A plane hit a patch of severe turbulence and the passengers were holding on tight as it rocked and reeled through the night. A little old lady turned to a minister who was sitting behind her and said, "You're a man of God. Can't you do something about this?"
He replied, "Sorry, I can't. I'm in sales, not management."
Cecilia PayneDied 7 Dec 1979 at age 79 (born 10 May 1900).Cecilia Helena Payne-Gaposchkin was an English-American astronomer who was the first to apply laws of atomic physics to the study of the temperature and density of stellar bodies, and the first to conclude that hydrogen and helium are the two most common elements in the universe. During the 1920s, the accepted explanation of the Sun's composition was a calculation of around 65% iron and 35% hydrogen. At Harvard University, in her doctoral thesis (1925), Payne claimed that the sun's spectrum was consistent with another solution: 99% hydrogen with helium, and just 1% iron. She had difficulty persuading her superiors to take her work seriously. It was another 20 years before Payne's original claim was confirmed, by Fred Hoyle. |
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