Spiral Path's Blog

I believe I was about 7 years old when my older twin brothers came home from school one day and, in order to show off with their newly acquired physics knowledge, presented me with my first science puzzle: More than 2000 years ago, Archimedes, the Greek physicist and mathematician, was supposed to have said something like "Give me a fixed point to stand on and a long enough pole and I can move the Earth out of its regular track". I was stunned! What? Move the planet? - At first I thought my brothers were just teasing me, as they always did, just to prove how much smarter they were than their stupid little sister. I just didn't believe them and sulked.

But then I decided to do my own research. Our family - my father, a civil servant, my mother, a former teacher, and my three older siblings (I also had a sister who was 9 years my senior) - lived at that time in a tidy little townhouse in the suburbs of Vienna, Austria. We also had an adjoining small garden which my father had turned in a few short years into a plentiful orchard. And I so loved to climb up into one of the trees, find a comfortable spot to sit on and read my books while plucking the fruit from the branches all around me. - We were not rich, just comfortable, and most of our furniture had been inherited from childless aunts and uncles. Our most cherished possessions were a grand piano which took up a quarter of our living room (and under which I had a perfect hiding place for myself and all my dolls, especially when visitors came) and a large glass-covered wooden cabinet overflowing with books. A much treasured and many volumes comprising encyclopedia soon rewarded my research efforts: Yep, my brothers had not been kidding me for a change. They were right, Archimedes did say that the Earth could be moved. But how?

This puzzle remained with me for the rest of my life - and, in a way, also determined the path I took when I studied the natural sciences.

Well, I am happy to report that, after 70 years, I can finally say that I now have found the answer to the question I had asked myself so long ago. With my SG-gravity I discovered Archimedes' "fixed" point he wanted to stand on and the "long-enough pole" he needed to demonstrate his law of leverage and lift the Earth out of its hinges. Or rather just move mountains in a succession of earthquakes from seafloor level to the dizzying heights of, for eaxample, the peaks of the Himalayas.

Thanks, Archimedes, for helping me find the solution to earthquake prediction.