Most interesting physics question I know...

Postscript: "Why not the Sun" you ask? Because the Sun is fully ionized: (almost) NO atoms at all, much less molecules.
The gas in the sun is hot (4000 degrees or more) so the kinetic energy of the electrons and nuclei provide pressure, preventing collapse.

Then there's the HYDROGEN ATOM:
A hydrogen ATOM has size ONLY because of the uncertainty principle.
After all, the electron is negative and the proton positive, so they should merge.
The only reason they don't is the uncertainty principle, or rather, QM itself.

You (and the Earth) are "all-molecules"; without the uncertainty principle, you would be vastly smaller than one atom.
Of course, you may say, planets are attracted to the Sun, by gravity, but they don't fall INTO the Sun do they?
Yes, BUT in hydrogen's ground state, its one electron has ZERO angular momentum.
IF Earth's angular momentum magically vanished we would fall straight into the Sun (It'd take 65 days).

A child's balloon does not collapse, because of the kinetic energy of the He atoms. Just like the Sun!
A white dwarf star does not collapse, only because of the uncertainty principle.
That's of course unless it does collapse for some reason, in which case it becomes a neutron star.
A neutron star does not collapse, only because of the uncertainty principle.
Dumping stuff onto it increases the inward gravitational force; big enough: it collapses: to a mathematical point!

Lewis Carroll Epstein: Algebra is wonderful! It enables fools to do physics without understanding.

That is no joke! Wolfgang Rindler was a highly-regarded relativist, whose OWN WORDS show that he had not the faintest
understanding of special relativity. From his book "Essential Relativity" I quote: "Note that, according to (50.3), the inertial
mass of a particle increases from a minimum of m₀ at v = 0 to infinity as v approaches c. We should not be too surprised at
this, since there must be some process in nature to prevent particles from being accelerated beyond the speed of light."

If your jaw does not drop at that, you are part of the problem.

(Think of it this way: suppose a famous professional geographer said
"I do wish we could find out WHAT IT IS that prevents explorers from going farther north than the north pole!")

EDDINGTON: The Nature of the Physical World
Best physics book ever! A joy! yes, tedious in spots, but, utterly wonderful: written AMIDST the discovery of quantum mechanics!

As a teenager, I found Eddington's great book which is where I learned of the mental character of creation.

In 2005, I submitted an unsolicited essay to Nature, unaware that they were planning to invite famous physicists to do the same. The result:
"Physics, complexity and causality," by George F. R. Ellis (4,578 accesses; 71 citations; 13 Altmetric)
"Dynamic Universe," by Freeman Dyson (849 accesses; 2 citations; 0 Altmetric)
"The mental Universe," by Richard Conn Henry (66,000 accesses; 27 citations; 71 Altmetric)
"The message of the quantum," by Anton Zeilinger (4,787 accesses; 81 citations; 63 Altmetric)

JUST OUT (2021 May) in Physics Today

At last! A concise (one-page) version: with minimal mention of superfluous c.

Think! the first item is SEEING two squares on the screen of your computer.
The second item is diagrams (but no algebra yet).
The third, and crucial, item is: ALGEBRA!
Algebra allows minus signs. Which exist only in our minds.
The universe turns out to be mental.

Developing this took us centuries!
No one ever imagined that the universe could turn out to be so simple, behind the scenes.
But it DID !

And here's a two-page version, with GENERAL relativity now included!

A friendly dispute between Dick Henry and Sir Winston Churchill ( scroll down ! )
(Dr. Johnson said "I refute it thus!", and kicked a stone. Childish! Winston Churchill puts Dr. Johnson to shame.)

The mathy pages below are designed for people who are excellent readers of English, but are not yet real readers of equations.
(Recall that when you long ago learned to read, at first you 'sounded out', and then you read word-by-word, and, soon, you read effortlessly.)
My math pages are designed specifically for you. Just calm down, and take your time over EVERY equation. Each is vital! There's no hurry.
(Don't make the error, 'I'm not interested in the math - tell me the physics.' The math IS the physics. It took us AGES to realize that!)

General Relativity (GR) predicted Black Holes!       [ which includes, as a bonus: The Universe is EXPLODING ! ]

Battle of the Titans! Einstein v. Newton!

A single-page version: "Einstein discovers the nature of TIME"

OK, now you've looked at that. Let me now tell you what you are supposed to get out of it:
First, the Pythagoras squares are ACTUAL PHYSICAL PARTS OF THE WORLD that our senses (fortunately) report to us accurately.
That is NOT true in general: Evolution has no interest in truth, only in your survival to reproduce.
So in our world [ at least so it seems: but I DO believe to be actual, simply because it predicts SO MUCH correctly (by experiment)! ]
'the square on the hypotenuse IS equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides'.
Second: the rotation diagram is merely to get you accustomed to the idea of invariance under a transformation, that's all!
(Mind you, conceivably the universe COULD have been made funny so that when you rotate an arrow in space it lengthens or shortens...)
BIG DEAL: so far, it's all direct human perception: no active role for ANY symbols. And then! miracle! Algebra is invented!
how boring....the algebra equation below the arrow diagram just sums up what we already KNEW by OBSERVATION of the ACTUAL universe.
→ DRUM ROLL ←
Pictures (our first whack) and diagrams (our second whack) do NOT permit MINUS SIGNS!
Our THIRD WHACK: A MINUS SIGN IS TIME
Greatest human discovery ever!
It is my belief that Hamilton tried this, but rejected it because it led to a speed limit which seemed nonsense.
Which just makes us realize how stupendous is the discovery
that human-invented ALGEBRA (of all things!) gifts us with the secrets of the universe.

I've now created a second page, included AFTER the single-page version that is linked above:

A follow-on page: "Einstein discovers the ATOMIC BOMB"

Since 2020-August, more than 500 people have visited this page!

I am celebrating that, by giving all of you a HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT!

Here's the deal.
I am asking for the help of each and every one of you, in bringing the whole world up to date on physics.
There are huge numbers of people who know the Pythagorean Theorem AND who also know that E = m c²
But except for you and me, almost NOBODY knows that you can trivially derive the latter from the former!
I request that you download and send

→ THIS

to everyone you know, with your endorsement.
And with the request that THEY copy it out on paper so they absorb it, AND then send it on with THEIR endorsement to everyone they know.
Within a few weeks everyone on earth will know that E = m c² was predicted, pretty much, by Pythagoras, 2500 years ago!

If you think (incorrectly) that the universe is real — well, here is a cheerful discussion of the issues:

Dick Henry spars with Art Hobson (2009)

Here is some more on the electron spin argument

Quantum Mechanics is NOT mysterious.

Congratulations to → Arizona Senator Mark Kelly !

Black Holes! Strongly CURVED spacetime! NO ESCAPE!

Trick question: The Gaussian Curvature of spacetime near, at, and inside, an isolated black hole is: A) positive B) negative C) zero

If you think you know General Relativity, don't answer too quickly, my friend!

Gotcha! The correct answer is OBVIOUSLY zero. After all, the vacuum field equations are R_μν = 0

The Gaussian curvature (which is exactly what we humans normally think of as THE curvature)
is simply the sum of the diagonal terms in R_μν

I've never read that in any book on General Relativity. If you know of such a statement let me know page number: henry@jhu.edu
[The Riemann curvature tensor has 256 components, of which twenty (20) are independent. Only if all twenty are zero is the spacetime flat.
The Ricci tensor R_μν is a contraction of the Riemann tensor; it has 16 components.
The curvature we are accustomed to is the contraction of that.]

If this interests you, I've prepared a 4-page-long derivation of Einstein's General Relativity and its application to cosmology: → EINSTEIN !

Dick Henry is → a former President of The Streit Council for a Union of Democracies.

Here is the Council's → Board of Directors.

PHYSICS IS SIMPLE! (Text of the video)

Let's try fiction: "One Too Many" by Richard Conn Henry

More fiction: "Ice" by Richard Conn Henry

CLICK HERE →   to get today's (correct!) date – AND
you will also get the exact TIME ← EVERYWHERE on Earth

... or, maybe, you want the (primitive!) local date/time? Well, the locals believe that it is  

 

Most people say that here in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, the date-and-time are:  

Academy Professor Richard Conn Henry

Dick's vitae   [short version]   [long version]

Dick is married to Dr Rita Mahon

Here is Einstein's Relativity...
(in a single page, plus a 'helpful-hints' page)

Once you've mastered that ONE page (sincere congratulations!)
you will want to also have a version that has the second ('helpful-hints') page replaced with:
What's Next: FORCES

and here's, finally, ALL of Physics ... in just 6 pages!

Space@Hopkins

Fareed Zakaria:

Professor Steve Hanke and I were on CNN, on 2019 June 28, pushing for a

Single World Time Zone

Currently, your wristwatch does NOT TELL YOU what TIME it is:
it ONLY tells you (and only approximately!) the state of your DAYLIGHT situation!
Please: that's goofy, and worse: is really stupid!

Here is the exact time RIGHT NOW everywhere on Earth!

Professor Jayant Murthy and I presented, in Switzerland, a poster paper
proposing measurement of the spectrum of the cosmic ultraviolet background from
Interstellar Space!

Think you know what a Black Hole looks like? Well, you don't!
But, we now provide an accurate PICTURE of Black Hole interiors:
Dick Henry, with J.M. Overduin, M. Coplan, and K. Wilcomb, give a roadmap to rotating and/or charged black holes .

Black Holes: the Inside Story

Richard Conn Henry, Academy Professor, the Johns Hopkins University

Only by means of theory can we (mentally) see inside black holes. The usual method of displaying black holes misses the delightful geometric complexity of black holes' interiors, for critical to verity is the plotting of scalar quantities: vital because scalar quantities are independent of the adopted coordinate system. This is brought out in Wikipedia ( Kretschmann Scalar ) where my expression for the Kretschmann scalar for general black holes is referenced (and where the confirmation of my result, by Remo Ruffini and his colleagues, is also referenced). With my colleague Professor James Overduin of Towson University, I have now extended my evaluation of black hole scalars to include all possible black hole scalar quantities, thereby providing us with the greatest insight we will ever have into the interior structure of the black holes that pervade our galaxy, and indeed, that pervade our universe.

so now you can see inside → A BLACK HOLE

Discover why it is that E = m c²

(Are you a student who has just taken Algebra 1 ?
Then you are ready to understand Einstein's relativity!)

(Are you easily offended ? If so, please do NOT click on the following guide to really understanding Special Relativity:

EXTRA HELP, for the slow of wit!)

Here are two versions of the documents above, in Microsoft Word (for downloading):

" E = m c² " and " another version of E = m c² "

Download the Movie!

If, by now, you are comfortable with + ds² = + dx² + dy² + dz² - dt²

then, do General Relativity : Black Holes: (just trivial high-school algebra is needed)

If you don't like dark matter, and/or if you don't like dark energy, well, there's hope for you!

Exotic SpaceTime !

If you didn't quite follow that, here's the layman's explanation:

Donaldson.pdf

Still having trouble? Then try this:

Magic.pdf

and keep in mind that we don't even know what the spaces between the real numbers of spacetime are filled with!
Maybe with real numbers; maybe NOT: perhaps with p-adic numbers!

Hey! Look THAT one up buster brown!

CLICK TO UNDERSTAND WHY YOU CAN'T GET OUT OF A BLACK HOLE!

There are NO Friday-the-13^ths in the Planet Earth calendar EVER

Professors Hanke and Henry hope to convince the world to adopt this new calendar:

You can Join the Calendar Reform Movement! Précis:     Dick Henry joined the JHU Physics Department's faculty in 1968 as its first astronomer ever (the world-renowned astronomer Simon Newcomb [1835 - 1909] — the only previous JHU astronomer — was in the Math Department). As Deputy Director of NASA's Astrophysics Division (1976 -1978), Dick strongly supported his Astronomy Chief, Nancy Roman, in convincing Noel Hinners to require a contest for the hosting of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), instead of simply putting it at Princeton. After Dick's return to JHU, Bill Fastie and Arthur Davidsen (a young astronomer hired with Dick's strongest support) succeeded in landing the STScI (now operating both HST and James Webb) on our own Homewood Campus. The result, today, is that there are now surely more astronomers working on the Homewood campus than there are scholars in any other field; and JHU itself, to everyone's astonishment, has become a world leader in Dick's field!   (Here's Dick's vitae   [short version]   [long version]) and, his publication pdf's)   Dick Henry was President of The Henry Foundation, Inc., which (until I recently closed it down) sponsored improved worldwide understanding of physics. Visit Dick's Family Tree web site. Dick has also been President of The Streit Council for a Union of Democracies.       Richard Conn Henry is an Academy Professor in the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts & Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University, where he is also Research Professor in the Henry A. Rowland Department of Physics & Astronomy, and is also Director, Maryland Space Grant Consortium ...and see also:       Mid-Atlantic Space Grant Consortium , a member of the Principal Professional Staff, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory; and a member of the JHU Center for Astrophysical Sciences. Since 1991, Dick has also served as Director, Maryland Space Grant Consortium Observatory, which is located atop the Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy, and which houses the Morris W. Offit telescope, a fine half-meter reflector. From 1998 until July 2000, Dick Henry was Chair of the National Council of Space Grant Directors, and, from its creation in 1991 until 2006 December 31, he served as Board Member and Treasurer of the National Space Grant Foundation. He was for many years a Director of the National Space Grant Alliance, a 501(c)(4) organization. From 1976 to 1978 he was Deputy Director of the Astrophysics Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA. He is a past Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow. He was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1940, and he became a U. S. citizen in 1973. Dr. Henry has more than two hundred publications, on topics including theoretical astrophysics, observational astronomy, radio astronomy, ultraviolet astronomy, and x-ray astronomy. For more information, please consult Henry's cv. Dick Henry was graduated from Ridley College in 1957, and obtained a B.Sc. (1961) at University College, University of Toronto, where he won the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Gold Medal. He obtained an M.A. in 1962, and a Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1967. Dick likes re-reading the old Nero Wolfe novels. He has been a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Study, research physicist at the U. S. Naval Research Laboratory, and a Lecturer at the Latin American School of Space Research in Argentina. He has conducted astronomical investigations at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, and at both Las Campanas and Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatories in Chile, and has participated in many rocket-astronomy experiments. Hey, so Dick is a rocket scientist. He has made observations using the Copernicus and IUE satellites and also the Hubble Space Telescope and the Mariner 9 spacecraft (at Mars), and was a co-investigator on Apollo 17 and also on the Apollo-Soyuz mission, and was a co-investigator on the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope. He was a Principal Investigator in the study of the lunar material, and he is the Principal Investigator for the Hopkins Ultraviolet Background Explorer (HUBE) , which was selected in 1996 April as a NASA MIDEX program alternate project. HUBE, in 2001, became a part of the highly-rated BEST round-three MIDEX mission. In 2003 HUBE was again proposed to NASA, this time as a SMEX candidate mission. But, sad to say, on 2003 November 4, the HUBE proposal was declined by NASA. Dick Henry has participated in eclipse expeditions to Quebec (in 1972), India (1980) and East Africa (1973 and 1980). He was a member of the group which discovered the first x-ray pulsar. My hero is William Rowan Hamilton, who wrote the following unbelievable poem (Mathesis is the Greek goddess of science):             THE TETRACTYS Of high Mathesis, with her charm severe, Of line and number, was our theme; and we Sought to behold her unborn progeny, And thrones reserved in Truth's celestial sphere: While views, before attained, became more clear; And how the One of Time, of Space the Three, Might, in the Chain of Symbol, girdled be: And when my eager and reverted ear Caught some faint echoes of an ancient strain, Some shadowy outlines of old thoughts sublime, Gently he smiled to see, revived again, In later age, and occidental clime, A dimly traced Pythagorean lore, A westward floating, mystic dream of FOUR. four of space "the One of Time, of Space the Three" Can you believe that Hamilton, perhaps the greatest physicist who ever lived, missed Special Relativity, although his poem shows that he had it in his hand, under his nose (the RED parts of the poem)?                 Dick Henry ...
1	... with J.M. Overduin, M. Coplan, and K. Wilcomb, provides a roadmap to rotating and/or charged black holes .
2	... with his colleagues establishes yet more firmly the existence of mysterious UV radiation at high Galactic latitudes: "Components of the Diffuse Ultraviolet Radiation at High Latitudes," by M. S. Akshaya, Jayant Murthy, S. Ravichandran, R. C. Henry, and James Overduin, submitted to MNRAS, 2019. Some high latitude radiation is of course merely starlight scattered from dust, and so terminates at 911.8Å, BUT there is no reason for the "mystery source" not to extend below 911.8Å: and if it does so (and if is a feature of all galaxies) then it is surely the source of the reionization of the universe. But more importantly, the radiation itself must be due to SOMETHING ... and decay radiation of dark matter particles is the only available candidate ...
3	... with his colleagues reaffirms the existence of mysterious UV radiation at high galactic latitudes: "The Diffuse Radiation Field at High Galactic Latitudes," by M. S. Akshaya, Jayant Murthy, S. Ravichandran, R. C. Henry, and James Overduin, ApJ 858:101 (9pp), 2018 May 10. This radiation is NOT starlight scattered from dust!
4	... draws attention to a vital paper by Tanvir et al. demonstrating (see their Figure 1) that we have a huge mystery on our hands: 99% of the hydrogen in the Universe is ionized, but we do not know what caused this ionization!
5	...wonders if you know that 99% of your weight, when you step on the scales, is merely the kinetic energy of the massless gluons that hold together all your protons and neutrons? The mass of your quarks and electrons is negligible!
6	"Astrophysics with New Horizons: Making the Most of a Generational Opportunity," by Michael Zemcov, Iair Arcavi, Richard Arendt, Etienne Bachelet, Ranga Ram Chary, Asantha Cooray, Diana Dragomir, Richard Conn Henry, Carey Lisse, Shuji Matsuura, Jayant Murthy, Chi Nguyen, Andrew R. Poppe, Rachel Street, & Michael Werner, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 130:115001, 2018 November
7	Sums it all up: General Relativity - natural! (curved spacetime is gravitation; OK!) Quantum Mechanics - natural! (since observations are numbers, and simple symmetries are present; OK!) Special Relativity: WHOA! HOLY SMOKES! A PYTHAGOREAN MINUS SIGN FOR TIME! The Universe knows ALGEBRA, which WE invented!
8	submitted to the ApJ, "Discovery of an Ionizing Radiation Field in the Universe", by Richard Conn Henry, Jayant Murthy, and James Overduin And now take a look at the referee's report!
9	... my PAPER How Einstein's Theory of Relativity Gives us E = mc2 and the Atomic Bomb at IAU 338 Gravitational Wave Astrophysics
10	... my POSTER How Einstein's Theory of Relativity Gives us E = mc2 and the Atomic Bomb at IAU 338 Gravitational Wave Astrophysics
11	... presented The Physics of our Universe at Multifrequency Sicily
12	... presented Ultraviolet Background Radiation from Beyond Pluto at Multifrequency Sicily
13	... asks you: Do you know the Pythagorean theorem (and high-school algebra)? If yes, and you would like to know WHY E = mc2  then !!-Click Me-!! OK, next up! WHO was Arthur Storer? Juar googe him. Childhood friend of Newton!
14	... Do you know that the Gaussian curvature of spacetime near, at, and inside a Black Hole is zero ?   (a lot of physicists don't know that! Yes, R = 0!) (but of the components of the Riemann tensor Rαβγδ some 24 (out of 256) are non-zero in all those precincts, so, yes, spacetime IS non-flat! So do keep your pets away from black holes!)
15	... helps you quickly learn: Special Relativity, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics!
16	... has submitted Wandering Towards a Goal to FQXi's latest essay contest
17	... welcomes Dr. Matthew Collinge as the new Deputy Director, Maryland Space Grant Consortium
18	... attended the AAS Meeting in Grapevine, Texas from 2017 January 3 (Tuesday) to January 6 (Friday)     bonus: History of ALL AAS Meetings
19	... has just been (re-) elected to a three-year term (2017 - 2019) on the Board of the National Space Grant Alliance
20	... on 2016 June 23 was awarded a further $360,000 (by NASA), for even MORE activity by Maryland Space Grant Consortium
21	... presented Black Hole results at the 2016 June AAS meeting in San Diego
22	... honors his Great-Great-Grandfather Henry's service in the War of 1812, AND celebrates the discovery of the Higgs boson!
23	... on 2016 April 4 was awarded $400,000 (by NASA) for further activity by Maryland Space Grant Consortium
24	... with Jayant Murthy proposes a New Horizons project!
25	... on 2015 August 4 at the Space Telescope Science Institute, gave a Public Lecture on "Black Holes."
26	... on 2015 June 10 at the Space Telescope Science Institute, gave a HotSci talk on "Formal Black Hole Features."
27	... has created an illustration of the famous Delayed Choice Experiment (don't click, just roll your mouse off and on the image and see the change occur)
28	... is going to humble you, should you choose to click (and hence download) these four PUZZLES. (The first of the four puzzles is easy, but the fourth puzzle is a horse of another color! BUT, BE WARNED: DO NOT GIVE UP, or you will bitterly regret having done so; Henry will have made a fool of you!)
29	... is, once again, messing around with Black Holes! And check out my work on the Kretschmann Scalar for a Kerr-Newman black hole!
30	... highly recommends the movie "The Imitation Game," based on the book by Andrew Hodges
31	... has (with Jayant Murthy, James Overduin, & Joshua Tyler), published (Astrophysical Journal, 798:14, 2015 January 1) "The Mystery of the Cosmic Diffuse Ultraviolet Background Radiation."
32	... teaches you Einstein's Special Relativity, and next teaches you Einstein's General Relativity.
33	... here is Arthur Stanley Eddington's great book, "The Nature of the Physical World", including my Introductory Essay.
34	... has, with Brian Josephson and others, signed "A call for an open, informed study of all aspects of consciousness".
35	... on 2013 November 4, gave a talk on "Streit Council: Democracy and Human Rights" at the institute for cultural diplomacy.
36	... on 2013 October 15, was re-elected to the Board of the National Space Grant Alliance.
37	... tries his hand at fiction: Darby's Dream.
38	... on 2013 August 24, was notified that NASA is awarding $500,000 to Maryland Space Grant's proposal in response to "Innovative Pilot in STEM Retention!"
39	... gave a HotSci talk at the Space Telescope Science Institute on 2013 August 21.
40	... hopes everyone will read Nolan Walborn's recollection of Space Telescope Science Institute history.
41	... wants everyone to understand GRAVITATION & DARK ENERGY.
42	... thanks the late Bill Fastie, for taking me to the Moon! In those innocent times, all it took was a 12 page pre-approved proposal to NASA. Oh, and see the pictures!
43	... and Professor Jayant Murthy have proposed in response to "New Frontiers in Astronomy & Cosmology".
44	... in 2012 June attended "UV Astronomy: HST and Beyond" in Hawaii, where he presented "The Ultraviolet Diffuse Cosmic Background".
45	... on 2012 March 6 introduced Transatlantic Perspectives on Current Financial and Economic Developments at George Mason University.
46	... invites you to a Maryland Space Grant Consortium Balloon Launch in Hagerstown, MD (the file is 1.08 GB, be warned!) The movie takes six minutes to play, and has a wonderful ending!
47	... reviews the 1900 novel, "His Wisdom The Defender," by Simon Newcomb.
48	... attends JWST event at the Science Center in downtown Baltimore: picture shows Senator Mikulski, John Grunsfeld, Adam Riess...
49	... joins Planetarium consultant Ian McLennan in front of the full-scale James Webb Space Telescope model at Baltimore's inner harbor.
50	... has finally scanned a 1976 document (a small booklet), prepared by Bland Norris, that helped to sell the Hubble Space Telescope to Congress (I wrote the text material, except that Noel Hinners changed "no one is at the controls" to "only God is at the controls"): Cover, Benefits, Astronomy, Quote, Practical, etc., Why Now?, etc., Chart 1, Chart 2, Chart 3, Chart 4, Chart 5, Chart 6, Chart 7, Chart 8, Chart 9
51	... thanks Mike Specian for assembling the 1975 Rowland-Wood Symposium Poster. (Here is more, if you have a big screen.)
52	... with Jayant Murthy and Jay Holberg has had accepted "Voyager Observatons of the Diffuse FUV Radiation Field" as an Astrophysical Journal Supplement.
53	... hosted the Space Shuttle Astronauts.
54	... hopes to finish this essay.
55	... celebrates 30 years of the Space Shuttle
56	...reports Progress in Understanding the Diffuse UV Cosmic Background (preprint), 2012, in Multifrequency Behaviour of High Energy Cosmic Sources, F. Giovannelli & L. Sabau-Graziati (eds.), Mem. SAIt Vol. 83 n. 1 (Large versions of each figure.)
57	... locates OBL, with a little help from Navy Seals and the Washington Post. [See osama02, osama03, osama04 for the region]. And how did the Seals find him? It seems he's been listed as a resident of Abbottabad since 2010 September 22.
58	... reprints Albert Einstein's most consequential paper.
59	... will present "Progress in Understanding the Diffuse UV Cosmic Background," in 2011 May at Frascati Workshop 2011, Vulcano, Italy
60	... assists a 5th grade scientist with a Dark Matter project (the wonderful image is from http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060824.html ).
61	... and Jayant Murthy, are authors of "Diffuse Ultraviolet Halos around Bright Stars," in press, Astrophysical Journal.
62	... is author of "Union of the West Endgame: A Straw Man Constitutional Amendment," Freedom and Union, Vol IV, No.1, Fall 2010, 23.
63	... is, with J. Murthy and N. V. Sujatha, author of "Mapping the Diffuse Ultraviolet Sky with the GALAXY EVOLUTION EXPLORER," Astrophysical Journal, 724, 1389, 2010.
64	... is, with N. V. Sujatha, J. Murthy, R. Suresh, and L. Bianchi, author of "GALEX Observations of Diffuse Ultraviolet Emisson from Draco," Astrophysical Journal, 723, 1549, 2010.
65	... on 2010 May 4 opened "Currency Without a Country" at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
66	... on 2010 April 16 gave the colloquium at the Towson University Dept of Physics, Astronomy, and Geosciences.
67	... talked on "Measurements of the UV Background with Voyager," at The View from 5 AU. Here are pictures of Tom Kelsall and John Mather at 5 AU.
68	... attended today's (2009 Nov 21) Maryland Space Grant Consortium Balloon Launch to the edge of space.
69	... at the 2010 January AAS meeting in Washington, DC, presented: "The ISM is Aglow in UV Radiation", by Richard Conn Henry, Jayant Murthy, and N. V. Sujatha.
70	... on 2009 July 30 said goodbye to ... ... his 1993 Acura, at 311,372.4 miles, NOT a clunker, sad to say! One says "a miss is as good as a mile," but in this case, a mile (per gallon) was as good as a miss! The steering got wonky: result, only a $200 trade in! C'est la vie, n'est ce pas?
71	... celebrates the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11.
72	... on the 12th hole, today (2009 June 23) hit a hole-in-one on the old course, St. Andrews (well, Himalayas, which abuts the old course - Richard is not a golfer ... and also, Rita won the game).
73	... is in Scotland for his son Mark Winston Henry's graduation (a 1st in Modern History) at St Andrews, Fife. Mark started as a resident tutor at Fettes, and is now a teacher of History at Fettes.
74	... gave a talk 2009 June 19 "The UV background: it's not just dust-scattered starlight" at the Department of Astrophysics , Oxford.
75	... has posted his 2009 Vulcano talk at astro-ph.
76	... (with colleagues) presented a SETI Poster at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
77	... notes the REAL scandal of quantum mechanics (American Journal of Physics, 77, 869, 2009 October).
78	... reviews the book Biocentrism (Journal of Scientific Exploration: in press).
79	... has written (with help from Lewis Carroll) "Alice in Physics Land," for your enjoyment.
80	... is, with N. V. Sujatha, Rahul Suresh, Jayant Murthy, and Luciana Bianchi, author of the GALEX Poster at the 2009 Astronomical Society of India meeting in Bangalore.
81	... is an author of the 2009 SETI White Paper for the National Academy Decadal Survey.
82	... podcasts on Earth & Sky about SETI.
83	... attended the 2009 Inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama.
84	... is interviewed by Rohit Dasgupta in The Blue Jay Buffet.
85	... has received an email from a former student saying "I was thinking it over a few days ago and forgot parts of your explanation as to why mass does not increase as you approach the speed of light. If it wouldn't be too much trouble, would you mind explaining it once again?" Why, it is no trouble at all!
86	... Chaired (on 2008 December 5) the Plenary Session "Technological Imperatives of the Transatlantic Market" at the Dupont Summit: "The New Administration Tackles Science & Technology." Here is the Session Program.
87	... reports good news about recently-released (Nov 19) Mathematica 7.0
88	... here is "GALEX Observations of Diffuse UV Radiation at High Spatial Resolution from the Sandage Nebulosity," of "GALEX Observations of Diffuse UV Radiation at High Spatial Resolution from the Sandage Nebulosity," by N. V. Sujatha, Jayant Murthy, Abhay Karnataki, Richard Conn Henry, and Luciana Bianchi, which has now appeared in the Astrophysical Journal.
89	... says nothing at all about "Quantum Physics Gets 'Spooky'" by Phil Berardelli
90	... on 2008 August 21 accepted an invition from Peter Overmann, Director of Software Techology for Wolfram Research, to become a beta tester for the next major version of Mathematica.
91	... has been awarded 32 hours on the Allen Telescope Array to Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. (He is Co-I on the proposal of Steve Kilston, a Senior Fellow at the Henry Foundation.)
92	... in 2008 June presented a poster on Teaching Special Relativity at the Third International Conference on the Nature and Ontology of Spacetime in Montreal
93	... presented a poster at AAS St. Louis in 2008 June, "SETI in the Ecliptic Plane" At the invitation of the AAS, Dick participated in a Press Conference on his work.
94	... is delighted to join Steve Kilston and Seth Shostack at Astrobiology Science Conference 2008
95	... suggests that "Minkowski trumps Einstein"
96	... reviews "The God Theory" by Bernard Haisch
97	... congratulates Glen Fountain (THE GAZETTE, 2007 July 6)
98	... attended, on 2007 July 3, a Colorado Space Grant balloon launch
99	... has created an illustration of the famous Delayed Choice Experiment
100	... in this 50th anniversary year, recalls 1957 October 4, in Toronto, on Bloor Street, learning of Sputnik: little dreaming that I would become a Principal Investigator in the US Lunar Program!
101	... has had an email from Mathematica indicating that the problem I discovered is FIXED in 6.0                 (I'll check it out when I receive my CD with 6.0 on it....                 ...but maybe someone would like to check it out and let me know?) 2007 July 6: received CD, tried it out: the problem is NOT fixed! I have alerted Mathematica. 2008 July 11, just tried with Mathematica 6.0.3 and the problem is STILL not fixed. Shame! 2008 July 20: light at the end of the tunnel? I hope so! 2008 August 03: Still sounding good!
102	... trys to help you, in your pondering of the problem of the Cosmological Constant
103	... on May 28 reports new GALEX results at the AAS meeting in Hawaii
104	... and colleagues report on Dust Optical Properties in Coalsack (astro-ph 0705.1752)
105	... and Steve Palmquist take notice of comments and new work by                 Alain Aspect and Anton Zeilinger
106	... Advocates Universal Use of Universal Time
107	... attended, in 2007 January, a Conference on Ultimate Reality
108	... reviews "Quantum Enigma" by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner
109	... takes notice of "Is our Universe natural?" by Sean Carroll
110	... says "Hurrah for Pluto, the most important Dwarf Planet! And UP with New Horizons,         FIRST mission EVER to a Dwarf Planet!"!
111	... is now celebrating the current interglacial!
112	... reviews "Not Even Wrong" and "The Trouble with Physics"
113	... has become deeply interested in stellar aberration
114	... reports the first fruits of his GALEX program (with Jayant Murthy, Luciana Bianchi, N. V. Sujatha, and P. Shalima) in the Chinese Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics
115	... thanks the late Charles Schulz for penetrating insight
116	... has submitted to "The Physics Teacher" a modern paper on relativity
117	... asks if you can, with no equipment, accurately measure Earth's size in about ten seconds?
118	... wants you to evaluate:   i i  before you ... CLICK ME to find the answer
119	... published Planetary Pretzels with Owen Gingerich.
120	... cannot suppress the embarrassing fact that a Planetary Alignment marks the date of his birth.
121	... is an American Physical Society Einstein 1905 - 2005 Lecturer           Mercy High School, Baltimore, MD, 2005 Oct 4           Avon Grove Charter School, West Grove, PA, 2006 Feb 8           Millersville University physics seniors, Millersville, PA, 2006 Feb 8           SUNY/Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY, 2006 Mar 27
122	... has discovered (and is causing to be corrected) a serious deficiency in Mathematica!
123	... had a great time in India ! Thank you, Professor Jayant Murthy!
124	... & colleagues: "FUV Scattering by Dust in Orion" (astro-ph/0601388) in press , MNRAS.
125	... & colleagues, had a GALEX poster at 2006 January AAS Meeting, Washington, DC.
126	... & colleagues, is pleased to have had another FUSE Proposal accepted. Also: who wins time on FUSE ? (Cycles 1-7 merged, and JHU winners in red).
127	... 's 1993 Acura Legend has gone as far as the Moon. ( Mike Griffin ... eat your heart out ! )
128	... celebrates Einstein's 1905 anniversary year with E = mc2.
129	... visited colleagues Jayant Murthy, N. V. Sujatha, and P. Shalima ... in 2006 January. Dick stayed at the Bell Craig Guest house in St Andrews, and the Taj West End Hotel in Bangalore.
130	... with Luciana Bianchi, Jayant Murthy, and P. Shalima ... is pleased to have again been successful in the GALEX Guest Investigator program.
131	... with N. V. Sujatha, P. Shalima, and Jayant Murthy ... has published "Dust Properties in the FUV in Ophiuchus," Astrophysical Journal, 633, 257, 2005.
132	... has made a contribution to this Nature essay series ... "Physics, complexity and causality," by George F. R. Ellis (1060 accesses) "Dynamic Universe," by Freeman Dyson (270 accesses) "The mental Universe," by Richard Conn Henry (27,000 accesses) "The message of the quantum," by Anton Zeilinger (917 accesses)
133	... with colleagues Jayant Murthy and David Sahnow, presented a paper on FUSE observations of Orion, at the 2005 January AAS meeting, in San Diego.
134	... thanks those who directed me to two wonderful art collections
135	... pays tribute to the greatest physicist who ever lived!
136	has become intrigued by Twistors.
137	wants you to understand Quantum Mechanics.
138	is proud of the Maryland Space Grant Consortium balloon launch of 2004 May 25 by Adeboyejo Oni, Mary Bowden, and Lisa LaCivita, aided by their assistants and students.
139	and his colleagues, P Shalima, Jayant Murthy, and Luciana Bianchi submitted a successful GALEX Guest Observer proposal. Here are : the GALEX team planned observations, shown with the TD1 Catalog stars; and here are: our Southern Voyager observations (red); and here are: our Northern Voyager observations (red), both shown with the GALEX team planned observatons.
140	has become interested in Calendar Reform, and presented a Paper on the CCC&T Calendar at the Atlanta AAS meeting.
141	authored the paper "Studying the diffuse ultraviolet background radiation with tomography," recently published in the journal "Astronomy & Astrophysics" (2003, volume 411, page 313) [movie]
142	... does rather fear heights, BUT he could not resist climbing: Arecibo!
143	was a speaker (with Michio Kaku and others) at the Symposium on Interstellar Travel and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena: Science Fiction or Science Fact? 2002 November 8, at George Washington University in Washington, DC. Symposium Moderator: Ray Suarez
144	and his colleagues presented two posters, "Voyager Observations of Diffuse Ultraviolet Light Shortward of Lyman Alpha," and "A MIDEX Mission to Spectrally Analyse the Diffuse X-ray and Ultraviolet Background," at the 2002 April AAS-HEAD/APS meeting in Albuquerque, NM
145	has the paper "The Local Interstellar Ultraviolet Radiation Field," in the 2002 May 10 issue of the Astrophysical Journal
146	presented a POSTER at the 2002 January AAS meeting in Washington, DC
147	with Jayant Murthy, Robin Shelton, and Jay Holberg, has published in the Astrophysical Journal (Letters):"Upper Limits on OVI Emission from Voyager Observations"
148	has published in the Astrophysical Journal: "Kretchmann Scalar for a Kerr-Newman Black Hole"
149	is junior author on a paper that is in the 2000 July issue of the American Journal of Physics: "Circular Motion"
150	and his family visited Hawai`i in 1999 June
151	delivered a paper, "Meet the (National Council of) Space Grant Directors," at AAS Meeting #194, Chicago,1999, June 3
152	has papers "Diffuse Background Radiation," Astrophysical Journal Letters, 516, L49 (1999) and "An Analysis of 17 Years of Voyager Observations," Astrophysical Journal, 522, 904 (1999)
153	delivered a talk, "Tour of the Universe," to the '49ers, Johns Hopkins Alumni, on 1999 April  23. Dick was introduced by noted astronomer William Sinton
154	Dick Henry, now well over 80, does have the feeling that the years are going by, faster and faster.....Dick used to ski in Colorado, by the way!

By golly, here's a view of Dick Henry's office in the Bloomberg Center: well, this WAS his office. All those journals have now been trashed!

Dick Henry has been (1997) a Keeley Visiting Fellow at Wadham College, Oxford, where his son, George W. Henry, in 2005 was awarded his M.A. in Biochemistry. George died in 2021, at 38. Dick's younger son, Mark Winston Henry, graduated in 2009 with First Class Honours from St Andrews. The summer of 2007, Mark was an intern at The Streit Council for a Union of Democracies; the summer of 2008, Mark was an intern with the Library of Congress in Washington, DC., and since graduating, Mark has been employed first as a Resident Tutor, and now as a History teacher, at Fettes in Edinburgh.

Dick Henry is a Member, Principal Professional Staff, The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

        You are visitor number:                               

 One spinning Earth is correct.   And one spinning Earth is incorrect!   Which is which?

THANK YOU!
Ed and Jean Henry, especially for sending me to Ridley for a year so I would get into U of T
Don MacRae, for teaching me FORTRAN
Jack Heard and Sidney van den Bergh, and Martin Schwarzschild (who interviewed me) for getting me into Princeton
Everyone at Princeton, but above all others, George B. Field
Herb Friedman and George R. Carruthers and G. Geiger Fritz
Paul D. Feldman, and every other person at The Johns Hopkins University:
especially Dept Chair George Owen for forcing terrified young me to teach General Relativity.
RITA MAHON

Do you wish to judge your acumen? Ponder this!

Are you a solipsist?
Of course I'm not 'a' solipsist !

This ASTOUNDING PROOF of the Pythagorean Theorem, is believed to have been discovered by an American schoolboy about 1939.
Maurice Laisnez
Notice that, while the right triangle may be particular, it is obvious that the proof would work for ANY right triangle!
I think this is the BEST proof of ANYTHING, EVER, by ANYONE !
For comparison, Einstein's proof of Pythagoras (as a youngster) was correct, but conventional and opaque (like everyone before him).

Don't be fooled by that image of the so-called "Moon" !

A wonderful image, showing the actual appearance of the Moon on a typical month, as viewed from Earth.
(The apparent wobble comes from the inclination and eccentricity of the Moon's monthly orbit around Earth.)

Oh yes: note the slightly changing apparent size of the Moon:
when it happens to be BIGGEST at "full" moronic newspapers SHOUT "SUPERMOON ".

I LOVE human space travel! I was part of Apollo 17! But, sadly, we must face facts:

Mars is WAY-BELOW-FREEZING cold, has almost no water, and its atmosphere is only ONE PERCENT of ours [ ~ NO oxygen ].
Worse: Mars has NO (general) magnetic field (as we on Earth do ) to protect settlers on Mars from the deadly cosmic rays.
There is NO future on Mars for human beings, dogs, cats, goldfish, cattle .... it's sad .... but it's true.

Mercury and Venus, we humans will NEVER set foot on !

We ARE sending people back to the Moon...
If you enjoy having FILTHY DUST EVERYWHERE, you will LOVE living on the Moon!

a CONCISE reminder as to WHY velocities are less than ONE, which gives us PROOF that the universe is MENTAL

Pi has infinitely many digits ... if you go far enough, you'll find 10,000 5's one after another.

Traditional big number is 'monkeys typing Shakespeare'. But, not vivid enough: how about: "in pi, 12345 repeated 100-billion-times" !

Or, how about this: in Pi,     6174 repeated     (googolplex!)^{(googolplex!)}     times?       .... now, that's BIG!

( Those two !'s are not emphasis, they mean factorial: 5! is: 5 X 4 X 3 X 2 X 1 )

( There are only ~10⁸⁰ electrons in the visible universe! )

(Here's where we are on the digits of π.    Mind you, 62.8 trillion is only 62,800,000,000,000. Pitifully few!)

Those two "giants", on whose shoulders Newton said he stood, were Tycho Brahe (the observer) and Johannes Kepler (the theorist).
Tycho accurately recorded the precise position of (red dot) MARS, over MANY YEARS. (I love the dance of Mercury and Venus!)
Note added on 2024 feb 27: Watching this over and over again is great: I now follow the dance of Mercury and Venus effortlessly! Terrific!

The period shown is 1582 to 1600, during which Tycho made his critical measurements of the declination of Mars.
(At far right, in the opening moments, do note the marvellous 1583 conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn ! )

In analyzing Tycho's observations, Kepler at first tried an equation that he did not realize was an ellipse (but in polar coordinates).
He found it did not work, but that was only because he had made a slip: a mistake in arithmetic !
So Kepler said to himself, "Let me try an ellipse now".
The rest is history !

Thirty Megabytes: Henry's "The Universe Does Not Exist" Macintosh Keynote.
(This does NOT convert at all well to Powerpoint, please don't waste your time trying!)
The Mach-Zehnder Interferometer!

And here is the same experiment, but for (massive) electrons, instead of zero-mass photons: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01503

Oh no! Please! Not yet ANOTHER concise boring reminder that human-invented ALGEBRA rules the universe!

The Earth and the Moon: it looks like a painting, but it is real ... where is the Sun?

My Early Life

Albert Einstein discovered everything, but he understood nothing.
I vividly recall waiting for the school bus in Edmonton, and Alex Brown running up: "your hero is dead". I didn't know I HAD a hero.
Nine years later, I was doing my PhD in Einstein's former office at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
(my PhD advisor Bengt Strömgren's office)

I'm writing at the beginning of 2024: Until a moment ago, I myself did not realize the following.
Henry began his web page, as a conventional Professorial web page. But, like Topsy, it grew!
Today, it is very, very, LONG, and there is NO sign of any limit! NO other web page is like this!
Compare with Sabine Hossenfelder's blog. She has no continuity, just episodes! Herky-jerky!
My way is, accidentally, much better.
(Like Robert Recorde casually inventing the equals sign in 1557.)

A BRIEF HISTORY of RELATIVITY

[ Oh, but before I go, you may as well UNDERSTAND Quantum Mechanics. Why not? ]

Where do you go, once you've got THAT? Well, here is a friendly guide!

A Movie explaining that Quantum Mechanics is inevitable,
guaranteeing that a deterministic universe is impossible.
Here is the critical frame from the movie.

Our planet Earth is attracted to the Sun ! Earth would fall straight into the Sun, fast,
were it not for Earth's possession of Angular Momentum.
In a Hydrogen atom, the electron is attracted MUCH MORE strongly to its Proton than is Earth to the Sun.
Yet (often) that electron has NO ANGULAR MOMENTUM at all: ZERO!
Now, all neutrons were formed by an electron COMBINING WITH a proton....
So WHY don't Hydrogen atoms all turn into neutrons?
It is because of quantum mechanics and energy conservation. A detail.

The Universe is profoundly different from how even most physicists picture it.
That is because evolution has provided humans with a "what-it-takes-to-survive" user interface.
You can easily discover experimentally, that, on a daily basis, our senses LIE to us! (but in our own interest of course. )

I am agnostic ( but with strong Deist leanings )

I have no interest in ANY religions, but, I do find myself thanking God Every Single Day!

I do NOT know WHAT happens (if anything!) when one dies ... as ... everyone ... will ...

yes ... everyone ...

(

Henry House OSHAWA
Elder Thomas Henry, "Old J.O.", Edwin Mowat Henry, Edwin Mackie Henry, Dick Henry....

)

A LONG and DETAILED summing-up !
(I am grateful to whomever looked at this recently, and by doing so, reminded me of its existence.)

Various Mysteries!

President Zelenskyy on TIME

A final ( and, I hope, not too gloomy ! ) perspective on it all ......

You're so stupid you can't even count!

unique visitors since 2020 August

On 2023 November 12 Sunday, after attending "Romeo and Juliet" at the Kennedy Center, Rita drove us into the streets of DC, to go home.
JUST so as to get into the lane we would want after turning west on Virginia Avenue, she did not get into the LEFT lane.
Had she done so, we would both be dead (or worse).
For a car turned into our road going the wrong way on our one-way street. It whizzed by us on our left. (Rita leaned hard on the horn ! )
Head-on collisions involve the square of the relative velocity, and hence enormous kinetic energy.

A Map, and a Photograph. Please note the ONE WAY sign!

Hanke-Henry On Time