The Syro-Roman lawbook

This blog has mentioned inheritance-law in the Arab-dominated Iraq. Here's The [Bavli] Talmud on inheritance-law: the Jews did not allow daughters to inherit if a son was available, the "Christians" did. This being not specifically the Gospel but "the Torah of the Gospel". That's the Syro-Roman Lawbook.

Keep in mind that Talmud may have taken on post-Islamic accretions. At the same time the "Islam", in the Iraq, in its first century - the Jews may have experienced as Christian in legal content.

BACKDATE EASTER MONDAY

Not-Altaic

The "Altaic" hypothesis has been a pain in everyone's rear since it was first floated. In 2014 a linguistic subhypothesis proposed a mechanism for Japanese, Korean, and Manchu. This work has recently been bolstered by genetics. Turtle Island has the synthesis.

The Liao watershed is the Urheimat.

Suggestive here is that the Japonic family may have survived in the south Korean highlands well into the Tang period, on account of Chinese colonies keeping Baekje and Silla from swamping the highlanders. I'd suggest a better factor from the Later Han era to the Tang era be protoJapanese islanders maintaining their own interests (and perhaps estates) back home, that is home in what's now south Korea.

All tantalisingly close to written history in Japan and Korea both. It's a bit tricky because literacy in both regions, in those days, was in contemporary Classical Chinese. The parties involved might care about the great acts of kings but not so much about the yokels. Compare the last years of Elamite under the Iranian empires of late antiquity. Or the Caucasian Albanians under their Armenian-speaking overlords.

BACKDATE 4/5 BUT MAYBE I SHOULDN'T HAVE BOTHERED 6/14. In fairness the Turtle isn't talking Robbeets.

More on the Tarim

Razib Khan posted on First April... some silly, but then this report which might not be a joke. He complained about the article's overcomplexity so he has done some good translating it into the sort of English a, er, Bengali would understand.

Last we looked at the Афанасьева matrix, it was Yamnaya or para-Yamnaya. Junggar was marked as solidly Yamnaya 3000-2800 BC and presumed Tocharian. Razib is saying, again, 3000-2500 BC is when Yamnaya mixed with the locals and created the Tocharians. Before 3000 BC said locals were Ancient-North-Eurasian Mal'ta Boys.

Where Афанасьева proper is postYamnaya or paraYamnaya, paraTocharian or preTocharian, doesn't seem to be answered here. Razib leans postYamnaya, preTocharian.

BACKDATE 4/5

Mercury's dynamo

Fairbanks in Alaska is telling us that Mercury has magnetic "storms". Given that this dwarf-planet has no atmosphere, I take it these are sparks coming off the surface.

Mercury has that mix of low gravity and proximity to the sun which makes delta-V a pain to approach this planet. On the plus (heh) side the Sun also provides a lot of energy.

I wonder about levitating material off the Mars-tier surface with magnets; not even superconductors but plain magnets.

Mercury looks a candidate for running an orbital ring around it, which would at least offer a wider net to catch incoming cargo (mostly food and water). Also there could be SML2 but shielding this might be a pain compared to SVL2. Newton famously doesn't work as well for Mercury.

BACKDATE 4/5

Kevin Jardine's starmap

I like 2-D representations of our 3-D immediate space; Kevin Jardine posts (png), I admire. This one's got TRADE ROUTES! How Starflight 2...

Anyway I'm keen on how it works for viewing the night sky, which is also two-dimensional to our eyes, on the Projection model. Also considering the 1994 Guide to the Galaxy which I wish I still owned.

First up is something called "Coma" very close to (0,0) which is us. (We're somewhat-famously almost dab in the Local Bubble's middle.) I hadn't heard of it (somehow); unless this be the Local Fluff of 1994. Looking around, I read that the Greeks first assigned the stars here to Leo's tail and, later, some Ptolemy in Alexandria renamed it after Berenice's hair. This Ptolemy proved cartographically correct since the Coma is closer to us than are the bulk of the Leo stars. At least they hadn't passed it to Taurus - Taurus is its own cluster (Hyades) except for Aldebaran which is just in the way, and for T Tauri of course.

The familiar-to-northerner stars cluster to the top of the map, I see. Alpha Tucanae (named after a toucan) is lower; same with the Eridani. So I guess up is north. The zodiac, which is the plane of earth's orbit, does have some lower-left presence, though.

I had no idea, none, about Alessi 13. Apparently this is a star cluster. It is also called χ¹ Fornacis... and it's 108 parsecs away. Which means it doesn't belong on Jardine's map. D'OH! In fairness Jardine's websites have that distinct 1997 scent of Tripod to them.

Azathoth is a liar

Earlier this week Cernovich linked NGC_2264's post on the DMT Nexus. It's a psychedelic forum, mostly (but not totally) involved with what Cerno calls Plant-Medicine; so don't go there if you are underage. One part of this particular post mentioned music as involved in the trip, more so than the drugs; this now seems to be a thing.

This blog exists in such a tradition as must accept the supernatural. "Luckily" this is a basic tenet of mathematics. The question NGC_2264 raises isn't whether Azathoth exists. It's whether a "psychonaut" can access It, when he hears the pipes at the gate. Or, if he hears the pipes, if its music is all just an avatar of the chaos in the human soul.

To disclose, I haven't accessed Azathoth. I would not attempt this. It doesn't matter to me if Azathoth speaks to us or does not.

NGC_2264 seems about right that whatever is out there, not involved with the real and tangible world, is not a friend.

Muonic helium

Happy April. I didn't and, really, don't have anything recent. ToughSf twitter did point us to a new exotic nucleus - more precisely, ion. Here a helium atom with a mu-lepton taking the place of the usual electro-lepton (or unusual antiproton).

The muon (like the antiproton) being so much more massive than the electron, it sinks to a lower quantum "orbit". For as long as the muon lasts (I'll get to this), the helium atom is now - chemically - an extremely heavy hydrogen atom. In the meantime researchers use this atom's odd setup to constrain the charge-radius of the helium nucleus. Which has its own interest since the helium nucleus is (1) the second-most common molecule in the universe, I think and (2) emitted as Alpha Radiation.

Now, er. The muon's lifespan. I'd wondered if some actual chemists might get some play out of this monster pseudohydrogen (E.G. 3/12/22 rockets). When I looked up the lifespan of a free muon: it looked assez, très, troup short-lived. Microseconds, I think. Even milli- wouldn't be good for most reactions. I suppose it might (seem to) last longer if pushed to relativistic speed or gravity, but if you can do that why are you even looking at chemistry?