Eclectic's Universe

A Cosmic Exclamation Point!

2011-08-13T11:34:00.004-04:00

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Hubble Space Telescope have collaborated to produce a fantastic image of two galaxies already interacting in the process of colliding! The purple colors represent x-ray data from Chandra. The red, green, and blue colors are optical data from Hubble.

Image Credit: X-ray NASA/CXC/IfA/D.Sanders et al; Optical NASA/STScI/NRAO/A.Evans et al
Sort of looks like an exclamation point, right?

These two galaxies are known as VV 340 (or Arp 302), and are about 450 million lightyears from Earth, a light year being about 6 trillion miles. VV 340 spans about 285,000 light years. The top galaxy is edge-on (VV 340 North) while the bottom one (VV 340 South) is pretty much face-on, a wonderful set of views.

And now, check out this narrated animation:

For more information and/or to see/download a higher res video and a variety of still-image sizes , just click the link below.

Happy galaxy gazing!

Chandra :: Photo Album :: VV 340 :: 11 August 11

NASA - Another Take on Supersonic

2011-08-03T11:00:00.000-04:00

Flying the Supersonic Skies!

NASA - Another Take on Supersonic:

NASA Image Of The Day text:

"Our ability to fly at supersonic speeds over land in civil aircraft depends on our ability to reduce the level of sonic booms. NASA has been exploring a variety of options for quieting the boom, starting with design concepts and moving through wind tunnel tests to flight tests of new technologies. This rendering of a possible future civil supersonic transport shows a vehicle that is shaped to reduce the sonic shockwave signature and also to reduce drag. Image credit: NASA/Lockheed Martin"

Now tell me, who wouldn't think this aircraft is COOL looking?! Does it remind you of another civil aircraft of times gone by?

Remember, this is only an artist's rendering of what a new, improved supersonic aircraft might look like! However, I'm wondering if there are going to be windows in this thing - I don't see any in this pic except for the cockpit area. But perhaps they'll be below the wing and out of sight in this view from above, eh?

In any case, I'd fly the friendly skies of NASA anytime!

NASA - Close-up View of 'Snowman' Craters

2011-08-02T16:31:00.002-04:00

NASA - Close-up View of 'Snowman' Craters
This is a view from about 3,200 miles of the 3 craters on the Vesta asteroid, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft which is presently orbiting Vesta. Dawn is the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid. The photo was taken July 24, 2011.

Click here--> NASA Image Of The Day Gallery to go there and/or download various sizes of this image. This image has been released by NASA to the public, and therefore is in the public domain. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.

I think this is magnificent detail! And, isn't it so very cool to get closeup views of an asteroid? Studies of Vesta conducted by NASA via the Dawn spacecraft will undoubtedly help mankind understand the origin and early history of our solar system. It will also add to our knowledge of asteroids as it pertains to how we might deflect or avoid an asteroid aimed at Earth. We really don't need another extinction event like the one 65 million years ago that is widely believed to have been caused by an asteroid impact on our planet!

And for an extra treat, how about a full frame view of Vesta?

This image is from from the APOD (Astronomy Picture Of the Day) site. (Click the link to go there and get larger versions of this pic.) Image Credit: NASA , JPL-Caltech, UCLA, MPS, DLR, IDA

The set of 3 craters called the snowman craters mentioned previously can be seen to the left of center. Cool, eh?!

NASA - Testing NASA's Next Deep Space Vehicle

2011-07-28T10:42:00.002-04:00

NASA - Testing NASA's Next Deep Space Vehicle

Check out the huge splash down at 50 mph!

More information about this photo is available at the NASA link above!

Physics versus Philosophy - game over?

2010-10-27T23:26:00.000-04:00

It's time to take stock of things and get a feel for the waters, folks! Thus the following poll. I hope you'll take the 10 seconds required to put your two cents in. And, don't be afraid to leave a comment either!
Has physics, in the form of relativity, quantum mechanics, and M-Theory (Superstring theory), made philosophy obsolete and/or useless?

Free Web Survey

Thanks!
--Gary D. Timothy-- (a.k.a., The Eclectic)

Ahh,... to fly like a bird! Well, it can and has been done with the Snowbird!

2010-09-27T17:46:00.001-04:00

Humans have dreamed of flying like birds under their own power ever since time began. Paul MacCready accomplished this feat in 1977 when he flew the Gossamer Albatross over the English Channel. It was quite true that he flew under his own power, but the wings of his craft were fixed and unmoving, except for directional controls. Still, this was an awesome achievement and MacReady was named by some to be the Engineer Of The Century.

But now there is Snowbird, a craft that is also completely human powered once it's in the air. And Snowbird, as what's known as an ornithopter, actually flaps its wings to sustain flight. True, it does need a pull from a car to get airborne, but once it's up,... well just watch the extraordinary video below!

On July 31st and August 2nd, 2010 the Snowbird maintained altitude and airspeed for 19.3 seconds - the world's firstself-powered flapping wing flight!

Ahhh,... to fly like a bird!

For more information: Check out the Human Powered Ornithopter Project website.
To watch this video on YouTube: World's First Human-Powered Ornithopter
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Stand Up For Science - Evolution is REAL Science!

2010-09-20T11:01:00.002-04:00

I ran across the two videos below on YouTube. If you're teetering on the edge of believing or not believing evolution theory, these videos might just inspire you. If you're sure that evolution is bunkum, then you too might want to check out the videos. And if you're already sure that evolution is the way to go, then these videos might just answer some questions for you anyway!

First up: Does the fossil record support Evolution?

Next up: Where are the Transitional Forms?

As I have asserted before on Gather.com and other sites, and as this video explains, nearly every species can be considered a transitional form. That is, all species stand somewhere between a former species and a later species on the evolutionary tree of life!

For those of you who do not accept the theory of Evolution, ignorance may be bliss, but I'm here to tell you that a little science knowledge can work even greater wonders!

For more videos and information: Stand up for REAL science

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The Milky Way Big Picture (Showcase) - NASA Spitzer Space Telescope

2010-09-12T15:09:00.001-04:00

The Milky Way Big Picture (Showcase) - NASA Spitzer Space Telescope

This is a video of the Spitzer Space Telescope's mission to capture over half of our Milky Way Galaxy, gloriously illustrated with wondrous visions, and explained beautifully by an astronomer.

It really is a Must See video!!

I do hope you enjoyed it!
--Gary D. Timothy--

I Finally Found Uranus and YOU can too!

2010-09-08T21:18:00.000-04:00

Now, this is a special event for me because I’ve never positively identified it before in the night sky. There have been times when I thought I was looking at Uranus, but I’ve never before been sure of it. At its brightest, it is sometimes barely visible to the naked eye in very dark skies with no light pollution, but it usually requires a good star chart to find.

Uranus is the seventh planet out from the Sun, beyond Saturn and smaller than Saturn too, so it’s no wonder that it’s much more difficult to see. Below is an image captured by the Voyager 2 spacecraft during it’s flyby of the planet in 1986.

Above: Voyager 2’s view of Uranus. As you can see, Uranus is quite featureless – it’s one of the gas giants, so you are basically looking at its opaque atmosphere although it is thought to have a rocky core. Both Voyager 1 and 2 are still functioning and sending data back to Earth after over 33 years! They are both currently leaving the Solar System and are, respectively about 17 and 14 billion kilometers from the Sun.

Of course Uranus is easier to pick out with good binoculars, but often still requires a star chart. However, these days it is getting easier and easier to see because of it’s apparent proximity to Jupiter in the sky, using Jupiter and nearby stars as reference points to find your way around. Jupiter is an extremely easy target, second only to Venus in brightness.

In any case, this has been a lifelong quest for me. Not that I’ve made it an overwhelming priority all the time, because quite often life gets in the way of such pursuits. But off and on I’ve tried to locate Uranus for a very long time. And having to make do with binoculars as my only aid because I could never afford a decent telescope with the proper mount for accurate pointing and tracking of celestial objects has only made my task a bigger challenge.

But finally, the combination of having 16-power binoculars, excellent star chart software, and clear night skies, together with Uranus being so close to Jupiter, allowed me to chalk up another celestial wonder in my sightings log.

Below are two annotated star charts from my Starry Night Pro 5 program to show you where and how I found Uranus.

Below: a zoomed version of the sky chart above.

On September 14, 2010, Uranus will be directly above Jupiter in the night sky and if you have clear night skies and at least a good pair of binoculars, you’ll be able to see Uranus too! So, by all mean, GET OUT THERE and take a look! Those of you with excellent night vision might just be able to pick it out with just your unaided eyes.

Below is a short video I’ve made to show you the apparent movement of Jupiter and Uranus against the star field background. Notice the apparent retrograde motion of both planets after their initial trek westward. This is because of our changing perspective as Earth, Jupiter, and Uranus all orbit the Sun. Also note that this video proceeds in steps of 1 day (actually a tiny bit less than 1 day in order to keep the star field stationary) – it’s not real time, but highly sped up time.

Clear skies to you all!
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Science Vine - Issue 3: Petrified Lightning, Suing Science, & Shuttle Wake-up Songs

2010-08-31T19:21:00.008-04:00

Science Vine – Issue 3 - August 31, 2010

Petrified Lightning

I’m sure most of you have heard of petrified wood, and maybe even seen some yourself either in pictures or at a museum. But how about petrified lightning or fulgurites? It’s possible that at some of you who have never heard of petrified lightning or fulgurites have actually seen them without realizing it!

When lightning strikes the Earth in some sandy or silica-rich soil, it can literally melt the ground and leave it’s mark as fulgurites: hollow, glassy tubes that represent the path the lightning took. They are often root-like in structure, with evident branching, which seems consistent with the branching lightning seen in the sky. And they can range in size from very small to several centimeters wide and several meters long.

You might be petrified of lightning, but there’s nothing to fear from fulgurites. And if you find one, especially a big one, you could be in for some serious money from collectors and/or museums. But even though lightning strikes the Earth 100 times every second on average according to the U.S. Dept. of Energy, fulgurites are very rare. So, while you might have seen one without know what it was, you probably won’t find one even if you know what you’re looking for. Isn’t that the way it always works?

For more information:
Wikipedia: Fulgurite
FactOidz: Fulgurites: Petrified Lightning in the Ground (Warning! Fascination content is HIGH! And, there’s pictures here too!)
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Man seeks to sue science.

Man logically loses litigation attempt.

According to a Discover Magazine blog:

Back in 2008, a Hawaiian fellow named Walter Wagner claimed the Large Hadron Collider’s hunt for the Higgs boson would end in apocalypse, and sued to stop the collider from going online. His suit was soon dismissed by a federal judge, but with the fate of the world on the line, Wagner kept trying.

A simulated event at the CMS particle detector of the LHC of the european particle physics institute, CERN. This simulation depicts the decay of a Higgs particle following a collision of two protons in the CMS experiment. [Image credit: CERN. From Wikipedia user Harp.]

But, to make a long story short, an appellate judge for the United States District Court in Hawaii has ruled that Wagner failed to show “credible threat of harm.” You see, the United States doesn’t control the collider, which spans the border of Switzerland and France. The LHC was indeed built with some U.S. government financial support, but the U.S. only has observer status on the operations governing body: the CERN (European Center for Nuclear Research) council.

So, it appears that the U.S. can’t be held accountable if the LHC somehow destroys the Earth by creating an Earth-eating black hole or similarly apocalyptic strange matter!

For those of you who have a sense of humor, check out the LHCDefense.org site I’ve listed below. It’s a serious site, but intelligent beings that know a lick of science won’t be taking it seriously!

For more information:
Discover Magazine: Judge: Man Can’t Sue over LHC’s “Potential Destruction Of The Earth”
LHCDefense.org: THE OFFICAL SITE FOR CITIZENS AGAINST THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

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Did you ever wonder what astronauts wake up to when they’re orbiting about 200 miles (325 kilometers) high above the Earth in the Space Shuttle? Why, Space Rock music, of course!

And who gets to choose the particular songs they hear? Why, Houston, of course! EXCEPT that now NASA has just opened voting booths to the public. That’s right, now YOU can vote on what music our shuttle astronauts get to wake up during the STS-133 mission, which is currently set to launch in November of this year.

So, to have your own voice in the musical voices that shuttle astronauts will hear, check out NASA’s Top 40 and pick out a song! They’ve listed 40 songs, all of which you can listen to, that have been played on previous missions, and the songs range from Beautiful Day by U2 to Rocket Man by Elton John to What A Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. The theme from Star Trek by Alexander Courage is currently leading in the polls, followed closely by Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf. Over 1.2 million votes have been cast so far, so get yours in now!

And on that note (pun intended, of course), so ends this issue of Science Vine.

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Science Vine - Issue 2: Google Mars, SpaceQuakes, and a Tachyon Joke

2010-08-05T14:37:00.000-04:00

Science Vine- Issue 2, July 27, 2010

Overheard on TheScientist.com Naturally Selected blog:

And the bartender says “Sorry, we don’t serve tachyons here.”

…

A tachyon walks into a bar…

Now, just in case you’re relatively physics challenged, click here for help with seeing the light. Or you can just left click and drag your mouse pointer over the seemingly empty space below for a clue.

A tachyon is a theoretical particle that travels faster than light, and as such, it would travel backward in time. This means that a tachyon would arrive before it left! Thus the reverse nature of the joke above.

For masochist individuals who wish to torture their own gray matter into temporal shreds of technicalities, please see (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon) for a good time before you get there.

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In NASA Release 10-163, it seems that NASA and Microsoft have teamed up again to offer a 3-D close encounter with Mars! Yup, you can not only Google Earth, but also Google Mars now.

NASA and Microsoft Research are adding new features in the WorldWide Telescope software that provide viewers with high-resolution 3-D maps of the Red Planet. This online virtual telescope allows you to explore the universe using images that NASA spacecraft have taken.

I recently checked it out for myself. Below is a screenshot from my computer featuring the Happy Face on Mars. Conspiracy theorists, please note that the crosshairs in the images are not alien formations on Mars, but rather alien formations on my computer screen!

And now, a cropped image from a bit closer view of the Happy Face crater:

And finally, another cropped image that’s even more zoomed in. It’s a little harder to make out the happy face now, isn’t it? And if you saw this image first, a happy face probably wouldn’t even come to mind.

The image below (another cropped, zoomed image from a screenshot) features a very elongated crater. Most of the time, we think of craters as being round, like the smaller craters inside and on both sides of this odd, cave-man-club shaped crater. Scientists think that, like other round craters, Marte Vallis was formed by an impact, but an impact at very oblique angle that started at the bottom of this image and gouged out a long trough.

But Wait! For those of you in a hurry to go check this WorldWide Telescope Mars out, be warned that you better have a fast computer, a fast Internet connection, and a decent video card/adapter! I ran this program on a 3 gigahertz processor with 1 gig of memory, and a fairly decent video card, but it still ran kind of sluggishly. However, the more you use it, the faster it gets because it downloads places you've explored already to your hard drive and is thus more quickly accessed on later expeditions to the Red Planet.

To learn more and download the WorldWide Telescope, visit: http://www.worldwidetelescope.org

For more information and images of Mars taken by HiRISE, visit:
http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu

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Now aren’t you all shook up about that happy face and really loooonnng crater? No? Well maybe this next new shoot off the Science Vine will get you quaking.

Surely you’ve heard about earthquakes, but how about spacequakes? Yeah, that’s right, quakes in space!

According to a NASA Science’s Science News article (Spacequakes Rumble Near Earth – July 27, 2010), “Researchers using NASA's fleet of five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a form of space weather [Yes, there’s a kind of weather in space!] that packs the punch of an earthquake and plays a key role in sparking bright Northern Lights.” The THEMIS mission aims to resolve one of the oldest mysteries in space physics, namely to determine what physical process in near-Earth space initiates the violent eruptions of the aurora that occur during substorms in the Earth's magnetosphere.

What caught my eye about this article is of course the word spacequake, which refers to a temblor (no, that’s not misspelled) in Earth’s magnetic field. Okay, but what might catch your eye now, is that some of these temblors actually reach the ground. Thankfully though, they don’t caused the destruction normally associated with the word quake!

In any case, there’s a really cool animation at the site linked above that shows just how the Earth’s magnetic field can get overstretched by the million-mile-per-hour solar wind and then snap back like a stretched rubber band being released.

But what does the acronym THEMIS stand for? Well I’m glad you asked, but you probably won’t be glad of the answer: Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms. Now that’s what I call torture!

I think it’s interesting to note that, in Greek mythology, Themis is the goddess of justice, wisdom and good counsel, the guardian of oaths, and the interpreter of the gods' will. She was the daughter of Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth), and was Zeus' second consort and the mother of the Horae (the Seasons) and the Moirae (the Fates). And finally, legend also has it that Themis was the mother of Prometheus.

And just in case you haven’t tumbled yet to that temblor of hints, Themis is also that blindfolded chick you sometimes see in and around halls of justice holding a sword and scales.

For more information on the THEMIS mission, just google it, or visit NASA’s THEMIS Mission page.

And that’ll do it for this edition of the Science Vine.

I do hope your grapes are never sour!

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Eclectic's Universe Wordle

2010-07-24T14:07:00.001-04:00

Check out this wordle that I created using the text from this blog. It's my first one, so don't be too critical, okay? Ha!

Yeah, I know, it's awful blurry, but you'll get a bigger, better, crisper view if you click on it!

Join me at MyLot

2010-07-21T01:40:00.000-04:00

Here's a new place to find me and my stuff - Just click the link below:
myLot User Profile

The Science Vine – Premier Issue: Surfing the Science Side

2010-07-14T10:13:00.000-04:00

This will hopefully be the first of many Science Vine posts by me, your friendly eclectic science guy. Now, since this is the first post of this series, I hereby justify the title of this article as “premier.” It could also be considered premier as in “first in importance” or “outstanding quality” but that would depend on your point of view and I graciously grant that it might be debatable if you are not me. But I won’t go there, even if I already have! (Oh the ego of this eccentric eclectic!)

But enough of the alliterated nonsense – let’s just get right to it, shall we?

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The Science Vine for July 12, 2010 (Issue 1): Surfing the Science Side of the Internet today, I found the following little grape seeds that could blossom into full blown grapes from the Science Vine should you actually choose to read more about ‘em from the links I’ve so magnanimously provided.

The Moon continues to NOT be implicated in the rise of bad behavior during full moons. Yet another study has found no correlation between full moons and crimes. See the USA Today article Full moon eclipsed as accessory to crime (By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY )for more info. Yet soooo many folks, cops and bartenders included, continue to believe that all the lunatics come out to play on nights with a full moon.

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Sometimes the one thing you learn every day sets you back on your heels and makes you go “What?! I thought it was just the opposite!” And that would be because it just never occurred to you to question your concept. In this particular case, I found that the methane produced by cows is released on average every 1.5 minutes through BURPs. That’s right, folks, burps, not farts. At least that’s what a British scientist explains in a video at BBC News - How methane is measured with a 'burp gun'. That’s right, a burp gun – it looks like a handheld radar gun and you just point it at the cow’s nose.

You see, the boogs (that’s “bugs” in British and it means bacteria) in a cow are up front in it’s stomachs and that’s where the gas is produced, so of course the gas gets expelled in burps out the front end. In horses and dogs and yup, even in humans, the boogs are all at the back end in the intestines, so the gas takes the path of least resistance out past the sphincters that result in those well known Barking Spiders my dad blamed everything on.

Finally, it turns out that the amount of methane released in a cow burp is equivalent to a leaky gas pipe that normal people would give a wide berth to. So I have one question: does anybody actually smoke in cow barns anymore?

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How many of you know what Newton’s Cradle is? Well, I’m NOT going to tell you! But I’ll give you a hint: check out Newton’s Cradle on Wikipedia. I know you’ll recognize it when you see it in action, but it’s known by a couple of other names that you may find more familiar. And I’m going to resist temptation to ply you with any “balls” jokes.

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Have you ever had an earworm infection? I’ll bet you’ve been infected by this insidious worm many times, in sometimes quite orchestrated ways! You’re in luck though – the infection usually only lasts for a matter of minutes or hours. However, it has been reported to go on for several days at a time. I seem to be particularly susceptible to these maladies – I think my body is simply tuned for it. (puns intended, if you already know what I’m talking about)

The phenomenon occurs when subjects are usually in a good mood and engaging in non-intellectual activities such as walking, which requires little concentration. It is during these times that people may often find themselves walking to the beat of a different drummer.

But don’t worry, be happy! The fact that Jeremiah was a bullfrog didn’t stop Andréane McNally-Gagnon and Sylvie Hébert from doing some key research in a continuing investigation of this well known but rarely studied phenomena.

For more info, check out Hey Jude: Get that song out of my head! at World Science.

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Well, that’s it for this edition of Science Vine. I do hope you’ve enjoyed! Tune in next time for more grapes off that eclectic vine.

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Practical Astronomy Magazine - Free Download eZine

2010-07-05T14:31:00.004-04:00

Practical Astronomy Magazine - Free Download eZine

For anyone with the slightest interest in the night sky and/or astronomy! Become a member and subscribe for free and get access to back issues and other cool stuff on this site! But it's a time-limited offer folks, so get there now or be square!

Also, if you have a mind to, and can actually write worth a whit, they you can also write and submit your own articles for consideration. Wouldn't it be cool to be published in this magazine? I'm going to have to try this out myself!

From Practical Astronomy's about page:

About Practical Astronomy Magazine

Practical Astronomy magazine was founded in 2009 and has always been distributed for free, using digital download from the internet.

Its primary driver is to encourage amateur astronomers worldwide, to share their observations and astronomical experience. So far, contributors from at least ten countries have been published in the magazine.

Contact (and send images/articles for publication) to Kevin Brown: editor@practicalastronomy.com

The magazine is published by Structure Ltd (a UK registered company) in pdf format, making it readable and printable by most computers in the World.

It’s been assigned the International Standard Serial Number ISSN 2042-2687, by the British Library.

Here’s a message from the editor..

The title “Practical Astronomy” just about sums-up my personal Astronomy ethos. So I thought, I really should help create this regular, downloadable magazine.

Magazine Editor, Kevin Brown

The objective (!) is to share practical astronomy techniques and news…

And also, encourage you to get outside and do some observing!

Thank You,

Kevin Brown FRAS

PlanetQuest - the number of Exoplanets Found is about to skyrocket!

2010-06-19T22:50:00.003-04:00

PlanetQuest: Exoplanet Exploration

NASA's JPL/CalTech website reports the current exoplanet count at 453 as of June 19, 2010. The number of stars with planets is a bit lower and stands at 385, meaning that some stars have more than one planet orbiting them.

The image below is a screen shot (from this author's screen) of a widget for your desktop and can be downloaded from the PlanetQuest Planet Counter page. It will keep you current on the hunt for exoplanets, but you'll have to have Yahoo! Widgets installed to make it work.

As soon as the recent first data set from the Kepler mission, which is devoted to finding exoplanets (particularly, Earth-like planets), is fully analyzed, the count of exoplanets is sure to skyrocket. But right now, the data set, just released to the public, reports 306 exoplanet "candidates." That means those candidate explanets must still be confirmed before adding them to the official exoplanet count.

The Kepler Space Telescope was launched March 6, 2009, its mission lifetime expected to span four years of planet hunting. But there are several other concurrent efforts underway in the exoplanet game, including the Spitzer Space Telescope, the Keck Interferometer, the Large Binocular Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope, EPOCh (Deep Impact), CoRoT, and MOST. Although these missions do contribute significantly to the exoplanet hunt, they are not entirely devoted to planet hunting. In fact, the two most well known missions, the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope are better known for their studies of and spectacular views of entire galaxies and nebulae.

Currently, scientists are searching for exoplanets within only 500 lightyears of Earth. This is a very tiny area, considering that just our own Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 lightyears across. There has been only 1 discovery of an exoplanet in another galaxy, the nearby Andromeda Galaxy, and that was a very lucky find and wasn't a result of actually looking for a planet in another galaxy.

Of course the next step is to determine if life might exist on any of those planets! Upcoming missions will allow us to begin analyzing the atmosphere of Earth-like exoplanets for the presence of carbon dioxide, water, and oxygen in the form of ozone (O3). Even though these three chemicals are necessary for life as we know it, extraterrestrial life may exist with different chemical requirements. But humanity's search for life elsewhere in the universe has to start somewhere, and we know the requirements best for life on Earth. Of course, even on Earth there are life forms known as extremophiles, some of which can survive and even prosper without oxygen, at very high or low temperatures, and in extremely acidic or salty environments.

Future missions currently planned to join in the hunt for exoplanets include SIM Lite, the Terrestrial Planet Finder Coronagraph, the Terrestrial Planet Finder Inteferometer, the James Webb Space Telescope, and Gaia.

What we will find is anyone's guess at this stage, but many astronomers and those officially involved in the exoplanet hunting communities are convinced that detecting Earth-like planets capable of supporting life is quite likely within the next decade. But confirming that life actually exists on any of those planets found is probably unlikely in the near future.

Many scientists think that we must start the process of finding extraterrestrial life right here in our own solar system by exploring some likely spots such as Io and Europa (moons of Jupiter), Titan and Enceladus (moons of Saturn), and of course Mars. Of course, finding extraterrestrial intelligence is quite another matter altogether. In the United States, that search is mostly being done by SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) at Berkley.

"Our Planet Hunting Neighborhood" image credit: NASA/JPL/CalTech

Sources:
"Extremophile", Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Planet Quest: Missions", NASA/JPL/CalTech
"PlanetQuest: Exoplanet Exploration", NASA/JPL/CalTech
Clara Moskowitz, "Top 5 Bets for Extraterrestrial Life in the Solar System", Wired Science

© 2010 Gary D. Timothy
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Note: This article may also be posted by me to Gather, Eclectic's Universe, RedGage, Associated Content, and SideTick.

Scientists explore whether some apes shake heads for "no"

2010-05-11T04:35:00.000-04:00

Scientists explore whether some apes shake heads for "no":

May 5, 2010
Special to World Science �

In communicating with each other, apes known as bonobos sometimes shake their heads—and one of the purposes for which they do this may be analogous to saying “no,” a study has found.

Researchers say the finding could be significant because bonobos are also humans’ closest evolutionary relatives, along with common chimpanzees."

[Yes, there's more! Click the link above to read the rest of the original article at the World Science website. --gdt]

This is one of those articles that may have you shaking your own head as you contemplate the possible universality of the head shake for "no!" in not only all humans but other species!

But I think one has to be careful of the assumptions that are easy to make here. For example, is the head shake for "no" really universal in humanity around the world? Or just in civilized peoples? I'm not really sure if the primitive tribes still extant in places like the Amazon jungle, the jungles of the Congo, or the remote Australian Outback all actually do generally shake their heads "no" in the same fashion that you and I do.

In any case, perhaps this recent research is at least food for thought? I hope!

--The Eclectic, a.k.a. Gary D. Timothy

Ya talk about high tech innovation - The future is here!

2010-04-25T13:54:00.000-04:00

If you want to get a glimpse into the future, and even of the here-and-now, you just HAVE to check out the TED talk by Patty Maes about the ultimate interactive environment in the real world. But you don't have to wait - the working demo is working now.

Some on you may remember the commercial about letting your fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages. Well, with this technology, your fingers are going to do a LOT more than just walking!

Making The-Sixth-Sense a reality, this video is a must-see for anybody even slightly interested in technology. It's amazing! And, there are a few laughs to boot!

You can also find this video and many more fantastic talks at:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

Hawking Radiation, and how something comes from nothing all the time!

2010-04-25T11:46:00.000-04:00

You too can begin to understand Black Holes, Hawking Radiation, Virtual Particles, and the strange quantum world of how "something" comes "nothing" all the time, everywhere!

Here's my story. And I'm sticking with it! :-)

While perusing the Internet one day, namely today, I ran across a brilliant video by the BBC on Hawking radiation. Okay, I didn't just run across it - I was specifically looking for Hawking Radiation related stuff. But only because I was looking for easy references that I could link to in my comments on someone else's posts.

I happened to be arguing that it is not so ridiculous to imagine that our universe may have indeed essentially been created as a result of quantum fluctuations within the "nothingness" of a vacuum. To me, the spontaneous creation of virtual particles, seems to negate any need for a supernatural force, or god(s) to be involved at all. After all, the creation of these virtual particles doesn't require any supernatural explanation since they are consequence of quantum fluctuations and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.

But that particular argument isn't really the subject of this particular post. Instead, it is my attempt to perhaps enlighten a mind or two about what some of the most brilliant people that have ever existed on Earth are thinking!

And, just who the heck am I to argue with Stephen Hawking who is one of those geniuses?! Now can you guess who Hawking Radiation is named after?

The video below is only about 6 minutes long and is well worth a look! It is presented quite simply and doesn't give a lot a scientific mumbo jumbo, and is emminently watchable and even enjoyable by the general population.

So, let's get right to it then - the video:

Now, the information in this video is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. There's actually a whole lot more to it than this. But the video should at least give you a good beginner's grip on just what the Theory of Hawking Radiation is all about.

It is worth mentioning again that the pairs of particles popping into and out of existence are a result of quantum fluctuations and are a special consequence of something called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. As such, these virtual particles are not "created" by anyone/thing, and are instead simply due to the properties of "the vacuum" which really isn't a true vacuum of nothingness at all. A true vacuum with absolutely nothing in it doesn't exist in our universe, believe it or not!

Oh, and one more note (from the Universe Today link below) about Black Holes ultimately exploding as is mentioned near the end of the video above:

We won't see any of the black holes in the Milky Way explode any time soon though … not only are they likely still gaining mass (from the cosmic microwave background, at least), but a one sol black hole would take over 10^67 [sic; that's 1 followed by 67 zeros!] years to evaporate (the universe is only 13 billion years old)!

More information on Hawking Radiation, and a picture of Stephen Hawking himself floating weightless can be found at a Universe Today page.

Space Shuttle Discovery Lift Off - April 5, 2010

2010-04-11T16:54:00.002-04:00

The Space Shuttle Discovery lifted off successfully on April 5 2010 for mission STS-131, one of the last missions before the program is retired. The photo below is an amazing shot of that lift off from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, USA!

Just take a gander at this beauty and see if you don't agree with me.

From NASA Image of the Day image description:
The seven-member crew will deliver the multi-purpose logistics module Leonardo, filled with supplies, a new crew sleeping quarters and science racks that will be transferred to the International Space Station's laboratories. The crew also will switch out a gyroscope on the station’s truss, install a spare ammonia storage tank and retrieve a Japanese experiment from the station’s exterior.

Image Credit: NASA/Tony Gray and Tom Farrar (NASA Image of the Day Gallery). You can find even larger, higher quality image formats there. [Since this image was produced by NASA, it is in the Public Domain and is not copyright protected. As such it can be freely downloaded, copied, and distributed.]

I think it will be a sad day when these missions finally come to an end as President Obama has directed with no equivalent replacement program identified yet. The U.S. return to the Moon program has also been axed by Obama while mission development was well underway. What a waste, I say! And U.S. leadership in space will quickly decline in an age when leadership in and exploration of space is most important.

But whatever becomes the U.S. space program, mankind in general will remain a species of inquiry into and exploration of the Universe. One way or another, I believe that you just can't take that out of mankind - and we will ultimately find a way that is not dependent on the petty political agendas of any nation!

RedGage - a new kid on my block!

2010-04-01T23:03:00.000-04:00

I've recently found a new site to publish my work to: RedGage. As far as I know, RedGage started up just last year, but I've only signed up for it about a week ago.

Now, I'm not abandoning my blog here, but I will be posting to RedGage as well, so not to worry!

In any case, I just wanted to get the word out there just in case any readers might be interested. Signing up for RedGage is FREE and you actually get paid to write articles and post your photos and videos there! Once you've earned $25, you'll get a RedGage Visa debit card and further earnings will be added to that card automatically. The great advantage to this site is that you get to spend the money on your RedGage Visa card anyway you like anywhere that Visa is accepted.

You can find me there as TheEclectic. :-)

Here's what RedGage has to say for itself on their site:

What is RedGage?

RedGage is a first-of-its-kind web site that pays people for their online content and monetizes their social activity. It's centralized hub where you can earn money for all the things you're already doing online at places like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and Blogger. RedGage pays based on the value of your content, measured by page views/popularity. It aggregates from other sites so you don't even have to regularly visit RedGage.

RedGage has redefined socializing and creating projects on the web by paying you for all of your blogs, pictures, videos, documents, and links. You will not only be able to create a stronger web identity, but will also have the opportunity to host, navigate, and review a wide variety of projects.

Why is RedGage Unique?

At RedGage, we realize that it's you, the user, who makes our site worthwhile by creating and sharing all of your great content. For the first time, by using RedGage, you are able to manage all of your online videos, blogs, posts, documents, links and photos in a single location, AND have the opportunity to get paid for your content. If you manage several social media accounts, RedGage provides a one-stop destination that will automatically import your new content, so no manual work is required to earn money. By using RedGage, you can make money for what you are already doing online.

We understand that the internet has become a major part of modern life only because of people like you. And we feel that you should be rewarded. So why should you keep on using multiple sites to manage your content when you can put it all in one place, and make money while doing it? Just create an account and start uploading your content. It's absolutely free. And the sooner you start, the more you stand to gain.

Sean Carroll on the arrow of time (Part 1) | Video on TED.com

2010-03-05T00:37:00.000-05:00

Sean Carroll on the arrow of time (Part 1) | Video on TED.com

A fascinating and easy to understand video explaining the arrow of time as it is ultimately linked to entropy.

From the TED Talks site of this video:

In Part 1 of his lecture at the University of Sydney, cosmologist Sean Carroll gives an entertaining and thought-provoking talk about the nature of time, the origin of entropy, and how what happened before the Big Bang might be responsible for the arrow of time we observe today. (Don't miss Part 2 of this talk!)

About Sean Carroll

A physicist, cosmologist and gifted science communicator, Sean Carroll is asking himself -- and asking us to consider -- questions that get at the fundamental nature of the universe. Full bio and more links

News from the Amazing World of Nature! - Crickets "warn" unborn babies about spiders!

2010-03-02T11:16:00.003-05:00

In my email today, I ran across a fascinating article about a wonder of biology.

From: ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2010) — Just because cricket moms abandon their eggs before they hatch doesn't mean they don't pass wisdom along to their babies. New research in the American Naturalist shows that crickets can warn their unborn babies about potential predator threats.

What? How is that possible? Human females have been known to claim they can affect their fetuses by talking to them, but exactly HOW does a cricket warn their unborn offspring about anything at all??

And the answer is: Nobody knows for sure! But scientists have a guess. But before I get to that guess, here's the background story:

Some researchers at the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg and Indiana State University did an experiment with pregnant crickets.

In one enclosure, they put some pregnant crickets in with a wolf spider. And, if you think You're afraid of wolf spiders, imagine the stress of those poor mamma crickets!

Wolf spiders are venomous and can cause a very nasty, painful wound on people. Thankfully, most people only suffer pain, itching and swelling for from a few minutes to a few days.

However, the wolf spiders in the experiments were only able to stalk the crickets, not kill them. The researchers somehow covered their fangs with wax, which somehow made the spiders safe. Now, I don't know the particulars about the wax job - my sources didn't elaborate.

Anyway, in a second enclosure, some more pregnant crickets were kept without a wolf spider to harass them. This is known as the Control Group.

Okay, so now, after the crickets laid their eggs, the researchers then compared the behavior of those offspring of crickets that were terrorized by a wolf spider to those offspring whose mothers hadn't been exposed to spiders. And, Guess What?

When placed into a terrarium with a hungry wolf spider, the crickets born of spider-exposed mothers were more likely to seek shelter and stay there. They stayed hidden over 100 percent longer -- and lived to tell the story more often -- than offspring from mothers that hadn't been exposed to spiders.

From Science Daily: Another experiment showed that the "forewarned" crickets were more likely to freeze when they encountered spider silk or feces -- a behavior that could prevent them from being detected by a nearby spider.

The results suggest that "the transfer of information from mother to offspring about predation risk, in the absence of any parental care, may be more common than one might think," Storm said.

Now, all this, apparently, doesn't just apply to crickets in the lab. The researchers also found that wild baby crickets in areas with lots of spiders tended to be more cautious in the presence of spider signs like spider webs. And of course, when those crickets were collected and put through the same paces as the lab-reared crickets, they tended to stay alive longer than baby crickets that were reared in safer wild environments.

The researchers also said their findings suggest a transfer of information from mother to offspring about predation risk might be more common than thought.

Now for the guess of how this might happen that I mentioned earlier: The researchers say that it is possible that stressful events like predator attacks trigger the release of a hormone that influences the development of the embryo.

And that's pretty much all she wrote folks! As far as the facts in this article go anyway. But I'm thinking the story won't really end there - I have a feeling that scientists are curious critters, and that they won't let this go by any means. They'll keep poking and prodding and mucking about with crickets and spiders and maybe some other creatures, until they get to the bottom of it. At least I hope they do! Because I'm still curious and I want to know more.

Parting thought: Could these findings apply to humans? If hormones, or whatever, actually Can have such far-reaching effects on behavior after birth, are we prisoners to our biology? Or are we the beneficiaries of biology? Can we truly give our children advantages before they are even born? Can we avoid instilling negative behaviors in our fetuses? And, just How might we do that?

Sign me Wondering!

------------------------------------------

MLA Source Citation: University of Chicago Press Journals. "Crickets 'Forewarn' Unborn Babies About Spiders." ScienceDaily 24 February 2010. 1 March 2010 .

Crickets 'forewarn' unborn babies about spiders

2010-03-01T14:04:00.000-05:00

Crickets 'forewarn' unborn babies about spiders

ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2010) — Just because cricket moms abandon their eggs before they hatch doesn't mean they don't pass wisdom along to their babies. New research in the American Naturalist shows that crickets can warn their unborn babies about potential predator threats.

Battling a stick figure virus - too funny not to post!

2010-02-06T10:28:00.000-05:00

I found this video at FunniestStuff.net. Take a peek and see if you don't laugh out loud!

May your universe always be Eclectic!

NASA Image of the the Day - Gallery

2010-02-04T17:31:00.002-05:00

Image of the the Day - Gallery

Little Galaxy With a Tail

This infrared (see spectrum diagram below) portrait of the Small Magellanic Cloud, taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, reveals stars and dust in this galaxy as never seen before.

The image shows the main body of the Small Magellanic Cloud, which is comprised of the "bar" and "wing" on the left and the "tail" extending to the right. The bar contains both old stars (in blue) and young stars lighting up their natal dust (green/red). The wing mainly contains young stars. The tail contains only gas, dust and newly formed stars. Spitzer data has confirmed that the tail region was recently torn off the main body of the galaxy. Two of the tail clusters, which are still embedded in their birth clouds, can be seen as red dots.

The data in this image are being used by astronomers to study the life cycle of dust in the entire galaxy: from the formation in stellar atmospheres, to the reservoir containing the present day interstellar medium, and the dust consumed in forming new stars. The dust being formed in old, evolved stars (blue stars with a red tinge) is measured using mid-infrared wavelengths. The present day interstellar dust is weighed by measuring the intensity and color of emission at longer infrared wavelengths. The rate at which the raw material is being consumed is determined by studying ionized gas regions and the younger stars (yellow/red extended regions). The Small Magellanic Cloud, and its companion galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud, are the two galaxies where this type of study is possible.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI
-------------------------------------
Note: Infrared radiation is light whose wavelength is longer (and the frequency lower) than that of visible light A diagram of the entire electromagnetic spectrum is shown below.

Spectrum Image source: Wikipedia

SNOWFLAKES - Everything you EVER wanted to know about them!

2010-01-21T16:26:00.001-05:00

Winter. The word has been known, believe it or not, to conjure up visions of snow. Yes, you know what I'm talking about: that cold white stuff that tends to fall out of the skies in some parts of the world lucky enough to actually experience Winter?

Now, I know that all you folks down in places like sunny Florida have no idea what I'm talking about. But listen up anyway! You might just learn a thing or three. At the very least, you could just be polite and humor your currently shivering Eclectic Science guy. Please?

Anyway, Winter sometimes means snow, but snow always means snowflakes! How about that!? Pretty cool so far, eh?

No? Well, humor me (or perhaps suffer me would be a better phrase), a bit longer because I'm about to astound, amaze, and educate the living snot out of you! (Um,... that is if you haven't already been impressed by the pics herein contained)

Snowflakes, REAL snowflakes are ALWAYS hexagonal. That's six (6) sided for those of you who have no idea what a hexagon is. And, NO the Pentagon is five (5) sided, you dummies. Are you astounded yet? Heh, I thought so!

Anyway, real snowflakes have six sides, six points, six, six, six! Not four, five, eight, or any other number. So that means that a lot of those paper snowflake cutouts you make every year for the kiddies or yourself because you live in Florida and you want ANY kind of snowflakes to adorn your hovels, er, houses,.... aren't really accurate unless you can count to six,... and stick with it.

Please note: All of the snowflake pictures in this article are REAL! They are photos of actual snow crystals that fell to earth in Northern Ontario, Alaska, Vermont, the Michigan Upper Peninsula, and the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. They were captured by Kenneth G. Libbrecht using a specially designed snowflake photomicroscope. [all images from SnowCrystals.com] You can click on each of the images in the slide show box below this article to see larger, higher resolution versions. It's well worth the extra finger motion!

And there's a scientist by the name of Thomas Koop who has reportedly been quoted as saying "Unfortunately, the grand diversity of naturally occurring snow crystals is commonly corrupted by incorrect 'designer' versions." Koop is a chemist at Bielefeld University in Germany. And I hear that Germany does actually get snow on occasion, so his opinion should weigh heavily upon all of you corrupt snowflake imitators!

And keep in mind that even Johannes Kepler knew that snowflakes have six sides. How do I know? Glad you asked! It seems he wrote a treatise called On the Six-Cornered Snowflake in 1611. So, after 400 years, you really have no excuse to get it wrong again.

Now, Koop isn't the only one advocating accuracy in art. From Scientific American:

One researcher who would likely second Koop's complaint is Kenneth Libbrecht, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology. Libbrecht maintains snowcrystals.com, a Web site devoted to snowflake photography and physics; the site even features a "morphology diagram" that shows how humidity and temperature converge to direct the formation of various snowflake types—all of them hexagonal. See some of Libbrecht's photographs, which show natural six-cornered snowflakes to be as intricate and lovely as anything an artist could dream up, in this 2008 slide show.

Nevertheless, the counterfeit flakes continue to proliferate—including, as Koop notes, in Nature's own advertising campaigns. "We who enjoy both science and captivating design," he writes, "should aim to melt away all four-, five- or eight-cornered snow crystals from cards, children's books and advertisements." But, despite his holiday grievance, the chemist is no grinch: "Let's welcome this as an opportunity to share a discussion about the true beauty of science over a mug of hot punch."

So, what do you think about that, eh?! If you ever wanted to see more snowflakes or learn more about them, then DO NOT pass up a gander of the SnowCrystals.com site! Go ahead, click it - I dare you to spend less than 20 minutes there! From that 2008 slide show linked to above:

WHITE SNOW: Many people think snowflakes are white, but a close look reveals that they are transparent, like glass. Snowflakes and snowbanks appear white because light is scattered from the edges of the clear crystals. Salt, sugar and crushed glass also are white for this reason.

From Wikipedia:

Snow crystals form when tiny supercooled cloud droplets (about 10 μm in diameter) freeze. These droplets are able to remain liquid at temperatures lower than −18 °C (0 °F), because to freeze, a few molecules in the droplet need to get together by chance to form an arrangement similar to that in an ice lattice; then the droplet freezes around this "nucleus."

Once a droplet has frozen, it grows in the supersaturated environment, which is one where air is saturated with respect to ice when the temperature is below the freezing point. The droplet then grows by diffusion of water molecules in the air (vapor) onto the ice crystal surface where they are collected. Because water droplets are so much more numerous than the ice crystals due to their sheer abundance, the crystals are able to grow to hundreds of micrometers or millimeters in size at the expense of the water droplets. This process is known as the Wegner-Bergeron-Findeison process. The corresponding depletion of water vapor causes the droplets to evaporate, meaning that the ice crystals grow at the droplets' expense. These large crystals are an efficient source of precipitation, since they fall through the atmosphere due to their mass, and may collide and stick together in clusters, or aggregates. These aggregates are snowflakes, and are usually the type of ice particle that falls to the ground. Guinness World Records list the world’s largest snowflakes as those of January 1887 at Fort Keogh, Montana; allegedly one measured 38 cm (15 inches) wide.

I leave you with a warning: Please don't fake your snowflakes anymore. Mother Nature might get angry with you. And you wouldn't like her when she gets angry!

Sources and References:

SnowFlakes.com: This is one of the absolutely coolest sites I have run across in quite some time! That's where all the pics in this post came from. And there's a ton of other snowflake pics with larger resolutions available there too.
Scientific American: 60-Second-Science Blog titled Accept no imitations: Chemist protests appearance of fake snowflakes
Search results for "snow" on Scientific American site: If you just can't get enough of snow, then this is as good a place as any to further your education. Oh, and ya just might get a kick out of some of these articles too!
Snowflake on Wikipedia: this entry has a LOT of technical info, some of which is actually understandable.

A Frozen Britain from way above! and It's sooooo cold that...

2010-01-21T15:43:00.001-05:00

Yep, it's cold outside, baby! Take a gander at the deep freeze holding Britain hostage in the photo below! Now, I'm thinking that there are parts of the U.S. that are a tad chilly also, but I wasn't able to hack into NASA's Terra satellite to get a photo of it yet.

This striking image taken by Nasa's Terra satellite on 7 January 2010 shows the UK deep in the clutches of the current cold snap. [Photo: NASA/GSFC, MODIS Rapid Response]

And, speaking of cooooold,... I've scoured the Internet for the best, and only the best, humor regarding the currently less-than-warm-fuzzy temps we've all been chatting and chattering and shivering about. And with all that chatter, the Department of Homeland Frigidity has finally set the Chilly Warning to White!

So, let your own pearly whites see the light of day as you peruse the following testimonials from trusted inside sources. But please do try not to chatter them too much - ya wouldn't want Homeland Frigidity secretary, Frosty, to raise the Chilly Warning even higher, would ya? On the other hand, I'm not sure it could go any higher since White is all the other colors combined already. Except when you're talking paint, in which case, we'd be running in the Black. But, come on, who associates black with cold??

So, all right all ready!...

Here's some frigid humor! (the only actually funny part of this post)

It's soooo cold that...

hitchhikers were holding up pictures of thumbs!

I chipped a tooth on my soup!

Starbucks was serving coffee on a stick!

the rats were bribing the alley cats for a snuggle.

Playboy magazine stopped publishing because no women would take their clothes off.

I actually enjoyed it when someone spilled scalding hot coffee on my lap!

Richard Simmons started wearing pants!

a kid could die of suffocation - ya can't breathe with frozen boogers!

McDonalds, Burger King, and other fast food chains have each reported several cases of deep-fried fingers!

we had lunch down at the "Greasy Spoon" - just for the heartburn!

Mother Nature moved out and went south! She's no longer on speaking terms with Father Winter.

washroom attendants were putting salt boxes beside the toilets!

kids were fighting for turns on the rotisserie.

I had to wave a blow-torch in front of my nose just to have a sneeze.

I starting using the snow blower on the carpet.

my silly putty turned into serious putty.

Bill Clinton thought he was standing next to Hillary.

I actually enjoyed political speeches. That's how desperate I was for some hot air.

unusual events were being attributed to the theory that Hell was, in fact, freeing over.

some men were starting to think that flannel nightgowns and woolly socks were sexy.

UN weapons inspectors have suddenly decided that chemical weapons might be hidden in Hawaii!

terrorists have started to stockpile weapons-grade hot chocolate!

And THAT, my friends, is why the Chilly Warning is currently set to White!

Happy HALLOWEEN everybody!

2009-10-27T18:05:00.000-04:00

You're blind in one eye, and can’t see out of the other!

2009-09-30T13:17:00.003-04:00

Did you know that each of your eyes has a Blind Spot??

There is a spot on the retina of each of our eyes that literally can’t see anything at all. This blind spot is where the optic nerve is and there are no rods or cones there. Now, you normally don’t notice that there is a blind spot anywhere in your field of vision. That’s because your brain is filling in the gaps, so to speak. Try the following experiment to prove it to yourself.

Close your left eye and focus your right eye on the splotch on the left below and then slowly move your head, first towards and then away from the splotches until you notice that the splotch on the right has completely disappeared. Now try the same thing with your left eye focused on the right splotch.

You’ve just found your blind spots!

What’s happening is that the image of the splotch you aren’t focusing on is falling on the optic nerve portion of your eye’s retina – ironically, the optic nerve can’t “see” an image, it can only transmit images. In this case, your brain doesn’t have to do much gap filling actually, because you normally look at things with both eyes, and one eye can always see the spot that the other eye can’t. But your brain does mesh the two images from each eye into one seemingly seamless image when you are using both eyes.

Note that, in the image above, the Fovea is the point of central focus for the human eye. It is nearby to where the optic nerve is located. But the optic nerve is offset to one side or the other, depending on which eye you're talking about. That's why your blind spot is offset to the right or left.

COOL, eh?
Okay, now for the moment of truth:
How many of you out there didn't know about your blind spots?

What's YOUR Umwelt?

2009-08-02T10:41:00.006-04:00

I wonder what reality would be like if only we could directly perceive more than the comparatively tiny bit of it we can actually perceive. But perhaps understanding my question is more important than its answer. And maybe, just maybe, the fact that we can indeed understand the question, and even begin to explore the answer, will allow us to at least begin to comprehend, if not conquer, “real” reality.

Experimenters in the Zoological Institute at Rostock before World War I coined the term “umwelt” to describe a creature’s perceptual world. In particular, they investigated the cattle tick which is a small, blood-sucking arachnid (eight legs like a spider).

The eye-less female tick hatches from an egg, feeds on various cold-blooded animals, sheds its skin several times, mates, and then climbs to the tip of a twig or bush. There she will perch, through light and dark, fair weather and foul, waiting for one thing only – the scent of mammalian sweat – for up to eighteen years! During this time, her metabolism is slowed drastically. Her fertilized eggs are also suspended. The passage of time means nothing to it – it doesn’t perceive it.

The smell of sweat is the only experience that will trigger time into existence for the tick. Then it suddenly comes alive, launching itself toward the scent. If it lands on a warm body, the tick proceeds to fill itself with blood, drop to the ground, lay its eggs, and die.

As you can see, the cattle tick’s world is very limited compared to ours. For most of its life it knows of, and senses, only one thing: sweat. A human’s umwelt would then be “the world” as he/she perceives it. But, as will become clear, this perceived world is far from all we actually know about, let alone all there may actually be.

Humans can only see a small portion of the electromagnetic radiation (light) spectrum. But the entire spectrum includes radio waves, infrared radiation, ultraviolet light, X rays, and gamma rays. These things we cannot perceive directly – their particular frequencies and wavelengths are invisible to us. But from experiment, we know that bees can see ultraviolet light. What would our world look like if we could see, for example, radio waves?

We can only hear a certain range of sounds too. But dogs are well known for being able to hear pitches that are undetectable by human ears. What would our world sound like if we could hear everything? (I suspect noise pollution would take on a new meaning!)

Our sense of smell is likewise limited. Once again, dogs can pick up odors far too faint for our noses to detect. In fact, scientific research strongly suggests that dogs conceptualize their world mostly in terms of smell. If we could smell as well as a bloodhound, would we like what we smelled?

Taste could be interesting if our taste buds could detect all that’s possible. Research has shown that some children (at varying ages) don’t like certain foods simply because they can detect unpleasant things in the same food adults like! But what would it really be like to be able to taste everything?

Our sense of touch seems to be highly developed, but we still cannot feel the cold of deep space or the intense heat of the sun beyond that point at which our fingers freeze solid or burn up. Perhaps that’s just as well!

So, while our umwelt is obviously limited to only a portion of reality, at least we can imagine more than we can actually experience. And we can experience more reality at least vicariously through technology and scientific experiments. But,… what would the world really be like, if…

I wonder!

What's In A Color?

2009-07-31T20:29:00.012-04:00

What's in a color?
Okay, now that I've drawn you in with a quirky question.... We all take a lot of things for granted in our daily lives. One of those things is color. Do you really know what it is?

Here are some thoughts about color that will hopefully make you think, and maybe encourage you to take a few less things for granted.

What's the color of this post background? What's the color of that wall in front of you? Are these two questions only about 2 different objects? Nope, and here's why. First, let's assume that the "answer" to both questions was Blue, just for argument's sake. Now, you're seeing the post background on your computer screen. Your computer screen (assume standard CRT screen/monitor) displays an image due to electrons being shot from the back of your monitor that hit the back surface of your screen and excite the pixels (picture elements) to produce that Blue color. The blue color you see are the blue photons (packets/particles of light) emanating from the excited pixels. Interject another question here for later reference: Is "Blue" a property of the post background, or at least a property of the blue part of the screen you are seeing?

As to the wall, well,.... you are seeing blue because that is the color of the light that is being "Reflected" from the wall. The wall is actually absorbing all other visible colors, but reflecting blue photons to your eyes. Is "Blue" really a property of the wall? Upon reconsideration, is it accurate to simply call the wall Blue? Or, the color of the wall Blue? Or, would it be more accurate to say that the wall is not really Blue, but rather that the wall has the property of reflecting blue light? Or, since the wall is absorbing everything but blue, shall we say it is every color but blue?

So, big deal, am I simply trying to make a mountain out of a molehill of semantics? I'm hoping that a little further reflection (pun intended) on your part will result in a better appreciation for what Color is or is not.

But I'm just getting started here, don't dis out on me now!

The light we see with our eyes is technically called electromagnetic radiation. And, "Visible" light is just a very small portion of the whole band, or spectrum, of electromagnetic radiation. Bees can see ultraviolet light - we humans can't. It's wavelength is too short for us to detect - it's shorter than that of visible light. This is sort of like dogs being able to hear sounds with higher pitches (smaller wavelengths), like dog whistles, than we can. If we could see things as bees see things, we'd see a vastly different world around us!

Radio waves are electromagnetic radiation - just like visible light except that it has a wavelength too long for humans to see. Infrared is electromagnetic radiation too, but it also is too long of a wavelength for us to see. The only difference between all the forms of electromagnetic radiation is the wavelength involved. Humans can only detect/see a very limited range of electromagnetic radiation. All the different colors we can see are simply different wavelengths of light.

The image below serves two purposes: 1) it gives you an idea of just how small the visible light spectrum is compared to the entire electromagnetic spectrum; 2) it gives you an idea of the relative sizes (wavelengths) of commonly known types of electromagnetic radiation in terms of things we are familiar with - from waves that are as long as a football field to waves that are smaller than an atom.

Curious fact: the infrared light that is furthest from the visible light range is called far infrared, or thermal radiation. Yup, that's just simple heat! Warm objects give off thermal radiation - infrared. It's still electromagnetic radiation, folks - light that we humans can't see. But the technology of infrared night-vision equipment, commonly used by police and the military, detects thermal radiation and converts it to visible light that humans can see.

Now consider that there is a lot of that electromagnetic radiation, essentially light if you will, that is constantly passing straight through your body, through your house, through your car, through your office, etc. When you listen to an AM or FM station on your radio, the signals that your radio receives with it's antenna (the antenna may be external or internal out of sight) are simply a particular range of electromagnetic radiation. It's the same thing as visible light - you just can't see radio waves. Talk on your cell phone - EMR (electromagnetic radiation) waves are traveling through you constantly. Change the channel on the TV with a remote control - EMR again.

How many other things can you think of now?? Yep, your microwave oven, garage door opener, car key controls, walkie-talkies, wireless networks, satellite TV, etc., etc., etc.- EMR. You are being literally bombarded by electromagnetic radiation constantly!

Food for thought: What color is a mirror? What color is a clear pane of glass? A perfectly transparent pane of glass would be invisible to us since it would neither reflect any light, nor absorb any light.

Is black a color? We usually call something black if it absorbs all the colors rather than reflecting any. Or, if we happen to be looking up into the night sky at the blackness of space between the stars, black is the absence of light altogether and thus the absence of color.

Is white a color? We usually call something white if it reflects (or emits) all the colors rather than absorbing any of them. So, can we actually consider white to be a single color, unique from others? We experience it as a unique color, but is it really?

Curious fact: you'll get black paint if you mix all the primary paint colors together. If you mix all the colors of light together, you get white light. So, how do you get white paint? A prism splits all the colors of white light into its constituent colors - like the rainbow you see in the sky when water droplets in the atmosphere split the white light from the sun into all those wonderful colors.

So,.... What's in a color?????

Look Up And See Into The Past

2009-07-26T21:55:00.006-04:00

There's a curious thing about looking up, especially if you happen to be looking up at a clear, dark night sky - you can literally see into the past! Now, this applies to things in the sky other than clouds and bats - things like stars, planets, and galaxies.

But before we get to the crux of the matter, you have to realize that light travels at about 186,000 miles (300,000 km) per second - that would be about 7 times around the Earth in one second. Now, that's pretty fast, but not infinetly so. And since the distances we are considering are significantly greater than 186,000 miles, you can see that it is going to take time for light to travel those immense distances.

The Moon is about 240,000 miles (384,00 km) away. Divide that by 186,000 and you get the appromately 1.3 seconds that light takes to travel from the Moon to Earth. So that means whenever you look a the Moon, you are seeing it as it was 1.3 seconds ago. Well, that's not so bad, you say? Harumpn, Big deal!

But it gets better, really! When you look at the Sun, you are seeing it as it was about 8 minutes ago. Do the math: 93,000,000 miles (distance from Earth to the Sun) divided by 186,000 (speed of light per second) = 500 seconds = about 8.3 minutes. Keep in mind that the light you see Now actually left the Sun about 8.3 minutes ago and is just now getting to your eyes. So, when you see the Sun rise, it actually rose 8.3 minutes ago. And if the Sun were to suddenly go supernova, we wouldn't know it until 8.3 minutes later because the light from the supernova event would take over 8 minutes to get here.

But we're not going to stop here,... because it just keeps getting sooo much better.

Take a look at Jupiter in the night sky. Currently, it is about 4 times farther away from us than the Sun. So the time it takes light to travel from Jupiter to Earth works out to be about 33.3 minutes. Okay, so now you are seeing Jupiter as it was over half an hour ago. Essentially you are looking into Jupiter's past.

Now, we'll take on the stars - this is where it really gets wild. So wild that we have to start thinking in terms of light years. A light year is the distance light travels in a whole year - about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers)! Remember, light is traveling at 186,000 miles (300,000 km) per second all during a whole year - 6,000,000,000,000 miles (10,000,000,000,000 km).

The closest star to us is Proxima Centauri, a small red dwarf that can't be seen with the naked eye, and it's about 4.2 light years away. But Alpha Centauri, a double star, can be seen with the unaided eye and it's 4.3 light years away. That means that you are looking 4.3 years into the past of Alpha Centauri - you see it as it was 4.3 years ago!

Sirius, the Dog Star, is a well known, very bright star. But it's about 8.6 light years away. The past is getting more past all the time, eh?

Polaris, the North Star, in the constellation of Ursa Minor (asterism Little Dipper), is about 430 light years away. Whoa - now that's going back in time!

And let's time travel a bit more. Betelgeuse, that famous, bright, red star in the constellation Orion, is about 640 light years away. Now that's some really elderly light that's hitting your eyes!

Finally, lets get serious about going back in time. The Andromeda galaxy is visible as a faint smudge on a clear, moonless, dark night. It's one of the closest galaxies to us and the only one that's visible to the naked eye. But even with a bit of light pollution, it can still be easily seen with binoculars. And the Andromeda galaxy is a whopping 2.5 million light years away. So, you look at Andromeda and you are looking 2.5 million years into the past, seeing it as it was 2.5 million years ago. Wow, hunh? Think about it, the light you see has been traveling through space for 2.5 million years!

Binoculars and telescopes, of course, let you see even older light - much, much older light. The Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, and a plethora of other space based and Earth based telescopes have allowed astronomers to see somewhere in the neighborhood of 13-14 BILLION years into the past! Now that's incredible, unimaginable, and downright cool - and it's true!

So, the next time you look up, think about what you are witnessing - The Past!

A Lesson On ASSUMPTIONS

2009-07-19T01:45:00.005-04:00

Yup, most of us know the old adage that when we assume, we make an ass of you and me - you know, ass-u-me. But some of the assumptions we fall prey to are particularly insidious because we aren't even aware that we are making an assumption. Sometimes we run across things that raise our eyebrows and even amaze or astound us, and that raise our suspicions immediately. But those suspicions are fought down as we stare at the apparent evidence right in front of our eyes.

Here's an example of what I mean. I was recently watching Wild On Tape, a National Geographic Channel show on TV. They were showing an amateur video taken by some American tourists in Thailand that featured an Asian elephant named Hong painting on a canvas with a paintbrush in its trunk. Now, Hong wasn't just making haphazard brush strokes. Hong was making very deliberate and careful movements. In fact the elephant drew an outline of an elephant right before my eyes! It wasn't a detailed picture, but it was undoubtedly an elephant that the elephant drew with the paint brush. And, to top it off, Hong the elephant then added an element that astounded me: it added a flower - the picture elephant was holding a flower in its trunk!

My reaction was WOW, this is amazing! Was this elephant really self aware enough to do such a thing? And, was it creative enough in its extraordinary consciousness to understand and appreciate what it had just drawn?! Yet my eyebrows were raised in suspicious unbelief. But, I had just seen the whole process with my own eyes - I was sure the elephant was real and that it did indeed paint the outline of an elephant holding a flower in its trunk.

And the voiceover guy of the NatGeo show confirmed that this elephant did indeed paint that picture just exactly as the amateur video depicted. But then the show indicated that a National Geographic team had been sent to check it out for themselves. This raised my suspicions again - there must be something that I was missing!

Indeed, the thing I was missing was the very thing this blog entry is all about - a very insidious form of assumption, an assumption that never occurred to me even as I tried to carefully critique my own evaluation of the whole thing.

The elephant had been rigorously trained to make the exact brush strokes required to draw an elephant holding a flower. It could indeed paint pictures, but every picture would be the same one as it had been trained to do. NatGeo TV also showed other elephants drawing other pictures with a paintbrush - each elephant had been trained to paint a particular picture.

Whew!!!! My sanity returned. The painting elephants weren't spontaneously painting elephants, flowers, trees, and self portraits - they were simply moving the paintbrush exactly as they were trained to do. They weren't necessarily aware of WHAT they were painting.

Do you see what the assumption was??

The assumption that made an ass of u and me? I assumed those elephants were painting of their own free will, and spontaneously displaying sophisticated creativity along with abstract expressions of their internal concept of themselves and the world around them borne of human-like consciousness and awareness.

'Nuff said??!

Let THAT be a lesson to us ALL!

Evolution - Back to Basics

2009-07-01T23:07:00.008-04:00

Okay, it's time to get back to the basics of evolution, folks!

The word evolution is seeing the light of day more and more these days as the debates about evolution vs. creationism and science vs. religion, ratchet upward in public arenas like school curricula, government, churches, newspapers, magazines, and Internet forums, blogs, and websites. But what an awful lot of people are missing, is a basic understanding of just what evolution is, how it works, what it says about how life evolves from simpler lifeforms, and what it doesn't say about how life began on Earth to begin with. So, this blog entry is devoted to clarifying and simplifying evolution for the masses, for the average Joe-Schmoe, and for even for some “experts” that still get things screwed up when they talk about evolution.

First, what exactly is evolution?

Well, it's a theory of how life generally developed on Earth through the process of natural selection from simpler lifeforms, like single-celled organisms, to more complex lifeforms like trees, fish, and humans. But STOP RIGHT THERE! It's just a theory, right? Well, it's a theory alright, but NOT JUST a theory, not in the sense that many opponents of evolutionary theory use when they pit evolutionary theory against creationist theory.

Evolution is a scientific theory. It's not just a hypothesis, a proposed explanation, or even an educated guess. A scientific theory doesn't become a theory until a hypothesis or proposed explanation or an educated guess has garnered enough evidence to support it that it becomes a generally accepted fact. The theory of evolution is as much a fact as a plethora of other scientific facts like the fact that photosynthesis is the process by which green plants convert sunlight into energy. And like all scientific theories, evolution can be invalidated by a single instance that contradicts it. So far, no such instances have been found. Creationism, on the other hand, is not a scientific theory. It is not supported by the facts. In fact, it is contradicted by the facts on soooo many levels! I personally wouldn't even validate it as even a rational hypothesis.

Now, it's important to realize that there are two aspects to the theory of evolution that need to be clarified.

The first aspect of the theory, and the most important one, is the Principle of the theory - that evolution through natural selection has happened, is currently happening, and will continue to happen. It includes the principle that mutations in organisms can result in either advantages or disadvantages with respect to its chances of survival and its subsequent ability to reproduce and thus pass on the mutation to subsequent generations of the organism. Thus, an organism that has an advantageous mutation will be more likely to survive and reproduce than an organism that has a disadvantageous mutation or no mutation at all – that's basically the process of natural selection which is the basis of the theory of evolution. For example, a rabbit that has only three legs (an obvious disadvantage) due to a mutation will be less likely to survive and reproduce than a rabbit that not only has all four legs, but also has longer and stronger legs (an advantage allowing it to more easily escape predators) due to a mutation.

The second aspect of the theory of evolution involves the actual details of the specific processes, functions, and workings of the main theory. In short, we know for a fact that evolution has happened and continues to happen – that organisms “evolved” from simple lifeforms to more complex lifeforms over many millions of years. But scientists still investigate (through experiment and observation) and debate and refine the actual details of the general process/principle. For example, it is generally accepted that humans evolved from some common ancestor of humans and apes, but the exact details concerning how many years it took, what all the intermediate creatures looked like, how many mutations it took, etc., are still waiting to be filled in and verified.

So, yeah, we don't know all the details yet, but that doesn't mean that evolution didn't happen or that it doesn't continue to happen!

Now we come to explanations and characterizations of evolution that are just plain misleading and desperately need clarification. My overlying frustration with the following issue is inspired by the fact that I've seen waaaay too many scientists themselves explain, or otherwise comment about, evolution in grossly erroneous ways. I'm sure that these same scientists, or most of them anyway, actually understand evolution correctly, but simply aren't careful enough about communicating it correctly.

Here's what I mean. I can't tell you how many times I've heard or read something by a scientist to the effect of: this critter evolved a such-and-such characteristic in order to take advantage of such-and-such resources. To illustrate, here's a specific example of this error:

Certain birds developed/evolved bigger, thicker, stronger beaks in order to be able to crack and eat the bigger, harder nuts available to them as the supply of smaller, more easily cracked nuts became more scarce. They were thus able to take advantage of a food supply that wasn't available to birds with smaller, weaker beaks – so they survived and reproduced better than the other birds.

This is a very common way to explain things, but it is sooooo wrong! Organisms do NOT evolve traits or characteristics in order to have advantages!! Instead, what happens is that an organism has a random mutation – there is no purpose to the mutation, it just happens without any foresight whatsoever of the possible advantages or disadvantages. (More about what causes mutations later.) Then, if that mutation happens to be advantageous one, it is more likely to be passed on to the offspring of that organism. So, here's a corrected version of the erroneous example above (with an additional couple of sentences for completeness of the idea):

A certain single/individual bird happened to have a mutation that resulted in having a bigger, thicker, stronger beak. It also happened that competition for the nuts that these type of birds could eat was getting tougher and tougher since the supply of nuts they could eat was dwindling. The bird with the bigger, thicker, stronger beak found that it could crack and eat the bigger, thicker, harder-to-crack nuts that the other birds could not. Thus it was able to survive and reproduce better than the others. So it passed along that genetic mutation to its offspring. Those offspring were, in turn, able to compete for food better and reproduce better than others. And, after a time, these birds with the bigger beaks became a new species, while the other birds became extinct.

Please note that in the situation above, and in other real situations, there may happen to be No random mutations at all (or, at least no advantageous mutations), and the birds may have become extinct without evolving at all.
Finally, what causes mutations to begin with?

There are several possibilities, and not all of them are completely understood. But rest assured that mutations DO Happen, regardless of whether we understand them or not! Note though, that the vast majority of mutations are distinctly disadvantageous. Heh, if they were mostly advantageous, then evolution would happen a whole heck of a lot quicker.

One cause of mutations is when the DNA of an organism fails to replicate perfectly – sometimes mistakes are made which ultimately result in good, bad, or neutral characteristics of the offspring organism. Neutral? Yes, neutral mutations do occur that make the organism different but without any specific advantage or disadvantage over the previous form.

Another cause of mutations may be the cosmic rays that bombard the Earth constantly. And sometimes, for whatever reason, the Earth gets hit with higher than normal amounts of cosmic radiation which may cause some mutations. Man-made radiation in excessive amounts, like the nasty stuff from a nuclear blast, is well known to cause mutations. There may be other causes of mutations, but you get the idea, right? It's all in the DNA.
What Evolution doesn't say!

Perhaps the biggest mistake that people make about evolution is thinking that the theory of evolution incorporates how life came from non-life. In reality, evolution says absolutely Nothing about how life got started on Earth to begin with. Evolution only applies to living things - the theory only kicks in once life has started, not before! As to how life actually came from non-life, well,... that's another story - perhaps even another blog entry. :-)

And that about wraps it up for this blog entry. I certainly hope that if I've erred in any of my explanations here, someone will graciously point them out to me so that I can correct them – I'd hate to perpetuate misinformation about evolution,... not after I've gone to such trouble of professing to correct some myself!

Equal Marriage Rights for Gays?

2009-06-29T14:41:00.004-04:00

Not EQUAL, but ADDITIONAL Rights!

As the debate rages on in the U.S. between legalizing gay marriage and banning it altogether, there is one point that needs to be made – a point that I have yet to hear either side make. It's a really critical point of clarification and is basic to the issue at hand. Now, before I make that point, please understand that I am taking no sides here, and I'm not a gay hater or even a gay disliker. So don't flame me as such.

Here goes!

Gay rights activists are demanding equal marriage rights, BUT, the crux of the matter is that all homosexuals Already Have Equal Rights in this matter! A homosexual already has the same right as a heterosexual to marry someone of the opposite sex. Now, obviously, a homosexual would want to marry someone of the same sex. In states where gay marriage is not legal, then it should be obvious now that gay marriage proponents are actually asking for and ADDITIONAL right, Not the SAME right of marriage.

Any man, homosexual or heterosexual, in the U.S. currently has the right to marry a woman, homosexual or heterosexual. And any woman, homosexual or heterosexual, in the U.S. currently has the right to marry a man, homosexual or heterosexual. But homosexual men want the Additional right to marry another man, and homosexual women want the Additional right to marry another woman. So, are we clear about that? It's an additional right folks, not an equal right.

And that's all I have to say about that!

[At least for now anyway. :-)]

THE NEXT STEP?

2009-06-27T14:39:00.011-04:00

[The Helix Nebula - courtesy of NASA and The Hubble Space Telescope]

The photo above is also sometimes referred to as The Eye Of God. While it's an inspiring image to say the least, and perhaps it might lead a religious person to think of God, I've shown it here because it inspires me to comment on life in the universe and here on Earth as a result of, not God, but Man's efforts to create life from scratch and find it elsewhere in the universe besides Earth.

Just a few months ago there was an amazing development in science. Here are a couple of quotes from LiveScience:

"Now scientists have created something in the lab that is tantalizingly close to what might have happened. It's not life, they stress, but it certainly gives the science community a whole new data set to chew on.

The researchers, at the Scripps Research Institute, created molecules that self-replicate and even evolve and compete to win or lose. If that sounds exactly like life, read on to learn the controversial and thin distinction."

And, later in the same article:

Specifically, the researchers synthesized RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely. "Immortalized" RNA, they call it, at least within the limited conditions of a laboratory.
More significantly, the scientists then mixed different RNA enzymes that had replicated, along with some of the raw material they were working with, and let them compete in what's sure to be the next big hit: "Survivor: Test Tube."
Remarkably, they bred.
And now and then, one of these survivors would screw up, binding with some other bit of raw material it hadn't been using. Hmm. That's exactly what life forms do ...
When these mutations occurred, "the resulting recombinant enzymes also were capable of sustained replication, with the most fit replicators growing in number to dominate the mixture," the scientists report.

So, we're getting close to being able to create life from scratch! I for one, don't doubt that we'll get there sooner or later.

My question is: What does that mean for those that would inject a god or other supernatural power into the equation of life's origin and evolution? In other words, if man can create life himself, then why would a god be needed to explain how life got started on Earth?

And, what about the over 300 planets we've discovered so far in our galaxy, the Milky Way? As the numbers climb, and they surely will with the deployment of the Kepler Space Telescope whose main mission is to discover Earth-like worlds circling other stars, doesn't it seem likely that we'll someday confirm that we are not alone in the universe? We've even discovered a planet in another galaxy - our close neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy.

So, where is it all leading? What's the next step? I believe it's all leading to another global paradigm of life itself! Sooner or later, it seems that there will be no place for a god to have done anything except possibly to have set the creation of the universe in motion to begin with. Perhaps that won't be enough for some people. For others, it will be too much to chalk up to mythologies. For me? I think the next step will be to find Intelligent extraterrestrial life. I admit that it might be a longshot, but that's where the path of science seems to be leading - as we step forward into knowledge.

Perhaps the Eye Of God is really in ourselves rather than in an inspiring image of the cosmos. And the Next Step is having faith in ourselves.

Just How Important Do You Think You Are?

2009-06-22T09:33:00.017-04:00

At Left: Hubble Space Telescope image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, nearby galaxy of our own Milky Way

As of March 7, 2009 there are approximately 6.76 billion people on Earth. And over 300 planets outside our own Solar System (exoplanets) have been discovered - all within our own galaxy, the Milky Way. And we are just now scratching the surface of possible planets out there. Recently, unbelievable as it sounds, we have even confirmed the discovery of a planet in another galaxy (extragalactic planet) - the Andromeda galaxy, nearby to our own Milky Way!

At Right: Kepler Space Telescope launches.

With billions of stars in the Milky Way, how many of those stars might have planets that harbor life, or even intelligent life? It's hard to say right now, but the Kepler space telescope aims to start our journey on discovering the possible answers. I watched its successful launch on one March night as I dreamed of its mission to discover Earth-like planets. And I dreamed of how much more insignificant its discoveries will make us feel, while at the same time instilling each of us with wonder and awe at the breadth of the Universe.

I am only one of 6.8 billion people on a planet circling one star in billions within one galaxy of billions. All in a universe that is over 13 billion years old and that spans at least 156 billion light years, each light year being about 6 trillion miles - you do the math.

So, I wonder, just how significant can I be in the face of such incomprehensible magnitudes?

Say What You Mean, and Mean What You Say!

2009-06-21T23:03:00.005-04:00

"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful one-hundred percent." -- Horton the elephant [Horton Hatches the Egg, by Dr. Suess, 1942]

Saying what you mean, and meaning what you say is a topic I have obsessed about in the past, having used the highlighted quote at the top many times and apparently erroneously attributed to Horton the elephant. But after a bit of research, it appears that what Horton really said is a bit different, as quoted and attributed above, hopefully correctly. However the meaning is clear either way, and that's what this particular blog is about, not Horton, or elephants.

I've always had the strong conviction that if you're going to say something, mean it, or else don't say it. And say what you mean for Pete's sake - take a second or two to put your brain in gear before putting your mouth in action! If there's something that irritates me during a conversation, it's when someone just blathers on without the slightest regard for the value of choosing their words in any particularly thoughtful way.

Now, first, here's a short history for perspective of where I'm coming from.

I guess that thinking about my words before speaking them was somehow ingrained in me from a very early age. I was basically very shy in grade school and was very self conscious. I was so afraid of being ridiculed for something that I said that I just never said much unless I was certain of what I wanted to say.

In any case, one day in a highschool study group for science, a friend stopped me cold with "Why are you always right?" It turned out to be a compliment, and my friend was just expressing his wonderment of how I had such a great track record for being correct with what I said. A confidence builder for sure, but not 100% true.

Later in highschool, I argued with an English teacher almost constantly over my written work since I'd always gotten excellent grades in English and I couldn't get above a C+ in her class. Finally it all came to a head at the end of the year, and she admitted that my work had been as good as any other student but she had noticed that I not only had writing talent, but also always had something to say - as in the difference between a wise man and a fool is that a fool has to say something, but a wise man has something to say. Therefor she was convinced that I could and should do even better.

Another friend, shortly after my highschool days, commented that I wasn't a conversationalist, because I always insisted on talking only about meaningful things rather than the weather we were having at the time.

Now, I'm not trying to be conceited here. Rather, I'm setting the tone for the importance and desirability of saying only what you mean, and meaning all that you say. I should note here that I have indeed practiced my simple conversationalist techniques just to be more sociable - it does have it's advantages! But by the same token, can't those with good conversational skills also benefit from putting a bit of meaning into what they say?

In any case, I think our kids need to learn about that Horton the Elephant business as much as possible. I've rarely made idle threats - if I tell my nephews that I'm turning around right now and taking them home if they don't stop bouncing around in the back seat of the car,... I Mean It! Else I don't say it. Kids are very good at picking up on empty threats. If I'm not prepared to follow through on the consequences of what I want to say, then I just don't say it. Is that such a bad way to live?

Adults need to learn about Horton the Elephant too.

So, go ahead, Say what you mean and mean what you say!

At least once in a while?

The Truth Is Out There, but so is a lot of other nonsense!

2009-06-21T18:02:00.003-04:00

The title of this post pretty much sums up my experience of life so far. I was having a discussion around a campfire with friends one night and I happened to comment that one of the purposes I'd chosen for my life was to seek out the truth of life and existence. And wouldn't you know, somebody asked me "Well, what truth have you found?" I replied with "Oh, I've found very little, . . . but I HAVE found a whole lot of things that are NOT True!"

In the coming days, I hope to share some of the truth that I think I have right now - of course that is subject to change, as is only natural, as the progress of science continues to add more or better or different understandings of it's inquiries. At least science is self correcting, which is more than can be said for religions generally. The general course of science throughout history brings more knowledge and more accurate knowledge to the table constantly.

But as science and reason progress, it seems that misinformation and irrational thinking propagate more widely in seriously alarming ways. So I will also be blogging about those things that I have found to be false - Not true. And perhaps that alone will be fodder enough for a lifetime of efforts.

But all told, I can't help but be upbeat about it all because the universe in all it's wonder is a most impressive place. So if I rant on about what is not true, it is only to bring us back to the reality of things - the truth of things. And truth really can be stranger than fiction and is often very much so. I've always said that if more folks knew what the greatest minds on the planet are thinking about the nature of reality and our place in the universe, they would be absolutely blown away.

And so, then, here's to the arts of blowing away the fictions we are all to often beset with, and blowing you away with the truth of things as only science and logical, rational thinking can do it!