Richard Anthony Proctor (23 March 1837 – 12 September 1888) was an English astronomer. He is best remembered for having produced one of the earliest maps of Mars in 1867 from 27 drawings by the English observer William Rutter Dawes. His map was later superseded by those of Giovanni Schiaparelli and Eugène Antoniadi and his nomenclature was dropped (for instance, his "Kaiser Sea" became Syrtis Major Planum).
He used old drawings of Mars dating back to 1666 to try to determine the sidereal day of Mars. His final estimate, in 1873, was 24h 37m 22.713s, very close to the modern value of 24h 37m 22.663s.[1][2][3]
The crater Proctor on Mars is named after him.
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The Fermi Paradox — Where Are All The Aliens? (1/2)
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Something To Think About ...
Transcription
Are we the only living thing in the entire universe? The observable universe is about 90,000,000,000 light years in diameter. There are at least 1,000,000,000 galaxies Each with 100,000,000,000 to 1,000,000,000,000 stars. Recently, we've learned that planets are very common too And there are probably trillions and trillions of habitable planets in the universe Which means there should be lot of opportunities for life to develop and exist, right? But where is it? Shouldn't the universe be teeming with spaceships? Let's take a step back. Even if there are aliens civilisations in other galaxies, there is no way we'll ever know about them. Basically, everything outside of our direct galactic neighborhood, the so called, "Local Group" is pretty much out of our reach forever, because of the expension of the universe. Even if we had really fast spaceships it would literally take billions of years to reach these places, travelling throught the emptiest areas in the universe. So, let's focus on the Milky Way. The Milky Way is our own galaxy, it consists of up to 4 hundred billions stars. That's a lot of stars, roughly 10 thousands for every grain of sand on earth. There are about 20 billions sun-like stars in the Milky Way and estimates suggest that a fivth of them have an earth-sized planet in its habitable zone, the area with conditions that enable life to exist. If only 0.1% of those planets harbored life, there would be 1 million planets with life in the Milky Way. But wait, there's more. The Milky Way is about 13 billion years old. In the beginning, it would not have been a good place for life because things exploded a lot, but after 1 to 2 billion years, the first habitable planets were born. Earth is only 4 billions years old, so there have probably been trillions of chances for life to develop on other planets in the past. If only a single one of them had developed into a space travelling super civilization we would have noticed by now. What would such a civilization look like? There are 3 categories. A Type 1 civilization would be able to access the whole energy available on its planet. In case you are wondering, we are currently around 0.73 on the scale and we should reach Type 1 sometime in the couple hundred of years. Type II would be a civilization capable of harnessing all of the energy of its home star. This would require some serious science fiction, but it is doable in principle. Concepts like the Dyson sphere, a giant complex surrounding the Sun would be conceivable. Type III is the civilization that basically controls its whole galaxy and its energy an alien race this advanced would probably be godlike to us. But why should we be able to see such an alien civilization in the first place? If we were to build generations of spaceships that could sustain a population for around one thousand years we could colonize the galaxy in 2 million years. Sounds like a long time, but remember, the Milky Way is huge. So, if it takes a couple of million years to colonize the entire galaxy and there are possibly millions if not billions of planets that sustain life in the Milky Way and these other life forms have had considerably more time than we've had, then where are all the aliens? This is the Fermi Paradox, and nobody has an answer to it But we do have some ideas. Let's talk about filters. A filter in this context represents a barrier that is really hard for life to overcome. They come in various degrees of scary. One: There are Great Filters and we've passed them. Maybe it is way harder for complex life to develop than we think. The process allowing life to begin hasn't yet been completely figured out and the conditions required may be really complicated. Maybe in the past the Universe was way more hostile, and only recently things have cooled down to make complex life possible This would also mean that we may be unique, or at least one of the first, if not the first civilization in the entire Universe. Two: There are Great Filters and they are ahead of us. This one would be really really bad. Maybe life on our level exists everywhere in the Universe but it gets destroyed when it reaches a certain point, a point that lies ahead of us. For example, awesome future technology exists, but when activated, it destroys the planet. The last words of every advanced civilization would be "This new device will solve all of our problems once I push this button." If this is true, then we are closer to the end than to the beginning of human existence. Or maybe there is an ancient Type III civilization that monitors the Universe and once a civilization is advanced enough it gets eliminated, in an instant. Maybe there is something out there that it would be better not to discover. There is no way for us to know. One final thought: maybe we are alone. Right now, we have no evidence that there's any life besides us. Nothing. The Universe appears to be empty and dead. No one sending us messages no one answering our calls. We may be completely alone, trapped on a tiny moist mud ball in an eternal Universe. Does that thought scare you? If it does, you are having the correct emotional reaction. If we let life on this planet die, perhaps there would be no life left in the Universe. Life would be gone, maybe forever. If this is the case, we just have to venture to the stars and become the first Type III civilization to keep the delicate flame of life existing and to spread it until the Universe breathes its final breath and vanishes into oblivion. The Universe is too beautiful not to be experienced by someone. This video was made posible by your support. It takes at least 100 hours to make one of our videos, and thanks to your contributions on Patreon we are slowly able to do more and more of them. If you want to help us out and get your own personal bird for example, check out the Patreon page.
Biography
Richard Proctor's father died in 1850 and his mother attended to his education. He was sent to King's College London and subsequently earned a scholarship at St John's College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1860 as 23rd wrangler.[4]
Proctor then read for the bar, but turned to astronomy and authorship instead, and in 1865 published an article on the Colours of Double Stars in the Cornhill Magazine. His first book Saturn and its System was published in the same year, at his own expense. This work contains an elaborate account of the phenomena presented by the planet; but although favourably received by astronomers, it had no great sale. He intended to follow it up with similar treatises on Mars, Jupiter, Sun, Moon, comets and meteors, stars, and nebulae, and had in fact commenced a monograph on Mars, when the failure of a New Zealand bank deprived him of an independence which would have enabled him to carry out his scheme without anxiety as to its commercial success or failure.
Being thus obliged to depend upon his writings for the support of his family, and having learned by the fate of his Saturn and its System that the general public are not attracted by works requiring arduous study, he cultivated a more popular style. He wrote for a number of periodicals; and although he has stated that he would at this time willingly have turned to stone-breaking on the roads, or any other form of hard and honest but unscientific labour, if a modest competence had been offered him in any such direction, he attained a high degree of popularity, and his numerous works had a wide influence in familiarising the public with the main facts of astronomy.
Proctor's earlier efforts were not always successful. His Handbook of the Stars (1866) was refused by Messrs Longmans and Messrs Macmillan, but being privately printed, it sold fairly well. For his Half-Hours with the Telescope (1868), which eventually reached a 20th edition, he received originally £25 from Messrs Hardwick. Although teaching was uncongenial to him he took pupils in mathematics, and held for a time the position of mathematical coach for Woolwich and Sandhurst.
Proctor's literary standing meantime improved, and he became a regular contributor to The Intellectual Observer, Chamber's Journal and the Popular Science Review. In 1870 appeared his Other Worlds Than Ours,[5] in which he discussed the question of the plurality of worlds in the light of new facts. This was followed by a long series of popular treatises in rapid succession, amongst the more important of which are Light Science for Leisure Hours and The Sun (1871); The Orbs around Us and Essays on Astronomy (1872); The Expanse of Heaven, The Moon and The Borderland of Science (1873); The Universe and the Coming Transits and Transits of Venus (1874); Our Place among Infinities (1875); Myths and Marvels of Astronomy (1877); The Universe of Stars (1878); Flowers of the Sky (1879); The Poetry of Astronomy (1880); Easy Star Lessons and Familiar Science Studies (1882); Mysteries of Time and Space (1883) - Digital Copy; "The Great Pyramid" (1883) - Digital Copy; The Universe of Suns (1884); The Seasons (1885); Other Suns than Ours and Half-Hours with the Stars (1887).
In 1881 Proctor founded Knowledge, a popular weekly magazine of science (converted into a monthly in 1885), which had a considerable circulation. In it he wrote on a great variety of subjects, including chess and whist.
Proctor was also the author of the articles on astronomy in the American Cyclopaedia and the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and was well known as a popular lecturer on astronomy in England, America and Australia.
Proctor was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1866. He became honorary secretary in 1872, and contributed eighty-three separate papers to its Monthly Notices. Of these the more noteworthy dealt with the distribution of stars, star clusters and nebulae, and the construction of the sidereal universe. He was an expert in all that related to map-drawing, and published two star-atlases. A chart on an isographic projection, exhibiting all the stars contained in the Bonner Durchmusterung, was designed to show the laws according to which the stars down to the 9–10th magnitude are distributed over the northern heavens. His Theoretical Considerations respecting the Corona (Monthly Notices, xxxi. 184, 254) also deserve mention, as well as his discussions of the rotation of Mars, by which be deduced its period with a probable error of 0.005. He also vigorously criticised the official arrangements for observing the transits of Venus of 1874 and 1882. He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1874.[6]
Proctor's largest and most ambitious work, Old and New Astronomy, left unfinished at his death, was completed by Arthur Cowper Ranyard and published in 1892[7] with a second edition in 1895.[8] He settled in America some time after his second marriage in 1881, and died of yellow fever at New York City on 12 September 1888. A monument was later erected in his memory.[9] Mary Proctor, his daughter by his first marriage, became an astronomer and a successful lecturer and writer.
References
- ^ Proctor, Richard A. (1867). "A New Determination of the Diurnal Rotation of the Planet Mars". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 27 (9): 309–312. Bibcode:1867MNRAS..27..309P. doi:10.1093/mnras/27.9.309.
- ^ Proctor, Richard A. (1867). "Rotation of Mars". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 28 (28): 37–39.
- ^ Proctor, Richard A. (1867). "The Rotation-period of Mars". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 33 (9): 552–558. Bibcode:1873MNRAS..33..552P. doi:10.1093/mnras/33.9.552.
- ^ "Proctor, Richard Anthony (PRCR856RA)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ Richard A. Proctor: Other worlds than ours : the plurality of worlds studied under the light of recent scientific researches. London : Longmans, Green, 1870. (Digital Copy)
- ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 5 May 2021.
- ^ Old and new astronomy by Richard A. Proctor, completed by A. Cowper Ranyard. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1892.
- ^ "Review of Old and New Astronomy by R. A. Proctor, 1895". The Quarterly Journal. 188: 113–138. July 1898.
- ^ Holden, E. S. (1893). "Monument to the Late Richard Proctor". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. 5 (32): 222. Bibcode:1893PASP....5Q.222.. doi:10.1086/120721.
Further reading
- Noble, W. (1888). "Obituary: Richard A. Proctor". The Observatory. 11: 366–388. Bibcode:1888Obs....11..366N.
- Willard, Charlotte R. (1894). "Richard A. Proctor". Popular Astronomy. 1 (March): 319–321.
- "Obituary". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 49 (2): 164–168. 1889. Bibcode:1889MNRAS..49..164.. doi:10.1093/mnras/49.4.164.
External links
Works by or about Richard Anthony Proctor at Wikisource- Works by Richard A. Proctor at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Richard A. Proctor at Internet Archive
- Works by Richard A. Proctor at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery[permanent dead link]
- Scientific American, "The Life and Death of a World", 09 October 1880, p.234
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Proctor, Richard Anthony". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 420–421.
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This page was last edited on 8 April 2024, at 13:40