Lonnnnnnng Perspective

Happy 57th Birthday to cousin Jerry and Happy 21st Birthday to the Hubble Telescope. You can now be admitted into pubs across the universe.

First question for your table - (trivia Q) - How long does the Hubble Space Telescope take to orbit the earth?

A: 97 minutes.

We're talking 7,500 meters per second. How do you take pictures when you're moving that fast? (Really good flash, right?)

Question #2 for your table - Did you ever stop to think where the idea of a telescope came from?

Isn't it a little bizarre? That you could look through a tube and see things more clearly at a distance?

History credits Hans Lippershey with inventing the telescope in 1608 and Galileo with improving it.

I do not know where Lippershey got the idea.

What I do know is that the Talmud (ca. 500 CE) states that "Rabban Gamliel had a tube through which he could see at a distance of two thousand cubits across the land and a corresponding distance across the sea" (Talmud Eruvin 43b). (Rabban Gamliel was a leading sage ca. 1st Century CE.)

(Excerpted and adapted from the Amazing Jewish-Fact-a-Day Calendar, an app for iphone, ipad and ipod.)


Question #3 - How does this amazing Jewish fact change your perspective?


Shabbat Shalom

PS - Our Spring 2011 newsletter was published this week. Download it here.
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PPS - Here's a private-content video you won't find if you search youtube:


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