Even younger offspring get older.

Today is one of those days. The younger Free-Ride offspring is a prime number again. (Indeed, she's a prime number that is the sum of the two prime numbers before it.) The earth has orbited the sun (or vice versa, for my Ptolemaic readers) five times since she arrived on the scene.

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As best I remember, this is not how she arrived. However, I don't think she'd have any hesistation about climbing into a space suit and doing some interplanetary travel at this point. (You'll notice, up in the right, all the planets and the sun are there.)

Also, it would seem she's into multiplication. Kids today.

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Tell your young offspring the collective intelligence of the next generation of the scientific community (of whom I am attempting to be a representative) wishes him/her/it a very happy birthday.

2 trivial comments:
1) I wish you hadn't said "5". It would have been interesting to see how many readers could figure it out.
2) Has she included Pluto - or not?

What's so good is that 3 X 10 = 30.

By Fred Gray (not verified) on 16 May 2006 #permalink

H-A-P-P-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y!!!!

Can I go into space with you? ;-)

By Super Sally (not verified) on 16 May 2006 #permalink

OK, in the geocentric system, you've got the Sun orbiting the Earth one full orbit per year (traveling along the Ecliptic, roughly the Zodiac belt, about 1 degree of the circle per day). Meanwhile, we have night and day because the Celestial Sphere, in which you can think of the Ecliptic as sort of a grooved track set at a 23 degree slant from the Celestial Equator, making a full spin on its axis every 24 hours -- it sort of sweeps that Sun, creeping through the Ecliptic, around with it. (This "Two Sphere Universe" can be used to give rather nice explanations for where the Sun will be at noon on equinoces and solstices.)

Also, with kids growing as fast as they do, sometimes even the Ptolemaic years feel like Ptolemaic days.

I should learn to read the whole post before doing complicated prime number calculations. (Well, it turned out to be easy once I realized it had to be even+odd=odd and there is only one prime number, but reading the next sentence was still faster...)