James Burke Would be Proud

An eyeball yesterday. Are you bothered that it's looking to the right? I am.

Well that was a lot of connections. This article deals with a lot of science facts (and some fictions) but tangentially it refers to the author's own book -  Infinity Drake: The Sons of Scarlatti - which involves the shrinking of humans to small size. Ever since seeing Fantastic Voyage I have been wondering if there was a serious flaw in the premise or small people, in that the focal length of the human lens would not be reduced in proportion and would require a great deal of adjustment to let the puny humans actually see clearly. I am afraid that the bit of physics required to check this was retained only for the length of time it took me to regurgitate it for the exam and the question raised by the film was strangely not on the paper.

Well just as The Internet solved my question about the line from The New Millionaires - "Just like Arbogast on the top two stairs." (look it up) - I have also clarified this optical issue. In fact I didn't even need to do any longhand calculations. This website does it all for me - a quick googling for the radii of curvature for the human lens - heck it's so easy - it's in The Abstract for goodness sake - and hey presto it is clear that the focal length shrinks in exact proportion to the radii of curvature. So an eye ten times smaller than normal would have a focal length a tenth of the full sized organ and Raquel Welch wouldn't need bottle-bottom glasses.

I suspect that somewhere an optician, astronomer or slightly precocious toddler will be saying that this is obvious. It probably is but at least it's now proved. I say proved. I suppose for absolute proof I should derive the focal length formula from some empirical data but hey - I only have lunchtime.

Next one to think about is whether the view of a galaxy which appears tilted from Earth, is distorted because the light from the far side takes many thousands more years to reach us than the light from the near side. I've probably mentioned it before but does the continuum of variance in how long the light takes to reach us from  across the whole disk cancel out any strange distortion or is there a measurable increase or decrease in the apparent density of stars? I suppose that this one will again be obvious when I eventually find the formula.

On and on.