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.
Showing posts with label star. Show all posts
Showing posts with label star. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
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.
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