"Factoids," "Kirt's Cogitations," and
"Tech Topics Smorgasbord"
are all manifestations of my rantings on various subjects relevant (usually) to
the overall RF Cafe theme. All may be accessed on these pages:
We can directly observe the
composition of the rings of Saturn - 850 million miles away - but we still can't
figure out what lies at the center of our Earth - a mere 4,000 miles away! Traditional
theory suggests it is a solid core of nickel-iron, surrounded by a liquid region
of iron, nickel, and a mix of sulfur, oxygen and silicon. A more avant-garde postulate
claims a literal nuclear reactor core of uranium and plutonium, surrounded by a
molten core of iron, sulfur and silicon. Both dynamo models account handily for
the Earth's magnetic field - including the cyclic variations. The greatest hole
ever drilled, on Russia's Kola Peninsula, is only 7.5 miles deep, or less than 0.2%
of the way to the center. In geophysicist Herndon's words, "That's roughly comparable
to learning about Alaska by driving from St. Petersburg, FL to Tampa."
RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling
2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed
formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit
design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at
the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps
while typing up your telephone line, and a nice lady's voice announced "You've Got
Mail" when a new message arrived...
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