{"id":1975,"date":"2004-11-05T14:37:45","date_gmt":"2004-11-05T19:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1975"},"modified":"2015-05-16T20:28:17","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T00:28:17","slug":"question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1975","title":{"rendered":"Question About Orbits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe style=\"width:120px;height:240px;\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&#038;OneJS=1&#038;Operation=GetAdHtml&#038;MarketPlace=US&#038;source=ac&#038;ref=tf_til&#038;ad_type=product_link&#038;tracking_id=thesheivari-20&#038;marketplace=amazon&#038;region=US&#038;placement=0374528373&#038;asins=0374528373&#038;linkId=HPS2QXNWOB2EWUVT&#038;show_border=true&#038;link_opens_in_new_window=true\"><br \/>\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nI am nearly done with <i>Brothers Karamazov<\/i>.  Once you get into the trial section, the book reads like a bullet out of a gun.  SO good.<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s my question, and it&#8217;s kind of a history\/science-knowledge kind of question:<\/p>\n<p>In the chapter where it is revealed that Ivan receives this nightly visitor, and it is revealed who this visitor is (I just can&#8217;t bring myself to tell you, if you haven&#8217;t read it &#8230; because it was an enormous shock to me when I got to that chapter) &#8211;<br \/>\nBut anyway, in this chapter, the visitor makes reference to an axe falling through space (he&#8217;s talking about the cold, and little kids putting their tongues against freezing things and having the skin ripped off, etc.) &#8211; well, I can&#8217;t explain it, here&#8217;s the excerpt I have the question about:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;You know the game the village girls play &#8212; they invite the unwary to lick an ax in zero weather, the tongue instantly freezes to it and the fool tears the skin off, so it bleeds.  But that&#8217;s only at zero, at 150 below I imagine it would be enough to put your finger on the ax and it would be the end of it &#8230; If only there could be an ax there.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And can there be an ax there?&#8221; Ivan interrupted carelessly&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;An ax?&#8221; the guest interrupted in surprise.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Yes, what would become of an ax there?&#8221; Ivan cried suddenly, with a sort of savage and insistent obstinacy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What would become of an ax in space?  What an idea!  If it were to fall any distance, it would begin, I think, flying around the earth without knowing why, like a satellite.  The astronomers would calculate the rising and setting of the ax &#8230;&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Brothers K was published in 1880, I think, or 1881.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, at that point, orbits of planets were understood and known of.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never really thought of this before, because &#8211; well, it never occurred to me until I read that sentence &#8211; but &#8220;satellite&#8221; isn&#8217;t solely a word from our technological age?  How would Dostoevsky know that things would be launched into our orbit and then circle the planet?<\/p>\n<p>Where does the word &#8220;satellite&#8221; come from, is basically my question.  Also &#8230; how early was it in time that orbits were understood, and it was understood that if you put something IN the orbit, it would circle the earth automatically &#8220;without knowing why&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I am nearly done with Brothers Karamazov. Once you get into the trial section, the book reads like a bullet out of a gun. SO good. But here&#8217;s my question, and it&#8217;s kind of a history\/science-knowledge kind of question: In &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1975\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[266,181,999],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1975"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101943,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1975\/revisions\/101943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}