these temperatures. It wilts in temperatures below 50F degrees. It also grows better in dry soil than damp soil. The leaves are in opposite decussate pairs and vary in sizes from approximately 2-4 cm. long. The flowers are fragrant, produced in conical panicles 1040 cm long, each flower 5 mm diameter, with four white petals. The fruit is a dry capsule 68 mm diameter, containing numerous 12.5 mm seeds.

The henna plant contains lawsone which is a reddish-orange dye that binds to the keratin (a protein) in our skin and safely stains the skin. The stain can be from pale orange to nearly black depending on the quality of the henna and how well ones skin takes it. A good henna, fresh from hot & dry climates, will stain the darkest.

For body decorations, the leaves of the henna plant are dried, crushed into a fine powder, and made into a creamy paste using a variety of techniques. This paste is then applied to the skin, staining the top layer of skin only. In its natural state it will dye the skin an orange or brown color. Although it looks dark green (or dark brown depending on the henna) when applied, this green paste will flake off revealing an orange stain. The stain becomes a reddish-brown color after 1-3 days of application. The palms and the soles of the feet stain the darkest because the skin is the thickest in these areas & contain the most keratin. The farther away from hands and feet the henna is applied, the lesser the color. The face area usually stains the lightest. The designs generally last from 1-4 weeks on the skin surface depending on the henna, care and skin type.

Henna works on all skin types and colors. It looks just as beautiful on dark skin as light skin but because some peoples skin may take the dye better than others, it can look more prominent on one and not as much on another (even lighter skin). But nevertheless, henna is a symbol of beauty, art, and happiness and is meant for EVERYONE!

Because henna acts as a sunblock, there is an added benefit to having henna designs in the summer. For those who love to get a tan It leaves tan lines! In order to benefit from this, it is best to get a henna design, let its natural color stay on for 3-5 days and then go and get a tan. This way you can enjoy the natural henna color on your body, the henna color with the tan, and then tan lines in the shapes of the design (once the henna fades away)! The tan lines last as long as the actual tan!

Henna is considered an herb, and has long been known to posses healing qualities. It is used topically and usually not ingested or inhaled. In ancient times it has been applied to the skin surface for such ailments as headaches, stomach pains, burns (including sunburns), open wounds, as a fever reducer, athlete's foot and even the prevention of hair loss. It is also a sunblock and has been used on the noses of animals to prevent sunburn. Another use of henna would be to apply it to goat skin bags, after they have been salt-cured. It "insect-proofs" or "moth-proofs" the bags by making the skin poisoned or inedible.

Henna is traditionally used for special occasions like holidays,

India, and the Middle East. The most popular of the traditions is the Mehndi (henna) Night where the bride, her family, relatives and friends get together to celebrate the wedding to come. The night is filled with games, music and dance performances that may have been rehearsed for months prior to the event by those closest to the bride while the bride gets extensive henna patterns done on her hands and feet that go to her elbows and sometimes, knees. The bridal patterns can take hours and are often done by multilpe henna artists. The guests will usually recieve small designs(tattoos) on the backs of their hands as well.

Today, brides prefer to have their henna done prior to the mehndi night so that they can enjoy the festivities and also have a deeper stain by the wedding day.

Tradition holds that for as long as the henna stain appears on the bride, she doesn't have to do any housework! Also, the darker the stain the better the marriage and the better the mother-in-law will be! So you can imagine why the bride would want the stain to come our dark and last as long as possible!

Is just a

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:27:00 +0000

Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was this guy named Aristotle. Pretty sharp fellow; he thought up a lot of good things. But, occasionally he made a mistake.

One mistake he made was to toss an orange up in the air and watch it come straight back down to his hand. Aristotle reasoned that if he was moving, the orange would have flown off to one side as soon as it left his hand. Because the orange did not do so, Aristotle concluded he was not moving. On the basis of this one observed fact, and the assumption that there was no other explanation for what he observed, Aristotle concluded that the Earth does not move and that therefore the rest of the universe had to move around it.

Aristotle was a very sharp guy, but the fact is that there was another explanation for why the orange fell back into his hand, and it would wait about another 2000 years before another smart man, Sir Isaac Newton, explained just what it was Aristotle had overlooked, set forth in Newton's laws of motion.

But for the early church, Aristotle's conclusions fit in rather well with their theology, which had the Earth created as the center of the universe, unmoving, with the rest of the cosmos spinning about it.

Of course, there was empirical evidence available to all that cast doubt on the church-approved version of the Cosmos. One could see during eclipses that the Earth was not flat. The curved shape of the Earth's shadow as it crossed the moon was the same no matter which place in the sky the eclipse took place. A spherical Earth was the only shape that could produce such a result. Ships sailing over the horizon clearly vanished over a subtle curve ( an observation which eventually inspired Columbus' voyages). Nobody could explain the behavior of a Foucault's Pendulum other than by the Earth spinning beneath it.

But by far the most troubling problem for the geocentric (earth centered) universe was the strange behavior of the planets. In an age before TV, or even books, the night sky was something every person was quite familiar with, even those who were not sailors or fortune tellers. Watching the night sky over time, the paths of the planets were easily seen to occasionally pause, move in reverse for a time, then proceed forward. This behavior was called retrograde motion. Ah, but this was a problem. The church did not have an explanation for this behavior. Indeed in the King James Version of the Bible, the word "planet" appears only once, and then only as an object to be sacrificed to.

There is a very simple explanation for retrograde motion. As the Earth, moving in its inner orbit, overtakes an outer planet, it will appear to hesitate, reverse its path across the sky, then resume its normal path. But the idea that the Earth moved was contrary to Church Dogma and to Aristotle. What education was tolerated by the church was "encouraged" to find some way to explain retrograde motion in a way that did not conflict with the religious needs for a universe centered on an unmoving Earth. Rather than re-examine Aristotle's basic claim, the learned men of the day grabbed onto a suggestion made by Claudius Ptolemy called "epicycles". This theory explained retrograde motion around a motionless Earth by suggesting that the planets moved in large orbits called deferents, upon which were superimposed smaller orbits called epicycles which produced a "wobble" as seen from Earth.

Epicycles were extremely popular with the church, and scholars at universities with religious affiliations were "encouraged" to refine this theory. And it needed refinement, badly, because the epicycle theory did not accurately predict what was being seen in the sky. Generations of effort was expended trying to figure out why the models did not predict the actual motions of the planets. At one point, it was even suggested that the epicycles had epicycles. No matter how many times the observed results did not match the predictions, the approved course of action was to refine the theory, but never to question the basic assumption. Those who dared point to the evidence suggesting that Aristotle (and by extension the church) were in error in postulating a geocentric universe were "discouraged". Galileo was tortured into recanting his conclusions that the Earth moved. Giordano Bruno was burned alive at the stake for suggesting that the sun was really just another star, only close up, and that the other stars had their own planets.

In recent times, our expanding technology has confirmed that Galileo and Bruno were right, and Aristotle and the church were flat out wrong. The Earth does move. There are no deferents or epicycles, or even epicycles on the epicycles. The models of the universe which are based on a moving Earth are quite accurate and able to predict the behaviors of the planets as evidence by the fact that we send spacecraft to those planets on a regular basis.

The theory of a geocentric universe and the theory of epicycles were not science. It was religious doctrine masked as science.

The church has never really dealt with the reality of the universe very well. They only apologized for their treatment of Galileo recently and still refuse to discuss Bruno. The Bible, presumed to be the perfect word of a perfect God, still teaches that the Earth is flat, rests on pillars (Job 26:11), and does not move (Psalms 19:5-6 93:1 96:10 104:5).

It seems that some mistakes are destined to be repeated again, despite our technological prowess.

In 1929, a Cal-Tech astronomer named Edwin Hubble observed that objects which appeared to be much further away showed a more pronounced shift towards the red end of the spectrum. Scientists building on Hubble's discovery concluded that the farther an object was away from Earth, the faster it was receding, and calculated the relationship between distance and velocity, called the "Hubble Constant" and concluded on the basis of this one observed fact and the assumption that there was no other explanation for that observed fact that the universe was expanding.

Religious circles embraced the idea of an expanding universe because for the universe to be expanding, then at some point in the past it had to originate from a single point, called the "Big Bang". Indeed, the concept of the Big Bang did not originate with Edwin Hubble himself but was proposed by a Catholic Monk, Georges Lema'tre in 1927, two years before Hubble published his observations of the Red Shift. The "Big Bang" coincided nicely with religious doctrine and just as had been the case with epicycles (and despite the embarrassment thereof) religious institutions sought to encourage this new model of the universe over all others, including the then prevalent "steady state" theory.

Then history repeated itself. Evidence surfaced that the "Big Bang" might not really be a workable theory in the form of General Relativity, and its postulation that super massive objects would have gravity fields so strong that even light could not escape, nor would matter be able to differentiate. Since the entire universe existing in just one spot would be the most super massive object of all, the universe could not be born.

Needless to say, this suggestion that the Big Bang could not happen provoked the same exact reaction as the suggestion that the Earth might not be the center of everything. Instead of questioning the basic assumption, great effort was made to find a way to evolve the new data in terms acceptable to the assumption of a universe spawned in a single moment of creation. A complex Cosmology theory sprang up, encouraged by those invested in the "Big Bang" to explain why the basic foundational principles of physics behaved differently in the first few milliseconds of time. The math work is impressive, as impressive as that which supported the theory of the epicycles, but it is really just a polite way of saying "The rules just didn't apply when we need them not to apply".

An attempt was made to prove the Big Bang by searching for the "Cosmic Background Radiation", the presumed energy echo from the primordial explosion. and indeed a radio noise signal was picked up. Like Aristotle, and like Hubble, the discoverers of the Cosmic Background Radiation assumed the signal meant what they thought it did and could have no alternative explanation. The discovery of the Cosmic Background Radiation was then heralded as final proof of the Big Bang theory, and those institutions invested in that theory celebrated.

But just as the theory of epicycles did not accurately predict the observed motion of the planets, the Big Bang Theory turned out to be less than accurate about the radiation signal detected in space.

For one thing, there is the "Horizon Problem". At present, the known universe spans 28 billion light years and is assumed to be 14 billion years old. (Obviously unless we actually ARE the center of the universe, it may be assumed that the universe probably extends even further in at least one direction). Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, so there is no way heat radiation could have traveled between the two horizons to even out the hot and cold spots created in the big bang and leave the thermal equilibrium we see now.

When the satellite COBE was sent up to analyze the Cosmic Background Radiation, it discovered instead of the smooth featureless glow predicted by the cosmologists a highly complex and detailed structure. Yet again, rather than question the prime assumption that the signal being analyzed was actually from a supposed "Big Bang", research was encouraged to find a way to fit the data into the existing theory, again on the assumption that the signal detected could not be from any other source. And yet, an alternative explanation for the signal was right at hand, indeed literally on all sides.

Our Solar System and planets have heavy elements (without which you would not be here) because at some time prior to the creation of our Solar System another star in the immediate vicinity exploded, creating the heavy elements and scattering them into the universe. Every star that explodes creates a planetary nebula, such as the one easily seen with amateur telescopes in the constellation Lyra. A planetary nebula is a bubble of debris in space, and given the presence of heavy elements in our own Solar System, then somewhere out in space there must be the tenuous remains of a billions of years old planetary nebula, the result of the not-so-very-big bang, viewable from our unique point of view near the center. This model of Earth lying at the center of the remains of a supernova predicts exactly the sort of structure that COBE found in the presumed Cosmic Background Radiation. But as was the case with Galileo and Bruno, challengers to the "approved" creation myths face a tough time, albeit funding cuts have replaced torture and being burned alive at the stake.

So pervasive is this bias to see the universe as created in a Biblical-consistent "Big Bang" that when William G. Tifft submitted his first article on the quantization of the observed Red Shift to Astrophysical Journal, the Journal published it because they could not find errors in it, yet still felt compelled to editorially distance themselves from the conclusions.

The conclusions derived from quantized red shift are devastating to the conventional view of the universe created in a single Big Bang, as devastating as Galileo's first telescope was to the theory that the Earth was the center of the universe.

Georges Lemaître (like Aristotle) assumed there was no other explanation for the red shift he observed than the motion of the observed objects relative to Earth. But given the theory that the universe is expanding uniformly, the amount of red shifts would have to be uniformly and randomly distributed.

But they aren't.

The observed red shifts in the sky are quantized, falling into discreet intervals. This is not explained by the theory that the red shift is produced solely by relative velocity. Some other effect is at work. And that means that the assumption that the universe is expanding based solely on the red shift is invalidated. Some other effect IS at work that explains the observations, quite possibly one that triggers a quantized red shift over vast distances without respect to relative velocity.

Which means the universe is not expanding. Which means there was no moment of creation, no "Big Bang" with an epicycle-esque cosmology to explain why the greatest black hole of all didn't behave like a black hole. Which means that the background radiation mapped by COBE which didn't quite fit the Big Bang model is probably the remnant of the stellar explosion that created the heavy elements making up that computer you are reading this on.

But the lesson for our time of just how much our society remains dominated by religious superstitions is revealed by the fact that the quantized red-shift is NOT a new discovery. The first article regarding the observed data appeared in 1976, a quarter of a century ago. Since then, scientists as much in the service of superstition as were those scientists who "studied" epicycles have repeatedly tried to disprove the observations of Tifft and Cocke, only to confirm and re-confirm the truth, that there is a quantized red-shift, which casts doubt on the theory of an expanding universe and a "Big bang" creation.

Yet even though hard evidence exists to warrant a full re-examination of the basic assumption of the expanding universe, our science classes and TV programs still promote the "Big Bang" view, just as the erroneous theory of Aristotle continued to be promoted even after Galileo proved it wrong, because one theory fits into a theology, and the other does not.

Man's progress is not measured by the reaches of his science but by the limits of his superstition. The truth is known. But the truth is unpopular.

The assumption that there must be a beginning to the universe is merely a human invention. We believe that we see things have beginnings and ends before us, but in truth we are seeing matter change form. A particular configuration may have a beginning and an end, but that the actual matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed is an axiom of physics. Miss April may be only 20 years old, but the atoms in her heavenly body are indeed heavenly bodies, being the remains of ancient exploded stars, and in THAT form for billions of years.

Ancients believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. But while we grudgingly admit that Earth orbits the sun and that our sun is nowhere near the center of the milky way, the idea that Earth is the center of all remains at the heart of the assumptions of the Big Bang theory. The "Bangers" describe the furthest objects we can detect (currently 13 billion light years) and from that calculate the age of the universe (currently set at 14 billion years).

But that only works if we ASSUME that the Earth is the center for all the cosmos that we can see. It is true that we are seeing objects out to the edge of our technological limits

and we are seeing them in all directions. We do not see an obvious end to the universe. Logically, the odds are far greater than what we can actually see is really just a tiny bubble in a far larger universe, rather than we just happen to be that one in googleplex worlds that wound up at the exact center for the expanding field of debris from the Big Bang (i.e. the location of the original singlularity). And if we abandon the assumption that we see most of the the universe from a fortunate position near the location of the original singlularity, then we cannot really know how large the universe really is, and the mathematics by which we claim to know the age based on the size break down completely. We truly are trying to calculate the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin.

PROOF THE BIG BANG DID NOT HAPPEN

Perhaps the biggest contradiction with the Big Bang Theory is the question of the singularity. The "primordial egg" had to be a super-massive black hole. Therefore no amount of "bang", no matter how big, is going to thrust the universe out into, well, the universe.

Cosmologists eager to promote the Big Bang Theory have hit upon the "explanation" that the laws of physics, gravity., etc. simply did not apply in those first few moments of the universe. The present Cosmology theory is that the universe enjoyed a period of "rulelessness" of about 3 seconds, after which the elements formed and the fundamental forces of the universe, gravity included, were functioning as we see them today.

Ah, but there is a problem. The singularity formed by the primordial egg turns out to be rather large.

Estimates of the total mass of the universe vary wildly, given that the ends of the universe have not yet been determined.

From the mass, you can calculate the diameter of the event horizon by finding the distance from a point mass that will have an escape velocity of c. Use sqrt(2GM/r) where M is the mass of the hole (the entire universe in this case) and r is the radius (classical), and G is the gravitational constant. Work it backward starting at c and you get c^2=2GM/r.

This works out to an event horizon light years across!

In short, at the moment in time when the Big Bang theorists claim the universe was functioning as it does today, complete with all fundamental forces, the entirety of the universe's mass was still well within the event horizon of its own gravity well. That the well was not the product of a true singularity is irrelevant, Newton's equation provides an equivalent gravity field for a singularity or a super dense mass in a localized region.

Therefore the Big Bang, as currently described, could not have produced the universe as we see it today. At three seconds, the time the theorists claim the universe started operating as we know it, it would have come under the influence of its own gravity and unable to reach an escape velocity exceeding that of light, collapsed back into itself.

The "Bangers" get around this paradox with the theory that when the universe was created, it had no mass at all. Therefore, so the theory goes, there was no gravity and no reason the the bang matter (or "batter") not to escape the bang into the universe. Then, after the matter was conveniently far away from the singularity, it interacted with a particle named the Higgs Boson. Like the two tubes that come with epoxy, the Higgs Boson blended with the massless "batter" and produced normal matter with mass. How all the matter in the universe knew just when to mix the tubes together is still open to speculation, but usually the proponents of this theory start whispering about God under their breath at this point.

With the exception of one false alarm out of Fermilab, there has been no evidence that the Higgs Boson exists. The Large Hadron Collider was built specifically to look for the Higgs Boson, nicknamed "The God Particle", thereby revealing the religious agenda that is actually behind what may be history's most expensive church. It must be pointed out that even if the LHC, in the unimaginable fury of the high energy collisions it generates, succeeds in producing a particle that matches the description of the Higgs Boson (absent a piece of "massless matter" to test it with, how will we know?) that does not prove such a particle ever existed before, nor does it prove the Big Bang. The scientist-priests at the LHC will not be able to prove that their new particle is not itself a creation of the LHC rather than a part of nature.

Particle physicists like to joke that studying matter with colliders is like smashing two mechanical clocks together and trying to guess what the clocks looked like based on the springs, gears, and levers that fly out. Let us take that analogy one step further and speculate that given enough speed at the moment of collision, individual teeth from the clock gears will come flying out as seperate distinct pieces. But clearly, prior to that moment of collision, they never did exist as seperate distinct pieces. Their separateness is created by the collision at that very moment. The same may well be true of the ultra-tiny particles generated by the collisions of the LHC, including whatever we may be asked to accept on faith as the "God Particle." They may be artifacts of the collision, and not of natural processes.

ANOTHER PROOF THE BIG BANG DID NOT HAPPEN

For the purposes of this thought experiment, let us assume that God waved a magic wand and the universe popped into existence from a Big Bang, and that "somehow" the universe escaped from it's own gravity well. With the entire 2.6*10⁶⁰ mass/energy of the universe confined to that small region, the temperatures and pressures amount to a super-supernova. We already know that in the cataclysm of a supernova, the heavier elements are created. That is where all the heavy elements in your body were created; inside an exploding star. Therefore, in that moment of super-creation called the Big Bang, as the universe started to operate by the rules we know today, the expanding universe should be creating all the known heavy elements.

So, how to explain the Population II stars?

Population II stars are stars with no heavy elements in them. When they explode at the end of their life cycles, heavy elements are created. These are swept up by stars that form afterwards creating Population I stars, usually with planets around them. Population I stars have heavy elements. Population II stars do not.

If the Big Bang had happened, the universe would be filled with heavy elements created in those first few moments the universe started to operate under the rules of physics we know today. There should not be any stars in existence devoid of those heavy elements. And yet there are.

The existence of Population II stars, devoid of heavy elements, directly contradicts the theory of the Big Bang.

YET ANOTHER PROOF THE BIG BANG DID NOT HAPPEN

The Big Bang is currently imagined to have occurred 14 billion years ago.

The farthest object seen in the sky by the Hubble and Keck Telescopes is 13 billion light-years distant, and is assumed to have been created when the universe was just 750 million years old. It would take at least that long (if not longer) for the material from the theorized Big Bang to coalesce into stars and for those stars to form a rotating galaxy.

But here is the problem. We are seeing that object 13 billion light-years distant not as it is today and where it is today but as it was and where it was, 13 billion years ago, 13 billion light-years distant from earth.

In other words, for this galaxy to lie 13 billion light-years away from Earth only 750 million years after the Big Bang, it would have had to travel 13 billion light years in just 750 million years' time. That requires the galaxy in question to travel more than 17 times faster than the speed of light, a speed limit which according to the Big Bang supporters was in effect from the moment the universe was 3 seconds old.

AN INTRIGUING QUESTION

We see in the night sky that all galaxies rotate. Stars rotate. Planets rotate. Bodies orbit around other bodies. A dimensionless singularity posited by the Big Bang cannot have rotation. So where did all this angular momentum come from if the universe emerged from the Big Bang singularity? For that matter, how do we get a variation in velocity or density emerging from a singularity

UPDATES: In 2011, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN was finally switched on in the experiment it was built to carry out; to prove the existance of the Higgs Boson, the hypothetical particle necessary to reconcile the Big Bang with Special Relativity. CERN concluded that the Higgs particle does not in fact exist. The 2011 Nobel Prize in physics went to three American scientists who demonstrated that the rate of expansion in the expanding universe is accelerating. Even taken at face value, this means some other force is at work other than the initial impetus of the supposed moment of creation. Something else is being seen and possibly misinterpreted! It is time to question the prime assumption that the observed red shift in the sky is attributable only to relative velocity.

Astronomy

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:25:00 +0000

he world. Science on the grandest scale has felt great impedence from religious dogma and pontificators, specificly, the relationship between Gallileo and the Catholic church. The entire history of cosmology is a subject too broad for a small project to contend with, so I want to explore.

10,000 Years After The Big Bang: Radiation Era: Most energy was in the form of radiation -- different wavelengths of light, X rays, radio waves and ultraviolet rays. As the universe expanded, these waves of radiation were stretched and diluted.

300,000 Years After The Big Bang: Matter Domination Era: The average temperature had cooled to a mere 5000 degrees Fahrenheit. The energy in matter and the energy in radiation were equal. But as the universe continued to expand, the effects of the stretching of the light waves continued driving them into lower and lower energy, while the matter continued outward largely unaffected. Electrons could now remain in orbit around atomic nuclei. These hydrogen and helium atoms would eventually form the fuel for the stars.

300,000,000 Years After The Big Bang: Stars and Galaxies Form: The force of gravity began to affect the irregularities in the density of the gaseous matter. As the universe continued to expand more rapidly, pockets of gas formed, becoming more and more dense. Within these pockets, stars ignited, and as they formed, groups of them became the earliest galaxies.

5 Billion Years Ago: Our Solar System Forms: Our sun formed within a cloud of gas in a spiral arm of what we now call the Milky Way Galaxy. A huge cloud of gas and debris surrounded this new star gave birth to planets, moons, and asteroids.

3.8 Billion Years Ago: Life Appeared: The Earth cooled and an atmosphere formed. Microscopic cells began to form, which were neither plant nor animal.

700,000,000 Years Ago: Animals Appeared: Mostly flatworms, jelly fish and algae. 130 million years later large numbers of creatures with hard shells suddenly appear.

200,000,000 Years Ago: Mammals Appeared: These early mammals evolved from some reptile who had begun developing mammalian traits.

65,000,000 Years Ago: Dinosaurs Became Extinct: An asteroid or comet crashed into the northern part of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. This catastrophic event brought an end to the long age of the dinosaurs, providing mammals with a chance to expand their ranges.

niverse continued to expand but not nearly as quickly. It became less dense and cooler. Gravity emerges. Matter forms. Building block particles of quarks, leptons, photons, and neutrinos, form. The universe is now about the size of a melon. Quarks combine to form protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons form the nuclei of all atoms. Protons and neutrons combine to form the atomic nuclei of hydrogen, helium and lithium.niverse continued to expand but not nearly as quickly. It became less dense and cooler. Gravity emerges. Matter forms. Building block particles of quarks, leptons, photons, and neutrinos, form. The universe is now about the size of a melon. Quarks combine to form protons and neutrons. Protons and neutrons form the nuclei of all atoms. Protons and neutrons combine to form the atomic nuclei of hydrogen, helium and lithium.

Steady state

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:22:00 +0000

Revolutionary advance in cosmology. And in the early 1940s, world war limited cosmological advance. But the war that temporarily absorbed scientific resources also promoted technologies that would lead to fundamental scientific advances.

Advances in nuclear physics helped transform cosmological speculations into quantitative calculations. This line of investigation, begun in the late 1940s, was at first pursued mainly by physicists, not astronomers. In the 1930s Georges Lemaître had suggested that the universe might have originated when a primeval "cosmic egg" exploded in a spectacular fireworks, creating an expanding universe. Now physicists found plausible numbers for the cosmic abundances of different elements that would be created in an initial cosmic explosion. But the theory of an initial cosmic explosion was soon challenged by a new hypothesis—that the universe might be in a steady state after all.

In 1946 the Ukrainian-born American physicist George Gamow considered how the early stage of an expanding universe would be a superhot stew of particles, and began to calculate what amounts of various chemical elements might be created under these conditions. Gamow was joined by Ralph Alpher, a graduate student at George Washington University, where Gamow taught, and by Robert Herman, an employee at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where Gamow consulted. Both Alpher and Herman were American-born sons of émigré Russian expansion and cooling of a universe from an initial state of nearly infinite density and temperature. In that state all matter would have been protons, neutrons, and electrons merging in an ocean of high energy radiation. Gamow and Alpher called this hypothetical mixture "Ylem" (from a medieval word for matter). Alpher made detailed calculations of nuclear processes in this early universe. For his calculations he used some of the first electronic digital computers—developed during the war for computing, among other things, conditions inside a nuclear bomb blast. It seemed that elements could be built up as a particle captured neutrons one by one, in a sort of "nuclear cooking."

The contribution of this theory was not to set forth a final solution but, no less important, to set forth a grand problem—what determined the cosmic abundance of the elements? Could the observed abundances be matched by calculations that applied the laws of physics to an early extremely hot dense phase of an expanding universe? Gamow did succeed in explaining the relative abundances of hydrogen and helium. Calculations roughly agreed with observations of stars—helium accounted for about a quarter of the mass of the universe and hydrogen accounted for nearly all the rest. However, attempts to make calculations for other elements failed to get a sensible answer for any element beyond helium. It seemed that piling more neutrons onto helium would hardly ever get you stable elements. Gamow joked that his theory should nevertheless be considered a success, since it did account for 99% of the matter in the universe.

Indeed his theory was not wrong but only incomplete. Astrophysicists soon realized that if the heavier elements were not formed during the hot origin of the universe, they might be formed later on, in the interiors of stars. The theory depended on a special property of carbon, which British astronomer Fred Hoyle measured and found as predicted. Cosmology had entered the laboratory.

There is a charming story, not taken seriously by all historians, about how steady state theory began. The idea came in 1947, Hoyle claimed, when he and his fellow scientists Hermann Bondi and Tommy Gold went to a movie. The three knew each other from shared research on radar during World War II. Hoyle was versatile, undisciplined and intuitive; Bondi had a sharp and orderly mathematical mind; Gold's daring physical imagination opened new perspectives. The movie was a ghost story that ended the same way it started. This got the three scientists thinking about a universe that was unchanging yet dynamic. According to Hoyle, "One tends to think of unchanging situations as being necessarily static. What the ghost-story film did sharply for all three of us was to remove this wrong notion. One can have unchanging situations that are dynamic, as for instance a smoothly flowing river." But how could the universe always look the same if it was always expanding? It did not take them long to see a possible answer—matter was continuously being created. Thus new stars and galaxies could form to fill the space left

in stellar interiors fell outside the theory in which elements were created at the very start. It was interpreted as favoring a rival theory. And Hoyle did favor a rival theory, which he had played a large part in inventing and developing. In this theory the universe had always looked much as it does now. There never had been a "big bang"—a phrase that Hoyle invented in 1950, intending the nickname as pejorative.

Steady-state theory also had an observational advantage over big-bang theory in 1948. The rate of expansion then observed, when calculated backward to an initial big bang, gave an age for the universe of only a few billion years—well below the known age of the solar system! That was certainly an embarrassment for the big bang theory.

For some time cosmologists had measured ideas against a "cosmological principle," which asserted that the large-scale properties of the universe are independent of the location of the observer. In other words, any theory that put we humans at some special place (like the center of the universe) could be rejected out of hand. Bondi and Gold insisted that the universe is not only homogenous in space but also in time—it looks the same at any place and at any time. They grandly called this the "perfect cosmological principle," and insisted that theory should be deduced from the axiom that we are not at any special place in either space or time.

Hoyle was less insistent that the perfect cosmological principle was a fundamental axiom. He preferred to have theory follow from a modification he proposed to Einstein's relativistic universe, adding the creation of matter. The two different steady-state theories had enough in common, however, to be considered one for most purposes.

Much of the later development of steady-state theory came in response to criticism. In Great Britain, especially, scientists gave considerable attention to elaborating the theory. Their arguments were largely of a philosophical nature, with little appeal to observation.

The cosmological debate acquired religious and political aspects. Pope Pious XII announced in 1952 that big-bang cosmology affirmed the notion of a transcendental creator and was in harmony with Christian dogma. Steady-state theory, denying any beginning or end to time, was in some minds loosely associated with atheism. Gamow even suggested steady-state theory was attached to the Communist Party line, although in fact Soviet astronomers rejected both steady-state and big-bang cosmologies as "idealistic" and unsound. Hoyle himself associated steady state theory with personal freedom and anti-communism.

Astronomers in the United States found the steady-state theory attractive, but they took a pragmatic approach. The rival claims of big-bang and steady-state theory must be settled by observational tests. One test involved the ages of galaxies. In a steady state, with continuous creation of matter, there would be a mixture of young and old galaxies throughout the universe. In a big bang, with only an initial creation, galaxies would age with time. And astronomers could look back in time by looking at more distant galaxies, for observing a galaxy a billion light-years away meant seeing it in light that had left it a billion years ago. Observations reported in 1948 purported to find that more distant galaxies were indeed older. Score one for the big bang. Bondi and Gold reviewed the data carefully, and in 1954 they showed that the reported effect was spurious. Score one for steady state. The age test might be able to distinguish between the rival theories in principle, but in practice it could not.

Another possible test involved the rate of expansion of the universe. In a big bang, the expansion rate would slow; in a steady state universe it would remain constant. Data from the Mount Wilson Observatory seemed to favor the big bang, but not certainly enough to constitute a crucial test.

Meanwhile there was a solution to the embarrassing calculation that put the age of a big-bang universe less than the age of the solar system. Walter Baade showed that estimates of the distances to galaxies had mixed together two different types of stars. As a result, the size of the universe had been underestimated by about a factor of two. If galaxies were twice as distant as previously thought, then calculation with the observed rate of expansion gave an age of the universe twice as great as previously calculated — safely greater than the age of the solar system. That argument against the big-bang universe thus dissolved.

The most serious challenge to steady-state theory came from the new science of radio astronomy. Fundamental knowledge in the techniques of detecting faint radio astronomy signals advanced greatly during World War II, especially with research on radar and especially in England. After the war, research programs at Cambridge, at Manchester, and at Sydney, Australia, built radio telescopes to detect signals from outer space. They dominated radio astronomy for the next decade.

The program at Cambridge was led by Martin Ryle, who in 1974 would receive the Nobel Prize in physics for his overall contributions to radio astronomy. In 1951 Ryle believed that radio sources were located within our galaxy, and hence were of no cosmological interest. But over the next few years he became convinced that most of the radio sources he was detecting were extragalactic. His observations, then, could be used to test cosmological models. Ryle argued that his survey of almost 2,000 radio sources, completed in 1955, contradicted steady-state theory, because more distant/older sources seemed to be distributed differently from nearby ones. But he overstated the significance of his initial data. Only after more years of work would radio observations argue strongly against steady-state theory.

Big theroy big bang

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:19:00 +0000

The Teaching Company
(48 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)Course No. 8050Imagine you are traveling through time. Consider the following episodes: * At 13.7 billion years ago, the Universe suddenly appears, growing from the size of an atom to the size of a galaxy in a fraction of a second. * At 10 billion years ago, hydrogen atoms and helium atoms fuse at the center of a supernova to create the building blocks of the physical world. * At 4.6 billion years ago, a cloud of matter collapses to produce a star?our Sun. Earth and the other planets in our solar system form out of the remaining bits of matter swirling around the new star. * At 67 million years ago, an asteroid collides with the Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs, and leaves territory open for the rise of a minor order of organisms, the early mammals. * At 100,000?60,000 years ago, a species of hominines?bipedal ape-like creatures? begins to move out of its home territory in Africa and into the Asian continent. * Today, the descendants of those first hominines?homo sapiens?live in nearly every ecological niche. We fly through the air in planes, communicate instantaneously over immense distances, and develop theories about the creation of the Universe.Each of these scenarios is just one episode in an ever-evolving story: the history of everything. It's a story you'll hear?in its monumental entirety?in Big History: The Big Bang, Life on Earth, and the Rise of Humanity.Taught by historian David Christian, Big History offers a unique opportunity to view human history in the context of the many histories that surround it. Over the course of 48 thought-provoking lectures, he'll serve as your guide as you traverse the sweeping expanse of cosmic history?13.7 billion years of it?starting with the big bang and traveling through time.Have you ever wondered: How do various scholarly discourses?cosmology, geology, anthropology, biology, history?fit together? Big History answers that question by weaving a single story from a variety of scholarly disciplines. Like traditional creation stories told by the world's great religions and mythologies, Big History provides a map of our place in space and time. But it does so using the insights and knowledge of modern science, as synthesized by a renowned historian. This is a story scholars have been able to tell only since the middle of the last century, thanks to the development of new dating techniques in the mid-1900s. As Professor Christian explains, this story will continue to grow and change as scientists and historians accumulate new knowledge about our shared past. Eight "Thresholds" To tell this epic, Professor Christian organizes the history of creation into eight "thresholds." Each threshold marks a point in history when something truly new appeared and forms never before seen began to arise. Starting with the first threshold, the creation of the Universe, Professor Christian traces the developments of new, more complex entities, including: * The creation of the first stars (threshold 2) * The origin of life (threshold 5) * The development of the human species (threshold 6) * The moment of modernity (threshold 8). In the final lectures, you'll even gain a glimpse into the future as you review speculations offered by scientists about where our species, our world, and our Universe may be heading. Getting the "Big" Picture While you may have heard parts of this story before in courses on geology, history, anthropology, biology, cosmology, and other scholarly disciplines, Big History provides more than just a recap. This course will expand the scope of your perspective on the past and alter the way you think about history and the world around you. "Because of the scale on which we look at the past, you should not expect to find in it many of the familiar details, names, and personalities that you'll find in other types of historical teaching and writing," explains Professor Christian. "For example, the French Revolution and the Renaissance will barely get a mention. They'll zoom past in a blur. You'll barely see them. Instead, what we're going to see are some less familiar aspects of the past. ... We'll be looking, above all, for the very large patterns, the shape of the past." Thanks to this grand perspective, you'll uncover the remarkable parallels and connections among disciplines that remain to be explored when you view history on a large scale. How is the creation of stars like the building of cities? How is the big bang like the invention of agriculture? These are the kinds of connections you'll find yourself pondering as you undergo the grand shift in perspective afforded by Big History. Fascinating Facts Along the way, you'll encounter intriguing tidbits that put the grand scale of this story in perspective, such as: * The entire expanse of human civilization?5,000 years?makes up a mere 2 percent of the human experience. * Approximately 98 percent of human history occurred before the invention of agriculture. * All the matter we know of in the Universe is likely to be no more than 1 billionth of the actual matter that was originally created. * The Earth's Moon was probably created by a collision between the young Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet. * At present, we cannot drill deeper than about 7 miles into the Earth, which is just 0.2% of the distance to the center (4,000 miles away). * Between 1000 C.E. and 2000 C.E., human populations rose by a factor of 24. * Traveling in a jet plane, it would take 5 million years to get from our solar system to the next nearest star. The Story We Tell about Ourselves "To understand ourselves," says Professor Christian, "we need to know the very large story, the largest story of all." And that, perhaps, is one of the greatest benefits of Big History: It provides a thought-provoking way to help us understand our own place within the Universe. From humankind's place within the context of evolutionary history to our impact on the larger biosphere?both now and in our species' past?this course offers a broad yet nuanced examination of our place in creation. It also poses a profound question: Is it possible that our species is the only entity created by the Universe with the capacity to ponder its mysteries? There is, perhaps, no more profound question to ask, and no better guide on this quest for understanding than Professor Christian. A pioneer in this approach to understanding history, Professor Christian has made big history his personal project for more than two decades. Working with experts in a variety of fields, he designed and taught some of the first big history courses, and has published widely on the topic. Accept his invitation to get the big picture on Big History, and prepare for a journey through time and across space, from the first moments of existence to the distant reaches of the far future. David Christian, D.Phil.Professor of HistorySan Diego State UniversityDavid Christian is Professor of History at San Diego State University, where he teaches courses on big history, world environmental history, Russian history, and the history of Inner Eurasia. From 1975 to 2000, he taught Russian history, European history, and world history at Macquarie University in Sydney. Professor Christian was born in New York and grew up in Nigeria and Britain. He completed his B.A. in History at Oxford University, his M.A. in Russian History at The University of Western Ontario, and his D.Phil. in 19th-Century Russian History at Oxford University. As a graduate student, he spent a year in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) during the Brezhnev era. In the late 1980s, Professor Christian developed an interest in understanding the past on very large scales. With the help of colleagues in astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, and prehistory, he began an experimental history course that started with the origins of the Universe and ended in the present day. Within two years, after his students persuaded him that it was a shame not to deal with the future after studying 13 billion years of history in 13 weeks, he introduced a final lecture on prospects for the future. In 1992, he wrote an article describing this approach as ?big history.? The label seems to have stuck, as similar courses have independently appeared elsewhere, and there are now several courses in big history at European, Russian, Australian, and North American universities. In addition, Professor Christian has written on the social and material history of 19th-century Russian peasantry, in particular on aspects of diet and the role of alcohol. In 1990, he completed a study of the role of vodka in Russian social, political, and economic life. Professor Christian?s recent publications include: Imperial and Soviet Russia: Power, Privilege and the Challenge of Modernity (Macmillan/St. Martin?s, 1997); A History of Russia, Central Asia and Mongolia, Vol. 1: Inner Eurasia from Prehistory to the Mongol Empire in The Blackwell History of the World (Blackwell, 1998); Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (University of California Press, 2004), which won the 2005 World History Association Book Prize and has been translated into Spanish and Chinese; and This Fleeting World: A Short History of Humanity (Berkshire Publishing, 2007). Professor Christian is a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities. He is Affiliates Chair for the World History Association and was one of the editors of the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History.

Big theory

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:16:00 +0000

We certainly know that our universe exists, however, this knowledge alone has not satisfied mankind's quest for further understanding. Our curiosity has led us to question our place in this universe and furthermore, the place of the universe itself. Throughout time we have asked ourselves these questions: How did our universe begin? How old is our universe? How did matter come to exist? Obviously, these are not simple questions and throughout our brief history on this planet much time and effort has been spent looking for some clue. Yet, after all this energy has been expended, much of what we know is still only speculation.
We have, however, come a long way from the mystical beginnings of the study of cosmology and the origins of the universe. Through the understandings of modern science we have been able to provide firm theories for some of the answers we once called hypotheses. True to the nature of science, a majority of these answers have only led to more intriguing and complex questions. It seems to be inherent in our search for knowledge that questions will always continue to exist.
Although in this short chapter it will be impossible to tackle all of the questions concerning the creation of everything we know as reality, an attempt will be made to address certain fundamental questions of our being. It will be important to keep in mind that all of this information is constantly being questioned and reevaluated in order to understand the universe more clearly. For our purposes, through an examination of what is known about the Big Bang itself, the age of the universe, and the synthesis of the first atoms, we believe that we can begin to answer several of these key questions.

One of the most persistently asked questions has been: How was the universe created? Many once believed that the universe had no beginning or end and was truly infinite. Through the inception of the Big Bang theory, however,no longer could the universe be considered infinite. The universe was forced to take on the properties of a finite phenomenon, possessing a history and a beginning.
About 15 billion years ago a tremendous explosion started the expansion of the universe. This explosion is known as the Big Bang. At the point of this event all of the matter and energy of space was contained at one point. What exisisted prior to this event is completely unknown and is a matter of pure speculation. This occurance was not a conventional explosion but rather an event filling all of space with all of the particles of the embryonic universe rushing away from each other. The Big Bang actually consisted of an explosion of space within itself unlike an explosion of a bomb were fragments are thrown outward. The galaxies were not all clumped together, but rather the Big Bang lay the foundations for the universe.
The origin of the Big Bang theory can be credited to Edwin Hubble. Hubble made the observation that the universe is continuously expanding. He discovered that a galaxys velocity is proportional to its distance. Galaxies that are twice as far from us move twice as fast. Another consequence is that the universe is expanding in every direction. This observation means that it has taken every galaxy the same amount of time to move from a common starting position to its current position. Just as the Big Bang provided for the foundation of the universe, Hubbles observations provided for the foundation of the Big Bang theory.
Since the Big Bang, the universe has been continuously expanding and, thus, there has been more and more distance between clusters of galaxies. This phenomenon of galaxies moving farther away from each other is known as the red shift. As light from distant galaxies approach earth there is an increase of space between earth and the galaxy, which leads to wavelengths being stretched.
In addition to the understanding of the velocity of galaxies emanating from a single point, there is further evidence for the Big Bang. In 1964, two astronomers, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, in an attempt to detect microwaves from outer space, inadvertently discovered a noise of extraterrestrial origin. The noise did not seem to emanate from one location but instead, it came from all directions at once. It became obvious that what they heard was radiation from the farthest reaches of the universe which had been left over from the Big Bang. This discovery of the radioactive aftermath of the initial explosion lent much credence to the Big Bang theory.

Even more recently, NASAs COBE satellite was able to detect cosmic microwaves eminating from the outer reaches of the universe. These microwaves were remarkably uniform which illustrated the homogenity of the early stages of the universe. However, the satillite also discovered that as the universe began to cool and was still expanding, small fluctuations began to exist due to temperature differences. These flucuatuations verified prior calculations of the possible cooling and development of the universe just fractions of a second after its creation. These fluctuations in the universe provided a more detailed description of the first moments after the Big Bang. They also helped to tell the story of the formation of galaxies which will be discussed in the next chapter.
The Big Bang theory provides a viable solution to one of the most pressing questions of all time. It is important to understand, however, that the theory itself is constantly being revised. As more observations are made and more research conducted, the Big Bang theory becomes more complete and our knowledge of the origins of the universe more substantial.

Now that an attempt has been made to grapple with the theory of the Big Bang, the next logical question to ask would be what happened afterward? In the minuscule fractions of the first second after creation what was once a complete vacuum began to evolve into what we now know as the universe. In the very beginning there was nothing except for a plasma soup. What is known of these brief moments in time, at the start of our study of cosmology, is largely conjectural. However, science has devised some sketch of what probably happened, based on what is known about the universe today.
Immediately after the Big Bang, as one might imagine, the universe was tremendously hot as a result of particles of both matter and antimatter rushing apart in all directions. As it began to cool, at around 10^-43 seconds after creation, there existed an almost equal yet asymmetrical amount of matter and antimatter. As these two materials are created together, they collide and destroy one another creating pure energy. Fortunately for us, there was an asymmetry in favor of matter. As a direct result of an excess of about one part per billion, the universe was able to mature in a way favorable for matter to persist. As the universe first began to expand, this discrepancy grew larger. The particles which began to dominate were those of matter. They were created and they decayed without the accompaniment of an equal creation or decay of an antiparticle.
As the universe expanded further, and thus cooled, common particles began to form. These particles are called baryons and include photons, neutrinos, electrons and quarks would become the building blocks of matter and life as we know it. During the baryon genesis period there were no recognizable heavy particles such as protons or neutrons because of the still intense heat. At this moment, there was only a quark soup. As the universe began to cool and expand even more, we begin to understand more clearly what exactly happened.
After the universe had cooled to about 3000 billion degrees Kelvin, a radical transition began which has been likened to the phase transition of water turning to ice. Composite particles such as protons and neutrons, called hadrons, became the common state of matter after this transition. Still, no matter more complex could form at these temperatures. Although lighter particles, called leptons, also existed, they were prohibited from reacting with the hadrons to form more complex states of matter. These leptons, which include electrons, neutrinos and photons, would soon be able to join their hadron kin in a union that would define present-day common matter.
After about one to three minutes had passed since the creation of the universe, protons and neutrons began to react with each other to form deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen. Deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, soon collected another neutron to form tritium. Rapidly following this reaction was the addition of another proton which produced a helium nucleus. Scientists believe that there was one helium nucleus for every ten protons within the first three minutes of the universe. After further cooling, these excess protons would be able to capture an electron to create common hydrogen. Consequently, the universe today is observed to contain one helium atom for every ten or eleven atoms of hydrogen.
While it is true that much of this information is speculative, as the universe ages we are able to become increasingly confident in our knowledge of its history. By studying the way in which the universe exists today it is possible to learn a great deal about its past. Much effort has gone into understanding the formation and number of baryons present today. Through finding answers to these modern questions, it is possible to trace their role in the universe back to the Big Bang. Subsequently, by studying the formation of simple atoms in the laboratory we can make some educated guesses as to how they formed originally. Only through further research and discovery will it be possible to completely understand the creation of the universe and its first atomic structures, however, maybe we will never know for sure.
AGE OF THE UNIVERSE
We now have something of a handle on two of the most important quandaries concerning the universe; however, one major question remains. If the universe is indeed finite, how long has it been in existence? Again, science has been able to expand upon what it knows about the universe today and extrapolate a theory as to its age. By applying the common physical equation of distance over velocity equaling time, which again uses Hubbles observations, a fairly accurate approximation can be made.
The two primary measurements needed are the distance of a galaxy moving away from us and that galaxys red shift. An unsuccessful first attempt was made to find these distances through trigonometry. Scientists were able to calculate the diameter of the Earths orbit around the sun which was augmented through the calculation of the Suns motion through our own galaxy. Unfortunately, this calculation could not be used alone to determine the enormous distance between our galaxy and those which would enable us to estimate the age of the universe because of the significant errors involved.
The next step was an understanding of the pulsation of stars. It had been observed that stars of the same luminosity blinked at the same rate, much like a lighthouse could work where all lighthouses with 150,000 watt light bulbs would rotate every thirty seconds and those with 250,000 watt light bulbs would rotate every minute. With this knowledge, scientists assumed that stars in our galaxy that blinked at the same rate as stars in distant galaxies must have the same intensity. Using trigonometry, they were able to calculate the distance to the star in our galaxy. Therefore, the distance of the distant star could be calculated by studying the difference in their intensities much like determining the distance of two cars in the night. Assuming the two cars headights had the same intensity, it would be possible to infer that the car whose headlights appeared dimmer was farther away from the observer than the other car whose headlights would seem brighter. Again, this theory could not be used alone to calculate distance of the most far-away galaxies. After a certain distance it becomes impossible to distinguish individual stars from the galaxies in which they exist. Because of the large red shifts in these galaxies a method had to be devised to find distance using entire galaxy clusters rather than stars alone.
By studying the sizes of galaxy cluster that are near to us, scientists can gain an idea of what the sizes of other clusters might be. Consequently, a prediction can be made about their distance from the Milky Way much in the same way the distance of stars was learned. Though a calculation involving the supposed distance of the far-off cluster and its red shift, a final estimation can be made as to how long the galaxy has been moving away from us. In turn, this number can be used inversely to turn back the clock to a point when the two galaxies were in the same place at the same time, or, the moment of the Big Bang. The equation generally used to show the age of the universe is shown here

Big

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:14:00 +0000

The Big Bang is the leading theory that almost all astrophysicists believe explains the origin of the universe. This is because all observations so far made support the Big Bang theory; there are four main lines of evidence that are most-often used.

The first was discussed above: The expansion of the universe. The universe is expanding now, so in the past it must have been smaller. If it were smaller in the past, then there probably was a time when it was infinitesimally small. One could ask why don't we think that it might be expanding now but it could have been shrinking before and we just don't know about it. The answer is that there is simply no mechanism that we know about that could accomplish this transition on a universal scale.

The second line of evidence is the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) that was discovered in 1965 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson from Bell Labs. They were working with a microwave receiver, but were getting noise from every direction they pointed the receiver. It was coming from all over the sky at what seemed to be exactly the same frequency. This was the first evidence for the CMB, and they later shared a Nobel Prize for this discovery.

The CMB is an "echo" left over from when the universe was approximately 300,000 years old, as predicted by the Big Bang model. As something becomes compressed, as matter was when the universe was young, it becomes hot. The actual "heat" comes from particles' movements - the faster they move, the more energetic they are, and so the more heat we see. The universe was so hot before it was 300,000 years old that atoms could not form. Because of this, photons - particles of light - could not move around, for they kept reacting with electrons.

Therefore, during this period, the universe was effectively opaque. Once the universe had reached 300,000 years old, atoms could form, and electrons were now bound to a nucleus. Once this happened, photons could move about freely. This "first light" is the CMB, and its existence is a very strong indication that the Big Bang occurred.

The third major pillar of the Big Bang theory lies in the abundance of the different elements of the universe. The theory predicts that certain amounts of hydrogen, helium, and other elements should be made. Observations have shown almost exactly the amounts that are predicted.

The fourth piece is that the Big Bang theory is the only one that comprehensively lays down a framework for the eventual evolution of the universe as we observe it today.

The Big Bang model had its beginnings with Edwin Hubble's discovery in 1929 that, on large scales, everything in the universe is moving away from everything else. The only explanation for this was that the universe was expanding in every direction, and it was taking galaxies along with it.

The next step towards the Big Bang model was to take this process in reverse - that is, to go back in time. If the universe is "blowing up" like a balloon as time progresses, then what would happen if you were to run the timeline backwards? What was the universe like in the past?

If the universe is currently growing, then the universe was smaller in the past. There must have been some point in time when the universe was half its current size. Then there must have been a time when it was half that size. If you continue to run time backwards, there must have been a time when the universe was an infinitesimally small point.

This is the basic idea behind the Big Bang. All matter and energy existed in an infinitely small point of infinite density a long time ago, and has since been expanding as our universe. One important note here is that the Big Bang was not an explosion the universe, but rather it is an explosion the universe. Therefore, there is no "center" of the universe from where the Big Bang started.

Cosmology

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:11:00 +0000

In the beginning, the Earth was flat. At least it appeared so to its first observers, hunters and gatherers, and members of early civilisations. Not totally unreasonable, one would think, because the curvature of our planet's surface is not immediately apparent. Yet we know, and it must have been not totally inconceivable even to the archaic tribesmen, that our senses occasionally deceive us. The Earth being flat brings about the problem that it must end somewhere, unless we imagine it to extend infinitely. Infinity is a rather unfathomable conception and, hence, right down to the Middle Ages people were afraid of the possibility of falling off the Earth's boundaries.

Early cosmogonies.

What lies beyond these boundaries was largely unknown and open to speculation. The starry heavens were a source of endless wonder and inspiration. Peoples from all parts of the world created their own myths, inspired by the skies and the celestial bodies. Their cosmogonies can be seen as an attempt to explain their own place in the universe. Six thousand years ago, the Sumerians believed that the Earth is at the centre of the cosmos. This belief was later carried into the Babylonian and Greek civilisations.

According to the history books, it was the Greeks who first put forward the idea that our planet is a sphere. Around 340 BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle made a few good points in favour of this theory in On the Heavens. First, he argued that one always sees the sails of a ship coming over the horizon first and only later its hull, which suggests that the surface of the ocean is curved. Second, he realised that the eclipses of the Moon were caused by the Earth casting its shadow on the moon. Obviously, the shadow would not always appear round, if the Earth was a flat disk, unless the Sun was directly under the centre of the disk. Third, from their travels to foreign countries, the Greeks knew that the North Star appears higher on the northern firmament and lower in the south. Aristotle explained this correctly with the parallactic shift that occurs when moving between two observation points on a spherical object. Among the Greeks, the heliocentric system was proposed by the Pythagoreans and by Aristarchus of Samos (ca. 270 BC). However, Aristotle dismissed the case for heliocentrism.

Ptolemy's geocentric model of the cosmos.

The influence of Aristotle was significant. Around 150 AD, Claudius Ptolemaeus (Ptolemy) elaborated Aristotle's ideas into a complete cosmological model. He thought that the Earth was stationary at the centre of the universe and that the Sun, the stars, and all planets revolve around it in circular orbits, hence, the model is sometimes referred to as the geocentric system. Ptolemy was aware that the postulation of perfect circular orbits contradicted observation, because the planets' motion, size and brightness varied with time. To account for the observed deviations, he introduced the idea of epicycles, smaller circular orbits around imaginary centres on which planets were supposed to move while describing a revolution around Earth. This enabled astronomers to make reasonably accurate predictions about the movement of the celestial bodies, and consequently the Ptolemaic model was a great success. The system was later adopted by the Christian Church and became the dominant cosmology until the 16th century.

Copernicus.

In 1514 the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) put forward an alternative model, referred to as the heliocentric system, in which the Sun is at the centre of the universe, and all planets, including Earth, revolve around it. The further apart a planet is from the Sun, the longer it takes to complete a revolution. Copernicus said that the ostensible movement of the Sun is caused by the Earth rotating around its north-to-south axis. The heliocentric system got rid of Ptolemy's obscure epicycles, whose main weakness was that they did neither account for the observed backward motion of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, nor for the fact that Mercury and Venus never moved more than a certain distance from the Sun. Unfortunately, the Copernican system was not inherently simpler than the geocentric system; and it did not immediately render more accurate calculations of the planet's motion.

Galileo.

The end of the Ptolemaic theory came with the invention of the telescope. With the help of this device, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) discovered the four largest Jupiter moons. The existence of these moons demonstrated beyond doubt that not all celestial bodies revolve around the Earth, contrary to Ptolemy’s theory. Galileo confirmed the Copernican model and thus initiated a scientific revolution of great importance, much to the discontent of the Roman Catholic Church. Unsurprisingly, Galileo struggled with church authorities during much of his lifetime. In 1594 the German astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) refined the heliocentric model in his book Mysterium Cosmographicum by showing that planets move on elliptical, rather than circular orbits. Kepler also prepared the idea of gravity by explaining that the Sun exerts a force on planets that diminishes inversely with distance and causes them to move faster on their orbits, the closer they come to the Sun. This theory finally allowed predictions that matched observations.

Kepler and Newton: The paradox of the collapsing universe.

Kepler’s model became the accepted 17th century cosmology, until Isaac Newton further refined Kepler's notion of the forces between celestial bodies. Newton postulated the law of universal gravitation that applied to all bodies, whether in space or on Earth, and he supplied the mathematical foundation for it. According to Newton, bodies attract each other proportionally with their size and inverse proportionally with the square of the distance between them. He went on to demonstrate that according to this law, planets move on elliptical orbits, as previously assumed by Kepler. Unfortunately, one consequence of this theory is that the stars of the universe attract each other and thus must eventually collapse onto each other. Newton was not able to give a plausible explanation for why this did not happen.

To counter this paradox, it was inferred that the universe is infinite in space, and thus contains an infinite number of evenly distributed stars, which would on the whole create a gravitational equilibrium. This assumption, however, would still imply instability. If the balance is disturbed in one region of space, the nearest stars collapse and the gravitational pull of the resulting more massive body draws in the next cluster of stars. Clusters would collapse like a house of cards and eventually draw in the entire universe. Today we know that this is not the case, because the universe is not static as Newton thought. The cosmos is in a state of expansion and therefore, gravitational collapse is prevented.

Is the universe infinite in space and time?

The question of whether the universe has boundaries in time and space has captivated the imagination of mankind since early times. Some would say the universe had existed forever, while others would say that the universe was created and thus had a beginning in time and space. The second thesis immediately raises the question what exists beyond its temporal and spatial bounds. Could it be nothingness? But then, what is nothingness? The absence of matter, or the absence of space and time itself? The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) dealt intensively with this question. In his book Critique of Pure Reason he came to the conclusion that the question cannot be answered reliably within the limits of human knowledge, since thesis and antithesis are equally valid. Kant thought instead of time and space as fundamental aspects of human perception.

Big Bang - the birth of our universe.

Fast forward: Despite Kant's doubts thereto, it appears that modern cosmology has answered the above question. The universe we can observe is finite. It has a beginning in space and time, before which the concept of space and time has no meaning, because spacetime itself is a property of the universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the universe began about twelve to fifteen billion years ago in a violent explosion. For an incomprehensibly small fraction of a second, the universe was an infinitely dense and infinitely hot fireball. A peculiar form of energy that we don't know yet, suddenly pushed out the fabric of spacetime in a process called "inflation", which lasted for only one millionth of a second. Thereafter, the universe continued to expand but not nearly as quickly. The process of phase transition formed out the most basic forces in nature: first gravity, then the strong nuclear force, followed by the weak nuclear and electromagnetic forces. After the first second, the universe was made up of fundamental energy and particles like quarks, electrons, photons, neutrinos and other less familiar particles.

About 3 seconds after the Big Bang, nucleosynthesis set in with protons and neutrons beginning to form the nuclei of simple elements, predominantly hydrogen and helium, yet for the first 100,000 years after the initial hot explosion there was no matter of the form we know today. Instead, radiation (light, X rays, and radio waves) dominated the early universe. Following the radiation era, atoms were formed by nuclei linking up with free electrons and thus matter slowly became dominant over energy. It took 200 million years until irregularities in the primordial gas began to form galaxies and early stars out of pockets of gas condensing by virtue of gravity. The Sun of our solar system was formed out of such a pocket of gas in a spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy roughly five billion years ago. A vast disk of gas and debris swirling around the early Sun gave birth to the planets, including Earth, which is between 4.6 and 4.5 billion years old. This is -in short- the history of our universe according to the Big Bang theory, which constitutes today's most widely accepted cosmological viewpoint.

What speaks in favor of the Big Bang theory?

A number of different observations corroborate the Big Bang theory. Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) discovered that galaxies are receding from us in all directions. He observed shifts in the spectra of light from different galaxies, which are proportional to their distance from us. The farther away the galaxy, the more its spectrum is shifted towards the low (red) end of the spectrum, which is in some way comparable to the Doppler effect. This redshift indicates recession of objects in space, or better: the ballooning of space itself. Today, there is convincing evidence for Hubble's observations. Projecting galaxy trajectories backward in time means that they converge to a high-density state, i.e. the initial fireball.

According to the Copernican cosmological principle, the universe appears the same in every direction from every point in space, or in more scientific terms: The universe is homogeneous and isotropic. There is overwhelming evidence for this assertion. The best evidence is provided by the almost perfect uniformity of the cosmic background radiation. This observed radiation is isotropic to a very high degree and is thought to be a remnant of the initial Big Bang explosion. The background radiation originates from an era of a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang, when the first atoms where formed. Another piece of evidence speaking in favour of Big Bang is the abundance of light elements, like hydrogen, deuterium (heavy hydrogen), helium, and lithium. Big Bang nucleosynthesis predicts that about a quarter of the mass of the universe should be helium-4, which is in good agreement with what is observed.

Will the universe expand forever?

On basis of our understanding of the past and present universe, we can speculate about its future. The prime question is whether gravitational attraction between galaxies will one day slow the expansion and ultimately force the universe into contraction, or whether it will continue to expand and cool forever. The current rate of expansion (Hubble Constant) and the average density of the universe determine whether the gravitational force is strong enough to halt expansion. The density required to halt expansion (=critical density) is 1.1 * 10^-26 kg per cubic meter, or six hydrogen atoms per cubic meter; the relation "actual density" / "critical density" is called Omega. With Omega less than 1, the universe is called "open", i.e. forever expanding. If Omega is greater than 1 the universe is called "closed", which means that it will contract and eventually collapse in a Big Crunch. In the unlikely event that Omega = 1, the expansion of the universe will asymptotically slow down until it becomes virtually imperceptible, but it won't collapse.

Big Bang - Big Crunch?

Some scientists think it not impossible that the universe is oscillating between eras of expansion and contraction, where every Big Bang is followed by a Big Crunch. Stephen Hawking (born 1942) pointed out the possibility that such an oscillating universe must not necessarily start and end in singularities, i.e. questionable points in spacetime where physical theories, such as General Relativity, break down while energy and density levels approximate infinity. Although everything points towards Big Bang, the future reversal and contraction of the universe is rather uncertain. Big Crunch is at most a hypothesis, because only about 1/100th of the matter needed for Omega=1 can be observed.

In spite of this, galaxies and star clusters behave as if they would contain more matter than we can see. It is almost as if these objects were engulfed by invisible matter. This "dark matter" that cannot be accounted for is one of the open questions in cosmology. Dark matter makes is thought to make up 23% of the universe.

Big Rip!

Today, most cosmologists believe there is not enough matter in the universe to halt and revert expansion. Robert Caldwell of Dartmouth University has recently suggested a third alternative for the fate of the universe. His Big Rip scenario is based on astronomical observations made in the late 1990s according to which a mysterious force, labelled dark energy, is responsible for the expansion of the universe. Dark energy makes up 73% of the universe. If the rate of acceleration increases, there will be a point in time at which the repulsive force becomes so strong that it overwhelms gravity and the other fundamental forces. According to Caldwell, this will happen in 20 billion years. "The expansion becomes so fast that it literally rips apart all bound objects," Caldwell explains. "It rips apart clusters of galaxies. It rips apart stars. It rips apart planets and solar systems. And it eventually rips apart all matter." Even atoms would be torn apart in the last 10-19 seconds before the end of time. –Whether or not this scenario will become true is to be decided by future research. Until then, the field is open to speculation.

religion in america

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:08:00 +0000

this past August, President Obama declared: “This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are.” In doing so, he paid homage to a vision that politicians and preachers have extolled for more than two centuries—that America historically has been a place of religious tolerance. It was a sentiment George Washington voiced shortly after taking the oath of office just a few blocks from Ground Zero.

But is it so?

In the storybook version most of us learned in school, the Pilgrims came to America aboard the Mayflower in search of religious freedom in 1620. The Puritans soon followed, for the same reason. Ever since these religious dissidents arrived at their shining “city upon a hill,” as their governor John Winthrop called it, millions from around the world have done the same, coming to an America where they found a welcome melting pot in which everyone was free to practice his or her own faith.

The problem is that this tidy narrative is an American myth. The real story of religion in America’s past is an often awkward, frequently embarrassing and occasionally bloody tale that most civics books and high-school texts either paper over or shunt to the side. And much of the recent conversation about America’s ideal of religious freedom has paid lip service to this comforting tableau.

From the earliest arrival of Europeans on America’s shores, religion has often been a cudgel, used to discriminate, suppress and even kill the foreign, the “heretic” and the “unbeliever”—including the “heathen” natives already here. Moreover, while it is true that the vast majority of early-generation Americans were Christian, the pitched battles between various Protestant sects and, more explosively, between Protestants and Catholics, present an unavoidable contradiction to the widely held notion that America is a “Christian nation.”

First, a little overlooked history: the initial encounter between Europeans in the future United States came with the establishment of a Huguenot (French Protestant) colony in 1564 at Fort Caroline (near modern Jacksonville, Florida). More than half a century before the Mayflower set sail, French pilgrims had come to America in search of religious freedom.

The Spanish had other ideas. In 1565, they established a forward operating base at St. Augustine and proceeded to wipe out the Fort Caroline colony. The Spanish commander, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, wrote to the Spanish King Philip II that he had “hanged all those we had found in [Fort Caroline] because...they were scattering the odious Lutheran doctrine in these Provinces.” When hundreds of survivors of a shipwrecked French fleet washed up on the beaches of Florida, they were put to the sword, beside a river the Spanish called Matanzas (“slaughters”). In other words, the first encounter between European Christians in America ended in a blood bath.

The much-ballyhooed arrival of the Pilgrims and Puritans in New England in the early 1600s was indeed a response to persecution that these religious dissenters had experienced in England. But the Puritan fathers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony did not countenance tolerance of opposing religious views. Their “city upon a hill” was a theocracy that brooked no dissent, religious.

History of rape

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 10:02:00 +0000

SPEECH, SILENCE, AND HISTORY IN THE RAPE OF LUCRECE

IN AN ANALOGY which underscores his perception of poetry as a distinguishing constituent of the aristocratic life, Puttenham introduces his discussion of figures of poetic ornament by comparing the proper "fashioning of our makers language and stile"with a properly dressed gentlewoman:

And as we see in these great Madames of honour, be they for personage or otherwise never so comely and bewtifull, yet if they want their courtly habillements or at leastwise such other apparell as custome and civilitie have ordained to cover their naked bodies, would be halle ashamed or greatly out of countenaunce to be seen in that sort, and perchance do then thinke themselves more amiable in every mans eye, when they be in their richest attire . . . then when they go in cloth or any other plaine and simple apparell. [1]

A judicious application of the figures of poetic ornament resembles, Puttenham continues, a skillful maquillage. A badly made poem is as ridiculous an object as would result if "the crimson tainte, which should be laid upon a Ladies lips, or right in the center of her cheekes should by some oversight or mishap be applied to her forhead or chinne" (138).

Puttenham's choice of an elegantly dressed and appropriately made-up lady as metaphor for the nature of an appropriately fashioned poem speaks to the highly gendered nature of Renaissance poetic convention, under whose terms the process of speaking about a woman so often became the process of fixing identities for both female object of desire and masculine speaker. [2] Speech about women eventuated in speaking Woman as a cultural presence, a presence which, despite its

positioning at the apex of a triangulated economy of sexual exchange between men, remained fixed and passive--the subject of others' desire and not the mistress of her own. [3] The rhetorical strategies of sixteenth-century poems are thus eloquent not only of their authors' expertise in manipulating the sexual tropes of poetic making, but also of how these tropes are implicated in situating a work within the discourses of gender definition.

Recent criticism of The Rape of Lucrece has concentrated on reading the poem's high degree of formal self-consciousness as an index to what it might have to say about sex and the social experience of gender.[4] This work, most of it produced by female scholars, creates a sharp contrast with earlier academic generations' virtually unanimous objections to the poem's highly ornamented language. One critic, concentrating on the heroine's apostrophes to Night, Opportunity, and Time after her rape, assigned the flood of Lucrece's distraught speech to normal "human self-delusion (intensified by a feminine proclivity to self-pity and evasive argument)," asserting that by the "long sermon on lust's dishonor" she "preaches" to Tarquin before the rape, she actually "increases its fascination." Indeed, her desperate attempts to persuade Tarquin not to rape her become an invitation: "as if subconsciously she wished force to work his way, but only after she has had time to excuse herself from responsibility."[5] Wholesale rejections of the poem on the grounds of its rich verbal ornamentation have a way of coming to define the ornamentation in sexual terms. Having dismissed the facile misogyny of earlier discussions of the links between language and gender in The Rape of Lucrece, however, modern criticism is increasingly convinced that its seemingly endless deferral of closure is in fact significant as a manifestation of the linguistic resistance of the feminine to incorporation within male master narratives.[6] (Lucrece eventually comes to reject the powers of words properly to name or to help her find a solution to her dilemma: "This helpless smoke of words does me no right".[7]) In such arguments, as well as in Renaissance explications of poetic theory, copiousness appears as a distinctively female property of language, a linguistic property often at odds with social prescriptions of female silence, retirement, and obedience.[8]

My discussion of The Rape of Lucrece will consider varieties of female speech and silence as they help shape Shakespeare's familial Roman ethos. Lucrece finds her desperate voice only to encounter its limitations in a poem deeply informed by Renaissance assumptions about silence and segregation as indices of female chastity; contradictions and oppositions between modes of speech and silence mark the boundaries of her crisis. As a Roman wife and Roman mother, Lucrece is wholly consecrated to her duty as steward of her husband's and her sons' honor, a duty bound up with self-imposed separation and enclosure. (In Painter's "Second Novell," the adventurous "yonge Romaine gentlemen" find her literally "in the middes of her house" on the night of their fateful wager.[9]) In sleep, in death, however, her body is mysteriously and multiply voiced: evidencing her chaste perfection yet inviting Tarquin's rape, vindicating her innocence and proving Tarquin's guilt. While the conventional Petrarchanism of the poem's opening produces Lucrece as an emblematic work of art, imagining the "silent war of lilies and of roses" in her complexion (71), the uncontrollable intensity of Tarquin's desire dangerously destablizes this poetic attempt to name her precisely. The poem accomplishes this disruption of formal categories of female description and the kinds of patriarchal male-female relationships they produce and reproduce by heightening the customary language of static perfection to hazardous extremes. On the verge of rape, Tarquin perceives the sleeping Lucrece in idealized, transcendent language more evocative of a tomb effigy than a living woman. Her head is "entombed" between "hills" of her pillow; "like a virtuous monument she lies" (390-91). The rape is a perverted performance of the consequences of Lucrece's ideals of self-sacrifice, as Tarquin escalates the abstraction inherent in Roman languages of female behavior by seeing her as more closely resembling a graven image than a living being. Continuing its presentation of the impact of constructions of feminity and feminine behavior on history, the poem informs us that Lucrece's body alone--first appropriated in the initial wager between her husband and his friends as a prize in a homosocial ritual of display, exchange, and rivalry, and appropriated again in death by Brutus's political opportunism--possesses sufficient eloquence to move the people against the Tarquins' tyranny and force a change in the form of Roman government.

The Rape of Lucrece thus, indeed, suggests a powerful connection between gender, speech (and silence), and power. The poem turns its vision of the special place reserved for Roman women under the powerful system of pietas on the pivot of its treatments of its heroine's volubility, so that questions of her silence or of her verbal openness resonate throughout the rape and its aftermath. In mounting his narrative poem on received understandings of the familial structure of Roman society and on contemporary formulations of the social and sexual behavior of aristocratic women, Shakespeare broadens and deepens the meaning of the materials he borrows from Ovid and Livy. He creates a new work with a graver, more rigorous sense both of cultural obligation and of the nature of the bonds between the roles of women and the maintenance of the families on which culture and commonwealth were based.

Both of Shakespeare's major sources place Lucrece's tragedy within a historical frame, but neither of them concentrates as particularly on her fate as he does. Livy treats the rape and suicide as a virtual parenthetical aside in his account:

For when as Tarquinius Superbus by his prowd tyrannicall demenure, had incurred the hatred of all men: he at last upon

the forcible outrage and villanie done by Sex. Tarquinius (his sonne) in the night season upon the bodie of Lucretia; who

sending for her father, Tricipitinus, and her husband, Collatinus, besought them earnestly not to see her death unrevenged,

and so with a knife killed herself: he I say, by the meanes of Brutus, especially was driven and expelled out of Rome,

when he had raigned five and twentie yeares.[10]

Ovid's Fasti expands its narrative of Lucrece's plight, but similarly locates its recital within a larger narrative of the Tarquins' deceit and cruelty: Sextus Tarquinius "burned, and, goaded by the pricks of an unrighteous love, he plotted violence and guile against an innocent bed."[11] As he was to do in his Roman plays, Shakespeare endeavors to discover the ethical significances of a political event-here, the Tarquins' exile and the change in the form of government-through linking such events to his exploration of character. Here, though, he alters the usual practice in his Plutarchan plays by choosing so radically to reorient the emphases in his sources, lingering as Ovid and Livy do not over the states of mind of the rapist and especially of his victim. The poem establishes a much more direct link between the rape and the political result than is available in the Roman historians, in an early presentation of Shakespeare's concern with the links between familial and civic bodies.[12]

Lucrece's female body, as has already been suggested, is the primary arena for the poem's classicized development of the relationship between private sexual matters and matters of state. In its foregrounding of the domestic sphere, Shakespeare's Lucrece takes its place among other early modern writings on the social significance of women's roles as mothers and wives, an extremely popular mode during a period which, as one modern historian has suggested, may have been undergoing a "crisis in gender relations."[13] Such a notion of a particular crisis in the relationships between men and women seems of a piece with the widespread anxiety and even paranoia about the future of the realm that marked the 1590s, but also takes on new power given that so much of that anxiety turned on the old queen's apparent refusal to name an heir and settle the succession: she had never behaved as a conventional woman, and the nation now seemed to be on the verge of reaping the whirlwind. Peter Wentworth used the traditional familial rhetoric of power even in his protestation that the queen's failure to marry had made it impossible to give that rhetoric a physical embodiment in the shape of heirs of her body: a ruler's responsibility toward her subjects is, to be as gods and natural fathers and mothers: for the resemblance that is betwixt the office of God towards man his creature, and parentes towardes their Children, is the ground and certaine cause, why these high names are communicated and given unto you by the spirit of God . . . . As therefore you are our head, shew your self to have dutifull care and love to your bodie.

Wentworth appealed to the queen as the "nursing mother" of her people, describing her subjects as "wee your children."[14]

This notion of the incorporation of hierarchical inferiors-whether subjects or children--into the loving parental body of state places itself within common familial representations of the nature of power and authority in Tudor and Stuart England. Many Marian exiles consistently used Mary Tudor's sex as a serious proof in their arguments against the legitimacy of her rule, and even the defenders of Elizabeth Tudor's right to the throne frequently felt themselves obligated to explain that her royal blood decontaminated the impropriety of a woman exercising authority.[15] Observers of the queen's success during her lifetime at forging means of coexistence between her sex and her political authority recognized that at bottom, she was playing no mere game. Gender and gender roles bodied authority, and declining to contract a marriage was seen as one way of preserving her power:

The reigns of women are commonly obscured by marriage; their praises and actions passing to the credit of their husbands; wheras those that continue unmarried have their glory entire and proper to themselves. In her case, this was especially more so; inasmuch as she had no helps to lean upon in her government, except as she herself provided . . . no kinsmen of the royal family, to share her cares and support her authority. And even those whom she herself raised to honour she so kept in hand and mingled one with the other, that while she infused into each the greatest solicitude to please her, she was herself ever her own mistress. [16]

For Sir Francis Bacon, the queen's ownership of her body was directly indexed to her maintenance of her power. Marriage inevitably "obscures" the accomplishments of a female ruler, while singleness ensures that her glory will remain as "entire," as uniquely her own, as will her virginal body. Remaining sexually closed denied her heirs of her body, but permitted her entry into public speech.

For nonroyal women, spinsterhood was a less likely resort. Yet, in entering marriage, women also entered a relationship whose rules and practices worked to limit their autonomy in strict and specific ways. Although a woman would retain ownership of any land her family made over to her in her marriage contract, for example, only her husband was legally entitled to any profits from the land. Any "moveables" she took with her into the marriage-clothes, furniture, money--became her husband's property. Since women received money more often than property at marriage, they were immediately placed in a position of economic dependence. The effect of such laws was to give a material presence to an increasingly explicit ideology of gender difference and of the necessity of controlling women.

This connection between theories and practices on the proper position of women within marriage is complicated by its placement within two systems of social hierarchy, that of rank as well as that of gender? It has frequently been observed that prescriptions for the silence, retirement, and obedience that the conduct books deemed proper behavior for wives often varied in rigor according to the social station of the audiences for which a particular book may have been intended. Hence, Heinrich Bullinger's Christen State of Matrimonye held that there were reasonable limits to the retirement that his readers among the urban bourgeoisie might seek for their daughters. If the seclusion were too strictly enforced, it was likely "ether to make them starke foles or els to make them naughtes when they shall once come abrode into companye"[18] In contrast, English translations of conduct books more consciously aimed at an elite ideal reader tend to urge markedly more severe restrictions. The Diall of Princes advocates wifely submission to the will of husbands, even for "Princesses and greate dames." In fact, the leisure enjoyed by ladies of rank created special emphases to the general prescriptions of seclusion. Not only did staying home spare her husband's finances, since it required a less stylish and extensive wardrobe than excessive gadding about, but it also limited women's exposure to opportunities for mischief and therefore to others' libellous speech: "For if the poore wife, the plebyan, goe out of her house, she goeth for no other cause, but for to seeke meate: but if the riche, and noble woman goeth out of her house, it is for nothing, but to take pleasure."[19] Unsupervised taking by beings who were commonly esteemed to be "fraile, spitefull, and given to revenge"[20] unnecessarily exposed women to slander and scandal. Because of this acknowledged moral weakness, wise women would at least attempt to cultivate "shamefastnes, which is the onely defence that nature hath give women, to keep their reputatio, to preserve their gravitie, to mainteine their honor, to advance their praise."[21]

In exploring the possibility of accomplishing this kind of moral exchange between innate feminine frailty and higher spiritual and social purpose, George Wither's theological commentary on the emblems in Rollenhage's Nucleus (1613) also works from an assumption of woman's inescapably sexualized nature. According to Wither, a woman's yearning for adornment in fact expresses her desire "to please her Lovers, or her Husband's Eyes." Under the proper circumstances, this desire can transform her into a "documentall signe" of virtue:

For, hee may bee thy Glasse, and Fountaine too.

His Good Example, shewes thee what is fit;

His Admonition, checks what is awry;

Hee, by his Good advise, reformeth it;

And, by his Love, thou mend'st it pleasedly. [22]

While arguing that women are indeed capable of recognizing and seeking virtue, Wither's rhyme also centrally assumes that vanity and seductiveness are such elemental parts of female nature that women will rely on them even in such a spiritual undertaking as practicing the subordination proper to wives. Attempting an ideological recasting of these manifestations of the waywardness of womanhood by linking them to obedience and pliability instead of to willfulness and lust, Wither's argument also works to gender the desire to seduce and to find a compelling functional necessity for it even within his less harshly antifeminist conception of woman.

In social practice, the primacy given to sexual matters in the social construction of female reputation seems often to have subsumed the other categories of appropriate female behavior, so that silence and submissiveness were seen as the behavioral evidence of the chastity which was the keystone of female honor.[23] Conversely, the behavior of willful, talkative women was seen as an index of their proneness to other, more grievous sexual enormities. Since "the honor of women is such a nice and charie thing, that it is not lawful for them to thinke, much less to speake, of many things, which men may freely both talk of and put in practise," one theorist adjured, women intending "to preserve their gravitie, must be silent not only in unlawful, but even in necessary matters, unles it be very requisite that they should speake of them."[24] One writer put his disgust for women who violated rules of silence, retirement, and modesty into a jangling rhyme which makes explicit the connections between public, verbal and private, sexual behavior:

Maides must be seene, not heard, or selde or never,

O may I such one wed, if I wed ever.

O Maide that hath a lewd Tongue in her head,

Worse than if she were found with a Man in bed. [25]

That social rank was a significant indicator of an individual woman's relative ability to subvene the gendered rule of silence is supported by the large representation of aristocrats among the growing number of Renaissance women whose writings are being rediscovered, or in many cases, discovered now for the first time, and put into circulation.[26] And yet, birth into extraordinary social privilege was not necessarily a prerequisite for the achievement of a public voice; the careers of Renaissance women writers from bourgeois or lesser backgrounds demonstrate both an awareness and a sophisticated and self-conscious manipulation of prohibitions against women's public speech.[27] Still, some surviving evidence suggests that one of the stresses in the unhappy aristocratic marriages in the period may have been the partners experience of contradiction between adjuration to female obedience and self-effacement on the one hand, and the wife's sense of incomplete acknowledgment of her independent possession of rank and social significance before the formation of her marriage on the other.[28]

In studying women in marriages where aristocratic rank is not an issue, however, troubling possibilities created by the clash between exhortations toward female self-effacement and the will toward speech still present themselves. Setting out to memorialize a loved wife who died young after childbirth, Philip Stubbes's A Christal Glasse for Christian Women explicitly praises Katherine Stubbes' silence as exemplary to her sex: "She obeyed the commandement of the Apostle, who biddeth women to bee silent, and to learne of their husbands at home . . . She was never knowne to fall out with any of her neighbors, nor with the least child that lived, much lesse to scold or brawle as many will now a daies for every trifle, or rather for no cause at al." In the interest of praising Katherine Stubbes's absolute "integritie of life," however, her widower describes a woman who carried the injunctions to silence and unworldliness to aggressive extremes. "[S]o solitary was she given, that she would verie seldome or never, and that not without great constraint (& then not neither, except her husband were in companie) goe abroad with any, either to banquet or feast, to gossip or make merry (as they tearme it) in so much that she hath beene noted to do it in contempt and disdaine of others."[29]

We do not know, because Philip Stubbes does not tell us, whether Katherine Stubbes had some particular physical reason to believe she would not survive childbirth; certainly death in childbed was common enough. At any rate, as soon as her pregnancy became known, he reports, she started telling her husband and friends "not once, nor twice, but many times, that she should never beare more Children: that, that child should be her death, & that she would live but to bring that child into the world." Stubbes, struck by the fact that his wife's prediction of her death did come to pass, takes it as evidence of a special revelation "unto her by the spirit of God."[30] She took to her bed as her pregnancy advanced, and prayed for death: "I thinke it long to be with my God, Christ is to me life, and death is to me advantage."[31] She rejected even her pet dog as a meaningless vanity before making her profession of the Protestant faith and asking her husband not to mourn her. She died at the age of nineteen after four years of marriage.

Although Philip and Katherine Stubbes were proto-Puritan city dwellers, Philip Stubbes' memorial reconstruction of his wife bears resemblance both to conduct books aimed at elite audiences, in its commendation of her extreme retirement from worldly affairs, and to Catholic-authored tracts, which tended to foreground chastity in their disussions of female conduct and character.[32] As the author of The Anatomie of Abuses (1583), Stubbes was already known for his disgust at the unnecessary display and boldness of modern habits of dress for men as well as women.[33] A Christal Glasse for Christian Women, its very title evoking not only reflection but also the lingering spiritual ideal of virginal female bodies as fragile vessels, hortus conclusus, focuses this revulsion from worldly things on gender and sexuality. Her husband's report of Katherine Stubbes's refusal to display herself unnecessarily, her awareness of the dangers of intemperate speech, her careful rationing of her innocent pleasures, consults a broader set of cultural materials in its construction of her virtue than might have immediately suggested themselves to him in terms of class or religion. If, according to these writings about women, modesty is for them "an naturall vertue,"[34] and that "vertue" is as intimately bound as Stubbes believes it to be with the refusal to make an unnecessary spectacle-either verbal or visual--of oneself, the irrefutable evidence offered by pregnancy of the sexual opening of Katherine Stubbes posed a challenge to the integrity and persuasive power of the extension of his Puritan strictures on speech and display to the arenas of sex and gender. An earlier writer of Puritan sympathy, declaring that the "tricksynes" manifest in women's desire to adorn their bodies with "trappynge trinkets so vayne" smacked of "popishe idolatry," warned that such self-displaying impulses were clear signposts on the road to whoredom:

And loke well, ye men, to your wives trycksynes,

whyche is to shamefull wyde,

Or some wyll not stycke, or it be longe,

to horne you on everye side.[35]

The Puritan ideals attributed to her by her husband and the less specific cultural exposure to the equation of openness with

immodesty performed a powerful dual solicitation of Katherine Stubbes.

When the conduct books and the ideologies of womanhood they transmitted advised women to stay at home and "nat medle with matters of realmes or cities," because their own houses are "cite great inough"[36] for any legitimate purpose, their formulaic language encodes this association of social intercourse with illicit sexuality. They also place the home in an analogical relationship with the public world which was the proper province of men; careful stewardship of her household was, for a woman, functionally the same as honorable conduct in the public realm was for men. Geffrey Whitney informs his readers that his emblem of Uxoria virtutes, illustrated by a woman standing on the back of a tortoise holding a chain of keys with her hand at her mouth,

represents the vertues of a wife,

Her finger, staies her tonge to runne at large.

The modest lookes, doe shewe her honest life.

The keys, declare shee hath a care, and chardge,

Of husbandes goodes: let him goe where he please,

The tortoyse warnes, at home to spend her daies.[37]

That at some point her duties toward her household and her obligation to maintain proper vigilance over her sexuality could possibly come into conflict was a terrible irony implicit in doctrines of women's sovereignty. In its concern with speech and silence, and the sexual resonances of both, The Rape of Lucrece demonstrates its extreme sensitivity to ideologies of womanhood and to the contradictions they may contain.

Shakespeare's Lucrece is a watershed in treatments of the story. Before him, historians wrote about its poliltical lessons and moralists debated the meaning of her suicide; after him, imaginative writers highlight its sexual aspects.[38] Translating Livy, Machiavelli declared that the Tarquins were banished from Rome not because of the rape committed by Sextus Tarquinius, but because his father Lucius Tarquinius "had violated the laws of the kingdom and ruled tyrannically . . . . Hence, if the Lucretia incident had not occurred, something else would have happend and would have led to the same result."[39] Thomas Heywood's The Rope of Lucrece (1609) preserves the basic elements of the classical narrative, but alters its emphases by ending with a single combat between Tarquin and Brutus in which they both receive death wounds, instead of with the suicide. Heywood's Lucrece also interpolates "severall Songs in their apt places, by Valerius the merry Lord among the Roman Peeres" which oddly contrast with Lucrece's misery.[40] Later treatments of or allusions to the Lucrece materials seem to lack Shakespeare's awareness of the bonds between verbal and physical openness, so that they present the places of licit and illicit sexuality in their stories under very different aspects. Heywood's transformation of the legend into a play about Sextus Tarquinius, which ends not with the momentous internal change in the structure of Rome's government but with the triumphal extension of Rome's power over the rebellious "Tuscans," is only one example. Elsewhere, poets attempt to rewrite the Romanized system of value

within which the rape must inevitably appear as disaster. In rebuking the "hated name / Of husband, wife, lust, modest, chaste or shame" which impedes a return to a Dionysian golden age, Thomas Carew's "A Rapture" pictures its Lucrece reading her Aretino and learning

how to move

Her plyant body in the act of love.

To quench the burning Ravisher, she hurles

Her limbs into a thousand winding curles,

And studies artfull postures, such as be

Carv'd on the barke of every neighbouring tree

By learned hands, that so adorn'd the rinde

Of those faire Plants, which, as they lay entwinde,

Have fann'd their glowing fires.[41]

Writing nearly a century after Shakespeare, Nathaniel Lee in Lucius Junius Brutus (1680) spares little concern for Lucrece's suffering at the hands of Tarquin as he pursues interests in political reform. The rape becomes only a pretext for his crafty Brutus to rouse the commons to antimonarchical fury, and Brutus demands as well that his son Titus renounce his faithful love for Tarquin's illegitimate daughter to prove his allegiance to his father's political vision. One hundred years after Lucrece, Thomas Southerne's The Fatal Marriage (1694) remembers Shakespeare's heroine in the epilogue to this overwrought tragedy of chastity and faithful love:

Now tell me, when you saw the Lady dye,

Were you not puzled for a Reason Why? . . .

We women are so Whimsical in dying.

Some pine away for loss of ogling Fellows:

Nay, some have dy'd for Love, as Stories tell us.

Some, say our Histories, though long ago,

For having undergone a Rape, or so

Plung'd the fell Dagger, without more ado.

But time has laugh'd those follies out of fashion:

And sure they'l never gain the approbation

Of Ladies, who consult their Reputation.

For if a Rape must be esteem'd a Curse,

Grim Death, and Publication make it worse.[42]

For Southerne's generation, the idea that rape could be experienced as a tragedy capable of irrevocably changing the life of a family and the progress of a state has become the subject for playhouse joking. In its worldly mockery of Lucrece's suicide, however, the epilogue also names Lucrece's dilemma: for her, rape is indeed a powerful "Curse," and the possibility of "Publication" of the fact that she is no longer chaste does compound her fear and shame. The act that Southerne judges as a folly impetuously committed by ladies who are insufficiently attentive to matters of "Reputation" is, in Shakespeare, deemed necessary precisely because of Lucrece's pained devotion to the good names of her husband and sons. His poem can admit of no safe vantage point from which a violated gentlewoman might at her leisure calculate the wisest course of action.

Shakespeare's version distinguishes itself by its presentation of the rape as both a personal and a social disaster, a crime against family, city, and the meaning of Roman history as well as against Lucrece's person. It recognizes that the bodies of men and women lie at the center of the notion of a familial state, and that Tarquin's crime violates the chaste vessel through which patriarchal authority transmits itself. Even before the rape, the poem's Argument tells us that Lucius Tarquinius seized power "after he had caused his own father-in-law Servius Tullius to be cruelly murd'red" (3-4): the rape confirms the Tarquins' defiance of the value of kinship. The Fasti specifies that the murder only took place at the instance of Lucius Tarquinius' wife, Sextus Tarquinius' mother Servia Tullia. After having urged her husband to kill her father, the previous king of Rome, she reveled in the murder and the power her husband gained through it by having her coachman drive her chariot across her father's face as he lay dead and unburied in the public streets: "Crime is a thing for kings" (365). This supreme example of un-Roman and unwomanly contempt for the dignity of fathers and families shadows her son's later disregard of his obligations toward his friend Collatine and offers another instance of the way in which the Lucrece materials contain within them hints of later elaborations of the internally contradictory and self-destructive roles played by women in matters of state.

Shakespeare continues to explore the implications of the connection between female chastity and family honor in following Ovid's detailing of Tarquin's threat to kill both Lucrece and one of her slaves and place their bodies together in her bed. In imitating and enlarging upon this Ovidian detail, however, Shakespeare elaborates on its Roman vision of the connections between shame and sexual behavior. Here is the relevant passage in Ovid:

"Resistance is vain," said he "I'll rob thee of honour and of life. I, the adulterer, will bear false witness to thine adultery. I'll kill a slave, and rumour will have it that thou were caught with him." Overcome by fear of infamy, the dame gave

way.[43]

While retaining the incident and even the Ovidian pairing of "honour" and "life," Shakespeare markedly personalizes Tarquin's threat. Rather than the vague "rumour will have it" that Lucrece was unfaithful to her husband with a social inferior, Tarquin vows that he will "kill thine honour with thine live's decay" by placing the dead slave in her bed and actively "[s]wearing" to witnesses that "I slew him, seeing thee embrace him":

So thy surviving husband shall remain

The scorful mark of every open eye;

Thy kinsmen hang thy heads at this disdain,

Thy issue blurred with nameless bastardy;

And thou, the author of their obloquy,

Shalt have thy trespass cited up in rhymes,

And sung by children in succeeding times.

(516,518-25)

Lucrece's horrified response to Tarquin's threat to inflict a publicly discussed "blemish that will never be forgot" (536) against her posthumous reputation and the good names of her husband and children similarly enlarges upon the Ovidian original. The argumentation comes to a premature end when Tarquin puts out the light and muffles Lucrece's head in her mantle so that she can neither see nor speak as he rapes her. Shakespeare in effect provides a more specific imagining of the sexual crime than Ovid does through verbal dilation on the wretched consequences of Lucrece's unwilling disclosure to Tarquin's "greedy" (368) vision and to the persuasive, delineating powers of public speech and display in making or unmaking her social presence.[44] The "fear of infamy"-of having the fact that another man besides her husband has known her sexually widely spoken of--is what forces Lucrece to yield and ultimately, what causes her to embrace suicide as a solution to her shame.

As noted above, twentieth-century critical scorn for The Rape of Lucrece's obsession with speech has concentrated on its impassioned apostrophes to Night, Opportunity, and Time. In arguing that speech and gender are in fact centrally important to the poem's production of Rome as a place where the violation of a respectable matron must resonate in the life of the state, I would like to concentrate instead on a relatively less-observed aspect, its ekphrasis of the fall of Troy. Embedded within it narration of Lucrece's changing experiences of her social and sexual objectification, the ekphratic representation of her examination of the "piece / Of skilful painting, made for Priam's Troy" (1366-67) exemplifies the way in which its formal concerns voice its perceptions of gender and history.[45] Shakespeare's elaborate description of Lucrece beholding Hecuba beholding Priam's murder establishes a receding historical vista on the substantive presence of domestic matters in matters of state: the fate of Hecuba, who will suffer the sight of the deaths of her husband, her children, and her civilization, and who will be driven into speechless madness by it, comes to shadow that of Lucrece, who will silence herself in grief and fear over the welfare of her husband and sons. Also present in the Troy tapestry is Helen, whose powerful desirability seemed to so many observers to invite the rape which set into motion the events culminating in the end of a world. George Wither performs this kind of narrative moralizing in his explication of an emblem of two urban gallants fighting while a woman looks out her upper window watching them. The engraving is surrounded by the Latin motto "Ubi Helena Ibi Troia," and the epigraph for his poetic discussion reads "Where Hellen is, there will be Warre; / For, Death and Lust, companions are."[46] Lucrece's ekphrasis rewrites the masculine and historical orientations of epic to find woman--mother, mistress, wife, sexual prey--deeply inscribed within. This gesturing at epic may indeed be initiated with the description of Lucrece's eager contemplation of the tapestry, in which echoes Aeneas's somber discovery of the Troy story carved on the walls of June's temple when he shipwrecks at Carthage in Aeneid 1. Like Aeneas, Lucrece weeps to find in the depiction of "Troy's painted woes" (1492) a physical representation of the vastness of her own anguish.

The tapestry depicts Hecuba's face, "a face where all distress and dolor dwell'd," in grief-numbed contemplation of "Priam's wounds,"

Which bleeding under Pyrrhus' proud foot lies.

In her the painter had anatomiz'd

Time's ruin, beauty's wrack, and grim care's reign;

Her cheeks with chaps and wrinkles were disguis'd:

Of what she was no semblance did remain.

Her blue blood chang'd to black in every vein,

Wanting the spring that shrunk pipes had fed,

Show'd life imprison'd in a body dead.

(1446,1448-56)

The death of her husband, father of her fifty sons, is only the beginning of the grief and rage which will alter Hecuba's human form; Metamorphoses 13 tells us briefly that she "lost (after all) her womans shape, and barked all her lyfe / In forreine countrye" (489-90).[47] A fuller description of the Trojan queen's tragic destiny appears later in 13, where she witnesses the death of her daughter Polyxena, who is ritually sacrificed by Neoptolemus at the demand of the shade of his father Achilles; on her death, the Greeks will be granted favorable winds for their voyage home. The post-Homeric accretions of the stories of Polyxena and of Iphegenia, whose father Agamemnon sacrificed her so that the Greeks might have fair winds on the voyage to Troy, complete the framing of the epic story of Troy's fall by episodes turning on the sacrifice of daughters. Ovid uses the Polyxena story to introduce the affective emotion that is his trademark in the Metamorphoses, providing Shakespeare's Lucrece a suggestive point of connection between the private sorrows of mothers and wives and the larger tragedies affecting world orders. The Ovidian description of Polyxena's death might even furnish a textual model for Lucrece's carefully histrionic public Roman suicide, as she expresses concern for her mother's suffering, excites the pity and admiration of the priest who will perform the execution, and, bearing "too the verry latter gasp a countenance devoid of feare," fell with "a care such parts of her too hyde / As womanhod and chastitie forbiddeth too bee spyde" (571-73).[48]

After bewailing the death of her daughter, Hecuba thinks to take some comfort in the survival of her last, son, little Polydorus, who has been delivered into the safekeeping of Polymnestor, King of Thrace. But on the way to the waterside where she will be carried back to Greece as Ulysses's slave, she discovers Polydorus's body, torn by the "mighty wounds" (644) inflicted by his cruel guardian, and the sight drives her mad. Pretending that she wishes to give him a sum of gold she had hidden for Polydorus' use, she persuades Polymnestor to accompany her away from the main body

And beeing sore inflamed with wrath, caught hold uppon him, and Streyght callyng out for succor to the wyves of Troy at hand, Did in the traytors face bestowe her nayles, and scratched out His eyes: her anger gave her heart and made her strong and stout.

(671-74)

As the shocked Thracians pelt Hecuba and the other Trojan women with stones, her rage transforms her flesh: "And as she opte her chappe / Too speake, in stead of speeche she barkt" (681-82).

Her own sorrow and frenzy over the senseless destruction of her family are powerful enough to rob Hecuba of her humanity, to send her off "howling in the feeldes of Thrace" (685). The outrages she suffers as mother and wife are the losses whose signs Lucrece observes and responds to in the painter's representation of her' "Of what she was no semblance did remain." Like Hecuba, she has endured the violation of the family bonds whose existence gave her place and meaning, and she finds in Hecuba's image the will to voice her own outrage:

"Poor instrument," quoth she, "without a sound,

I'll tune thy woes with my lamenting tongue,

And drop sweet balm in Priam's painted wound,

And rail on Pyrrhus that hath done him wrong,'

And with my tears quench Troy that burns so long,

And with my knife scratch out the angry eyes

Of all the Greeks that are thine enemies.

(1464-70)

Lucrece, who has found her identity to this point in silence, chastity, and enclosure, finds herself vowing to speak the "woes" of one who is doubly voiceless--both because the Hecuba who inspires her is only a "painted" image of a real woman, and because the legendary queen was involuntarily metamorphosed into a howling animal.

Hecuba's loss of voice and her reduction to a subhuman state figure in other imitations of Ovidian texts than The Rape of

Lucrece. Perhaps ironically, given my own argument here on the centrality of speech and enclosure in Shakespeare's poem, these later references to Hecuba tend also to emphasize her voicelessness, although to rather different effect than I believe presents itself in Lucrece. Cooper's Thesaurus, for instance, omits any reference to a physical transformation, noting instead that after all her losses, "she finally waxed madde, and did byte and stryke all men that she mette, wherfore she was called dogge, and at the last was hyr selfe kylled with stones by the Greeks." George Sandys's Ovid's Metamorphoses English'd is conventionally pious about Hecuba's fall from glory:

Shee having lost by violent death so many of her valiant sonnes, seene her husband slaughtered before the Altar of

Jupiter, Cassandra ravish't in the Temple of Minerva, Astianar throwne from the top of a tower, Polixena sacrificed on

the tombe of Achilles, fallen from the greatnesses of birth, and the glory of Empire, to that contempt and poverty, that

none would have accepted her as a Servant, had shee not beene cast by lot upon Ulisses: which affords a sad

consideration of humane instability, and may abate their pride, and confidence who too much insult in prosperity; high

fortunes confining steepe praecipitations.[49]

Sandys continues his interpretation, though, by addressing the specific meanings of Hecuba's transformation into a dog. Careful on the one hand to undercut the persuasive power of Ovid's fantastical account by characterizing her metamorphosis as "feigned," he nevertheless also asserts that her change "was not only derived from her contemptible condition, but from the acerbity and fury of her sorrow, expressed in revilings and execrations: for which they threw so many stones at her, as buried her under their burden." Finishing his account of Hecuba's place in the Metamorphoses, Sandys adds that "there is a place called Cynosema, which signifies the tombe of the Bitch," known as Hecuba's grave.[50]

Alexander Ross's Mystagogus Poeticus Or the Muses Interpreter is more explicit than Sandys in connecting Hecuba's particular transformation to her intemperate and unwomanly speech:

And truly, not un fitly may the impudent railing speeches of some women be compared to the barking of dogs; neither is there any thing more like barking Cur, then a railer, or scold, which if they would duly consider, they would be more moderate in their tongues, and circumspect of their words. [51]

characterizing the metamorphosis as "imaginary," such as afflicts those "disturbed" men who "imagine themselves to be Wolves and Dogs," Ross rejects the notion of metamorphosis and insists that "Hecuba was still a woman, though she seemed to her self to be a dog." He cites Euripides's Trojan Women in support of his view that "she was so bold and violent in her mouth," and suggests that the stories say she became a dog "because the Grecians used her like a dog . . . being impatient of her railing tongue." [52]

Sandys' linkage of Hecuba's change to her verbal expression of her grief and Ross's notion of her "violent" mouth are both formed by an early-modern sensibility of the appropriateness of silence to womanhood.[53] Ross is especially vehement on Hecuba's inappropriate volubility:

When Jupiter had sent the rain-bow, to perswade Priamus to go to Achilles and redeem Hectors body from him,

promising his assistance, his Wife Hecuba would have diswaded him from going, under pretence, that Achilles was cruel

and in no ways to be trusted; yet Priamus would not hearken to her, but preferred Jupiters command to her advice. I

wish Adam had been so wise as to prefer Gods commands to his wifes counsel: too many women like Hecuba, stick not

to counsel their husbands in things contrary to Gods laws: and too many husbands are so uxorious as to hearken to their

wives, and prefer their foolish counsels to the wisdom of God.[54]

In looking at Hecuba gazing aghast on her husband, Lucrece examines a tapestry of bereavement in which also figure the deaths of the queen's last children, the extinction of her seed as well as of her civilization. ("At once both Troy and Priam fell," remarks Golding's Ovid.[55]) Concern for the good names of her husband and children was, of course, uppermost in her mind as she faced Tarquin's assault. Reading the moment where Hecuba experiences the last losses which will push her beyond the limits of human reason and human speech, Lucrece finds a voice for them both; but in finding a voice in which to speak both her fury and Hecuba's, she also locates herself within a story which would be read and reread as exemplifying the perils of female speech.

Given the poem's guiding assumption of the existence of mutually constitutive bonds between the family and the state, Lucrece's position as mistress of her husband's household already gives her considerable cultural presence. However, Lucrece's use of the Troy ekphrasis as demonstration of its insistently historical definition of the rape carries within the stories of Hecuba and Helen inconsistencies and ambivalences strong enough to destabilize the ekphrasis' value as the heroine's point of entry into coherent narration of the tragedy that has befallen her.[56] Commentators read Hecuba's violence against men--however justified it may be--as a provocation; in response to her demonstrative anger, she is punished by madness. Lucrece's own guilty identification with Helen's image in the tapestry further attests to this internal contadiction in commentators' remarks on the Trojan women. Depsite her innocent possession of the "wounderfull beauty" which spurs men to commit any transgression in order to possess her, Helen is nonetheless "the onely occasion of the tenne yeres syege, and finall destruction of the moste famous cities of Troye."[57] The stories about the fates of Hecuba and Helen as they figured in the fate of Troy simultaneously narrate those ladies' responsibility to the strictures governing their gender; foregrounded at the appropriate moments within the epic tradition, they are additionally judged by their nonfulfillment of their social contracts as women, mothers, and wives.

The poem's will to historicize the rape also functions to differentiate male and female capacities for authoritative speech. Tarquin finds himself struggling for words as he plans the rape of his friend's wife, finally settling on the military vocabulary belonging to his public role as the heir of the Tarquins. He vows "invasion" (287); his heart, the "alarum striking" (433), gives his lust "the hot charge: (434); his hand climbs "the round turrets" (441) of her breasts. Compelling her to submit, his speech "like a trumpet: sounds "a parley" (470-71) before he scales the "never conquered fort" (482) of her body, "to make the breach and enter this sweet city" (469).[58] Although he claims to be compelled by desire for Lucrece, he describes her effect on him in terms which more obviously oppose him to Collatine in the civic and martial world than they link him to her: the sight of her beauty breeds in him "new ambition" to oust Collatine from his seat on the "fair throne" (411; 413) of her body, for example. Aware that in surrendering to the impulse to rape his friend's wife he will forfeit all claims to Roman nobility, he implies that the enormity of the crime he contemplates and the depth of the moral abdication it requires manifests his possession of a superheroic indifference to the obligations and responsibilities of order ("Crime is a thing for kings")? Under the terms of this military language and the unitary identity of Roman men, the rape demonstrates his possession of the same traits of daring and initiative which are valued in his public life.

To be sure, a certain amount of self-persuasion is necessary before Tarquin can successfully eroticize his aggression and rivalry with Collatine. Before he can attack Roman familial institutions through committing the rape of Lucrece, he must first conquer his own best instincts and loyalties. His "will" (417) proves stronger than either his "reason's weak removing" (243) or his "frozen conscience" (247), so that his "servile powers" (295) triumph over his mind. Indeed, this triumph seems to be produced through his rhetorical willingness to manipulate his standing as Collatine's friend and as Lucrece's superior to secure his goal. He does not merely threaten her with sexual assault, but also invokes the entire power of his presence--a man, a warrior, a governor--in Roman culture as a weapon to use against her. The poem describes Tarquin's theatrical threats from Lucrece's perspective:

he shakes aloft his Roman blade,

Which like a falcon tow'ring in the skies,

Coucheth the fowl below with his wings' shade,

Whose crooked beak threats, if he mount he dies:

So under his insulting falchion lies

Harmless Lucretia, marking what he tells

With trembling fear, as fowl hear falcons' bells.

(505-11)

After the rape, Lucrece attempts to express her sense of desolation through invoking the civic purpose she knows has been destroyed.

My honey lost, and I, a drone-like bee,

Have no perfection of my summer left,

But robb'd and ransack'd by injurious theft. In thy weak

hive a wand'ring wasp hath crept, And suck'd the honey which

thy chaste bee kept.

(836-40)[60]

As a woman, the language of civic order is not properly hers to begin with. As Tarquin's sexual victim, she is no longer privately chaste, and therefore also becomes incapable of her indirect public performances of familial and civic virtue. As does Tarquin, Lucrece, too, ultimately despairs of the powers of rational speech and analysis to resolve her crisis. Betrayed by the authority of stories to shape experience, forced into reliance on foreign vocabularies by her violent exile from the sanctity of her seclusion, faced with the loss of her customary significances within her family and household, Lucrece chooses suicide as the welcome and literal end to this voiceless oblivion.

Perhaps ironically, the sudden shock of her histrionic public suicide-so at odds with her previous identity as a proper Roman matron, so astonishing to her husband and father--is what returns her to the shelter of her cultural role. In death, Lucrece restores her relationship to her family, even as she commits this ultimate defiance of the rules of privacy and female enclosure:

"O," quoth Lucretius, "I did give that life

Which she too early and too late hath spill'd."

"Woe, woe," quoth Collatine, "she was my wife,

I owed her, and 'tis mine that she hath kill'd."

"My daughter!," and "My wife!" with clamors fill'd

The dispers'd air, who holding Lucrece' life,

Answer'd their cries, "My daughter!'" and "My wife!"

(1800-1806)

In a formula that acknowledges the incongruity of the action which restores her propriety, Ovid salutes her as a "matron of manly courage. "[61] In death, she finally achieves persuasive eloquence as politic Brutus delivers an interpretation of her life and her death which resists all undoing, all contradiction. Incorporating her again within the course of Roman history, he uses her body as a speaking emblem of the republican virtue whose source the Tarquins have insulted. His audience vows with him to "show her bleeding body thorough Rome, / And so to publish Tarquin's foul offense" (1851-52)--thus making incontrovertibly public the sexual and domestic segregation to which she devoted her life. Renouncing speech and history, Lucrece is nonetheless appropriated for the purposes of both. The conclusion of the poem speaks the contradictions and perils inherent in Renaissance productions of doctrines of female sovereignty.

Notes

1. George Puttenham, The Arte of Englishe Poesie, ed. Gladys Doidge Willcock and Alice Walker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936; rpt. 1970), 137.

2. See, for example, Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, "The Politics of Astrophil and Stella," SEL 24 (1984): 53-63; Maureen Quilligan, "Feminine Endings: The Sexual Politics of Sidney's and Spenser's Rhyming," in The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon, ed. Anne M. Haselkorn and Betty S. Travitsky (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990), 311-26; and Mary Ellen Lamb, Gender and Authorship in the Sidney Circle (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990).

3. Nancy Vickers writes persuasively about the presentation of the feminine as the object of descriptive masculine speech in "'The Blazon of Sweet Beauty's Best': Shakespeare's Lucrece," in Shakespeare and the Question of Theory, ed. Patricia Parker and Geoffrey Hartman (New York: Methuen, 1985), 95-115.

4. Besides Vickers, see Heather Dubrow, Captive Victors: Shakespeare's Narrative Poems and Sonnets (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 80-168; Katharine Eisaman Maus, "Taking Tropes Seriously: Language and Violence in Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece," SQ 37 (1986): 66-82; Robin Bowers, "Inconography and Rhetoric in Shakespeare's Lucrece," ShakS 14 (1981): 1-21; Nancy Vickers, "'This Heraldry in Lucrece's Face'" Poetics Today 6 (1985): 171-84; and Tita French, "'A Badge of Fame': Shakespeare's Rhetorical Lucrece," EIRC 10 (1984): 97-106. Patricia Parker's brilliant Literary Fat Ladies: Rhetoric, Gender, Property (London: Methuen, 1987), ranges far into Shakespeare and eighteenth-century literature, but 8-17 and 126-32 are particularly relevant to a discussion of the rhetorical construction of gender in Lucrece.

5. Roy Battenhouse, Shakespearean Tragedy: Its Art and Its Christian Premises (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969), 19, 16. Bowers cites these and other dismissive passages on p. 1 of her essay.

6. One useful theoretical exposition of this argument is Mary Jacobus, "Is There a Woman in this Text?," NLH 14 (1982): 117-54.

7. The Rape of Lucrece, line 1027. All Shakespeare quotations are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), and hereafter will be cited parenthetically in the text.

8. See Parker, Literary Fat Ladies, 26-31; Ann Rosalind Jones, "Nets and Bridles: Early Modern Conduct Books and Sixteenth-Century Women's Lyrics," in The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality, ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennehouse (New York: Methuen, 1987), 39-72; and Lynda E. Boose, "Scolding Bridles and Bridling Scolds: Taming the Woman's Unruly Member," SQ 42 (1991): 179-213.

9. William Painter, The Pallace of Pleasure (New York AMS Press, 1967), 1:18.

10. The Romane History Written by T. Livius of Padua, trans. Philemon Holland (London, 1600), 2.

11. Trans. Sir James George Frazer (London: William Heinemann, 1931), 113.

12. Stephanie H Jed's stimulating Chaste Thinking: The Rape of Lucretia and the Birth of Humanism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), is primarily concerned with fifteenth-century Italy and barely mentions Shakespeare's Lucrece at all, but I have still found it immensely suggestive for the present study of the links between constructions of gender and constructions of historical and social meaning. Jed is concerned with the transmission of the written records out of which later readers can establish such meaning. Informed by philological and etymological methods, she makes a connection between chastity and "castigation," the process through which early Renaissance editors and scholars produced their pure versions of ancient texts, and also narrowed the meanings of Lucrece's rape and suicide. She argues that the historical uses made of Lucrece's rape-especially the belief that it was significant only in that it provided a pretext for the change in Roman regimes--provide a prime example of the way in which the humanistic rediscovery of the past and modern generations' own practices in reading the Renaissance and classical past are themselves deeply implicated in the erasure of women from records of history and culture. In telling and retelling the story of rape and the consequent triumph of republican virtue, Renaissance humanists effectively removed Lucrece and made Brutus the hero of the newly philologically chaste narrative. Jed's observation that the authority of received history may "discourage us from questioning the literary structures within which we work" (5) speaks both to the resourcefulness of the rhetorically informed feminist criticism I acknowledge in n.4 above in affirming the connection between gender, genre, and text, and to my discussion, below, of the barriers Lucrece encounters in attempting to read the Troy tapestry and thus to define herself as a historical actor.

13. David E. Underdown, "The Taming of the Scold: the Enforcement of Patriarchal Authority in Early Modern England," in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England, ed. Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 122.

14. A Pithie Exhortation to her Majestie for Establishing Her Successor to the Crowne (London: 1598), 6, 8.

15. Paula Louise Scalingi reviews much of this material in "The Scepter or the Distaff: The Question of Female Sovereignty, 1516-1607," The Historian 41 (1978): 59-75. Two books by Retha M. Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983), esp. 47-63, and The Rise and Fall of Ann Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), offer useful discussions of the practices of sixteenth-century queenship. Louis A. Montrose, "'Shaping Fantasies': Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture," Representations 1 (1983): 61-94; Leah S. Marcus, "Shakespeare's Comic Heroines, Elizabeth I, and the Political Uses of Androgyny," in Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives, ed. Mary Beth Rose (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 135-54; and Pamela Joseph Benson, "'Rule, Virginia': Protestant Theories of Female Regiment in The Faerie Queene," ELR 15 (1985): 277-92, are three useful discussions of literary representations of the cultural phenomenon of powerful women.

16. "On the Fortunate Memory of Elizabeth Queen of England," in James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, eds., The Works of Francis Bacon (Boston: Brown & Taggard, 1860), 11:450. Philippa Berry, Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen (London: Routledge, 1989), is concerned with the strategies developed by Renaissance English authors for addressing the problem of how most gracefully to implicate a virgin queen in the literature and social practices of courtship.

17. See Susan Dwyer Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), esp. 102-4.

18. Trans. Miles Coverdale (London: 1541), n.p.

19. Trans. Sir Thomas North (London: 1577), f. 90.

20. Peter de la Primaudaye, The French Academie, trans. T.[homas] B.[owes], (London: 1586), 503.

21. Edmund Tilney, A Briefe and Pleasant Discourse of Duties in Mariage, called the Flower of Friendshippe (London: 1586), n.p.

22. In A Collection of Emblems, Ancient and Moderne (London: 1635), 91.

23. While my discussion here is fairly closely focused on female sexual behavior as an indicator of social reputation and on the links between sexual openness and female speech, I am not entirely following Lawrence Stone's influential conclusions about rigidly patriarchal Renaissance families first formulated in The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977). Keith Wrightson, English Society 1580-1680 (London: Hutchinson, 1982), esp. 90-104, argues that patriarchal and companionate marriage historically coexisted and bases his case on a much broader base of English evidence than does Stone's concentration on the aristocracy. Ralph Houlbrooke, The English Family, 1450-1700 (London: Longman, 1984), denies Stone's thesis of fundamental change in the pattern of English families from patriarchal to more companionate models, the change occurring sometime during the enlightenment. Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England, 1300-1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) marshals comprehensive English evidence to argue the existence of companionate, affective family bonds since the medieval period. Alice Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century [London; Routledge, 1919; rpt. 1982), emphasizes the range of public, commercial activities that nonaristocratic women engaged in, and their social consequences.

24. de la Primaudaye, French Academic, 517.

25. Peter Stallybrass cites Robert Tofte's marginal gloss in his translation of Bernardo Varchi's The Blazon of Jealousie (London: 1615) in his important essay, "Patriarchal Territories: The Body Enclosed," in Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern England, ed. Margaret Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 126.

26. Besides Mary Ellen Lamb on the women of the Sidney-Herbert circle, see Barbara Lewalski,; Writing Women in Jacobean England (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993).

27. See Ann Rosalind Jones, The Currency of Eros: Women's Love Lyric in Europe, 1540-1620 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), esp. 1-7 and 11-35, on the adaptive strategies displayed in women's texts.

28. See Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy, 1558-1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 660-64; and Alice T. Friedman, "Portrait of a Marriage: The Willoughby Letters of 1585-1586," Signs 11 (1986): 542-55. Lewalski's account of the career of Ann Clifford, Countess of Dorset and Montgomery, 125-51, is particularly suggestive of how women could experience patriarchal institutions both as a source of pride and a source of social frustration.

29. Philip Stubbes, A Christal Glasse for Christian Women London, 1592, 2.

30. Ibid., 4.

31. Ibid., 5.

32. Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), was one of the first scholars to note the pervasiveness of adjurations to chastity in the conduct books, and to discuss how this advice contributed to the cultural formation of English gentlewomen. Margaret Lael Mikesell, "Catholic and Protestant Widows in The Duches of Malfi," Renaissance and Reformation 19 (1983): 265-279, believes that Catholic-authored works tended to value chastity more than Protestant-authored tracts, which she believes more often advance obedience as the cardinal virtue for women.

33. E.g., "So that when they have all these goodly robes uppon them, women seeme to be the smallest part of themselves, not naturall women, but artificiall Women, not women of flesh & blod, but rather puppits, or mawmets of rags and clowtes compact together" (n.p.).

34. George Whetstone, An Heptameron of Civill Discourses (London: 1582), 119.

35. Charles Bansley, A Treatyse Shewing and Declaring the Pryde and Abuse of Women Now A Dayes (London: 1550). Ralph Houlbrooke, Church Courts and the People During the English Reformation, 1520-1570 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), cites an equally suggestive incident of a man who, haled before an ecclesiastical court on the charge that he had called his neighbor a whore, attempted to excuse himself by explaining that he hadn't meant a "whore of her body," but "a whore of her tongue" (80).

36. Juan Luis Vives, Instruction of a Christian Woman, trans. Thomas Paynell (London, 1540), E 2.

37. A Choice of Emblemes, ed. Henry Green (London; 1866; rpt. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1967), 93.

38. I began thinking about the embedded and antecedent texts of The Rape of Lucrece after first reading Ian Donaldson's The Rape of Lucretia: A Myth and Its Transformations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982). Donaldson's study, which traces treatments of the Lucrece story from Livy through the eighteenth century, persuasively demonstrates both the extraordinary vitality of the narrative in western cultures and the relationships betwen versions of Lucrece's life and death and changing interpretations of Roman value. He discusses Shakespeare's Lucrece, 40-56. His broader comparative anaylysis is usefully complemented by the attention of Stephanie Jed to the material and social circumstances under which the Lucrece story was transmitted specifically in Renaissance Italy.

39. Niccolo Machiavelli, The Discourses of Livy, trans. Leslie J. Walker, S.J. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1950; rpt. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), 3:468-69.

40. See, for example the bawdy catch performed by two Roman nobles and a comic servant after the rape: "Did he take the Lady by the thigh man? . . . And now he came somewhat nie man . . . . But did he do tother thing man? . . . And at the same had he a fling man." Heywood's play was evidently a popular one, being printed four more times after 1609; I cite the fifth edition, including authorial emendations, of 1638, from The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood (London: 1874; rpt. London: Russell & Russell, 1964), 5:161,233.

41. In The Poems of Thomas Carew, With His Masque Coelum Britannicum, ed. Rhodes Dunlap (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), 52.

42. In The Works of Thomas Southerne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), ed. Robert Jordan and Harold Love; 2:84. Donaldson discusses Southern's play, 87-88. For further treatments of the Lucrece materials, see Laura Bromley, "The Lost Lucrece: Middleton's The Ghost of Lucrece," PLL 21 (1985): 258-74; Saad El-Gabalawy, "The Ethical Question of Lucrece: A Case of Rape," Mosaic 12, no. 4 (1979): 75-86; and Harriet Hawkins, "Myth and Morals," EIC 34 (1984): 79-87.

43. Frazer, 115.

44. In the biographical and place-name supplement to his Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae (London, 1565), Thomas Cooper's discussion of Lucrece's rape also emphasizes her fear of public shaming as a reason for yielding to Tarquin: "For feare of . . . shamefull reproch and infamie, rather than for dreadde of death, as after appeered, she suffered the violence of the wicked advouterer." As though conscious of the power of adultery, even forced adultery, in making and unmaking female reputation, however, Cooper finds it necessary to end his entry by adding that "the example of Lucrece shoulde never be a cloke for light women to excuse the unfaithfull breach of wedlocke" (n.p.).

45. The general bibliography on ekphrasis in Renaissance poetry is not as large as I expected it to be. I use the term here as James A. W. Heffernan does in his useful discussion, "Ekphrasis and Representation," NLH 22 (1991): 297-316, to refer specifically to "the verbal representation of graphic representation" (299). Heffernan finds that true ekphrasis is distinguished by its impulse to establish a narrative for its description of a static image, a characterization which certainly holds true for the Troy ekphrasis in Lucrece; to his remarks I would add that graphic images of events or characters in the Troy story, while physically stable, often carry unstable and fluctuating sets of interpretive associations, so that the image offers what may turn out to be only an uncertain opportunity for fixing narrative meaning. Other discussions I have drawn on in this section include Jean H. Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism from Dryden to Gray (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958; rpt. 1987), and John Hollander, "The Poetics of Ekphrasis," Word and Image 4 (1988): 209-19.

46. Collection of Emblems, 27. Judith Dundas, "Mocking the Mind: The Role of Art in Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece," SCJ 14, no. 1 (1983): 13-22; S. Clark Hulse, "'A Piece of Skilful Painting' in Shakespeare's Lucrece," ShS 31 (1978): 13-22; Elizabeth Truax, "'Lucrece! What Hath Your Conceited Painter Wrought?'," Bucknell Review 25, no. 1 (1980): 13-30; and A. Robin Bowers, "Emblem and Rape in Shakespeare's Lucrece and Titus Andronicus," SIcon 10 (1984-86): 79-96, all discuss the Troy tapestry's meaning in the poem. Robert Miola, Shakespeare's Rome (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1983), discusses the Troy ekphrasis' roots in Aeneid 1-2 and Metamorphoses 12, 30-36.

47. I cite Arthur Golding, The .XV. Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso, entytuled Metamorphosis (London: 1567; rpt. London; Centaur Press, 1961); here, line 261.

48. This emphasis on the propriety of Polyxena's death survives in George Sandys's Ovid's Metamorphoses English'd (Oxford: 1632), which notes that "then when shee fell, shee had a care to hide / What should be hid; and chastly-decent dide" (435). In their concern for inscribing Roman and female senses of propriety in this moment of death, Sandys and Golding may be following Fasti, whose description of Lucrece's death also includes this implied connection between posture and chaste decency: "Even then in dying she took care to sink down decently: that was her thought even as she fell" (117).

49. Sandys, Ovids, 447.

50. Ibid., 448.

51. Alexander Ross, Mystagogus Poeticus (London, 1648), 157.

52. Ibid., 158.

53. Hecuba's transformation into a barking dog is missing from at least three medieval treatments of the Troy materials. The Laud Troy Book, ed. J. Ernst Wulfing (London: EETS, 1902) and The Gest Hystoriale of the Destruction of Troy, ed. George A. Panton and David Donaldson (London: EETS, 1869 and 1874) place Hecuba's madness and stoning after Polyxena's death but omit any mention of a transformation. The Seege or Battayle of Troy, ed. Mary Elizabeth Barnicle (London: EETS, 1927) omits Hecuba's madness entirely and skips right from Polyxena's death to Helen's return to Menelaus. The strange image of a "violent" mouth recalls Houlbrooke's report of the woman with the whorish tongue, or Tofte's assertion that a maid with a "lewd tongue" is virtually the same as a fornicator. In all three cases, the open mouth (and the associated vaginal orifice) which these unruly women inappropriately show the world becomes the focus of critiques of their violations of gendered behavior.

54. Ross, Mystagogus Poeticus, 159.

55. Metamorphoses 13.488.

56. Compare my position here with that of Battenhouse, who asks of the poem's portrayal of Lucrece's act of reading, "With how much self-undertanding is she capable of reading? Her shallowness as an explicator of great art can then become for us both amusingly pathetic and a caveat for explicators like ourselves" (23).

57. Cooper's supplement. He notes that Paris's seizure of Helen was the second rape she suffered: she was first abducted "at the age of nine yeres by Theseus." For further discussion of treatments of the stories of Helen and their relation to woman's place in generic traditions, see Gotz Schmitz, The Fall of Women in Early English Narrative Verse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 223-41; and Mihoko Suzuki, The Metamorphoses of Helen: Authority, Difference, and the Epic.

Testing

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 09:45:00 +0000

We hear the word "experimental" used within the sport aviation industry on a regular basis. The most common use of experimental applies to a classification of an airworthiness certificate used for a custom built airplane. This is different from the airworthiness category assigned to an airplane that is mass produced by a manufacturer which is then sold to the general public. I will explore the exact meaning of the word experimental later in this article. Suffice to say that FAR's (Federal Aviation Regulations) pertaining to the operation of experimental airplanes can be confusing. I will attempt to clarify the confusion that exists and to simplify the regulations as they apply to building an airplane. Each phase of building and operating an amateur-built airplane will be discussed along with the applicable regulations.
In general, we are very privileged to have only a minimum number of regulations that actually pertain to building and flying our amateur-built airplane. When a manufacturer plans to mass produce an airplane, they are required by FAR's to comply with design standards that are detailed in FAR Part 23. This regulation is very restrictive as to design, weight, speed, etc.. Amateur builders are not restricted by Part 23 or any other certification regulations. Basically, our only restriction is that we must construct and assemble the majority of the airplane. (Most airplane kit manufacturers actually voluntarily comply with the guidelines of Part 23.) Part 23 is titled "Airworthiness Standards: Normal, utility, acrobatic, and commuter category airplanes." As the builder of our own airplane, which will not be mass produced, we are limited only by our imagination and ingenuity. Of course, when we build our own airplane we are going to impose strict limitations and restrictions concerning quality of construction, materials used, etc.. We certainly want a safe, reliable airplane to fly and in which to carry our passengers.
Lets define the "experimental" category and see how it applies to our amateur- built airplane. To legally fly within the United States, we must have 4 documents on board; an airworthiness certificate, a registration certificate, a copy of the operating limitations, and the weight and balance for our airplane. Airworthiness certificates are classified under 2 categories according to FAR 21.175 - standard and special. Standard airworthiness certificates are issued for most production airplanes and they are usually classed under the normal category. We are interested in special airworthiness certificates that are further broken down into several additional categories of which one is "experimental." Experimental airworthiness certificates are issued for different purposes. These purposes are: (1) research and development, (2) to conduct flight tests to show compliance with airworthiness regulations, (3) for crew training, (4) for exhibition, (5) for air racing, (6) to conduct market surveys and sales demonstrations, (7) to operate an amateur-built airplane, and (8) to operate a kit-built aircraft that was assembled by a person from a kit manufactured by the holder of a production certificate for that kit.
We will primarily concern ourselves with purpose number 7, to operate an amateur-built airplane. Fully 95% of all airplanes that we build from a set of plans or from a kit will be certificated under the amateur-built classification. Purpose number 8, the kit-built classification, only applies to kit manufacturers who have certified their airplane under a type certificate termed a "primary category" aircraft. To date, only one kitplane manufacturer falls in this category to my knowledge. All other kitplane manufacturers sell their kits to be classed under the experimental certificate for the purpose of operating an amateur-built aircraft. FAR 21.191(g) is the heart of all regulations for the builder of an airplane. This regulation states the following: "Operating amateur-built aircraft. Operating an aircraft the major portion of which has been fabricated and assembled by persons who undertook the project solely for their own education or recreation." This regulation is the essence of custom aircraft building. The intent of the classification is very clear. Notice that one or more persons may build the airplane but they must build it only for their own enjoyment or education.
Ultralight airplanes fall under a different set of rules. If your completed airplane meets the requirements of FAR 103.1, it is classed as an ultralight vehicle and as such does not require an airworthiness certificate. Briefly, these requirements are: single pilot, used for recreation only, weighing less than 254 pounds empty weight, fuel capacity not to exceed 5 U.S. gallons, not capable of more than 55 knots in level flight, and a power-off stall speed not exceeding 24 knots. As you can readily observe, the majority of custom built airplanes exceed one or more of these criteria. Often, the owner of an ultralight airplane will choose to certificate their aircraft under the experimental category. This is usually done to comply with the regulations regarding weight, passengers, etc.. Note that the operator of an ultralight does not have to be a certificated pilot contrasted to the operator of an amateur-built airplane who, of course, must be a licensed pilot and the holder of a current medical certificate.
To continue our discussion of FAR 21.191(g), it is clear that to certificate an airplane under the experimental category for amateur-built operation, we must assemble and construct at least 51% of the airplane. The FAA emphasizes this restriction in at least two publications. The first is FAA Order 8130.2C, which is the airworthiness certification manual used by FAA Inspectors as a guide to inspect an airplane and to issue an airworthiness certificate. On page 116 of that guide, the following guidelines appear under the eligibility section. (1) "Amateur-built aircraft may be eligible for an experimental airworthiness certificate when the applicant presents satisfactory evidence that the aircraft was fabricated and assembled by an individual or group of individuals." This section goes on to state that the project must be undertaken for educational or recreational purposes and the FAA must find that the airplane complies with acceptable standards. Aircraft that are manufactured and assembled as a business for sale are not considered to be amateur-built. This statement appears within the Order: "NOTE: Amateur-built kit owner(s) will jeopardize eligibility for certification under FAR 21.191(g) if someone else builds the airplane." The applicant for amateur-built certification must sign a notarized form (FAA Form 8130-12), certifying the major portion was fabricated and assembled for educational or recreational purposes, and that evidence is available to support the statement. The second place the 51% rule is emphasized is in Advisory Circular 20-27D on page 5 under 7(b). This section simply emphasizes the major portion rule.
When you purchase an airplane kit from a manufacturer, the kit should be listed on the FAA listing of kits that have been evaluated to ensure that 51% of the building will be completed by the purchaser (this is commonly known as the "major portion" rule). I want to emphasize that the FAA in no way endorses any of these kits nor do they approve kit manufacturers. They simply evaluate the kits solely for the purpose of determining if an aircraft built from the kit will meet the major portion criteria. A listing of these kits is available from your local FAA office. I do not recommend purchasing a kit that is not on this listing unless you are prepared to prove to the FAA Inspector that the kit meets the proper criteria.
The FAA does not expect the builder to personally fabricate every part of the airplane. A number of items can be purchased and several tasks can be contracted commercially. FAA Advisory Circular 20-139 titled "Commercial Assistance During Construction of Amateur-Built Aircraft", provides a very detailed guide concerning what can be purchased complete and what can be contracted commercially. Engines, propellers, wheel and brake assemblies, and standard aircraft hardware are examples of items that may be purchased. Installation of avionics, painting an airplane, and upholstery items are examples of tasks that may be contracted. The bottom line of the entire discussion is that you must prove to the FAA Inspector who issues your airworthiness certificate that you have complied with FAR 21.191(g). Next month we will discuss the necessary documentation to present to the inspector to assure your compliance.
If you decide to allow someone else to build your airplane to be certificated as amateur-built, you will be required to license it under the experimental category for the purpose of exhibition. This category is much more restrictive than amateur-built. The purpose of this category is to allow the holder to exhibit their airplane at air shows, motion pictures, television filming, etc., and of course to fly to and from these productions. I will not spend time discussing this category since it is rarely used.
Now that I have discussed the general regulations concerning building your airplane, I will detail specific regulations as they apply to each phase of building, flying, and maintaining an amateur-built airplane. I would recommend that you obtain a copy of the regulations for your own reference. Several books are available that contain the FAR's along with computer discs containing all of the FAA regulations. The FAA also maintains a web site with all regulations. This site can be found at www.faa.gov.
(Visit "Helpful Links" on this web site for many links to the FAA)
Initial Building Phase
The first phase of construction is, of course, the building phase. I would highly recommend that before you begin your project you ask your local FAA office for their information packet that is available relating to amateur-built airplanes. Part of this packet is Advisory Circular 20-27D, that you will refer to regularly. Regarding regulations governing the first phase, we have discussed in detail FAR21.191(g). Another regulation, FAR 21.173, presents the eligibility for an airworthiness certificate. FAR 21.191 defines all purposes that are allowed for licensing under the experimental category including, of course, amateur-built. FAR 21.175 defines the classifications of airworthiness certificates. FAR 21.193 contains the information that must be submitted for an experimental certificate. Advisory Circular 20-27D presents this information much more completely. FAA Part 45 details the markings that are necessary for your aircraft with respect to what is required, size, location, etc.. FAR 45.23 is where we are told that we will display the word "experimental" in letters not less than 2 inches high nor more than 6 inches high near the entrance to the cabin or cockpit. FAR 45.29 provides us with the size of registration marks and specifically allows us, as owners of experimental aircraft, to use 3 inch high numbers and letters providing our maximum cruising speed is less than 180 knots. If our cruising speed is higher than 180 knots, then we are required to use 12 inch letters and numbers. An additional regulation applies if our airplane had an experimental certificate issued more than 30 years ago. This regulation allows us to use numbers and letters only 2 inches high. FAR45.22 specifies the rules as they apply to the older airplanes. Details of spacing, width, and other factors are discussed in this section.
Continuing the building stage, FAR 47.15 informs us about registration numbers. You may select an "N" number of your choice providing the number is currently not in use on another airplane. FAR 47.33 lists the information that must be submitted with your application for the "N" number. If you intend to fly your airplane at night or under Instrument Flight Rules, you are required to have specific equipment. The necessary equipment, including instruments, radios, etc., is outlined in FAR 91.205. This regulation also tells you what is needed for VFR flight during the day. FAR 91.207 outlines the requirements for emergency locator transmitters (ELT). The requirements for an ELT are basically the same for all airplanes, including amateur-built. It should be noted that if you remain within 50 nautical miles of your home airport and you are engaged in flight training, you are not required to have an ELT. Also, if you have a single place airplane you are not required to install an ELT.
Obviously, there are a number of other issues involved in the building phase.
In next month's article, I will present a detailed checklist of the items you will need to certificate your aircraft under amateur-built. At that time I will also talk about the FAA inspection process and the required documentation and papers. After the FAA inspects your airplane, the inspector will issue a set of Operating Limitations. Those limitations then become regulations for operation of your aircraft and they are actually part of the special airworthiness certificate. The airworthiness certificate will be issued at the time of the inspection and will contain two phases. Phase 1 is the initial flight testing phase of the aircraft, and Phase 2 lists the operating limitations that go into effect upon completion of the flight testing. Phase 2 applies for the duration of the certificate.
Flight Testing
FAR 91.305 defines a flight test area. Basically, it states that you must conduct your flight testing over sparsely populated areas having light air traffic. FAR 91.319 provides a listing of operating limitations. As I mentioned, when your aircraft is inspected you will be given a copy of operating limitations. Usually, the inspector will issue Phase 1 and Phase 2 at the time of inspection providing you with 2 sets of operating limitations; flight testing and subsequent operation. The flight test area is defined within the Phase 1 limitations along with the required number of hours you must fly the aircraft. The primary restrictions regarding flight testing are: (1) no passengers, (2) day, VFR only, (3) no operation over congested areas, (4) you must advise ATC that you are experimental, and (5) the pilot must have the appropriate ratings. Of course, the general operating rules under FAR Part 91 are applicable. Phase 1 operating limitations have an expiration time of 12 months from date of issue. All flight testing must be completed within that time period or the aircraft must be reinspected. One of the restrictions, in FAR 91.319, that is interesting is that in order to have the Phase 1 restrictions lifted you must prove that the aircraft has no hazardous operating characteristics and that it is controllable throughout its normal range of speeds and maneuvers. The FAA has an Advisory Circular that is very helpful in providing guidelines for flight testing. This circular, Advisory Circular 90-89, is necessary to read prior to your first flight. Also, the EAA Flight Advisor program is highly recommended. The flight testing phase should be an enjoyable conclusion to your building experience and it will be if planned and executed properly.
Normal Operation of Your Amateur-Built
Once again, all of the general operating rules under FAR Part 91 apply to daily operations of your aircraft. In addition, the operating limitations presented under FAR 91.319 and as issued by the FAA Inspector at the time of inspection govern. After completion of Phase 1, you are then allowed to carry passengers and fly at night or IFR if so equipped. Phase 2 limitations do add some restrictions that merit discussion. First of all, you may not carry passengers or property for hire. Secondly, any major changes that are made to the airplane as defined by FAR 21.93 require inspection by the FAA prior to further flight. A minor change is defined as one that has no appreciable effect on the weight, balance, structure, or anything affecting the airworthiness. Examples of a major change would be a different horsepower engine, a different pitch propeller, a change in basic design, etc.. If a major change is made notify the FAA in writing providing the details of the change to ascertain whether or not an inspection will be required. Thirdly, you may not operate your airplane unless it has received a condition inspection (annual inspection). This will be discussed in the next section.
Maintaining Your Airplane
As I mentioned in the previous section, a condition inspection is required every 12 calendar months on amateur-built aircraft. This check is similar to an annual inspection required by FAR Part 43 on production airplanes. The Phase 2 Operating Limitations specifically refer to FAR Part 43, Appendix D, as the guide to performing this inspection. The inspection can be performed by any licensed A & P mechanic, an FAA Approved Repair Station, or by the builder of the airplane provided the builder obtains a "Repairman’s Certificate" from the FAA. FAA Advisory Circular 65-23A is available for information concerning application and privileges of this certificate. In short, the primary builder of the airplane is eligible to apply for this certificate which then permits inspection of the airplane and a logbook endorsement of the condition check. It is noteworthy that the primary builder must be one person. If a group of people builds an airplane, only one can be designated as the primary builder. In addition, the issuance of the repairman’s certificate only applies to the one airplane that has been built by the primary builder and no other airplane regardless of same type, etc..
Normal maintenance on an experimental airplane can be performed virtually by anyone regardless of credentials. Once again, this does not apply to the condition check previously discussed. You can perform maintenance items on the engine whether or not it is "certified". Once a certified engine is placed on an amateur-built aircraft and is operated, it no longer conforms to its type design. This means that the engine can no longer be placed on any aircraft other than an amateur-built until it has been inspected and found to meet its type design. It also must be found to be in a condition for safe operation "airworthy". Once again, common sense should rule. We do not want to overhaul an engine on our airplane unless we are equipped to do so with tools and proper knowledge.
I will point out that FAR Part 43 specifically states that the rules of that part do not apply to amateur-built airplanes. With that in mind, anyone can maintain the airplane. However, remember in our earlier discussion that Part 43, Appendix D was referenced in Phase 2 operating limitations presented to the builder at the time of inspection. It is referenced as a guide to be used in conducting condition inspections. That means Part 43, Appendix D does apply to the condition inspection because of this reference. The FAA has further clarified AD (Airworthiness Directives) as they apply to amateur-built airplanes. Airworthiness Directives cannot apply to any part on an amateur-built airplane unless that specific airplane is cited along with who should do the work and to what standards. The reason for this is because once an approved part is placed on an experimental airplane it is no longer considered an approved part. Again, let me emphasis that just because a regulation does not require an action it still may be prudent and within our best interest to conform to an AD note. We are striving to improve the safety record of this industry and in all cases we must act on the side of common sense and good practice.
Regulations Involving The Sale of Your Amateur-Built
There are few regulations governing a sale of your airplane. The airworthiness certificate is transferable with the airplane even though it is experimental. (FAR 21.179) The proper bill of sale and registration documents must be completed when you sell the airplane. Of particular interest is the fact that the new owner may maintain the newly purchased airplane, but may not perform the condition check. The repairman’s certificate is not transferred with the airplane. It remains with the original primary builder. That person legally may still perform the condition check if you can persuade them to do so. If you are purchasing a partially completed kit you need to obtain the proper documentation to ensure you will meet the major portion rule. FAA Advisory Circular 20-27D has the following warning: "CAUTION: Purchasers of partially completed kits should obtain all fabrication and assembly records from the previous owner(s). This may enable the builder who completes the aircraft to be eligible for amateur-built certification." Once again, a call to your FAA Inspector will prevent future problems. The time spent by the original builder is usually applied toward the total time required to build the airplane. Documentation is necessary.
Summary
The following table will provide a concise summary of Federal Aviation Regulations as they apply to amateur-built airplanes. Next month I will detail forms, documentation, etc., necessary to certificate your amateur-built aircraft along with an easy to use checklist.

Wright Brothers

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 09:44:00 +0000

For centuries man dreamt of flying, but he knew that the ‘flying carpets' of the Arabian Nights were nothing but meagre dreams. Wright brothers, however, revolutionized the whole concept turning the fairy tale into a reality.

Aeroplanes have revolutionized the entire mode of human existence. With their application in both peace and war, aeroplanes have shrunk our vast planet into a small world. Furthermore, it was the successful flight of an airplane, which stirred the hope in man to reach for the moon and the planets beyond.

Wilbur and Orville were the sons of Milton Wright and Susan Catherine Wright. Wilbur Wright was born in 1867, in Millville, Indiana. Orville Wright, his brother was born in 1871, in Dayton, Ohio. The Wright children were educated in public schools and grew up, as Orville later explained, in a home where "there was always much encouragement for children to pursue intellectual interests; to investigate whatever aroused curiosity." In a less-nourishing environment, Orville believed, "our curiosity might have been nipped long before it could have borne fruit." Both boys received high school education, although neither actually received a diploma. Both of them never got married.

Wilbur and Orville, like their father, were independent thinkers with a deep confidence in their own talents, an unshakeable faith in the soundness of their judgment, and a determination to persevere in the face of disappointment. Both were mechanically gifted, and both were interested in the subject of flying. They were fans of the writings of Otto Lilienthal, Octave Chanute and Samuel P. Langley - the other workers in aeronautics.

Their secret of success lay in the fact that they always worked together and co-operated perfectly with each other. And secondly they, unlike others, decided that they would first learn how to fly before attempting to build a plane.

In 1892, they opened a shop where they sold, repaired, and manufactured bicycles. This provided fund for their interests in aeronautics. Along with this the experience of designing and building lightweight, precision machines of wood, wire, and metal tubing was ideal preparation for the construction of flying machines.

News reports of Lilienthal's death in a glider crash in August 1896 marked the beginning of the brothers' serious interest in flight.

The brothers realized that a successful airplane would require wings to generate lift, a propulsion system to move it through the air, and a system to control the craft in flight. Lilienthal, they reasoned, had built wings capable of carrying him in flight, while the builders of self-propelled vehicles were developing lighter and more powerful internal combustion engines. The final problem to be solved, they concluded, was that of control.

They started working with kites and gliders in 1899. After an unsuccessful attempt they tested their second full-scale glider in 1901, and a third in 1902. The third glider incorporated some of their most important innovations, and they made more than a thousand successful flights with the third glider. By now, the Wright brothers were already the best and most experienced glider pilots.

With the major aerodynamic and control problems behind them, the brothers pressed forward with the design and construction of their first powered machine. They designed and built a four-cylinder internal combustion engine with the assistance of Charles Taylor, a machinist whom they employed in the bicycle shop. Recognizing that propeller blades could be understood as rotary wings, the Wrights were able to design twin pusher propellers on the basis of their wind-tunnel data.

Their plane, which they called Flyer I, cost less than a thousand dollars. Wilbur made the first attempt at powered flight on December 14, 1903 but he stalled the aircraft on take-off and damaged the forward section of the machine. Three days were spent making repairs and waiting for the return of good weather. Then, at about 10:35 on the morning of December 17, 1903, Orville made the first successful flight, covering 120 feet through the air in 12 seconds. Wilbur flew 175 feet in 12 seconds on his first attempt, followed by Orville's second effort of 200 feet in 15 seconds. During the fourth and final flight of the day, Wilbur flew 852 feet over the sand in 59 seconds. Five local citizens witnessed the four flights. For the first time in history, a heavier-than-air machine had demonstrated powered and sustained flight under the complete control of the pilot. The original plane is now at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

The claim of the Wright brothers to have flown was widely doubted. For example, the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune carried an article on the Wright brothers with the headline "Flyers or Liars?" It was almost five years before it was generally realized in the world at large that manned flight had actually been achieved. In February 1908, the Wrights signed a contract for the sale of an airplane to the US Army. They would receive $25,000 for delivering a machine capable of flying for at least one hour with a pilot and passenger at an average speed of 65km per hour. The following month, they signed a second agreement with a group of French investors.

On May 14, Wilbur carried aloft the first airplane passenger-mechanic Charles Furnas.

Following the successful Fort Myer trials, Orville travelled to Germany, where he flew at Berlin and Potsdam. Wilbur made several important flights as part of the New York City's Hudson-Fulton Celebration, then went to College Park, Md., where he taught the first three US Army officers to fly.

In November 1909, the Wright Company was incorporated with Wilbur as president, Orville as one of the two vice presidents, and a board of trustees that included some of the leaders of American business. The Wright Company established a factory in Dayton and a flying field and flight school at Huffman Prairie.Exhausted by business and legal concerns and suffering from typhoid fever, Wilbur died in his bed early on the morning of May 30, 1912. Upon Wilbur's demise, Orville assumed leadership of the Wright Company, remaining with the firm until 1915, when he sold his interest in the company to a group of financiers.

One of the most celebrated Americans of his time, Orville received honorary degrees and awards from universities and organizations across America and Europe. Orville disliked public speaking, however, and enjoyed nothing more than spending time with friends and family in the privacy of his home and laboratory in Dayton. During the last four decades of his life he devoted considerable energy to defending the priority of the Wright brothers as the inventors of the airplane.

On January 27, 1948, Orville suffered a heart attack; he died three days later in Dayton hospital. There is perhaps no better epitaph for both of the Wright brothers than the words crafted by a group of their friends to appear as a label identifying the 1903 Wright airplane on display at the Smithsonian: "By original scientific research, the Wright brothers discovered the principles of human flight. As inventors, builders and flyers, they further developed the aeroplane, taught man to fly, and opened the era of aviation."

Aeroplane

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 09:41:00 +0000

The purpose of this book is to give some indication of the principles and methods of construction of modern aeroplanes, as distinct from those considerations pertaining purely to design, although occasional references to various elementary principles of aerodynamics have been found necessary to illustrate the why and wherefore of certain constructional details.

To many the aeroplane is a structure of appalling flimsiness, yet the principle which it exemplifies, that of obtaining the maximum strength for a minimum of weight, constitutes a problem of which the solving is not only an unceasing labour, but one demanding the observance of the best engineering procedure. The whole future of aviation, commercially or otherwise, may be said to be indissolubly bound up with the development of efficiency; and whether this is to be attained in improvements in aerodynamical qualities, by the discovery of a material giving a greatly enhanced strength to weight ratio, or by progress in the arrangement of the various members of the complete structure of the aeroplane, is a matter upon which some diversity of opinion exists. However, it is certain that the very great developments of the last few years are clue more to refinements in design rather than construction; and it is questionable whether the constructional work of the modern aeroplane has developed equally with design, so that, even taking for granted the oft-repeated, but very doubtful, statement that we are approaching the limitations of design, there irf certainly plenty of scope for experiment and improvement in the constructional principles of the modern aeroplane.

Standardization of Details.
Whatever may be said for the standardization of aeroplane types, a scheme which should effect a considerable saving in labour and material, and which offers chances of success, would consist in the standardization of metal fittings and wood components generally, for in this direction there is certainly great need for improvement. Taking as a hypothesis the various makes of scouting machines, we find hardly any two details the same. This means that if in this country there are six firms producing machines of their own design (these figures, of course, being purely suppositionary), there will be six sets of detail drawings, six sets of jigs, templates, and press tools, and sundry special machine tools. There seems no valid reason why many of the fittings for all machines within certain dimensions should not be of standard design, and a brief review of the various details which could be standardized without detracting in the least from aerodynamical efficiency will indicate the extent to which the con- serving of labour could be carried. In the construction of the fuselage, the clips fastening the longerons and cross struts could easily be of one design, whatever the make of the machine. At present we find some clips are bent up from a stamping and attached to the longeron without the drilling of the latter; some built up from various parts, such as washer-plates, duralumin pressings, and bolted through the longeron; while some combine advantages and others the disadvantages of both. In some cases the longerons of spruce are spindled out for lightening; in others no spindling occurs; while in a few instances hickory or ash, with or without channelling, is used. There are the interplane strut attachments, stern-post fittings, control-surface hinges, and under- carriage attachments, all showing great variations, and in all of which the design could be brought within reasonable limits.
As indicating how unnecessary a good deal of the variation is, one may instance the fact that for the swaged streamline, or R.A.F. wires, there are at least three different terminals in use. Although more difficult of achievement, there is scope for improvement in the different arrangements for the fixed gun mounting, while a standard instrument board would benefit the pilot.

Methods of Manufacture,
It is fairly well known that the output of some firms is considerably better than others, although the machines are of the same design. Although a good many factors may contribute to this result, it seems fairly certain that in some cases the methods of manufacture must be superior, which calls for some system of standardizing the broad principles pertaining to manufacturing procedure. Under this arrangement a much better estimate of probable output could be made. It is also necessary by the fact that some firms have been developed through the exigencies of war, and not as a result of any great manufacturing ability, whereas in peace time the spur of competition would force the adoption of the most rapid methods of production. The creation of a central or universal office for the design of the various jigs used in the manufacture of aircraft, with power to decide the process of manufacture, although a somewhat far-reaching reform, would certainly eliminate a number of useless experiments made by the individual constructors, and would also greatly improve the interchangeability of the various components. In addition, fresh firms to the aviation industry would be at once acquainted with the general methods of manufacture, which should be of considerable assistance in expediting initial output. Of course, this system would tend rather to destroy individual initiative, in that much that is now left to the skill and experience of the workman would be predetermined, although this would be more than compensated for by the increased benefits accruing to the State. Jigs designed to produce the same work in different works often differ in detail considerably, and this, of course, often influences the rate of production. As an instance, in some works elaborate benches are considered necessary for the erection of fuselages, while in others a pair of trestles suffices. With this system of unified manufacturing procedure extreme regard would have to be paid, in the design of various jigs and fixtures, to adaptability for modifications in design. Otherwise the various alterations which are bound to occur would result in an unnecessary expenditure on fresh jigs. It is somewhat unfortunate that in the general design of an aeroplane, in numerous cases, far too little regard is paid to considerations of ease of manufacture, and this is frequently responsible for the many changes in design after a contract has been started. Under an ideal system of standardization, the requirements of manufacture would necessitate consideration in the design of the constructional details.

Metal Construction,
The question of the aircraft materials of the future is not so much a problem as a matter of gradual evolution. In view of the dwindling supplies of suitable timber, it certainly seems more than probable that some form of metal construction will one day constitute the structure of the aeroplane. The manufacture of the various components in wood does not necessitate an extensive plant, the labour necessary is comparatively cheap and easily available, and moreover the transitory nature of the whole business, and the ease with which essential changes in type can be made without the wholesale scrapping of the expensive jigs associated with the use of steel, all strengthen the case in favour of wood. The conclusion of hostilities would introduce another state of affairs, and it is conceivable that the various types will then be standardized for different purposes, which may necessitate the greater use of steel. Certainly the advantage of steel would be better realized under some system of standardized design, but this unfortunately is not possible while present conditions obtain. The advantages of metal as a material considered briefly, are that it permits of design to close limits without the allowance of so-called factors of safety, which are now necessary through the great variation in the strengths of wood, manufacturing procedure would be expedited, while one can reasonably expect a greater degree of precision in the finished machine, due largely to the increased facilities for accurate manufacture of components which metal affords. It is quite possible, of course, given a uniform grade of steel, to design to extremely close limits without fear of collapse ; but the human factor in the shape of fitter, welder, or operator introduces the unknown element, and one for which some allowance must always be made. One cannot assert that any very decided indication exists of a trend in modern design towards metal construction, and it is quite possible that this will not arrive until it is rendered imperative by reason of the scarcity of timber. The precise composition of the metal is rather a controversial matter, some authorities favouring steel, and others some alloy of aluminium, such as, for instance, "duralumin." The production of a suitable alloy constitutes a real problem and one upon which the Advisory Committee for Aeronautics have already made investigations and experiments. A disadvantage with steel is that, although it is quite possible to produce, say, a fuselage entirely of this material to withstand easily the greatest stress encountered in flying, such a structure, owing to the thin nature of the various components, would suffer damage through shocks induced by rolling over rough ground, and also by handling. In addition the effects of crystallization would require some considerable study. These and other reasons indicate that an alloy of aluminium, which for a given weight would be considerably more rigid than steel, offers possibilities as a material. It might prove advantageous to combine both metals, using steel for the more highly stressed parts, such as, for instance, wing spar attachments, inter-plane bracing lugs, and indeed any part where the load to be carried is one induced by tension.
The foregoing is indicative of some of the more important directions in which improvement and development are possible, and certainly ample scope yet exists for the attention of the student, or indeed anyone interested in the future of the aviation industry.

Special

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 17:53:00 +0000

he first clear example of time dilation was provided over fifty years ago by an experiment detecting muons. (David H. Frisch and James A. Smith, Measurement of the Relativistic Time Dilation. These particles are produced at the outer edge of our atmosphere by incoming cosmic rays hitting the first traces of air. They are unstable particles, with a “half-life” of 1.5 microseconds (1.5 millionths of a second), which means that if at a given time you have 100 of them, 1.5 microseconds later you will have about 50, 1.5 microseconds after that 25, and so on. Anyway, they are constantly being produced many miles up, and there is a constant rain of them towards the surface of the earth, moving at very close to the speed of light. In 1941, a detector placed near the top of Mount Washington (at 6000 feet above sea level) measured about 570 muons per hour coming in. Now these muons are raining down from above, but dying as they fall, so if we move the detector to a lower altitude we expect it to detect fewer muons because a fraction of those that came down past the 6000 foot level will die before they get to a lower altitude detector. Approximating their speed by that of light, they are raining down at 186,300 miles per second, which turns out to be, conveniently, about 1,000 feet per microsecond. Thus they should reach the 4500 foot level 1.5 microseconds after passing the 6000 foot level, so, if half of them die off in 1.5 microseconds, as claimed above, we should only expect to register about 570/2 = 285 per hour with the same detector at this level. Dropping another 1500 feet, to the 3000 foot level, we expect about 280/2 = 140 per hour, at 1500 feet about 70 per hour, and at ground level about 35 per hour. (We have rounded off some figures a bit, but this is reasonably close to the expected value.)

To summarize: given the known rate at which these raining-down unstable muons decay, and given that 570 per hour hit a detector near the top of Mount Washington, we only expect about 35 per hour to survive down to sea level. In fact, when the detector was brought down to sea level, it detected about 400 per hour! How did they survive? The reason they didn’t decay is that in their frame of reference, much less time had passed. Their actual speed is about 0.994c, corresponding to a time dilation factor of about 9, so in the 6 microsecond trip from the top of Mount Washington to sea level, their clocks register only 6/9 = 0.67 microseconds. In this period of time, only about one-quarter of them decay.

What does this look like from the muon’s point of view? How do they manage to get so far in so little time? To them, Mount Washington and the earth’s surface are approaching at 0.994c, or about 1,000 feet per microsecond. But in the 0.67 microseconds it takes them to get to sea level, it would seem that to them sea level could only get 670 feet closer, so how could they travel the whole 6000 feet from the top of Mount Washington? The answer is the Fitzgerald contraction. To them,Mount Washington is squashed in a vertical direction (the direction of motion) by a factor of the same as the time dilation factor, which for the muons is about 9. So, to the muons, Mount Washington is only 670 feet high—this is why they can get down it so fast!

But this isn’t the whole story—we must now turn everything around and look at it from Jill’s point of view. Her inertial frame of reference is just as good as Jack’s. She sees his light clock to be moving at speed v (backwards) so from her point of view his light blip takes the longer zigzag path, which means his clock runs slower than hers. That is to say, each of them will see the other to have slower clocks, and be aging more slowly. This phenomenon is called time dilation. It has been verified in recent years by flying very accurate clocks around the world on jetliners and finding they register less time, by the predicted amount, than identical clocks left on the ground. Time dilation is also very easy to observe in elementary particle physics, as we shall discuss in the next section.

Suppose now the blip in Jill’s clock on the moving flatbed wagon takes time t to get from the bottom mirror to the top mirror as measured by Jack standing by the track. Then the length of the “zig” from the bottom mirror to the top mirror is necessarily ct, since that is the distance covered by any blip of light in time t. Meanwhile, the wagon has moved down the track a distance vt, where v is the speed of the wagon. This should begin to look familiar—it is precisely the same as the problem of the swimmer who swims at speed c relative to the water crossing a river flowing at v! We have again a right-angled triangle with hypotenuse ct, and shorter sides vt and w.

relativity

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 17:49:00 +0000

The notion of relativity is not as revolutionary as many believe. In fact, spatial relativity is part of our everyday experience. Spatial relativity, also called Galilean relativity in honour of Galileo who first formulated the concept of relative motion, is often confused with Einstein's theories. Galileo simply described the fact that an observer in motion sees things differently from a stationary observer, because he has a different spatial coordinate system, or "reference frame" in Relativity speak. It might sound more complicated than it actually is. Consider the following example:

Galilean relativity: the train example (courtesy of Stephen Hawking).

Two people riding on a train from New York to San Francisco play a game of ping-pong in the sport compartment of the train. Lets say, the train moves at 100 km per hour (= 27.8 m/s) and the two players hit the ball at a speed of two meters per second. In the reference frame of the players, the ball moves back and forth at this particular speed. For a stationary observer standing beside the railroad, however, things look quite different. In his reference frame the ball moves at 29.8 m/s when it is played forward in the direction where the train is heading, while it moves at 25.8 m/s in the same direction when it is played backwards. Thus he doesn't see the ball moving backward at all, but always moving towards San Francisco. For an observer in outer space, things look again totally different because of the Earth's rotation, which is opposite to the train's movement; therefore the outer space observer always sees the ball moving East.

Einstein's new concept of relativity.

Einstein's Relativity differs from classical relativity, because of the way he looked at time. Before Einstein, people thought time to be absolute, which is to say that one big clock measures the time for the entire universe. Consequently one hour on Earth would be one hour on Mars, or one hour in another galaxy. However, there was a problem with this concept. In an absolute time frame the speed of light cannot be constant. Roemer found that the speed of light is finite and has a certain, quantifiable velocity (usually abbreviated with "c"), which at first implies Galilean relativity. This would mean that while the Earth rotates at a velocity of v, light emitted in the direction of the Earth rotation must be c + v, while light emitted in the opposite direction would travel at c - v, relative to an outside observer.

In 1881, A. Michelson conducted an experiment which proved that this is not the case. With the help of an apparatus that allowed measuring minute differences in the speed of light by changes in the resulting interference patterns, Michelson observed that the speed of light is always the same. No changes whatsoever. The experiment has been repeated later with greater precision by Michelson and E.W. Morley.
This view of Relativity, that there are different realities, has been picked up unanimously by the public, and hence, has taken on a far greater meaning than that of the original scientific theory, the focus of which was -strictly speaking- on mechanics and electrodynamics. This astonishing success was at least in part due to Einstein's personality. He understood himself as a philosopher as much as a scientist, and he was ready to discuss philosophical issues at any time, particularly matters involving Relativity. The philosophical aspect of Relativity forced people to think differently about the universe. Suddenly, the cosmos was not a God-created clockwork anymore, but a totality of disparate realities with the same basic natural laws.

Special Relativity published in 1905.

Numerous attempts were made at reconciling these discrepancies, yet they were all unsuccessful, until Einstein solved the dilemma with his famous paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies in 1905, in which he developed his Special Relativity Theory. Special Relativity is an extremely elegant construct that deals with things moving near or at the speed of light. Surprisingly, the new concept of space and time that arises from Relativity is based only on two simple postulates: 1. The laws of physics are the same in all inertial (=non-accelerating) reference frames, and 2. The speed of light in free space is constant.

It is a matter of common experience that one can describe the position of a point in space by three numbers, or coordinates. For the purpose of explaining the relativistic model, Einstein added time as a fourth component to the coordinate system, and the resulting construct is called spacetime. Just as there is an infinite number of 3-D reference frames in Galilean relativity, there is an infinite number of 4-D spacetime reference frames in Einstein's theory. This is to say that Einstein put an end to absolute time. The revolutionary insight lies in the conclusion that the flow of time in the universe does indeed differ depending on one's reference frame.

In his usual humble way, Einstein explained how he reinvented physics: "I sometimes ask myself how it came about that I was the one to develop the theory of Relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult stops to think about problems of space and time. These are things which he has thought about as a child. But my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up." On Relativity, he said: "Relativity teaches us the connection between the different descriptions of one and the same reality."

E=mc² - Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.

An outstanding feature of Special Relativity is its mass-energy relation, which is expressed in the well-known formula: E=mc².

Einstein derived this relation in an attempt to reconcile Maxwell's electromagnetic theory with the conservation of energy and momentum. Maxwell said that light carries a momentum, which is to say that a wave carries an amount of energy. Due to the principle of conservation of momentum, if a body emits energy in the form of radiation, the body loses an equivalent amount of mass that is given by E/c². This describes the relation between energy and mass.
According to the conservation principle, in a closed system the sum of mass and its energy equivalent is always the same. The mass-energy relation tells us that any change in the energy level of an object necessarily involves a change in the object's mass and vice-versa. The most dramatic consequences of this law are observed in nature, for example in nuclear fission and fusion processes, in which stars like the Sun emit energy and lose mass. The same law also applies to the forces set free in the detonation of an atomic bomb.

Was Einstein involved in the development of the atomic bomb?

Einstein was not directly involved in the creation of the atomic bomb, as some people assume. His credits are rather being the one who provided the theoretical framework. In 1939, Einstein and several other physicists wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, pointing out the possibility of making an atomic bomb and the peril that the German government was embarking on such a course. The letter, signed only by Einstein, helped lending urgency to efforts in the creation of the atomic bomb, but Einstein himself played no role in the work and knew nothing about it at the time.

General Relativity published in 1916.

Eleven years after On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, Einstein published his second groundbreaking work on General Relativity, which continues and expands the original theory. A preeminent feature of General Relativity is its view of gravitation. Einstein held that the forces of acceleration and gravity are equivalent. Again, the single premise that General Relativity is based on is surprisingly simple. It states that all physical laws can be formulated so as to be valid for any observer, regardless of the observer's motion. Consequently, due to the equivalence of acceleration and gravitation, in an accelerated reference frame, observations are equivalent to those in a uniform gravitational field.
This led Einstein to redefine the concept of space itself. In contrast to the Euclidean space in which Newton’s laws apply, he proposed that space itself might be curved. The curvature of space, or better spacetime, is due to massive objects in it, such as the sun, which warp space around their gravitational centre. In such a space, the motion of objects can be described in terms of geometry rather than in terms of external forces. For example, a planet orbiting the Sun can be thought of as moving along a "straight" trajectory in a curved space that is bent around the Sun.
On the following pages we will examine spacetime and other fascinating aspects of Relativity in some detail and see how Relativity leads us to new insights about the structure and the creation of the universe.

Everyday

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 17:46:00 +0000

This is the perennial question posed to physicists by their non-science friends, by students in the humanities and social sciences, and by politicians looking to justify spending tax dollars on basic science. One of the problems is that it is hard to predict definitely what the payback of basic physics will be, though few dispute that physics is somehow "good."Physicists have become adept at finding good examples of the long-term benefit of basic physics: the quantum theory of solids leading to semiconductors and computer chips, nuclear magnetic resonance leading to MRI imaging, particle accelerators leading to beams for cancer treatment. But what about Einstein's theories of special and general relativity? One could hardly imagine a branch of fundamental physics less likely to have practical consequences. But strangely enough, relativity plays a key role in a multi-billion dollar growth industry centered around the Global Positioning System (GPS).When Einstein finalized his theory of gravity and curved spacetime in November 1915, ending a quest which he began with his 1905 special relativity, he had little concern for practical or observable consequences. He was unimpressed when measurements of the bending of starlight in 1919 confirmed his theory. Even today, general relativity plays its main role in the astronomical domain, with its black holes, gravity waves and cosmic big bangs, or in the domain of the ultra-small, where theorists look to unify general relativity with the other interactions, using exotic concepts such as strings and branes.But GPS is an exception. Built at a cost of over $10 billion mainly for military navigation, GPS has rapidly transformed itself into a thriving commercial industry. The system is based on an array of 24 satellites orbiting the earth, each carrying a precise atomic clock. Using a hand-held GPS receiver which detects radio emissions from any of the satellites which happen to be overhead, users of even moderately priced devices can determine latitude, longitude and altitude to an accuracy which can currently reach 15 meters, and local time to 50 billionths of a second. Apart from the obvious military uses, GPS is finding applications in airplane navigation, oil exploration, wilderness recreation, bridge construction, sailing, and interstate trucking, to name just a few. Even Hollywood has met GPS, recently pitting James Bond in "Tomorrow Never Dies" against an evil genius who was inserting deliberate errors into the GPS system and sending British ships into harm's way.But in a relativistic world, things are not simple. The satellite clocks are moving at 14,000 km/hr in orbits that circle the Earth twice per day, much faster than clocks on the surface of the Earth, and Einstein's theory of special relativity says that rapidly moving clocks tick more slowly, by about seven microseconds (millionths of a second) per day.Also, the orbiting clocks are 20,000 km above the Earth, and experience gravity that is four times weaker than that on the ground. Einstein's general relativity theory says that gravity curves space and time, resulting in a tendency for the orbiting clocks to tick slightly faster, by about 45 microseconds per day. The net result is that time on a GPS satellite clock advances faster than a clock on the ground by about 38 microseconds per day.To determine its location, the GPS receiver uses the time at which each signal from a satellite was emitted, as determined by the on-board atomic clock and encoded into the signal, together the with speed of light, to calculate the distance between itself and the satellites it communicated with. The orbit of each satellite is known accurately. Given enough satellites, it is a simple problem in Euclidean geometry to compute the receiver's precise location, both in space and time. To achieve a navigation accuracy of 15 meters, time throughout the GPS system must be known to an accuracy of 50 nanoseconds, which simply corresponds to the time required for light to travel 15 meters.But at 38 microseconds per day, the relativistic offset in the rates of the satellite clocks is so large that, if left uncompensated, it would cause navigational errors that accumulate faster than 10 km per day! GPS accounts for relativity by electronically adjusting the rates of the satellite clocks, and by building mathematical corrections into the computer chips which solve for the user's location. Without the proper application of relativity, GPS would fail in its navigational functions within about 2 minutes.So the next time your plane approaches an airport in bad weather, and you just happen to be wondering "what good is basic physics?", think about Einstein and the GPS tracker in the cockpit, helping the pilots guide you to a safe landing.

Love einstein

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 17:44:00 +0000

It’s the year 2100. You wake up alone in a small, windowless room. The only other thing in the room is a small ball. Maybe the room is located in your city, but maybe it’s inside that new spaceship everyone’s talking about. How can you tell?You pick up the ball and drop it. It falls vertically to your feet. You time the fall and calculate that the ball accelerates at 9.8 metres per second per second, exactly the acceleration of gravity at the surface of the Earth.But a spaceship in the middle of deep space can also accelerate by that much, producing the exact same results. So where are you?In 1911, Einstein formally proposed that gravitational mass (that which produces a gravitational field) and inertial mass (that which resists acceleration) were one in the same, and this became known as the “equivalence principle”. According to this principle, you can’t tell whether you’re in a gravitational field (such as on the surface of the Earth) or experiencing constant acceleration (a spaceship speeding up, pushing you to the floor, like the g-force of a roller-coaster).Another example is the infamous “Vomit Comet”, officially the Weightless Wonder (see video below), used by NASA for training, and occasionally by Hollywood for filming. Just as with our example with the ball, there’s no way to tell the difference between free fall, and being in the absence of a gravitational field, say in deep space.This principle led Einstein to consider incorporating gravity into the framework of his special theory of relativity, culminating in his General Theory of Relativity.At face value, that doesn’t appear such a difficult thing to do. Until this point, the properties of objects in isolation could be described by equations with great accuracy. But what to do about gravity? How does one calculate the properties of a system in which acceleration can be due to either gravity or changes in velocity? It seems to depend on how you are looking at it.That led to the idea of a “reference frame” – the stage on which the objects you are looking at play out their roles. There may of course be other frames in which the objects appear to behave differently, so we need a description of all the frames, and the way to relate them.The trick was to consider space and time as a four-dimensional object in itself – not a fixed stage on which the objects are defined, but something that itself can change. Let’s say you and I are going to meet for coffee. How do you describe this “event”? One option is to look at a map – “I’ll meet you at the cafe on level two of the building that’s at G5 on the map”. We have described three coordinates: G, 5, and level two. This is another way of saying a set of x, y, and z coordinates. So that we both actually meet for coffee, we’ll also need to add a fourth coordinate: time – say 2:00pm. These four points are what we call a space-time event.

General Relativity says the map can be distorted; and our coordinates will depend on how that happens. If I were to bend the map a little, the distance between two locations changes.

If you measure and add the angles of a triangle on the flat map you would get 180 degrees. If you do this on the curved map, you get a little more or a little less (depending on which way it’s curved). In the same way, the universe itself can have areas of different curvature.

Now for the mind

Einstein

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 17:41:00 +0000

IN your schooldays most of you who read this book made acquaintance with the noble building of Euclid’s geometry, and you remember—perhaps with more respect than love—the magnificent structure, on the lofty staircase of which you were chased about for uncounted hours by conscientious teachers. By reason of your past experience, you would certainly regard every one with disdain who should pronounce even the most out-of-the-way proposition of this science to be untrue. But perhaps this feeling of proud certainty would leave you immediately if some one were to ask you: “What, then, do you mean by the assertion that these propositions are true?” Let us proceed to give this question a little consideration.
Geometry sets out from certain conceptions such as “plane,” “point,” and “straight line,” withwhich we are able to associate more or less definite ideas, and from certain simple propositions (axioms) which, in virtue of these ideas, we are inclined to accept as “true.” Then, on the basis of a logical process, the justification of which we feel ourselves compelled to admit, all remaining propositions are shown to follow from those axioms, i.e. they are proven. A proposition is then correct (“true”) when it has been derived in the recognised manner from the axioms. The question of the “truth” of the individual geometrical propositions is thus reduced to one of the “truth” of the axioms. Now it has long been known that the last question is not only unanswerable by the methods of geometry, but that it is in itself entirely without meaning. We cannot ask whether it is true that only one straight line goes through two points. We can only say that Euclidean geometry deals with things called “straight line,” to each of which is ascribed the property of being uniquely determined by two points situated on it. The concept “true” does not tally with the assertions of pure geometry, because by the word “true” we are eventually in the habit of designating always the correspondence with a “real” object; geometry, however, is not concerned with the relation of the ideas involved in it to objects of experience, but only with the logical connection of these ideas among themselves.
It is not difficult to understand why, in spite of this, we feel constrained to call the propositions of geometry “true.” Geometrical ideas correspond to more or less exact objects in nature, and these last are undoubtedly the exclusive cause of the genesis of those ideas. Geometry ought to refrain from such a course, in order to give to its structure the largest possible logical unity. The practice, for example, of seeing in a “distance” two marked positions on a practically rigid body is something which is lodged deeply in our habit of thought. We are accustomed further to regard three points as being situated on a straight line, if their apparent positions can be made to coincide for observation with one eye, under suitable choice of our place of observation.
If, in pursuance of our habit of thought, we now supplement the propositions of Euclidean geometry by the single proposition that two points on a practically rigid body always correspond to the same distance (line-interval), independently of any changes in position to which we may subject the body, the propositions of Euclidean geometry then resolve themselves into propositions on the possible relative position of practically rigid bodies. 1 Geometry which has been supplemented in this way is then to be treated as a branch of physics. We can now legitimately ask as to the “truth” of geometrical propositions interpreted in this way, since we are justified in asking whether these propositions are satisfied for those real things we have associated with the geometrical ideas. In less exact terms we can express this by saying that by the “truth” of a geometrical proposition in this sense we understand its validity for a construction with ruler and compasses.
Of course the conviction of the “truth” of geometrical propositions in this sense is founded exclusively on rather incomplete experience. For the present we shall assume the “truth” of the geometrical propositions, then at a later stage (in the general theory of relativity) we shall see that this “truth” is limited, and we shall consider the extent of its limitation.

Note 1. It follows that a natural object is associated also with a straight line. Three points A, B andC on a rigid body thus lie in a straight line when, the points A and C being given, B is chosen such that the sum of the distan

Secuirity Tips for girls

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 16:12:00 +0000

As Muslims and their institutions become targets of harassment in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attack, Muslim women, especially those who dress Islamically, have become major targets. Reports of Muslim women being yelled at, threatened, having their Hijabs pulled off and having guns pointed at them have surfaced. It is necessary that the whole community rallies to defend Muslim women. But sisters also have to take personal precautions when they go outside. Like it or not, they will be targets.

Here are some safety tips for sisters

1. Always be aware of your surroundings This applies whether you are travelling alone or in groups. Don't just focus inwardly on your thoughts if you are alone, or your friends if you are together. Keep one eye out for your environment, looking out for suspicious characters, possible danger, etc. Also, don't assume that because your area has been "safe" thus far, that it will continue to be so.

2. Travel in groups "There is safety in numbers" is not just a cliché. It's true. Make a point of traveling together with other sisters, whether it's on public transportation, on campus, in cars, etc.

3. Change the route you normally travel by. If you've taken the same bus,train or highway to get to work or school, change your route. Even if it takes you a little longer, your safety is more important. By changing your route, you can avert possible attacks or harassment from those who know your schedule, method and route of travel well. Please note though that you should avoid short cuts that take you through unfamiliar or unsafe areas.

4. When traveling by public transportation choose the right seat; If you are traveling by bus or train, do not sit on the window seat as you may be "blocked in" by a potential assailant. Always select the seat next to the aisle so that you can quickly leave if necessary. If you are taking public transportation alone after peak hours, sit as close to the driver as possible and/or choose the section of the bus/train that is most crowded. Try to get a seat near the exit as well.

5. If you are driving alone Don't think that if you are in a car, you're safe. Windows should be up and doors locked even when driving to avoid unwanted passengers at intersections. When you are walking to your car, always have your keys ready, so that you can quickly get into your car. But don't just get in right away. Always check your car before entering, especially the back, for any intruders.

6. Never leave your car door unlocked Even if it means for one minute to drop something off in the mailbox that's a few feet away. Attackers have been known to lie in wait for such an opportunity.

7. Be careful in parking lots Always be alert in parking lots, especially when it's dark. Ask someone to escort you to your car. Between cars and inside cars, it's easy for someone to hide and wait until an unalert person comes along.

8. If you are traveling by taxi Always check the identification of the driver (usually located near the visor) and ensure that it matches the driver. Once inside, don't sit behind the driver as it may be easy for the driver to lock the rear passenger door. Always choose the adjacent seat. In addition, avoid flagging taxis. Always order taxis so the driver can be traced if something happens.

9. Note "safe houses" along your route Mentally note houses at intervals on each route you take that can be used as "safe houses" if you are attacked, such as shops or houses that you know to be occupied by a friend or acquaintance.

10. When you make a call from a phone booth After dialing the number you wish to call always turn around so that you have your back to the phone and may see who or what is coming your way. You will then be able to tell the person to whom you are speaking that you may be in trouble and you may be able to use the weight of the phone as a weapon. The door of a telephone box could be used to wedge in the limbs of the attacker.

11. Do not open the door of your home without first checking from a window, peephole or by asking and verifying who it is. Instruct children to do the same.

12. Report any suspicious activity around your home If you see people loitering on the streets near your house, call the police on a non emergency number and report it.

13. Invest in a cell / mobile phone This is an invaluable safety device. Keep it with you at all times and keep emergency numbers on it. Also, keep it next to your bed before you go to bed at night.

14. Parking tips: Avoid parking in areas that are not well lit. Where possible, park close to a school or work entrance or in a parking garage that has an attendant. If you see a suspicious person approaching or hanging around near your parked car, turn around and go back to an area where there are other people. Try to get an escort to your car through the campus or job security or local police.

15. Tell others about your whereabouts: Parents, spouses and friends should know where you are going and when you will be back, so that your absence will be noticed. Arrange a call in system with a friend if you live alone, whereby you call when you arrive home.

16. Trust your instincts: If you are walking somewhere and feel strange or scared, don't ignore this feeling. Take extra precautions by walking a little faster to get to a more populated or well-lit area or change the route you've been driving on.

17. If you think you are being followed, change your route and activity. You can cross the street, change directions, or enter a populated building or store. Do whatever is necessary to avoid being alone with the person who is following you. Inform a police officer or security official about the follower.

18. Attract attention if you are in a dangerous situation. Get others' to pay attention to what's happening to you if you are under attack or being harassed. You can alert others by honking a car horn or loudly describing what is happening.

19. NEVER admit that you are alone: If someone calls your home and asks if you are alone, NEVER admit it. Ask who the caller is. If they refuse to identify themselves, calmly hangup. Keep the radio on in the house so that callers will get the impression that others are in the home too. Instruct children to do the same when they pick up the phone.

20. Obscene phone calls: If you receive an obscene call or a crank call, do not talk to the caller. Hang up if the caller doesn't say anything, or as soon as s/he shouts obscenities. Hang up the phone calmly and do not slam it down. Note down the date and time of the calls. If they are persistent, inform local police.

21. If you are a student: Avoid studying in isolated classrooms in parts of the college campus that are not regularly patrolled by the school's security officers.

22. In large buildings take the elevator, not the stairwell. Stairwells are usually quiet and dark. Most people take the elevator. But if someone creepy gets on, don't hesitate to get off at the same time. Or, if someone is already on the elevator who you feel strange about, do not get on and wait for the next elevator.

Beauty

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 16:11:00 +0000

Vern Barnet does interfaith work in Kansas City. Reach him at vern@cres.org

Several readers of last week’s column asked why I called Islam “incredibly beautiful.” Based on decades of study, world travel and long friendships with Muslims, I answer with three hints.

•Our indebtedness to Muslim culture is extraordinary. Try doing your finances using Roman instead of Arabic numerals, and you’ll get the idea.

Have you had your coffee? The attempt 400 years ago to prohibit Christians from drinking coffee because it was a Muslim drink obviously has failed.

Thomas Aquinas, for centuries the pre-eminent Christian theologian, was influenced by Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes). Renaissance art, music and poetry, out of which today’s world developed, were stimulated by encounters with Muslim thinkers.

Who can see the Alhambra or the Taj Mahal or the great mosques throughout the world without awe? One image often used to identify Kansas City is Giralda Tower on the Country Club Plaza, a smaller version of what was once the minaret of a mosque in Seville.

•The five “pillars” of Islam present a spiritual path rousing admiration, if not imitation.

The first pillar is the profession of faith, that there is but one God, and Muhammad is his messenger. This simple statement serves to center and unify every aspect of how one lives one’s life.

Second, prayer five times daily is a renewal of one’s commitment to submit to God’s will.

Third, giving to the needy is a religious obligation.

Fourth, in the words of Bill Graves, then Kansas governor, Muslims fast during the month of Ramadan “to remind themselves that others hunger and to relieve the hunger of others, to practice discipline through self-denial, to nurture family relationships and to strengthen commitment to God” and to recall the first revelations of the Qur’an.

I have repeatedly observed these four pillars, and from them I have taken inspiration.

The fifth pillar is the pilgrimage to Mecca. While this is not possible for me since I am not a Muslim, I have witnessed how this ritual has deepened the faith of Muslim friends.

•Speaking of Kansas City Muslim friends — they may be business people, doctors, professors, chaplains, public officials, scientists or soldiers. They may fight fires, teach martial arts, report the news or manage a library.

They are honest and generous, working to make America and the world better. They never seek to convert me. Their faith is beautiful.

Facts

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 16:10:00 +0000

1) "Islam" means "peace through the submission to God".

2) "Muslim" means "anyone or anything that submits itself to the will of God".

3) Islam is not a cult. Its followers number over 1.5 billion worldwide. Along with Judaism and Christianity, it is considered to be one of the three Abrahamic traditions.

4) There are five pillars of practice in Islam. These practices must be undertaken with the best of effort in order to be considered a true Muslim: A) Shahadah - declaration of faith in the oneness of God and that Muhammad is the last prophet of God. B) Formal prayer five times a day. C) Fasting during the daylight hours in the month of Ramadan. D) Poor-due "tax" - 2.5% of one's savings given to the needy at the end of each year. E) Pilgrimage to Mecca at least once, if physically and financially able.

5) There are six articles of faith in Islam. These are the basic beliefs that one must have in order to be considered a true Muslim. They are belief in: A) the One God. B) all the prophets of God. C) the original scriptures revealed to Prophets Moses, David, Jesus, and Muhammad. D) the angels. E) the Day of Judgment and the Hereafter. F) the divine decree (or destiny).

6) Islam is a complete way of life that governs all facets of life: moral, spiritual, social, political, economical, intellectual, etc.

7) Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in the world. To become Muslim, a person of any race or culture must say a simple statement, the shahadah, that bears witness to the belief in the One God and that Prophet Muhammad was the last prophet of God.

8) "Allah" is an Arabic word that means "God". Muslims also believe that "Allah" is the personal name of God.

9) Allah is not the God of Muslims only. He is the God of all people and all creation. Just because people refer to God using different terms does not mean that they are different gods. Spanish people refer to God as "Dios" and French people refer to God as "Dieu", yet they are all the same God. Interestingly, most Arab Jews and Arab Christians refer to God as "Allah". And the word Allah in Arabic appears on the walls of many Arab churches.

10) The Islamic concept of God is that He is loving, merciful, and compassionate. But Islam also teaches that He is just and swift in punishment. Nevertheless, Allah once said to Prophet Muhammad, "My mercy prevails over my wrath." Islam teaches a balance between fear and hope, protecting one from both complacency and despair.

11) Muslims believe that God has revealed 99 of His names (or attributes) in the Holy Qur'an. It is through these names that one can come to know the Creator. A few of these names are: the All-Merciful, the All-Knower, the Protector, the Provider, the Near, the First, the Last, the Hidden, and the Source of Peace.

12) Muslims believe in and acknowledge all the prophets of old, from Adam to Jesus. Muslims believe that they brought the message of peace and submission (islam) to different peoples at different times. Muslims also believe that these prophets were "muslims" because they submitted their wills to God.

13) Muslims neither worship Muhammad nor pray through him. Muslims solely worship the unseen and Omniscient Creator, Allah.

14) Muslims accept the original unaltered Torah (the Gospel of Moses) and the original Bible (the Gospel of Jesus) since they were revealed by God. However, none of those original scriptures are in existence today, in their entirety. Therefore, Muslims follow the subsequent, final, and preserved revelation of God, the Holy Qur'an.

15) The Holy Qur'an was not authored by Muhammad. It was authored by God, revealed to Muhammad, and written into physical form by his companions.

16) The Holy Qur'an has no flaws or contradictions. The original Arabic scriptures have never been changed or tampered with.

17) Actual seventh century Qur'ans, complete and intact, are on display in museums in Turkey and many other places around the world.

18) If all Qur'ans in the world today were burned and destroyed, the original Arabic would still remain. This is because millions of Muslims, called Hafiz (or "preservers") have memorized the text letter for letter from beginning to end, every word and syllable. Also, chapters from the Qur'an are precisely recited from memory by every Muslim in each of the five daily prayers.

19) Muslims do not believe in the concept of "vicarious atonement" but rather believe in the law of personal responsibility. Islam teaches that each person is responsible for his or her own actions. On the Day of Judgment Muslims believe that every person will be resurrected and will have to answer to God for their every word, thought, and deed. Consequently, a practicing Muslim is always striving to be righteous.

20) Islam was not spread by the sword. It was spread by the word (Islamic teachings) and the example of its followers. Islam teaches that there is no compulsion in religion (the Holy Qur'an 2:256 and 10:99).

21) Terrorism, unjustified violence and the killing of innocent people are absolutely forbidden in Islam. Islam is a way of life that is meant to bring peace to a society, whether its people are Muslim or not. The extreme actions of those who claim to be Muslim may be, among other things, a result of their ignorance or uncontrolled anger. Tyrant rulers and those who commit acts of terrorism in the name of Islam are simply not following Islam. These people are individuals with their own views and political agendas. Fanatical Muslims are no more representative of the true Islamic teachings than Timothy McVeigh or David Koresh are of Christianity. Extremism and fanaticism is a problem that is common to all religious groups. Anyone who thinks that all Muslims are terrorists should remember that the famous boxer Muhammad Ali, perhaps the most celebrated person of our era, is a practicing Muslim.

22) The word "jihad" does not mean "holy war". Instead, it means the inner struggle that one endures in trying to submit their will to the will of God. Some Muslims may say they are going for "jihad" when fighting in a war to defend themselves or their fellow Muslims, but they only say this because they are conceding that it will be a tremendous struggle. But there are many other forms of jihad which are more relevant to the everyday life of a Muslim such as the struggles against laziness, arrogance, stinginess, or the struggle against a tyrant ruler or against the temptation of Satan, or against one's own ego, etc.

23) Women are not oppressed in Islam. Any Muslim man that oppresses a woman is not following Islam. Among the many teachings of Prophet Muhammad that protected the rights and dignity of women is his saying, "...the best among you are those who treat their wives well." (Tirmidhi)

24) Islam grants women numerous rights in the home and in society. Among them are the right to earn money, to financial support, to an education, to an inheritance, to being treated kindly, to vote, to a dowry, to keep their maiden name, to worship in a mosque, etc., etc.

25) Muslim women wear the head-covering (hijab) in fulfillment of God's decree to dress modestly. From a practical standpoint, it serves to identify one as attempting to follow God in daily life and, therefore, protects women from unwanted advances from men. This type of modest dress has been worn by righteous women throughout history. Prominent examples are traditional Catholic Nuns, Mother Teresa and the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus.

26) Arranged marriages are allowed in Islam but are not required. Whereas "forced" marriages, usually stemming from cultural practice, are forbidden. Divorce is permissible, however, reconciliation is what is most encouraged. But if there are irreconcilable differences then Islam permits a fair and just divorce.

27) Islam and the "Nation of Islam" are two different religions. Islam is a religion for all races and enjoins the worship of the one unseen God who, orthodox Muslims believe, never took human form. The "Nation", on the other hand, is a movement geared towards non-whites and teaches that God appeared in the form of Fard Muhammad in 1930 and that Elijah Muhammad (a man who died in 1975) was a prophet of God. These beliefs clearly contradict the basic Islamic theology outlined in the Qur'an. The followers of "the Nation" adhere to some Islamic principles that are mixed with many other teachings that are alien to Islam. To better understand the difference between the two, read about Malcolm X, his pilgrimage to Mecca and his subsequent comments to the media. Islam teaches equality amongst all the races (Holy Qur'an 49:13).

28) All Muslims are not Arab. Islam is a universal religion and way of life which includes followers from all races of people. There are Muslims in and from virtually every country in the world. Arabs only constitute about 20% of Muslims worldwide. Indonesia has the largest concentration of Muslims with over 120 million.

29) In the five daily prayers, Muslims face the Kaaba in Mecca, Arabia. It is a cube-shaped stone structure that was originally built by Prophet Adam and later rebuilt by Prophet Abraham. Muslims believe that the Kaaba was the first house of worship on Earth dedicated to the worship of one god. Muslims do not worship the Kaaba. It serves as a central focal point for Muslims around the world, unifying them in worship and symbolizing their common belief, spiritual focus and direction. Interestingly, the inside of the Kaaba is empty.

30) The hajj is a simultaneous pilgrimage to the Kaaba made by millions of Muslims each year. It is performed to commemorate the struggles of Abraham, Ismail and Hagar in submitting their wills to God.

Common

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 16:09:00 +0000

This is the biggest misconception in Islam, no doubt resulting from the constant stereotyping and bashing the media gives Islam. When a gunman attacks a mosque in the name of Judaism, a Catholic IRA guerrilla sets off a bomb in an urban area, or Serbian Orthodox militia men rape and kill innocent Muslim civilians, these acts are not used to stereotype an entire faith. Never are these acts attributed to the religion of the perpetrators. Yet how many times have we heardthe words 'Islamic, Muslim fundamentalist. etc.' linked with violence.

Politics in so called "Muslim countries" may or may not have any Islamic basis. Often dictators and politicians will use the name of Islam for their own purposes. One should remember to go to the source of Islam and separate what the true religion of Islam says from what is portrayed in the media. Islam literally means 'submission to God' and is derived from a root word meaning 'peace'.

Islam may seem exotic or even extreme in the modern world. Perhaps this is because religion doesn't dominate everyday life in the West, where as Islam is considered a 'way of life' for Muslims and they make no division between secular and sacred in their lives. Like Christianity, Islam permits fighting in self-defense, in defense of religion, or on the part of those who have been expelled forcibly from their homes. It lays down strict rules of combat which include prohibitions against harming civilians and against destroying crops,trees and livestock.

NOWHERE DOES ISLAM ENJOIN THE KILLING OF INNOCENTS..

The Quran says:

"Fight in the cause of God against those who fight you, but do not transgress limits. God does not love transgressors." (Quran 2:190)

"If they seek peace, then seek you peace. And trust in God for He is the One that heareth and knoweth all things." (Quran 8:61)

War, therefore, is the last resort, and is subject to the rigorous conditions laid down by the sacred law. The term 'jihad' literally means 'struggle'. Muslims believe that there are two kinds of jihad. The other 'jihad' is the inner struggle of the soul which everyone wages against egotistic desires for the sake of attaining inner peace.

MISCONCEPTION #2:
Islam oppresses women.

The image of the typical Muslim woman wearing the veil and forced to stay home and forbidden to drive is all too common in most peoples thoughts. Although some Muslim countries may have laws that oppress women, this should not be seen as coming from Islam. Many of these countries do not rule by any kind of Shari'ah (Islamic law) and introduce their own cultural stand points on the issue of gender equity.

Islam on the other hand gives men and women different roles and equity between the two is laid down in the Quran and the example of the Prophet (peace be upon him). Islam sees a woman, whether single or married, as an individual in her own right, with the right to own and dispose of her property and earnings. A marriage gift is given by the groom to the bride for her own personal use, and she keeps her own family name rather than taking her husband's. Both men and women are expected to dress in a way that is modest and dignified.

The Messenger of God (peace be upon him) said:
"The most perfect in faith amongst believers is he who is best in manner and kindest to his wife."
Violence of any kind towards women and forcing them against their will for anything is not allowed. A Muslim marriage is a simple, legal agreement in which either partner is free to include conditions. Marriage customs thus vary widely from country to country. Divorce is not common, although it is acceptable as a last resort. According toIslam, a Muslim girl cannot be forced to marry against her will: her parents simply suggest young men they think may be suitable.

MISCONCEPTION #3:Muslims worship a different God.

Allah is simply the Arabic word for God. Allah for Muslims is the greatest and most inclusive of the Names of God, it is an Arabic word of rich meaning, denoting the one and only God and ascribing no partners to Him. It is exactly the same word which the Jews, in Hebrew, use for God (eloh), the word which Jesus Christ used in Aramaic when he prayed to God. God has an identical name in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; Allah is the same God worshiped by Muslims, Christians and Jews. Muslims believe that Allah's sovereignty is to be acknowledged in worship and in the pledge to obey His teaching and commandments, conveyed through His messengers and prophets who were sent at various times and in many places throughout history. However, it should be noted that God in Islam is One and Only. He, the Exalted, does not get tired, does not have a son ie Jesus or have associates, nor does He have human-like attributions as found in other faiths.

MISCONCEPTION #4:Islam was spread by the sword and intolerant of other faiths.

Many social studies textbooks for students show the image of an Arab horseman carrying a sword in one hand and the Quran in the other conquering and forcibly converting. This, though, is not a correct portrayal of history. Islam has always given respect and freedom of religion to all faiths.

The Quran says:

"God forbids you not, with regards to those who fight you not for [your] faith nor drive you out of your homes, from dealing kindly and justly with them; for God loveth those who are just. (60:8)

Freedom of religion is laid down in the Quran itself:

"There is no compulsion (or coercion) in the religion (Islam). The right direction is distinctly clear from error". (2:256)

Christian missionary, T.W. Arnold had this opinion on his study of the question of the spread of Islam:
".. of any organized attempt to force the acceptance of Islam on the non-Muslim population, or of any systematic persecution intended to stamp out the Christian religion, we hear nothing. Had the caliphs chosen to adopt either course of action, they might have swept away Christianity as easily as Ferdinand and Isabella drove Islam out of Spain, or Louis XIV made Protestanism ..."

It is a function of Islamic law to protect the privileged status of minorities, and this is why non-Muslim places of worship have flourished all over the Islamic world. History provides many examples of Muslim tolerance towards other faiths: when the caliph Omar entered Jerusalem in the year 634, Islam granted freedom of worship to all religious communities in the city. Proclaiming to the inhabitants that their lives, and property were safe, and that theirp laces of worship would never be taken from them, he asked the Christian patriarch Sophronius to accompany him on a visit to all the holy places. Islamic law also permits non-Muslim minorities to set up their own courts, which implement family laws drawn up by the minorities themselves. The life and property of all citizens in an Islamic state are considered sacred whether the person is Muslim or not.

Racism is not a part of Islam, the Quran speaks only of human equality and how all peoples are equal in the sight of God.

"O mankind! We created you from a single soul, male and female, and made you intonations and tribes, so that you may come to know one another. Truly, the most honored of you in God's sight is the greatest of you inpiety. God is All-Knowing, All- Aware. (49:13)

MISCONCEPTION #5:
All Muslims are Arabs

The Muslim population of the world is around 1.2 billion. 1 out of 5 people in the world is a Muslim. They are a vast range of races, nationalities and cultures from around the globe--from the Phillipines to Nigeria--they are united by their common Islamic faith. Only about 18% live in the Arab world and the largest Muslim community is in Indonesia. Most Muslims live east of Pakistan. 30% of Muslims live in the Indian subcontinent, 20% in Sub-Saharan Africa, 17% in Southeast Asia, 18% in the Arab world, and 10% in the Soviet Union and China. Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan make up 10% of the non-Arab Middle East. Although there are Muslim minorities in almost every area, including Latin America and Australia, they are most numerous in Russia and its newly independent states, India and central Africa. There are about 6 million Muslims in the United States

MISCONCEPTION #6
The Nation of Islam is a Muslim group.

Islam and the so called "Nation of Islam'" are two different religions. NOI is more of a political organization since its members are not limited to a single faith. Muslims consider this group to be just one of many cults using the name of Islam for their own gain. The only thing common between them is the jargon, the language used by both. "The Nation of Islam" is a misnomer; this religion should be called Farrakhanism, after the name of its propogator, Louis Farrakhan.

Islam and Farakhanism differ in many fundamental ways. For example, Farakhan followers believe in racism and that the 'black man' was the original man and therefore superior, while in Islam there is no racism and everyone is considered equal in the sight of God, the only difference being in one's piety. There are many other theological examples that show the 'Nation's teachings have little to do with true Islam. There are many groups in America who claim to represent Islam and call their adherents Muslims.

Any serious student of Islam has a duty to investigate and find the true Islam. The only two authentic sources which bind every Muslim are

1. the Quran and

2. authentic or sound Hadith.

Any teachings under the label of "Islam" which contradict or at variance with the direct understanding of fundamental beliefs and practices of Islam form the Quran and authentic Hadith should be rejected and such a religion should be considered a Pseudo-Islamic Cult. In America there are many pseudo-Islamic cults, Farrakhanism being one of them. An honest attitude on the part of such cults should be not to call themselves Muslims and their religion Islam. such an example of honesty is Bahaism which is an off-shoot of Islam but Bahais do not call themselves Muslims nor their religion, Islam. In fact Bahaism is not Islam just as Farrakhanism is not Islam.

MISCONCEPTION #7
All Muslim men marry four wives.

The religion of Islam was revealed for all societies and all times and so accommodates widely differing social requirements. Circumstances may warrant the taking of another wife but the right is granted, according to the Quran, only on condition that the husband is scrupulously fair. No woman can be forced into this kind of marriage if they do not wish it, and they also have the right to exclude it in their marriage contract.

Polygamy is neither mandatory, nor encouraged, but merely permitted. Images of "sheikhs with harems" are not consistent with Islam, as a man is only allowed at most four wives only if he can fulfill the stringent conditions of treating each fairly and providing each with separate housing etc. Permission to practice polygamy is not associated with mere satisfaction of passion. It is rather associated with compassion toward widows and orphans. It was the Quran that limited and put conditions on the practice of polygamy among the Arabs, who had as many as ten or more wives and considered them "property".

It is both honest and accurate to say that it is Islam that regulated this practice, limited it, made it more humane, and instituted equal rights and status for all wives. What the Qur'anic decrees amount to, taken together is discouragement of polygamy unless necessity for it exists. It is also evident that the general rule in Islam is monogamy and not polygamy. It is a very tiny percentage of Muslims that practice it over the world. However, permission to practice limited polygamy is only consistent with Islam's realistic view of the nature of man and woman and of various social needs, problems and cultural variations.

The question is, however far more than the inherent flexibility ofIslam; it also is the frank and straight forward approach of Islam in dealing with practical problems. Rather than requiring hypocritical and superficial compliance, Islam delves deeper into the problems of individuals and societies, and provides for legitimate and clean solutions which are far more beneficial than would be the case if they were ignored. There is no doubt that the second wife legally married and treated kindly is better off than a mistress without any legal rights or expermanence.

MISCONCEPTION #8
Muslims are a barbaric, backward people.

Among the reasons for the rapid and peaceful spread of Islam was the simplicity of its doctrine-Islam calls for faith in only one Godworthy of worship. It also repeatedly instructs man to use his powers of intelligence and observation. Within a few years, great civilizations and universities were flourishing, for according to the Prophet (pbuh), 'seeking knowledge is an obligation for every Muslim man and woman'.

The synthesis of Eastern and Western ideas and of new thought withold, brought about great advances in medicine, mathematics, physics,astronomy, geography, architecture, art, literature, and history. Many crucial systems such as algebra, the Arabic numerals, and also the concept of the zero (vital to the advancement of mathematics),were transmitted to medieval Europe from Islam. Sophisticated instruments which were to make possible the European voyages of discovery were developed, including the astrolabe, the quadrant and good navigational maps.

MISCONCEPTION #9
Muhammad (pbuh) was the founder of Islam and Muslims worship him.

Muhammad (pbuh) was born in Mecca in the year 570. Since his father died before his birth, and his mother shortly afterwards, he was raised by his uncle from the respected tribe of Quraysh. As he grew up, he became known for his truthfulness, generosity and sincerity, so that he was sought after for his ability to arbitrate in disputes. The historians describe him as calm and meditative. Muhammad (pbuh) was of a deeply religious nature, and had long detested the decadence of his society.

It became his habit to meditate from time to time in the Cave of Hira near Mecca. At the age of 40, while engaged in a meditative retreat, Muhammad(pbuh) received his first revelation from God through the Angel Gabriel. This revelation, which continued for 23 years is known as the Quran. As soon as he began to recite the words he heard from Gabriel, and to preach the truth which God had revealed to him,he and his small group of followers suffered bitter persecution, which grew so fierce that in the year 622 God gave them the command to emigrate.

This event, the Hijra 'migration', in which they left Mecca for the city of Medina, marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar. After several years, the Prophet and his followers were able to return to Mecca, where they forgave their enemies and established Islam definitively. Before the Prophet (peace be upon him) dies at the age of 63, the greater part of Arabia was Muslim, and within a century of his death Islam had spread to Spain in the West and as far East as China. He died with less than 5 possessions to his name.

While Muhammad (pbuh) was chosen to deliver the message, he is not considered the "founder" of Islam, since Muslims consider Islam to be the same divine guidance sent to all peoples before. Muslims believe all the prophets from Adam, Noah, Moses, Jesus etc. were all sent with divine guidance for their peoples. Every prophet was sent to his own people, but Muhammad(pbuh) was sent to all of mankind. Muhammad is the last and final messenger sent to deliver the message of Islam. Muslims revere and honor him (pbuh) for all he went through and his dedication, but they do not worship him.

"O Prophet, verily We have sent you as a witness and a bearer of glad tidings and a warner and as one who invites unto God by His leave and as an illuminating lamp." (33:45-6)

MISCONCEPTION #10
Muslims don't believe in Jesus or any other prophets.

Muslims respect and revere Jesus, upon him be peace, and await his Second Coming. They consider him one of the greatest of God's messengers to mankind. A Muslim never refers to him simply as'Jesus', but always adds the phrase 'upon him be peace' (abbreviated as (u) here). The Quran confirms his virgin birth (a chapter of the Quran is entitled 'Mary'), and Mary is considered the purest woman in all creation.

The Quran describes the Annunciation as follows:

"Behold!" the Angel said, "God has chosen you, and purified you, and chosen you above the women of all nations. O Mary, God gives you good news of a word from Him whose name shall be the Messiah, Jesusson of Mary, honored in this world and the Hereafter, and one of those brought near to God. He shall speak to the people from his cradle and in maturity, and shall be of the righteous." She said: "O my Lord! How shall I have a son when no man has touched me?" He said: "Evenso; God creates what He will. When He decrees a thing, He says to it,"Be!" and it is" (Quran 3:42-47)

Jesus (u) was born miraculously through the same power, which had brought Adam (u) into being without a father:

"Truly, the likeness of Jesus with God is as the likeness of Adam. He created him of dust,and then said to him, 'Be!' and he was." (3:59)

During his prophetic mission Jesus (u) performed many miracles.

The Quran tells us that he said:

" I have come to you with a sign from your Lord: I make for you out of clay, as it were, the figure of a bird, and breath into it and it becomes a bird by God's leave. And I heal the blind, and the lepers, and I raise the dead by God's leave." (3:49)

Neither Muhammad (pbuh) not Jesus (u) came to change the basic doctrine of the brief in One God brought by earlier prophets, but to confirm and renew it.

In the Quran Jesus (u) is reported as saying that he came:

"To attest the law which was before me. And to make lawful to you part of what was forbidden you; I have come to you with a sign from your Lord, so fear God and obey Me. (3:50)

The Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said:

"Whoever believes there is no god but God, alone without partner,that Muhammad (pbuh) is His messenger, that Jesus is the servant and messenger of God, His word breathed into Mary and a spirit emanating from Him, and that Paradise and Hell are true, shall be received by God into Heaven. "(Hadith related by Bukhari).

Mothers

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 09 Dec 2012 16:08:00 +0000

Obedience and respect towards your mother is a very important duty in Islam and is similar to performing Salaah and keeping fast. To hurt your mother in any way is the second biggest sin and those who commit this evil sin will be harshly punished by Allah in the hereafter or maybe even in this world!

Your mother is not a Prophet, nor is she an angel; she’s just a human like you and I, so why has Allah ordered you to be obedient towards your mother and why does your mother have such a high status in Islam?

Allah loves and cares for us more than anybody else, and he especially loves those people who love and care for others. Similarly, he becomes very angry with those people who hurt other people in any way. Allah the All-Knowing, knows that in this world nobody is more loving and caring towards another person than the way that a mother is towards her child. Only Allah and his Messenger May Allah send peace and blessings upon him love you more than your mother!

Only Allah knows what your mother does for you, He sees your mother feeling pain whilst she tries to give you whatever you want. He sees your mother’s love and kindness. Pleased by your mother’s actions, Allah has given her a very high status and many virtues and rewards.

Allah also sees that many of us are not thankful to our mothers. He sees many of us being disobedient towards them. Therefore, Allah has ordered us to be good towards our mothers; he has not advised us but ordered us; we have no choice; therefore we have to be good towards our mothers! To encourage us to do this, Allah Taa’la has promised paradise for those of us who are obedient towards our mothers. At the same time, Allah has threatened to severely punish those of us who do not listen to our mothers or hurt them in any way.

But what does your Mother do for you? She only cooks and cleans! So why do you need to be thankful to your Mother?

Apart from Allah, nobody knows what our Mother really does for us.

10 Wonderful reasons to be grateful to your mother

1. Your mother carried you for 9 months bearing pain upon pain.
2. During this time, she could not eat becuase of you! She could not sleep because of you!
3. When you were a baby, she spent every minute of her life looking after you!
4. She only slept when you slept! She only ate after you had eaten!
5. She was patient and loved you even when you cried all night and when you cried all day !
6. She taught you how to walk, how to speak, how to eat, she taught you how to live!
7. When you fall ill, she looks after you!
8. She always cooks and prepared food for you !
9. She buys you whatever you ask for !
10. She loves you unconditionally !

These are just a few things that our Mothers do for us; they do so much more of which we do not know about. However, one thing that your Mother does for you, that nobody else in the world does, is that she worries about you from the bottom of her Heart.

So what is it she worries about ?

She WORRIES about your food!
She WORRIES about your clothes!
She WORRIES about your health!
She WORRIES about your education!
She WORRIES about your future!
She WORRIES about your whole life !

Allah has ordered us, in various places of the Holy Qur’an, to be good to our mothers. He has told us to look after them even more when they are old and weak. He has taught us to be gentle to our mothers and speak to them in a nice manner. He has also told us to supplicate to Him for our Mothers with this prayer,

RABBIR-HAMHUMA KAMA RABBAYANI SAGHEERAH

Transalation : My lord, have mercy upon my parents, the way they had mercy upon me when I was young)

The Prophet May Allah send peace and blessings upon him has also ordered us to be good to our mothers. He has told us about the great rewards for that person who is good to his mother. He has described the mother as being a ‘door of paradise.’ He has also warned us of severe punishments for that person who is disobedient to his mother.

10 Easy Ways To Enter Paradise

1. LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER
2. HELP YOUR MOTHER
3. SMILE AT YOUR MOTHER
4. BE THANKFUL TO YOUR MOTHER FOR WHATEVER SHE DOES FOR YOU
5. SPEND TIME WITH YOUR MOTHER
6. ALWAYS ASK YOUR MOTHER IF YOU CAN HELP HER WITH ANYTHING
7. BUY YOUR MOTHER GIFTS
8. BE GOOD TO YOUR MOTHER’S FAMILY AND FRIENDS
9. STUDY HARD AND LEAD A GOOD LIFE SO THAT YOUR MOTHER IS HAPPY
10. ALWAYS PRAY FOR YOUR MOTHER, ESPECIALLY AFTER EVERY SALAAH.

Warning : Those who are disobedient to their mothers will burn in hellfire.

However hard we try, we can never repay our mothers for what they have done for us, but we can at least try, and also ask Allah to repay them for us. Our mothers are indeed a great blessing from Allah. We should appreciate and value this blessing as much as we can. Whilst our mothers are alive, we have a golden opportunity to guarantee ourselves paradise and also success in this world.

Reminder : We will only truly realise the value of our mothers when they are no longer with us – when they have passed away, but then it will be too late!