I’m starting this blog with a
picture I have posted on FB already. It “speaks to me” and it is so positive I
could not resist.
Scientifically it looks like
this….in my mind.
Which may have something to do with
this.
And works through you like this….teaching.
And if you are lucky, mentoring two
equally old souls. I have been so blessed by The Great Mystery.
My daughter Kersti and my son Zack
As you have become acutely aware over the years, I am a big fan of Astronomy (the first “science”). I even purchased a NASA cap to wear down here to show my support for science in general. Here’s some recent developments and discoveries I would like to share with you.
This is currently the known planets
and moons of our solar system. It has grown dramatically since I was a child
and is obviously more diverse and colorful than imagined even 10 years ago.
Check out all those moons; each one different and full of surprises to come. As in the case of Jupiter.
The gas giant Jupiter, which was named in honor of the king of the gods in the Roman pantheon, has always lived up to its name. In addition to being the largest planet in the Solar System – with two and a half times the mass of all the other planets combined – it also has an incredibly powerful magnetic field and the most intense storms of any planet in the Solar System.
What’s more, it is home to some of the largest moons in the Solar System (known as the Galilean Moons), and has more known moons than any other planet. And thanks to a recent survey led by Scott S. Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution of Science, twelve more moons have been discovered. This brings the total number of known moons around Jupiter to 79, and could provide new insight into the history of the Solar System.
tps://www.universetoday.com/139641/twelve-new-moons-discovered-around-jupiter-and-one-of-them-is-pretty-odd/
Our sun in comparison to other suns
(stars) in our galaxy.
Small but as the ancients knew, and the great Akhenaten wrote a most beautiful poem about, it is our creator. It is what gives life to this “third rock from the sun”. Scientifically: no sun = no photosynthesis = no plants = no oxygen = no animals – that’s you and me folks.
Now we know there is plenty of water
out there in our solar system. Two moons are particularly interesting and with
the energy from that sun, add some water and a few key elements and life is
almost inevitable.
Since
the 1970s, when the Voyager probes captured images of Europa’s icy
surface, scientists have suspected that life could exist in interior oceans of
moons in the outer Solar System. Since then, other evidence has emerged that
has bolstered this theory, ranging from icy plumes on Europa and Enceladus,
interior models of hydrothermal activity, and even the groundbreaking discovery
of complex organic molecules in
Enceladus’ plumes.
The
discovery of these plumes triggered a widespread debate about the possible
existence of life in the moon’s interior.
Even its orbit is weird: Iapetus is roughly three times farther from Saturn than its closest neighbor, Titan. And the path it takes around the planet is tilted, meaning it swings up and down as it orbits, rather than staying in the plane of Saturn’s rings like the rest of the “normal” satellites.
In other words, it’s kind of like the rebel of the Saturnian system, a moon who’d prefer to hang out behind the dumpster and cut class rather than play ball with the other kids.
phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2014/05/Iapetus_equatorial_ridge.jpg
This photo, taken by NASA's Cassini
spacecraft, shows Earth and the Moon as points of light between the icy Rings
of Saturn. Cassini was 870 million miles (1.4 billion kilometers) away from
Earth when the image was taken. You have to enlarge to see our moon but it's there.
This was known as Cassini’s “Grand Finale“, which began with the probe plunging into the unexplored region that lies between Saturn’s atmosphere and its rings and culminated with live coverage of it entering the atmosphere. In honor of the mission and NASA’s outstanding coverage of its final months, NASA was recently nominated for an Emmy Award by The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
And our galaxy,
“the Milky Way”, well: same story but equally lovable. Yeah, we’re kind of
small and there are about 200 billion out there in our universe.
But fear not, we may visit other galaxies one day.
Wormholes do exist and we will find a way to travel within them - count on it!
In the meantime we have some incredible stuff here small as we are.
We have whimsy.
We have fantasy.
We have royalty.
This is an actual free diver swimming underwater for a photo shoot
Irrelevant as it may seem, aren’t they the picture of royalty? I believe they will be part of the resistance, small but significant.
We have comedy all around us.
We have friends and beautiful children.
Some general just
cool stuff
My dear friend Alfonzo. I cannot begin to tell you all that he means to me.
Ishmael's daughter Rosa. Ishmael makes me Lomboy tea and delivers it to me every 2-3 weeks to combat my cancer.
Tony Wu of Tony Wu Underwater Photography
slipped into the ocean to swim with sperm whales, yes. But he sure didn't
expect THIS:
And here’s something very rare. A
humpback whale whose fluke markings are on the top surface. I’ve ID’d over 280
individual humpbacks and never seen anything like this.
After a 400-Year Absence, A Rare Ibis Returns to European Skies
The northern bald ibis is critically
endangered, with fewer than 1,000 existing in the wild. But a German group is
reintroducing these birds in Europe, where they once thrived, and is using
ultralight aircraft to lead them on migrations south toward the Mediterranean.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/after-a-400-year-absence-waldrapp-rare-ibis-returns-to-european-skies
In a display that rivals even the
most dazzling of firework shows, millions of firefly squid gather off the coast
of Japan each spring to perform a sparkling spawning ritual.
See the spectacle that photographer
Solvin Zankl was able to capture during the brief season when the squids’ orbit
intersects with our own: http://bit.ly/2KxpLIc
One more animal pic
Cuthulu, is that you? Nope, just a
glass octopus with its THREE hearts. Meet more "aliens of the deep"
here: bit.ly/2mC3yNi
(Photo by Solvin Zankl) #CephalopodWeek
And then there’s
us
If
you're drawing your genealogical chart, be prepared to buy a lot more paper
because the human race is much older than we thought. According to a team led
by Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary
Anthropology and Abdelouahed Ben-Ncer of the National Institute for Archaeology
and Heritage in Morocco, fossils and stone tools found in a cave 100 km (62 mi)
west of Marrakesh show that Homo Sapiens has been around for at least 300,000
years.
A
scientific consortium has found that human ancestors were scattered across
Africa, and largely kept apart by a combination of diverse habitats and
shifting environmental boundaries, such as forests and deserts. Millennia of
separation gave rise to a staggering diversity of human forms, whose mixing
ultimately shaped our species.
Also new findings from “The Iceman”
In
1991, German tourists discovered a human body that was later determined to be
the oldest naturally preserved ice mummy, known as Otzi or the Iceman.
Now,
researchers who have conducted the first in-depth analysis of the Iceman's
stomach contents offer a rare glimpse of our ancestor's ancient dietary habits.
Among other things, their findings show that the Iceman's last meal was heavy
on the fat.
And more discoveries:
Ancient tools and bones discovered
in China by archaeologists suggest early humans left Africa and arrived in Asia
earlier than previously thought.
The artifacts show that our earliest human
ancestors colonized East Asia over two million years ago. They were found by a
Chinese team that was led by Professor Zhaoyu Zhu of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences, and included Professor Robin Dennell of Exeter University. The tools
were discovered at a locality called Shangchen in the southern Chinese Loess
Plateau. The oldest are ca. 2.12 million years old, and are c. 270,000 years
older than the 1.85 million year old skeletal remains and stone tools from
Dmanisi, Georgia, which were previously the earliest evidence of humanity
outside Africa.
Last thoughts
Intellectual freedom, science not myth.
