Wednesday 21 October 2015

(451) Patientia, reasonable doubt

(451) Patientia is a main belt asteroid discovered in December of 1899.

It has a perihelion of 2.82 AU and an aphelion of 3.29 AU. The semimajor axis is at 3.06 AU. It has an orbital period of 5 years and 127 days. It has an inclination of 15.2º.
It has a diameter of about 225 km.

There are photometric observations between the years 1969 and 2003. There were star occultations in June of 1999, October of 2010, February of 2013 and May of 2015.


Orbital resonance:
11:2 with Saturno (99.8%)
20:9 with Júpiter (99.7%)
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1:1 with Interamnia (99.9%)



Word in Latín

Patientia is a word in Latin that means patience:
  1. The bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain without complaint, loss of temper, or anger.
  2. An ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay.
  3. Quiet, steady perseverance; even-tempered care; diligence.

(451) Patientia was discovered a year after the release of the classic story of Henry James about ghosts: "The Turn of the Screw" (1898).


(451) Patientia is related with ambiguous situations in which initially it is not reasonable to commit to any of the possible hypothesis, because there is not enough information, or because the various competing hypotheses are very balanced, like in the movies "K-Pax"(2001), "Darbareye Elly" (2009) and "Stone" (2010). 

"What's really interesting about the film to me, is how do you respond to an act like this? And it's a movie that says you respond by not rushing headlong into war; you don't do a knee-jerk violent reaction. You take the time to get the facts, get the information and then you deal with it." (Phil Alden Robinson, director of the movie "The Sum of All Fears", 2002)

Unlike zen riddles, which are ideally designed, the situations related with (451) Patientia refer to real-life situations were it is finally possible to find a solution to the enigma, even though it may cost a lot of effort or take a long time.

"Scooby Doo" (1969)