The Elephant in the Room

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The Elephant in the Room

• Philip Edwards
• (ISAS 1994-2006)
• (ATNF 2006-)

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HirabayashiakaHirax
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Secret agent?
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The thrash metal band Hirax was formed in
California in 1984
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The Language Instinct

• The elephants trunk is six feet long and one
  foot thick and contains sixty thousand muscles.
  Elephants are the only living animals that
  possess this extraordinary organ. Their closest
  living terrestrial relative is the hyrax, a
  mammal that you would probably not be able to
  tell from a large guinea pig.
• 
  Steven Pinker

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HyraxinSagamihara!
Several hyrax live in the small Zoo in
Sagamihara Park, easily located by the optical
pulsar visible from Hiraxs old offices.
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The word "rabbit, or "hare" was used instead of
"hyrax" many times in some earlier English
Bible translations. European translators of
those times had no knowledge of the hyrax, and
therefore no name for them. There are
references to hyraxes in the Old Testament.
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Spain

• Early Phoenician navigators mistook the rabbits
  of the Iberian Peninsula for hyraxes (Hebrew
  Shaphan) hence they named it I-Shapan-im,
  meaning "land of the hyraxes", which possibly
  became the Latin word "Hispania", the root of
  Spain's modern Spanish name España and the
  English name Spain.

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Blind monks examining an elephant", an 1888
ukiyo-e print by Hanabusa Itcho.
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• The blind man who feels a leg says the elephant
  is like a pillar
• the one who feels the tail says the elephant is
  like a rope
• the one who feels the trunk says the elephant is
  like a tree branch
• the one who feels the belly says the elephant is
  like a wall and
• the one who feels the tusk says the elephant is
  like a solid pipe.
• and the one who feels the ear says the elephant
  is like a hand fan

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Kanreki
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Elephants in Sagamihara!
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Zou-san

• Zou-san, zou-san
• O-hana ga nagai no ne
• Sou-yo kaa-san mo nagai no yo

• Little elephant, little elephant
• You have a long, long nose
• Yes, sir, my mother has a long nose too

Memorably performed by the JPL space-VLBI choir
in the mid-1990s
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Elephants in Japan
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Elephants in India
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Elephants, elephants everywhere!
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Sumo
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Kendo
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The Elephants Trunk Nebula (IC 1396)
APOD 010720
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VSOP News 115 (19 May 2000)

• SAGAMIHARA
• Sagamihara city, in Kanagawa prefecture, is
  home to the main campus of the Institute of Space
  and Astronautical Science (ISAS). The
  astronomical links with the city were
  commemorated recently with minor planet (7435)
  being named "Sagamihara". The minor planet was
  discovered by K. Endate and K. Watanabe in 1994.
  The official citation for the naming of the minor
  planet notes ISAS's presence in the city and
  specifically mentions HALCA as being an ISAS
  satellite.
• although (6390) bears the name Hirabayashi,
  there is no connection to the VSOP Project
  Scientist!

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VSOP News no. 20 (15 Sep 1995)

• A NEW CLASS OF RADIO SOURCE?
• The award for best joke of the SWG meeting
  goes to Esko Valtaoja. In describing the pitfalls
  of conducting a survey program without
  ground-based monitoring support, Esko gave the
  illustration of a new class of radio sources
  waiting to be discovered. These, he suggested,
  could be called HIghly RAdiating unknown sources
  -- HIRAXes!

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Conclusions

• Life is a journey into the unknown

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Conclusions

• Life is a journey into the unknown
• And in trying to make sense of the unknown

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Conclusions

• Life is a journey into the unknown
• And in trying to make sense of the unknown
• And in randomly encountering elephants