Reply #28: Alexander Abian, internet legend

[bananas]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Abian

Alexander Abian (January 1, 1923 – July 1999) was an American mathematician who taught for many years at Iowa State University but who became an Internet legend for his incessant and frequently bizarre posts to various Usenet newsgroups.

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Abian gained a degree of international notoriety for his claim that blowing up the Moon would solve virtually every problem of human existence. He made this claim in 1991 in a campus newspaper.<1> Stating that a moonless Earth wouldn't wobble, eliminating both the seasons and its associated events like heat waves, snowstorms and hurricanes. Refutations were given toward that idea by NASA saying that part of the exploded Moon would come back as a meteorite impacting the Earth and causing sufficient damage to extinguish all life, while restoring the seasons in the process. Just before he died, Abian said that "Those critics who say 'Dismiss Abian's ideas' are very close to those who dismissed Galileo".<2> This claim and others, made in thousands of UseNet posts during the last portion of his life, gained Abian mention (not entirely favorable) and even interviews in such publications as Omni, People, and The Wall Street Journal.<3>

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