{"id":816,"date":"2021-10-04T14:55:15","date_gmt":"2021-10-04T18:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/researchbdev.wpengine.com\/zorina-khan\/?p=816"},"modified":"2021-10-04T16:43:22","modified_gmt":"2021-10-04T20:43:22","slug":"travelling-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/life-on-the-margin\/travelling-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Travelling Light"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Any fan<\/strong> of Adam Smith believes in specialization and the division of labour, which implies the efficiency of \u201crational ignorance.\u201d\u00a0 In keeping with this principle, I know a lot about economics, statistics, history and technology; but very little (okay, nothing) about physics, chemistry, and engineering.\u00a0 I am familiar with a slide rule and trigonometry, and used to be able to mentally calculate cube roots but, as the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=R4GLAKEjU4w\">Sam Cooke song goes<\/a>,\u00a0 &#8220;don&#8217;t know much about science book.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For that, I depend on the kindness of my sister, who has degrees in physics and international relations, a wide sphere of scientific interests, is married to a plant geneticist who specializes in microscopy, and knows English, French, and Dutch.\u00a0 She holds passports from Australia and the United States, currently lives in the Netherlands, and has travelled from Tunisia to Namibia to Mongolia (where, apparently, Khan is a name to conjure with).<\/p>\n<p>This post and its title are all owing to her sending me an email with this <a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com.au\/speed-through-space-earth-rotation-orbit-galaxy-movement-2016-3?r=US&amp;IR=T\">link to an utterly fascinating video.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff\"><em>She wrote: &#8220;Don\u2019t get dizzy looking at this. Ultimately, we (and everything else) all travel at the same velocity in the space time continuum, and only the space or time aspect of the vector changes.&#8221;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>As a super-fan<\/strong> of <em>Star Trek: Next Generation<\/em> and <em>Firefly<\/em>, I know all (or as much as I want to know) about the space-time continuum.\u00a0 Although I do often wonder what <a href=\"https:\/\/astrobiology.nasa.gov\/research\/astrobiology-at-nasa\/exobiology\/\">exobiologists<\/a> spend their sidereal day doing&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-819 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/files\/2021\/10\/thumbnail_big-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"190\" height=\"190\" srcset=\"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/files\/2021\/10\/thumbnail_big-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/files\/2021\/10\/thumbnail_big-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/files\/2021\/10\/thumbnail_big-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/files\/2021\/10\/thumbnail_big.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 190px) 100vw, 190px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>(<a href=\"https:\/\/sos.noaa.gov\/catalog\/datasets\/planet-rotations\/\">This link<\/a> includes a NASA video that illustrates the rotation period of different planets.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Any fan of Adam Smith believes in specialization and the division of labour, which implies the efficiency of \u201crational ignorance.\u201d\u00a0 In keeping with this principle, I know a lot about economics, statistics, history and technology; but very little (okay, nothing) about physics, chemistry, and engineering.\u00a0 I am familiar with a slide rule and trigonometry, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-a-few-of-my-favourite-things","category-life-on-the-margin","entry","has-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/zorina-khan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}