Twice a year
once for Yin
and once for Yang
We pass the Balancing Point
and hover there for just a moment
hanging in the Black
perfectly perpendicular
aligned with Our Star
Day lasts as long as Night
and Night no longer than Day
We pass this point
and balance on this edge
just as We begin to explode with verdant Life
and then again We balance here
at the other side of Our Revolution
just as We begin to grow cold and die
These Equal Nights are the doorways to Our Two Worlds
light and dark
Life and Death
Yin and Yang
back and forth from one extreme to the other
in Our Endless Revolutions
but always passing through the same
points of Perfect Balance
in one door and out the other
We live and die all the while
swaying to this Eternal Rhythm
and it shapes us
molds us into Who We Are
What We Have Become
And so We hold these Equal Nights as Sacred
Special
Holy
or Magickal
examples of those brief ineffable moments
of Alignment
and Balance
and Perfection
these Equal Nights guide us to seek those moments
within Ourselves
and without
We feel this rhythm
and We see this balance
return again and again
We see it in Our World
and We feel it within Our Selves
and We strive to achieve that perfection
And so do We accomplish
all Our many
Great Things
Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label astronomy. Show all posts
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Equal Night...
Friday, February 15, 2013
KIC1013...
I gave Her a star
my Valentine
my Forever Valentine
designation K.I.C.-
ten-thirteen
now bears Her name
a Kepler star
a binary star
so
truthfully
two stars
locked Together
Forever
each attracted to
and repelled by
the other's force
of Gravity
Two immense
uncontrolled
Nuclear Explosions
so gigantic
so astronomically enormous
that their own weight
holds them in place
and keeps them from growing
any larger
Chaos poised
in perfect Balance
these two fireballs
right now
are spinning around each other
in the cold vacuum of deep
extrastellar space
each throwing off enough Heat
and Light
to brighten and warm
a dozen worlds
they spin around each other
Burning
locked together
Dancing
through the void
They have been dancing for
a billion years
and they will keep dancing
for a billion more
They will still be dancing
and burning
together
lighting the dark
long after Our World
has turned to dust
and blown away
and there is no one left
to remember them
But for now
we call them by Her names
And it's not enough
it will never be enough
there's so much more I could do
so much more I must do
But for now
I call them by Her names
so we can look up at night
and see ourselves there
on fire in the void
dancing forever
And so I call them by Her names
my Valentine
my Forever Valentine
Thursday, December 13, 2012
By Jove...
I saw Jupiter for the first time recently.
My old elementary school, that I happen to live just a few blocks away from now, has a pretty famous science center attached to it, called the Earth and Space Science Lab. When I was a kid, they had the only planetarium in the state. Now they've moved to their own building on campus, that feels almost as big as the rest of the school all by itself, and they've added an observatory, among other educational attractions. They have shows at the planetarium on a fairly regular basis, and they're cheap, and I'm into astronomy, and it's only a couple blocks from my house, so I sometimes go to these shows, even though the median age in the room is usually about nine.
I don't know what the fuck I expected - it's an elementary school, for fuck's sake. But, for some reason, I assumed that the shows they put on outside of school hours would attract an older crowd, or at least feature content aimed above a fifth-grade level. And when I went to my first show, and realized I was the only adult there who hadn't brought a child with them, I felt, once again, like a complete fucking weirdo. And the whole time, I felt like all the parents were looking at me sideways, like I was standing outside a windowless white van in a clown costume with one hand full of balloons and the other full of roofies. It was mortifying. But then I thought, fuck them, I'm hear for the Science! Then the show turned out to contain about as much educational science information as an episode of Ancient Aliens, and I was back to feeling like the clown with the van and the collection of baby teeth again. But, still, I continue to go to these things. I think just because I still geek out about being in the planetarium, just like I did when I was in school there. And so I still have fun, even if I don't learn very much; and I try to ignore the parents, and their screaming kids.
Anyways, I enjoy it so much (despite myself) that I decided to volunteer there. They're always advertising that they need volunteers, and it's so nearby, and I could convince myself I was doing a good deed, and it beats washing dishes at the soup kitchen across the street. Plus, I thought it'd be a good way to get to see the shows without having to buy a ticket. (It's not like I'm a cheapskate or anything; tickets are only $5. It's just that their process for purchasing tickets was a bit of a wonky pain-in-the-ass, and I thought it'd be better to do it this way, by doing a good deed, and earning my way into the show, rather than just handing over $5. And also, not for nothing, but now I don't have to feel like Beelzebozo the Hellclown anymore, because I'm not just the creepy guy hanging out by himself with all the families and children - I work there, so it's okay.)
And it turns out that my favorite perk of volunteering there, is that I get to go out to the observatory and look through their incredibly powerful telescope.
Jupiter has been plainly visible to the naked eye for a couple of months now. (It's nearly impossible to miss - it's the brightest object in the night sky that isn't the Moon.) And, as is usually the case during these times when it is visible, I've often found myself standing outside, staring up at it. This image of Jupiter as a bright, white point in the night sky is therefore very familiar to me. I often wonder at just how huge that object must be, to be that far away and still be that bright! (Answer: Jupiter is the 2nd most massive object in the solar system, next to the Sun. In fact, if you took every other object in the solar system - every planet, every comet, every asteroid, every Kuiper Belt object - and crushed them all together into one giant ball of stuff, that giant ball would still be less massive than Jupiter! It is literally more massive than the rest of the solar system, combined. That is fucking HUGE.) And I've seen countless pictures of Jupiter before. We all have. The various colored layers of swirling gas, the giant red spot. It's an iconic image.
But this time was different.
I was working in Critter Cove, explaining the weird lives of sea urchins and brittle starfish to six-year-old's, when an intern came in and told me that they had the observatory trained on Jupiter. I almost dropped the urchin I'd been holding. Seeing my reaction, the intern laughed and told me that she'd mind the exhibits while I ran out to have a look. I tried not to knock down any children on my way out of the building, but looking back, I can't guarantee to a certainty that I succeeded in that endeavor.
Shivering in the cold, I leaned into the eyepiece, and saw Jupiter, really saw it, for the first time.
It was as big as a half-dollar. And I could see all of the stripes of layered gas swirling across it. (The red spot was apparently on the far side, out of view.) I could see the four Galilean moons - Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - lined up in a perfectly straight line to the right of it, on Jupiter's orbital plane. It was a bit blurry, but still, there was no mistaking it: that was clearly Jupiter. And not just an image of Jupiter, but the real thing! Live and in-person! I was seeing it, for real, as it was right then, in real-time! (Or, at least, as it was about forty minutes earlier. As I said, it's really far away, and so it takes the light a while to reach us. Which only made the fact that it was the size of a half-dollar and that I could make out so much detail as to actually see each individual layered stripe just that much more impressive!)
It was like meeting a celebrity in-person; you're so intimately familiar with them as this 2-D image inside the box in your living room, that when you suddenly find yourself face-to-face with them as a living, three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood person, there's this strange disconnect in your brain, and things feel just slightly un-real. And that's how I felt peering through that telescope at the 40-minute-old sight of the greatest planet in our system, the planet that more than any other outside of our own is responsible for our existence. (Without Jupiter's massive gravity-well situated smack-dab in the middle of the solar system, Earth would be constantly bombarded by comets and asteroids, making it a relatively unstable environment, and therefore a very unlikely place for life to have been able to evolve.)
I lifted my head away from the telescope, and looked out the hole in the roof at the bright point of light in the sky that I had always believed was Jupiter. I had believed that because the Astronomers told me that was the case, and I chose to believe them; I had no reason not to. But now, I could see the telescope pointed straight at that point of light. And I looked back through the eyepiece, and I could see it, plain-as-day, in all of its massive, iconic glory, spinning there in outer space. It was real. From that moment on, it was real to me.
Before, I had only believed in Jupiter. But now I knew it.
Because I had seen it with my own eyes.
My old elementary school, that I happen to live just a few blocks away from now, has a pretty famous science center attached to it, called the Earth and Space Science Lab. When I was a kid, they had the only planetarium in the state. Now they've moved to their own building on campus, that feels almost as big as the rest of the school all by itself, and they've added an observatory, among other educational attractions. They have shows at the planetarium on a fairly regular basis, and they're cheap, and I'm into astronomy, and it's only a couple blocks from my house, so I sometimes go to these shows, even though the median age in the room is usually about nine.
I don't know what the fuck I expected - it's an elementary school, for fuck's sake. But, for some reason, I assumed that the shows they put on outside of school hours would attract an older crowd, or at least feature content aimed above a fifth-grade level. And when I went to my first show, and realized I was the only adult there who hadn't brought a child with them, I felt, once again, like a complete fucking weirdo. And the whole time, I felt like all the parents were looking at me sideways, like I was standing outside a windowless white van in a clown costume with one hand full of balloons and the other full of roofies. It was mortifying. But then I thought, fuck them, I'm hear for the Science! Then the show turned out to contain about as much educational science information as an episode of Ancient Aliens, and I was back to feeling like the clown with the van and the collection of baby teeth again. But, still, I continue to go to these things. I think just because I still geek out about being in the planetarium, just like I did when I was in school there. And so I still have fun, even if I don't learn very much; and I try to ignore the parents, and their screaming kids.
Anyways, I enjoy it so much (despite myself) that I decided to volunteer there. They're always advertising that they need volunteers, and it's so nearby, and I could convince myself I was doing a good deed, and it beats washing dishes at the soup kitchen across the street. Plus, I thought it'd be a good way to get to see the shows without having to buy a ticket. (It's not like I'm a cheapskate or anything; tickets are only $5. It's just that their process for purchasing tickets was a bit of a wonky pain-in-the-ass, and I thought it'd be better to do it this way, by doing a good deed, and earning my way into the show, rather than just handing over $5. And also, not for nothing, but now I don't have to feel like Beelzebozo the Hellclown anymore, because I'm not just the creepy guy hanging out by himself with all the families and children - I work there, so it's okay.)
And it turns out that my favorite perk of volunteering there, is that I get to go out to the observatory and look through their incredibly powerful telescope.
Jupiter has been plainly visible to the naked eye for a couple of months now. (It's nearly impossible to miss - it's the brightest object in the night sky that isn't the Moon.) And, as is usually the case during these times when it is visible, I've often found myself standing outside, staring up at it. This image of Jupiter as a bright, white point in the night sky is therefore very familiar to me. I often wonder at just how huge that object must be, to be that far away and still be that bright! (Answer: Jupiter is the 2nd most massive object in the solar system, next to the Sun. In fact, if you took every other object in the solar system - every planet, every comet, every asteroid, every Kuiper Belt object - and crushed them all together into one giant ball of stuff, that giant ball would still be less massive than Jupiter! It is literally more massive than the rest of the solar system, combined. That is fucking HUGE.) And I've seen countless pictures of Jupiter before. We all have. The various colored layers of swirling gas, the giant red spot. It's an iconic image.
But this time was different.
I was working in Critter Cove, explaining the weird lives of sea urchins and brittle starfish to six-year-old's, when an intern came in and told me that they had the observatory trained on Jupiter. I almost dropped the urchin I'd been holding. Seeing my reaction, the intern laughed and told me that she'd mind the exhibits while I ran out to have a look. I tried not to knock down any children on my way out of the building, but looking back, I can't guarantee to a certainty that I succeeded in that endeavor.
Shivering in the cold, I leaned into the eyepiece, and saw Jupiter, really saw it, for the first time.
It was as big as a half-dollar. And I could see all of the stripes of layered gas swirling across it. (The red spot was apparently on the far side, out of view.) I could see the four Galilean moons - Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto - lined up in a perfectly straight line to the right of it, on Jupiter's orbital plane. It was a bit blurry, but still, there was no mistaking it: that was clearly Jupiter. And not just an image of Jupiter, but the real thing! Live and in-person! I was seeing it, for real, as it was right then, in real-time! (Or, at least, as it was about forty minutes earlier. As I said, it's really far away, and so it takes the light a while to reach us. Which only made the fact that it was the size of a half-dollar and that I could make out so much detail as to actually see each individual layered stripe just that much more impressive!)
It was like meeting a celebrity in-person; you're so intimately familiar with them as this 2-D image inside the box in your living room, that when you suddenly find yourself face-to-face with them as a living, three-dimensional, flesh-and-blood person, there's this strange disconnect in your brain, and things feel just slightly un-real. And that's how I felt peering through that telescope at the 40-minute-old sight of the greatest planet in our system, the planet that more than any other outside of our own is responsible for our existence. (Without Jupiter's massive gravity-well situated smack-dab in the middle of the solar system, Earth would be constantly bombarded by comets and asteroids, making it a relatively unstable environment, and therefore a very unlikely place for life to have been able to evolve.)
I lifted my head away from the telescope, and looked out the hole in the roof at the bright point of light in the sky that I had always believed was Jupiter. I had believed that because the Astronomers told me that was the case, and I chose to believe them; I had no reason not to. But now, I could see the telescope pointed straight at that point of light. And I looked back through the eyepiece, and I could see it, plain-as-day, in all of its massive, iconic glory, spinning there in outer space. It was real. From that moment on, it was real to me.
Before, I had only believed in Jupiter. But now I knew it.
Because I had seen it with my own eyes.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
Sol 1...
I'm completely brain-dead from lack of sleep today, but still exhilarated by the events of last night/this morning. So incredible. Basically, this is me today:
http://xkcd.com/1091/
And also this:
http://sci-ence.org/touchdown/
Wow. Just... wow.
And now I get to spend the next several years looking forward to July 2015, when the New Horizons probe reaches Pluto!
http://xkcd.com/1091/
And also this:
http://sci-ence.org/touchdown/
Wow. Just... wow.
And now I get to spend the next several years looking forward to July 2015, when the New Horizons probe reaches Pluto!
Curiosity Landing...
It's closing in on 1a, and I've had my 5-hour shot, and my Amp energy drink, and I've still had a difficult time staying awake this late. (Damn, I feel old.) But I'm awake now, and I'm watching the live feed from Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity's Mission Control center at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. I've decided to live-blog the proceedings from now until I finally go to bed.
12:57a - MC crew conducting one of the last series of flight checks, each station announcing status of its particular system, one at a time.
1a - they're passing jars of peanuts around MC. Apparently a good luck tradition since the Ranger mission.
1:08a - approximately 20 mins. from landing, Curiosity ~3,400 miles from Mars, the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) team takes over and begins to run through their checklists, to make sure everything is ready to go.
1:12a - EDL has announced that pyros are enabled. Pyros are used to separate the stages of the landing vehicle.
1:15a - EDL has announced successful crew-stage separation. Curiosity now ~2,200 miles from Mars. In about a minute, Curiosity's EDL systems will "wake-up" in preparation for atmospheric entry.
1:19a - EDL has announced Curiosity is ~6mins from entry, and is broadcasting "heartbeat" tones; all is good, and as expected - nothing to do now but wait. Curiosity is currently traveling at ~5km/sec. (Remember, all this information is ~14mins old by the time it gets to us. So, by now, the rover is on the surface, one way or another.)
1:22a - MC crew just sitting around, waiting; all looking nervous, anxious, and excited. EDL announces ~2mins to entry, and Curiosity is on-target to land ~2.3meters from the target site.
1:25a - Curiosity now less than 400miles from Mars, and has successfully switched to the special antenna it will use for atmospheric entry.
1:26a - Curiosity has entered the atmosphere of Mars!
1:27a - MC receives word that Martian Odyssey satellite is tracking Curiosity's descent.
1:29a - Curiosity is decelerating, going ~Mach 2.4 and falling, preparing for parachute deployment.
1:30a - Parachute has deployed! Speed dropped to less than half of Mach 1 and falling. Preparing for sky-crane seperation.
1:32a - Sky-crane rockets have fired!
1:33a - TOUCHDOWN! Curiosity is safe on the surface of Mars!! MC crew goes wild - cheering, crying, hugs and high-fives all around! I haven't seen this many nerds crying since the end of Dark Knight Rises.
1:35a - the first image comes down from Curiosity! And, of course, I can't see it, because my internet connection cuts out all of a sudden.
1:44a - finally got my internet back and powered-up the feed again. Everyone at JPL MC still partying as the first images are coming down. Everything is covered in dust thrown up by the sky-crane's thrusters as it launched away from the rover after touchdown. First visible image is of Curiosity's wheel on the surface of Mars.
1:48a - everyone is settling back into their seats. Let's do some SCIENCE!
1:50a - crew going through post-landing checks, making sure everything is still intact and working after that fast and furious fall.
2:01a - post-landing poll almost finished. At that point, control will be shifted to the ground team, who will be responsible for the rover from this point on.
2:03a - well, I wanted to wait until the post-landing poll had been completed, and it was confirmed that everything was working satisfactorily, but NASA just cut their feed in preparation for the press conference in about twenty minutes, so I guess that's my cue to go to bed. What an amazing thing to have witnessed. I'm so glad I had a chance to be a part of it. We are absolutely incredible, truly. The things we can do!
I cannot wait to see what Curiosity can teach us.
12:57a - MC crew conducting one of the last series of flight checks, each station announcing status of its particular system, one at a time.
1a - they're passing jars of peanuts around MC. Apparently a good luck tradition since the Ranger mission.
1:08a - approximately 20 mins. from landing, Curiosity ~3,400 miles from Mars, the Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) team takes over and begins to run through their checklists, to make sure everything is ready to go.
1:12a - EDL has announced that pyros are enabled. Pyros are used to separate the stages of the landing vehicle.
1:15a - EDL has announced successful crew-stage separation. Curiosity now ~2,200 miles from Mars. In about a minute, Curiosity's EDL systems will "wake-up" in preparation for atmospheric entry.
1:19a - EDL has announced Curiosity is ~6mins from entry, and is broadcasting "heartbeat" tones; all is good, and as expected - nothing to do now but wait. Curiosity is currently traveling at ~5km/sec. (Remember, all this information is ~14mins old by the time it gets to us. So, by now, the rover is on the surface, one way or another.)
1:22a - MC crew just sitting around, waiting; all looking nervous, anxious, and excited. EDL announces ~2mins to entry, and Curiosity is on-target to land ~2.3meters from the target site.
1:25a - Curiosity now less than 400miles from Mars, and has successfully switched to the special antenna it will use for atmospheric entry.
1:26a - Curiosity has entered the atmosphere of Mars!
1:27a - MC receives word that Martian Odyssey satellite is tracking Curiosity's descent.
1:29a - Curiosity is decelerating, going ~Mach 2.4 and falling, preparing for parachute deployment.
1:30a - Parachute has deployed! Speed dropped to less than half of Mach 1 and falling. Preparing for sky-crane seperation.
1:32a - Sky-crane rockets have fired!
1:33a - TOUCHDOWN! Curiosity is safe on the surface of Mars!! MC crew goes wild - cheering, crying, hugs and high-fives all around! I haven't seen this many nerds crying since the end of Dark Knight Rises.
1:35a - the first image comes down from Curiosity! And, of course, I can't see it, because my internet connection cuts out all of a sudden.
1:44a - finally got my internet back and powered-up the feed again. Everyone at JPL MC still partying as the first images are coming down. Everything is covered in dust thrown up by the sky-crane's thrusters as it launched away from the rover after touchdown. First visible image is of Curiosity's wheel on the surface of Mars.
1:48a - everyone is settling back into their seats. Let's do some SCIENCE!
1:50a - crew going through post-landing checks, making sure everything is still intact and working after that fast and furious fall.
2:01a - post-landing poll almost finished. At that point, control will be shifted to the ground team, who will be responsible for the rover from this point on.
2:03a - well, I wanted to wait until the post-landing poll had been completed, and it was confirmed that everything was working satisfactorily, but NASA just cut their feed in preparation for the press conference in about twenty minutes, so I guess that's my cue to go to bed. What an amazing thing to have witnessed. I'm so glad I had a chance to be a part of it. We are absolutely incredible, truly. The things we can do!
I cannot wait to see what Curiosity can teach us.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Curiosity...
In just a hair under a week, humanity will have landed a third mobile robot on another planet.
On Monday, August 6th, at around 1:30a EST, the "mobile science lab" rover named Curiosity will land in Gale Crater, on Mars. Mars has very little atmosphere with which to slow down a robot the size of an SUV as it plummets to the surface from outer space, and so landing the rover has become a famously complicated endeavor dubbed, "The Seven Minutes of Terror." It is one of the single most complicated operations ever undertaken by Mankind, and it's an all-or-nothing deal; if any one thing goes wrong at any point, then the whole process will fail, and the rover will slam into Mars at several thousand mph, creating a new surface feature, Curiosity Crater. (Take five minutes and watch NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's video explanation of the Seven Minutes of Terror here. You'll be glad you did.)
If it lands safely (and it is far from guaranteed to do so - no one's ever done it before, and it is impossible to create on Earth the conditions necessary to accurately test it), then it will spend the next several years (dare I say, decades?) roaming about the planet Mars, searching for evidence that life has ever existed on the red planet.
I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how exactly to explain why this fascinates me so much. I think for starters, it is simply an amazing thing, when you stop and think about it. Purely amazing. We are controlling robots on Mars. How fucking unbelievable is that?! Robots on Mars. It sounds like a science-fiction story. And it is! Except, it's not fiction. It's fantasy, brought to life.
And I think it also has something to do with something I touched on yesterday. It is a "living" example of the incredible, awe-inspiring things that human-beings can accomplish. How can it be that a bunch of balding monkeys could so quickly push themselves to the point that we're firing off robots to explore other planets? It boggles the mind!
What a piece of work is Man! Look what we can do! So what if no one has ever done it before. That's precisely why it must be done! From the moment the first of us picked up a rock and used it to smash open a nut (or a skull), our single purpose has been to learn, to discover, and to do the things that have not yet been done. Every single one of us for the last 200,000 years has done our part to push forward that line of what-is-possible, even just a little bit, in our own way. It is what we do. It is all we do.
And, in just a hair under a week, we're going to do it again, in a big, big way. And I will no doubt find myself once again struck dumb with awe at the notion of all that we are capable of achieving. We are, each and every one of us, absolutely, fucking, amazing.
Just look what we can do.
On Monday, August 6th, at around 1:30a EST, the "mobile science lab" rover named Curiosity will land in Gale Crater, on Mars. Mars has very little atmosphere with which to slow down a robot the size of an SUV as it plummets to the surface from outer space, and so landing the rover has become a famously complicated endeavor dubbed, "The Seven Minutes of Terror." It is one of the single most complicated operations ever undertaken by Mankind, and it's an all-or-nothing deal; if any one thing goes wrong at any point, then the whole process will fail, and the rover will slam into Mars at several thousand mph, creating a new surface feature, Curiosity Crater. (Take five minutes and watch NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's video explanation of the Seven Minutes of Terror here. You'll be glad you did.)
If it lands safely (and it is far from guaranteed to do so - no one's ever done it before, and it is impossible to create on Earth the conditions necessary to accurately test it), then it will spend the next several years (dare I say, decades?) roaming about the planet Mars, searching for evidence that life has ever existed on the red planet.
I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how exactly to explain why this fascinates me so much. I think for starters, it is simply an amazing thing, when you stop and think about it. Purely amazing. We are controlling robots on Mars. How fucking unbelievable is that?! Robots on Mars. It sounds like a science-fiction story. And it is! Except, it's not fiction. It's fantasy, brought to life.
And I think it also has something to do with something I touched on yesterday. It is a "living" example of the incredible, awe-inspiring things that human-beings can accomplish. How can it be that a bunch of balding monkeys could so quickly push themselves to the point that we're firing off robots to explore other planets? It boggles the mind!
What a piece of work is Man! Look what we can do! So what if no one has ever done it before. That's precisely why it must be done! From the moment the first of us picked up a rock and used it to smash open a nut (or a skull), our single purpose has been to learn, to discover, and to do the things that have not yet been done. Every single one of us for the last 200,000 years has done our part to push forward that line of what-is-possible, even just a little bit, in our own way. It is what we do. It is all we do.
And, in just a hair under a week, we're going to do it again, in a big, big way. And I will no doubt find myself once again struck dumb with awe at the notion of all that we are capable of achieving. We are, each and every one of us, absolutely, fucking, amazing.
Just look what we can do.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Chutes and Ladders...
Just a brief synopsis of my day...
In preparation for the upgrade of my work PC (currently my only working computer, since my laptop is in the shop being repaired) from Windows XP to Windows 7 tomorrow, I had a bunch of files to backup, and one program (Quicken) to upgrade, since the version of Quicken that I've been using to manage my personal finances for the last ten years is not compatible with Win7.
I'd already bought the latest version of Quicken, so the upgrade installation should only take about an hour. Decided to do that first, only to discover that the CD-ROM drive on my PC is apparently broken. Luckily managed to scrounge a portable CD-ROM from the Help Desk that plugs in on a USB. After running for a half-hour, the installation program suddenly shuts down with an error message. Had to restart my computer and do it again; another half an hour, but this time it works. But when I start up the new program, it tells me that I can't covert data from my old version (2002) to the new version (2012). I'll need to download and install an intermediate version (2004), convert my data from 2002 to 2004, then re-install 2012, and then finally convert my data from 2004 to 2012. Ugh, ok. Luckily, they offered a free version of 2004 for download.
So, downloaded that, but it took me a half dozen tries to install it. Kept getting error messages, had to uninstall 2012 first (another half-hour), but it eventually worked, and I managed to convert my data to 2004 format. Then I spent another half-hour installing 2012, only to have it fail with the same error message again. Had to restart my machine (all told, had to restart my machine six times - at about ten minutes a piece, that's an hour I spent restarting my machine alone!), and install it again. Another half-hour, but this time it worked.
But then when I went to run it, it told me that I couldn't use my data because it was for a Deluxe version of Quicken. (Apparently the "free" version of 2004 that they offered was the Quicken 2004 Deluxe.) And so, in order to be able to use my data that I had just spent over four hours trying to convert, I would need to upgrade to the Deluxe version of 2012, at a cost of $60. I'd already spent $30 on the version I'd just spent all day trying to install! I then spent an hour on the phone with an argumentative gentleman from New Delhi at Quicken Customer Service trying to find a way around this, to no avail. Ended up having to upgrade to the Deluxe version, even though I didn't want it, just to save my data. Spent another half an hour installing it and converting my data (FINALLY!).
All told, I ended up spending almost seven hours of my day just trying to install this one fucking program. In my entire life using computers, I have never had this much difficulty installing a program, ever. Not even close.
And I couldn't use my computer for anything else the whole time it was installing (so that would be all day), so I still had all the rest of my work to do! But I was out of time, because I had to rush home to try and see the Transit of Venus.
Venus crosses the face of the Sun (from our point of view on Earth) twice about every hundred years or so. The last time it happened was in 2004. The next time it will happen, after today, is 2117. Literally, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And I am lucky to live within walking distance of an elementary school science lab/planetarium that had set up telescopes with special filters to allow the public to view the transit from 6-8p today.
But it was cloudy. From horizon to horizon, grey fluffballs of clouds covering the entire sky.
Anticipating a long wait, we brought along one of our two folding camp chairs. Removing it from it's carrying pouch, She discovered a hidden treasure inside. A sword, with a crystal handle, and a brass hilt. This sword had been an important magickal item to me for years. I used it in various Solar rituals. It had also been one of the treasures offered up in our wedding ceremony. I had lost it years ago. So long ago in fact, that it has been years since I even considered it lost; for many years now I have simply assumed that it was gone, and that I would never see it again.
And then, suddenly, as I'm waiting, desperately, for the Sun to appear from behind the curtain of clouds, so that I could watch this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of our closest neighbor planet floating across its immense, bright face, my long-lost Magickal Sun Sword simply appears out of nowhere. Almost as if by magick.
Surely, this was a sign that my luck was turning.
And, sure enough, with less than fifteen minutes before the Sun disappeared behind the horizon, there was a sudden break in the clouds! And She managed to secure us a spot near the front of the line!! (You have my eternal gratitude for this, Precious. You saved me from disappointment and disaster.)
And so, for about ten seconds, I was able to look through a telescope's eyepiece, and directly into the face of our Star. And there she was - Venus. A small, black dot, floating against a backdrop of the enormous, white circle of the Sun. I saw it with my own eyes.
I will remember those ten seconds for the rest of my life.
And then I got to drive all the way back to my office to finish up the file backup preparations for tomorrow that I hadn't had a chance to do earlier. And now I'm done, and it's time to go home. And by the time I get there, it will be past my bedtime.
But I don't even care.
Today was a great day.
In preparation for the upgrade of my work PC (currently my only working computer, since my laptop is in the shop being repaired) from Windows XP to Windows 7 tomorrow, I had a bunch of files to backup, and one program (Quicken) to upgrade, since the version of Quicken that I've been using to manage my personal finances for the last ten years is not compatible with Win7.
I'd already bought the latest version of Quicken, so the upgrade installation should only take about an hour. Decided to do that first, only to discover that the CD-ROM drive on my PC is apparently broken. Luckily managed to scrounge a portable CD-ROM from the Help Desk that plugs in on a USB. After running for a half-hour, the installation program suddenly shuts down with an error message. Had to restart my computer and do it again; another half an hour, but this time it works. But when I start up the new program, it tells me that I can't covert data from my old version (2002) to the new version (2012). I'll need to download and install an intermediate version (2004), convert my data from 2002 to 2004, then re-install 2012, and then finally convert my data from 2004 to 2012. Ugh, ok. Luckily, they offered a free version of 2004 for download.
So, downloaded that, but it took me a half dozen tries to install it. Kept getting error messages, had to uninstall 2012 first (another half-hour), but it eventually worked, and I managed to convert my data to 2004 format. Then I spent another half-hour installing 2012, only to have it fail with the same error message again. Had to restart my machine (all told, had to restart my machine six times - at about ten minutes a piece, that's an hour I spent restarting my machine alone!), and install it again. Another half-hour, but this time it worked.
But then when I went to run it, it told me that I couldn't use my data because it was for a Deluxe version of Quicken. (Apparently the "free" version of 2004 that they offered was the Quicken 2004 Deluxe.) And so, in order to be able to use my data that I had just spent over four hours trying to convert, I would need to upgrade to the Deluxe version of 2012, at a cost of $60. I'd already spent $30 on the version I'd just spent all day trying to install! I then spent an hour on the phone with an argumentative gentleman from New Delhi at Quicken Customer Service trying to find a way around this, to no avail. Ended up having to upgrade to the Deluxe version, even though I didn't want it, just to save my data. Spent another half an hour installing it and converting my data (FINALLY!).
All told, I ended up spending almost seven hours of my day just trying to install this one fucking program. In my entire life using computers, I have never had this much difficulty installing a program, ever. Not even close.
And I couldn't use my computer for anything else the whole time it was installing (so that would be all day), so I still had all the rest of my work to do! But I was out of time, because I had to rush home to try and see the Transit of Venus.
Venus crosses the face of the Sun (from our point of view on Earth) twice about every hundred years or so. The last time it happened was in 2004. The next time it will happen, after today, is 2117. Literally, a once-in-a-lifetime experience. And I am lucky to live within walking distance of an elementary school science lab/planetarium that had set up telescopes with special filters to allow the public to view the transit from 6-8p today.
But it was cloudy. From horizon to horizon, grey fluffballs of clouds covering the entire sky.
Anticipating a long wait, we brought along one of our two folding camp chairs. Removing it from it's carrying pouch, She discovered a hidden treasure inside. A sword, with a crystal handle, and a brass hilt. This sword had been an important magickal item to me for years. I used it in various Solar rituals. It had also been one of the treasures offered up in our wedding ceremony. I had lost it years ago. So long ago in fact, that it has been years since I even considered it lost; for many years now I have simply assumed that it was gone, and that I would never see it again.
And then, suddenly, as I'm waiting, desperately, for the Sun to appear from behind the curtain of clouds, so that I could watch this once-in-a-lifetime spectacle of our closest neighbor planet floating across its immense, bright face, my long-lost Magickal Sun Sword simply appears out of nowhere. Almost as if by magick.
Surely, this was a sign that my luck was turning.
And, sure enough, with less than fifteen minutes before the Sun disappeared behind the horizon, there was a sudden break in the clouds! And She managed to secure us a spot near the front of the line!! (You have my eternal gratitude for this, Precious. You saved me from disappointment and disaster.)
And so, for about ten seconds, I was able to look through a telescope's eyepiece, and directly into the face of our Star. And there she was - Venus. A small, black dot, floating against a backdrop of the enormous, white circle of the Sun. I saw it with my own eyes.
I will remember those ten seconds for the rest of my life.
And then I got to drive all the way back to my office to finish up the file backup preparations for tomorrow that I hadn't had a chance to do earlier. And now I'm done, and it's time to go home. And by the time I get there, it will be past my bedtime.
But I don't even care.
Today was a great day.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Witness...
As the weeks have turned into months, I've been discovering even more reasons to love my new commute.
When I describe it as a "backroad through farm country," that is not poetic exaggeration. The road snakes past dozens of farms of every variety. Dairy farms, horse farms, plow-plant-harvest farms, even more than one llama farm. And as the season has slowly turned, I've been able to glimpse the changes occurring on some of the farms as I make my way past them every day. I've started noticing that several of the cowherds now include a calf or two. And I've watched the fields progress from dirt, to rows of dirt piles, to green lawns, to fields of waving shoots. I'm enjoying the game of trying to guess what each of the plants in the various fields are from their early sproutings. Most of them look like wheat to my uneducated eyes, but it's definitely possible that they could be some other grain, and it's even conceivable that some of them could be corn. I'll find out soon enough. I'm looking forward to that more that I'd like to admit, honestly.
I'm struck by how much I'm enjoying the opportunity to be a silent witness to this progress of biology. And I'm reminded of the swallows from last Spring.
We really don't want birds nesting around our building, but because of the beautiful garden with its variety of trees and bushes and flowers and its never-ending source of water in the form of a bubbling fountain, wild animals of every variety are naturally attracted to it. So, every year we come up with new remedies to stop birds from nesting in the places they nested the year before, and every year they find ever more ingenious ways to outwit us. Last Spring, when they couldn't find any place else to do it, a pair of swallows simply built a nest directly onto a vertical brick wall in our building's entryway, eight feet above the ground. Just to be clear, the nest was not resting on anything - it was simply glued directly onto a brick wall, by means of some unknown adhesive. I was so delighted by the sheer audacious tenacity of this, that I didn't even mind being outwitted by a bird. (And honestly, I wouldn't have minded, regardless. I love it when nature reminds me that we don't know half as much as we think we do.)
But even better than this, was that every day I got to walk past these nesting birds at least twice. And so I was given regular glimpses into their lives. I noticed when one of them (presumably the mother) was in the nest every time I walked by, where before it had usually been empty. I remember the day shortly thereafter when I first heard the cacophony of tweets echoing from the nest, and looked up to see the horrendously ugly faces of several new-born chicks squawking at me hungrily. After that, I was fortunate enough to get to see their parents feeding them a time or two. And over the course of the next several weeks, I watched those chicks grow faster than I ever thought possible, until suddenly they were full-grown birds, indistinguishable from their parents.
I remember the day I came home from work, and passing out of the entryway and into our garden, one of the birds flew directly at me, veering off what seemed mere inches from my face. At first I was upset, wondering why this parent-bird was attacking me. What could I possibly have done to threaten them, just walking by as I've done so many times before? Following the flight of the bird up above the garden, I saw several of them swooping and diving in odd arcs, occasionally diving right at each other, often narrowly missing other objects in their path. And they weren't going very high, either, tending to stay within the confines of the courtyard. It was all very odd behavior that I hadn't seen before. But then I noticed that the nest was empty. And with that, I finally realized that these were the new birds, not their parents. They must've just learned to fly! Probably that very day. When that bird flew at my face it wasn't attacking me, it was a near-miss on toddler-wings. It was probably just as freaked out by the experience as I was! And now they were playing in the air above me, testing their new power and freedom, feeling the wind in their feathers for the very first time. You could see they were still trying to figure it all out - still hadn't quite got the hang of it all, still afraid of going too high, or too far from home. I had to just stop and watch for a while. It was so beautiful.
Then, as Spring turned into Summer, I watched as the parents flew off, leaving their adolescents behind forever. I watched the remaining birds grow until they could no longer fit in the nest. Once they were too big, they perched on a nearby video camera on the opposite wall of the entryway. The sibling-birds stayed there for weeks, too timid to leave home just yet, wanting to stay together, in the only world they'd ever known, for as long they could. But, eventually, they disappeared. First one, then another, then the rest all at once. Looking for food, perhaps? Or maybe a mate? Or maybe they were just driven by an innate need to explore, or to start flying North as the season wore on. I'll never know exactly. But I remember experiencing a very peculiar melancholy when I first noticed they had gone. I was sad to see them go, I would honestly miss them - but I was also so excited and amazed at the cycle they were a part of, and that I had been so unbelievably fortunate to have been able to witness so much of it, from start to finish.
I remember those swallows, every time some old codger on the condo board complains about all the bird shit in the entryway, and suggests some new way to drive out the "nuisance." All I can think is, what's a little bird poop, compared to an experience like that? Getting to be a direct witness to the cycle of our biology? Being reminded of how alike we all are, how similar all of Life is? Being given a direct insight into your place in our World? Being fortunate enough to catch a glimpse, just for a moment, of a microcosm of the grand pattern on display throughout the entire Universe? Being able to remember, for a time, just how absolutely fucking amazing Life is? In the face of all that, who cares about something as trivial as a little bird shit?
I can feel the beginnings of something similar to my experience with the swallows in these peaceful moments on my commute. I can feel the swallows, every time I see the fields have grown a little more, every time I notice a new calf I've never seen before, bounding after its mother on spindle-legs. But this cycle is slower, and will last longer. It will last until I see the fields barren and covered in snow, and until the snow thaws, and the fields are plowed again. I catch these glimpses every day, and I string them all together in my memory, like an old flip-book penny arcade, and I feel as if I'm watching the cycle of Life on Earth in time-lapse, like Nature's breath - inhale, cold and lifeless - exhale, warm, vibrant growth - and on and on and on - as if I'm watching the planets spin round and around our star, as if I can feel the rotation of the Milky Way itself spinning off into the void, as if that longing in my heart is the tugging weight from the black hole at its center, around which we are all spinning, spinning, spinning...
And I am suddenly so still.
When I describe it as a "backroad through farm country," that is not poetic exaggeration. The road snakes past dozens of farms of every variety. Dairy farms, horse farms, plow-plant-harvest farms, even more than one llama farm. And as the season has slowly turned, I've been able to glimpse the changes occurring on some of the farms as I make my way past them every day. I've started noticing that several of the cowherds now include a calf or two. And I've watched the fields progress from dirt, to rows of dirt piles, to green lawns, to fields of waving shoots. I'm enjoying the game of trying to guess what each of the plants in the various fields are from their early sproutings. Most of them look like wheat to my uneducated eyes, but it's definitely possible that they could be some other grain, and it's even conceivable that some of them could be corn. I'll find out soon enough. I'm looking forward to that more that I'd like to admit, honestly.
I'm struck by how much I'm enjoying the opportunity to be a silent witness to this progress of biology. And I'm reminded of the swallows from last Spring.
We really don't want birds nesting around our building, but because of the beautiful garden with its variety of trees and bushes and flowers and its never-ending source of water in the form of a bubbling fountain, wild animals of every variety are naturally attracted to it. So, every year we come up with new remedies to stop birds from nesting in the places they nested the year before, and every year they find ever more ingenious ways to outwit us. Last Spring, when they couldn't find any place else to do it, a pair of swallows simply built a nest directly onto a vertical brick wall in our building's entryway, eight feet above the ground. Just to be clear, the nest was not resting on anything - it was simply glued directly onto a brick wall, by means of some unknown adhesive. I was so delighted by the sheer audacious tenacity of this, that I didn't even mind being outwitted by a bird. (And honestly, I wouldn't have minded, regardless. I love it when nature reminds me that we don't know half as much as we think we do.)
But even better than this, was that every day I got to walk past these nesting birds at least twice. And so I was given regular glimpses into their lives. I noticed when one of them (presumably the mother) was in the nest every time I walked by, where before it had usually been empty. I remember the day shortly thereafter when I first heard the cacophony of tweets echoing from the nest, and looked up to see the horrendously ugly faces of several new-born chicks squawking at me hungrily. After that, I was fortunate enough to get to see their parents feeding them a time or two. And over the course of the next several weeks, I watched those chicks grow faster than I ever thought possible, until suddenly they were full-grown birds, indistinguishable from their parents.
I remember the day I came home from work, and passing out of the entryway and into our garden, one of the birds flew directly at me, veering off what seemed mere inches from my face. At first I was upset, wondering why this parent-bird was attacking me. What could I possibly have done to threaten them, just walking by as I've done so many times before? Following the flight of the bird up above the garden, I saw several of them swooping and diving in odd arcs, occasionally diving right at each other, often narrowly missing other objects in their path. And they weren't going very high, either, tending to stay within the confines of the courtyard. It was all very odd behavior that I hadn't seen before. But then I noticed that the nest was empty. And with that, I finally realized that these were the new birds, not their parents. They must've just learned to fly! Probably that very day. When that bird flew at my face it wasn't attacking me, it was a near-miss on toddler-wings. It was probably just as freaked out by the experience as I was! And now they were playing in the air above me, testing their new power and freedom, feeling the wind in their feathers for the very first time. You could see they were still trying to figure it all out - still hadn't quite got the hang of it all, still afraid of going too high, or too far from home. I had to just stop and watch for a while. It was so beautiful.
Then, as Spring turned into Summer, I watched as the parents flew off, leaving their adolescents behind forever. I watched the remaining birds grow until they could no longer fit in the nest. Once they were too big, they perched on a nearby video camera on the opposite wall of the entryway. The sibling-birds stayed there for weeks, too timid to leave home just yet, wanting to stay together, in the only world they'd ever known, for as long they could. But, eventually, they disappeared. First one, then another, then the rest all at once. Looking for food, perhaps? Or maybe a mate? Or maybe they were just driven by an innate need to explore, or to start flying North as the season wore on. I'll never know exactly. But I remember experiencing a very peculiar melancholy when I first noticed they had gone. I was sad to see them go, I would honestly miss them - but I was also so excited and amazed at the cycle they were a part of, and that I had been so unbelievably fortunate to have been able to witness so much of it, from start to finish.
I remember those swallows, every time some old codger on the condo board complains about all the bird shit in the entryway, and suggests some new way to drive out the "nuisance." All I can think is, what's a little bird poop, compared to an experience like that? Getting to be a direct witness to the cycle of our biology? Being reminded of how alike we all are, how similar all of Life is? Being given a direct insight into your place in our World? Being fortunate enough to catch a glimpse, just for a moment, of a microcosm of the grand pattern on display throughout the entire Universe? Being able to remember, for a time, just how absolutely fucking amazing Life is? In the face of all that, who cares about something as trivial as a little bird shit?
I can feel the beginnings of something similar to my experience with the swallows in these peaceful moments on my commute. I can feel the swallows, every time I see the fields have grown a little more, every time I notice a new calf I've never seen before, bounding after its mother on spindle-legs. But this cycle is slower, and will last longer. It will last until I see the fields barren and covered in snow, and until the snow thaws, and the fields are plowed again. I catch these glimpses every day, and I string them all together in my memory, like an old flip-book penny arcade, and I feel as if I'm watching the cycle of Life on Earth in time-lapse, like Nature's breath - inhale, cold and lifeless - exhale, warm, vibrant growth - and on and on and on - as if I'm watching the planets spin round and around our star, as if I can feel the rotation of the Milky Way itself spinning off into the void, as if that longing in my heart is the tugging weight from the black hole at its center, around which we are all spinning, spinning, spinning...
And I am suddenly so still.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Life on Mars?!...
"Scientists have discovered life on Mars."
Dozing on the couch early this morning, between snooze alarms, I hear that sentence come from the newscast on my television, and I am instantly awake. My eyes pop open and I sit bolt-upright, throwing the blanket off my chest.
"Scientists are now saying they believe a lander sent over 30 years ago actually did discover life on Mars. Now, this isn't the little-green-men kind of life, but they say they have found evidence of biological activity on the Red Planet. In other news..."
"That's IT?!"
I'm all at once astounded, amazed, and outraged. We found life on another fucking planet - and not just any other planet, but one of the closest planets to us - and it gets a less-than-10-second blurb between the Weather and the latest update on the Gingrich "campaign"? What the fuck is wrong with that picture?!
Finding life on Mars is a HUUUGE deal! Astronomically huge, you could say, pun completely intended. Because, first of all, finding any life anywhere else would change everything we now know about our place in the universe. It would change the entire outlook of every single religion practiced by humanity! For the first time in the entire history of life on Earth, we would know that we are not alone! So, yeah, kind of a big deal.
But then to find life on Mars, specifically, would increase the importance of that discovery by an order of magnitude. Because it could mean one of two things: either, A) life actually began on Mars, and later traveled to Earth, essentially changing our entire concept of the origin of our species (for instance, a large asteroid slams into Mars, blowing chunks of it out into space, which later hit Earth as meteorites [we've already found Martian-meteorites in Antarctica]; and some of the bacteria or other organisms on some of those Martian-meteorites could've survived the trip, essentially becoming "seeds" that later flowered in our environment); or B) if life actually formed on two-out-of-eight planets in our incredibly-ordinary-solar-system - if we found evidence of a second genesis right next-door to us - then life must be incredibly common in the universe.
So hopefully you can understand why I'm a little upset that they didn't think this story warranted more than just a headline.
I have to know more. So I grab my laptop and start searching the news feeds. Doesn't take long to find an article that goes into a lot more depth. And I'm disappointed (though, I hate to say, not surprised) to discover that once again, the media has simultaneously dumbed-down and overblown another science story.
No one has discovered any life on Mars. The actual story, beyond the sensational headline, turns out to be that a team of mathematicians took another look at the hard-copy data of the soil samples taken by the two Viking landers back in 1976. They analyzed these numbers to determine their level of complexity, using a new theory that biological systems are much more complex than non-biological ones. And, using this new theory, they found data that was so complex, that they believe the only explanation is that it shows evidence of biological life-forms.
So, at most, what they've actually discovered is evidence of the possibility of some sort of biology on Mars, at some point. Hardly the same thing as finding "life on Mars." But then on top of that, this mathematical-complexity-theory of biological systems that they've based all of their findings on, hasn't even been proven to work on Earth! So all of their findings are based on a method that they haven't even proven yet!
How in the fuck do you get from "mathematicians have used an unproven theory on 36 year-old data to suggest the possibility that life may have existed on Mars at some point" to "Scientists have discovered life on Mars?!"
Unfortunately, this is something I see time and again from the mainstream news media. They did it with the whole "Large Hadron Collider May Create Black Hole and Destroy Earth" story (no, it won't). And they did it again recently with the "Scientists Have Discovered Particles Traveling Faster Than Light" story (no, they didn't). They never report actual scientific findings. Instead, at the barest hint of only the most sensational stories (black holes gobbling up the planet, speed-of-light barrier broken, life on Mars, etc.) they jump all over it, remove anything resembling context, evidence, or truth, and splash the tabloid-esque headline across the front page or the evening newscast: "Bat Boy Found on Mars Travelling Faster Than Light! 'Trying to Destroy Earth,' Say 'Scientists'!"
Ugh.
It's mornings like this that I weep for my species.
< /nerdrant >
Dozing on the couch early this morning, between snooze alarms, I hear that sentence come from the newscast on my television, and I am instantly awake. My eyes pop open and I sit bolt-upright, throwing the blanket off my chest.
"Scientists are now saying they believe a lander sent over 30 years ago actually did discover life on Mars. Now, this isn't the little-green-men kind of life, but they say they have found evidence of biological activity on the Red Planet. In other news..."
"That's IT?!"
I'm all at once astounded, amazed, and outraged. We found life on another fucking planet - and not just any other planet, but one of the closest planets to us - and it gets a less-than-10-second blurb between the Weather and the latest update on the Gingrich "campaign"? What the fuck is wrong with that picture?!
Finding life on Mars is a HUUUGE deal! Astronomically huge, you could say, pun completely intended. Because, first of all, finding any life anywhere else would change everything we now know about our place in the universe. It would change the entire outlook of every single religion practiced by humanity! For the first time in the entire history of life on Earth, we would know that we are not alone! So, yeah, kind of a big deal.
But then to find life on Mars, specifically, would increase the importance of that discovery by an order of magnitude. Because it could mean one of two things: either, A) life actually began on Mars, and later traveled to Earth, essentially changing our entire concept of the origin of our species (for instance, a large asteroid slams into Mars, blowing chunks of it out into space, which later hit Earth as meteorites [we've already found Martian-meteorites in Antarctica]; and some of the bacteria or other organisms on some of those Martian-meteorites could've survived the trip, essentially becoming "seeds" that later flowered in our environment); or B) if life actually formed on two-out-of-eight planets in our incredibly-ordinary-solar-system - if we found evidence of a second genesis right next-door to us - then life must be incredibly common in the universe.
So hopefully you can understand why I'm a little upset that they didn't think this story warranted more than just a headline.
I have to know more. So I grab my laptop and start searching the news feeds. Doesn't take long to find an article that goes into a lot more depth. And I'm disappointed (though, I hate to say, not surprised) to discover that once again, the media has simultaneously dumbed-down and overblown another science story.
No one has discovered any life on Mars. The actual story, beyond the sensational headline, turns out to be that a team of mathematicians took another look at the hard-copy data of the soil samples taken by the two Viking landers back in 1976. They analyzed these numbers to determine their level of complexity, using a new theory that biological systems are much more complex than non-biological ones. And, using this new theory, they found data that was so complex, that they believe the only explanation is that it shows evidence of biological life-forms.
So, at most, what they've actually discovered is evidence of the possibility of some sort of biology on Mars, at some point. Hardly the same thing as finding "life on Mars." But then on top of that, this mathematical-complexity-theory of biological systems that they've based all of their findings on, hasn't even been proven to work on Earth! So all of their findings are based on a method that they haven't even proven yet!
How in the fuck do you get from "mathematicians have used an unproven theory on 36 year-old data to suggest the possibility that life may have existed on Mars at some point" to "Scientists have discovered life on Mars?!"
Unfortunately, this is something I see time and again from the mainstream news media. They did it with the whole "Large Hadron Collider May Create Black Hole and Destroy Earth" story (no, it won't). And they did it again recently with the "Scientists Have Discovered Particles Traveling Faster Than Light" story (no, they didn't). They never report actual scientific findings. Instead, at the barest hint of only the most sensational stories (black holes gobbling up the planet, speed-of-light barrier broken, life on Mars, etc.) they jump all over it, remove anything resembling context, evidence, or truth, and splash the tabloid-esque headline across the front page or the evening newscast: "Bat Boy Found on Mars Travelling Faster Than Light! 'Trying to Destroy Earth,' Say 'Scientists'!"
Ugh.
It's mornings like this that I weep for my species.
< /nerdrant >
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Rocks From Outer Space...
I've purchased two meteorite fragments in the past week.
I've never bought a meteorite before, and until recently, hadn't given them much thought. But as my interest in astronomy and astrophysics has grown, so has my fascination with meteorites. The idea of being able to touch, to hold in my hand, a piece of material that was formed in outer space, has thrilled me in a way that I find hard to describe.
Somewhere in the Milky Way, billions of years ago, a gigantic star a million times larger than our Sun ran out of fuel. It had burned through all of its helium and hydrogen, producing heavier elements in the fusion process: nitrogen and oxygen, then silicon and carbon. Then it had burned through all of those elements, as well, producing yet heavier elements such as neon and magnesium. This process continued for billions of years, creating heavier and heavier elements, until finally, the nuclear core of that giant star produced an element that it could no longer fuse for fuel: iron. And this infinitesimal speck of iron upset the delicate balance between gravity and atomic explosion that had been that star, causing it to explode in the most violent and catastrophic event in the known universe: a supernova.
That explosion sent elemental material careening out through space, all throughout that local area of the galaxy, where it eventually cooled, and mixed with other material from other exploded stars, to form enormous clouds of dust and debris. Pieces of this debris clumped together, attracted by their gravitational pull in the vacuum - the bigger the clumps got, the more mass they had, so the stronger their gravity, so the more debris they pulled into them, so the bigger they got. Every planet was produced in this way, including our own. But this particular clump of debris - iron and nickel and stone by this point, among other things - never became a planet. It was simply a large asteroid.
Approximately 700,000 years ago, that asteroid came just a hair too close to Earth, and fell down our planet's gravity well, becoming a meteoroid as it hit our atmosphere, and exploding into fragments as the force of our gravity and the heat of re-entry combined to tear it apart. The fragments slammed into the planet north of the Arctic Circle, near what is now Norbbotten, Sweden, making it a meteorite. Over the next 700 millenia, those fragments were pushed and pulled this way and that again and again by glaciers, and tectonic shifts, and an Ice Age or two. Then, in 1906, two children tending cattle in a field discovered the first fragment of this gigantic rock from outer space.
And in a few days, I will be able to hold a slice of it in my hand.
Isn't it beautiful?
It's now known as the Muonionalusta meteorite, and it's the oldest meteorite ever discovered. The pattern of lines visible on the slice in the image above is known as a Widmanstätten Pattern. It's produced by bathing the slice of meteorite in nitric acid, to oxidize the metals it is composed of. The nickel and iron oxidize at different rates, creating the pattern, which outlines the nickel-iron crystals that formed as the asteroid grew in that dust cloud so long ago.
I don't know what exactly it is that fascinates me so much about this. It's almost as if this tiny piece of metal and stone is a tangible piece of the forces of creation. That vast majority of Nature, of Tao, that dominates the rest of the universe outside of our microscopic little blue bubble of air and water. And I want to know that Nature, to understand it, to be able to visualize it, to feel it. And this solid evidence, this proof of that Nature, somehow takes it out of the realm of abstract contemplations, and makes it real for me. It's like faith becoming fact. It seems almost impossible somehow, and yet there it is, undeniably real. Iron crystals, from a long dead star, touching my skin.
Like a kiss from Creation.
I've never bought a meteorite before, and until recently, hadn't given them much thought. But as my interest in astronomy and astrophysics has grown, so has my fascination with meteorites. The idea of being able to touch, to hold in my hand, a piece of material that was formed in outer space, has thrilled me in a way that I find hard to describe.
Somewhere in the Milky Way, billions of years ago, a gigantic star a million times larger than our Sun ran out of fuel. It had burned through all of its helium and hydrogen, producing heavier elements in the fusion process: nitrogen and oxygen, then silicon and carbon. Then it had burned through all of those elements, as well, producing yet heavier elements such as neon and magnesium. This process continued for billions of years, creating heavier and heavier elements, until finally, the nuclear core of that giant star produced an element that it could no longer fuse for fuel: iron. And this infinitesimal speck of iron upset the delicate balance between gravity and atomic explosion that had been that star, causing it to explode in the most violent and catastrophic event in the known universe: a supernova.
That explosion sent elemental material careening out through space, all throughout that local area of the galaxy, where it eventually cooled, and mixed with other material from other exploded stars, to form enormous clouds of dust and debris. Pieces of this debris clumped together, attracted by their gravitational pull in the vacuum - the bigger the clumps got, the more mass they had, so the stronger their gravity, so the more debris they pulled into them, so the bigger they got. Every planet was produced in this way, including our own. But this particular clump of debris - iron and nickel and stone by this point, among other things - never became a planet. It was simply a large asteroid.
Approximately 700,000 years ago, that asteroid came just a hair too close to Earth, and fell down our planet's gravity well, becoming a meteoroid as it hit our atmosphere, and exploding into fragments as the force of our gravity and the heat of re-entry combined to tear it apart. The fragments slammed into the planet north of the Arctic Circle, near what is now Norbbotten, Sweden, making it a meteorite. Over the next 700 millenia, those fragments were pushed and pulled this way and that again and again by glaciers, and tectonic shifts, and an Ice Age or two. Then, in 1906, two children tending cattle in a field discovered the first fragment of this gigantic rock from outer space.
And in a few days, I will be able to hold a slice of it in my hand.
Isn't it beautiful?
It's now known as the Muonionalusta meteorite, and it's the oldest meteorite ever discovered. The pattern of lines visible on the slice in the image above is known as a Widmanstätten Pattern. It's produced by bathing the slice of meteorite in nitric acid, to oxidize the metals it is composed of. The nickel and iron oxidize at different rates, creating the pattern, which outlines the nickel-iron crystals that formed as the asteroid grew in that dust cloud so long ago.
I don't know what exactly it is that fascinates me so much about this. It's almost as if this tiny piece of metal and stone is a tangible piece of the forces of creation. That vast majority of Nature, of Tao, that dominates the rest of the universe outside of our microscopic little blue bubble of air and water. And I want to know that Nature, to understand it, to be able to visualize it, to feel it. And this solid evidence, this proof of that Nature, somehow takes it out of the realm of abstract contemplations, and makes it real for me. It's like faith becoming fact. It seems almost impossible somehow, and yet there it is, undeniably real. Iron crystals, from a long dead star, touching my skin.
Like a kiss from Creation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)