Billy Pettit real disappointment

[Sridhar Ayengar]

woodelf wrote:
>> That it wouldn't matter where you stood, because you'd have to bring 
>> the end of the lever down from someplace in the sky impossible to reach.
> 
> The law still holds regardless. That was the whole point of the
> saying -- did any body remember that?

You might be able to move it by a nanometer.  The solar wind might move 
it more.  We're just too puny to have much of an effect.  That was the 
conclusion we came to.

> PS. The world was a whole lot smaller then too, ask Atlas about that
> some time.

No it wasn't.  Ask Eratosthenes.  8-)

Eratosthenes and Archimedes lived at the same time.  The one who had 
drastically underestimated the size of the Earth was Pythagoras, 300 
years earlier.

Peace...  Sridhar