[ExI] Arthur C. Clarke dies

[Damien Broderick]

At 06:48 PM 3/29/2008 -0400, JKC, no e, wrote:

>I'm sure that Arthur would be amused at the
>coincidence that on the very day he died for the first time in human
>history a Gamma Ray burst occurred that was so bright that a human
>being could detect it with his naked eye, something that occurred
>halfway across the universe 8 billion years ago. It is by far the
>most distant object a human being could see with his naked eye.
>Nobody, absolutely nobody, could have stage managed
>Arthur C. Clarke's death more skillfully. I am impressed.

Denis Overbye was, too, in the NYT on Tuesday:

<In the kind of coincidence that would have 
delighted Clarke and set his fictive powers 
going, a new star appeared briefly on Wednesday 
morning, visible to the naked eye, in the 
constellation Boötes. It was the remains of a 
cataclysmic explosion, a gamma-ray burst, that 
must have torched a galaxy seven billion 
light-years away, around the curve of the cosmos, as Clarke might have put it.

Nobody knows if there could have been somebody or 
something living there, when the universe was 
half its present age. When I heard about it I 
couldn’t help thinking about Clarke’s Jesuit and 
the star of Bethlehem. Whoever or whatever was there now belongs to the ages.

Darkness has now reclaimed that spot in the sky.>

Great minds, and all... :)

Damien Broderick