Oxygen, Alien Life

Posted on February 23, 2018 by Brian H. Gill

We haven’t found extraterrestrial life. But we’re still finding planets circling other stars. Thousands of them.

Some of those planets couldn’t possibly support life as we know it. But some might.

Atomic oxygen may be a good biosignature: evidence of life. That’s what some scientists said in a recent paper. If they’re right, we may be a step closer to finding life in this universe.

Martians

Looking for extraterrestrial life seemed simpler a few generations back.

Frank R. Paul’s picture was an artist’s rendering of a science fiction editor’s thoughts on what Martians might look like.

The Gernsback/Paul Martian was less fanciful than many imagined space aliens.

As David S.Zodney put it, “…the Martian was actually based on some sort of logic, though very much of the schoolboy exercise book variety….”

But it was still more fiction than science.

Scientists didn’t “believe in” Martians back in the 1930s. I’ll get back to that. Serious speculation about life on Mars wasn’t nearly as colorful as Paul’s art.

We’ve known about Martian polar caps since the 1600s. We’d learned that the planet has seasons much like Earth’s by the 1800s.

Improved tech brought the planet’s other large surface features into focus. Barely.

The Vatican Observatory’s Fr. Pietro Angelo Secchi drew some of the first color maps of Mars. He described “channels” on the Martian surface in 1858. We call his “Canale Atlantico” “Syrtis Major Planum” these days.

“Channel” in Italian is “canali.” It means any sort of channel: natural or artificial. Channels on Earth have water in them, maybe that started scientists thinking about cause-effect links between Martian seasons, channels, and seasonal color changes.

I like Lowell’s speculative account of a Martian civilization’s desperate and doomed efforts to survive a little longer on a dying world:

“…On the earth the sea-bottoms still hold seas, on Mars they only nourish vegetation….
“…once fertile fields become deserts….
“…That it [a canal network] joins the surface from pole to pole and girdles it at the equator betrays a single purpose there at work. … Nations must have sunk their local patriotisms in a wider breadth of view and the planet be a unit to the general good….”
(“Mars as the abode of life,” Percival Lowell (1908))

It makes a good story. But Lowell’s Mars wasn’t a good match to his era’s science. Late 19th and early 20th century spectroscopy showed little to no water on Mars. Quite a few scientists were wondering if the channels/canals were really there.

We’ve learned quite a bit about Mars and optical illusions since then. (October 13, 2017; December 16, 2016)

Expectations

Most scientists thought extraterrestrial life would be very much like life on Earth. If it existed at all.

Biosignatures, indications that there’s life, seemed pretty obvious. We figured we’d find life on planets that are about Earth’s size and mass, with Earth’s temperature and oxygen in the atmosphere.

All life must, scientists thought, gets energy from the sun. Plants do it directly. Other critters eat plants, or eat the critters that eat plants, and all of them end up recycled by microcritters. With sunlight driving the whole food chain.

Plants produce oxygen, so oxygen in the air shows that life’s there. It seemed obvious.

Then we found critters living around hydrothermal vents, miles below the last rays of sunlight. They’re getting energy from the hot vents, not the sun. Other critters don’t need oxygen. Some die if exposed to the stuff. But they’re “life.”

Scientists found ways oxygen could get into a planet’s air without life being involved. We’ve found at least one planet with atmospheric oxygen that couldn’t possibly have life as we know it. It’s far too hot. (March 3, 2017; September 2, 2016)

Life and Oxygen Ions


(From NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle, via NASA, used w/o permission.)
(From 2014, Tim Pyle’s idea of what Kepler-186f may look like.)

“Charged oxygen in ionosphere may offer biomarker for exoplanets”
Barbara Moran, Boston University, via Phys.org (February 19, 2018)

“On January 9, 1992, astronomers announced a momentous discovery: two planets orbiting a pulsar 2,300 light years from our sun. The two planets, later named Poltergeist and Draugr, were the first confirmed ‘exoplanets’—worlds outside our solar system, circling a distant star. Scientists now know of 3,728 (confirmed) exoplanets in 2,794 systems, each one begging the question: ‘Is anyone else out there?’

“‘What more important question could we ask? Are we alone?’ asks Boston University professor of astronomy Michael Mendillo. ‘I don’t know of any more fascinating question in science.’…”

If that picture looks familiar, I’m not surprised. Tim Pyle’s art has been used quite a bit since NASA/JPL released it in 2014, announcing Kepler-186f’s discovery.

Kepler-186f is the first roughly earth-size planet found in another star’s habitable zone. It might look like that picture. Maybe. Or maybe not. It’s one of five known planets orbiting Kepler 186.

Nearly three years later, we still don’t know much more about the Kepler-186 planetary system. It’s not for lack of interest.

The star isn’t particularly bright, and about 500 light-years away. That’s too far for us to study Kepler-186f’s atmosphere, or learn much of anything else about it.

I figure we’ll develop telescopes and other tech that’ll ‘reach’ that far. Eventually. But nothing we’ve got now or are developing will do the job.

Scientists have found quite a few more approximately Earth-size planets that may or may not be habitable. Data from Kepler has been particularly useful in the continuing search for ‘Earth 2.0.’

Kepler was still in operation, the last I heard. The spacecraft’s fuel supply will most likely run out later this year. But that won’t be the end of Kepler’s story. We’re still studying data it’s been sending back, and probably will be for years. Decades.

I won’t be checking on Moran’s numbers for how many confirmed exoplanets we’ve spotted. The number may have changed by Friday morning. Then there’s who confirmed them, and how. That’s a lot of work for a statistic that’ll soon be outdated.

I’m not sure whether the 3,728 count includes what Danish scientists announced:

This is not the world I grew up in. Discoveries of worlds circling other stars were mostly in science fiction magazines, not science journals and a business-oriented aviation tech website. We didn’t have websites either, for that matter.

A Pulsar and Dead Worlds

The first two confirmed exoplanets weren’t the first ones discovered. Not by several decades. They were also quite a surprise. We still haven’t quite figured out how a pulsar can have planets. Not quite.

Poltergeist and Draugr orbit PSR B1257+12. The star was designated PSR 1257+12 before its coordinates were updated. Except for catalogs where it was PSR J1300+1240.

The “B” in a pulsar’s designation means that its position in our sky was for the 1950.0 epoch.

Astronomers update coordinates every 50 years. The changes are small, but important when aiming telescopes.

Shakespeare’s “I am constant as the northern star” in “Julius Caesar” aside, the “northern star” isn’t particularly constant. Mainly because Earth’s axis precesses, moving along the surface of a cone. Slowly.

Tiān Qiāng sān, Theta Boötis, was the North Star when folks were setting menhirs where Carnac is today. Rukh, Delta Cygni, will be Earth’s North Star around the 113th century. (December 8, 2017; March 24, 2017; December 2, 2016)

We’re pretty sure about that, partly from studying old star catalogs. There’s debate over who noticed what first. We’ve got a mess of old sky catalogs, from cuneiform texts like The Three Stars Each and MUL.APIN to the SAO. And that’s another topic.

Newton said precession and gravity were linked. His ‘precession’ math wouldn’t work, but he had the right idea. Other mathematicians and scientists worked on the math. Then Einstein added relativistic effects to the mix. It’s been an interesting era.

PSR B1257+12 is a mouthful, even for astronomers, so the star’s been called Lich.

Lich is old English for “corpse.” That word’s been reanimated recently as a term in fantasy literature and role-playing games.

Draugr is what my Norse ancestors called one sort of walking corpse. Poltergeist means “noisy ghost” in German.

We’ve found a third planet in that system: Phobetor. The name is from Ovid’s Metamorphoses: nightmares personified.

Appropriate names, I think, for a dead-but-active star and its planets.

Besides being one of the first confirmed exoplanets, Draugr is the lightest of any we’ve found yet. It’s not quite twice our moon’s mass.

Lich is what’s left of a star that exploded between 1,000,000,000 and 3,000,000,000 years back. Or maybe two stars. The pulsar’s planets are almost certainly as dead as their names imply.

How a pulsar like Lich gets planets is a good question. Scientists figure the least-unlikely scenario is two white dwarfs merging into a pulsar, leaving a protoplanetary disk. Or maybe it was a weird supernova. Or a quark-nova.1

It’s one of the fascinating puzzles we haven’t solved. Yet.

Biosignature? Biomarker?

Michael Mendillo, Paul Withers and Paul A. Dalba say atomic oxygen ions may be a reliable biosignature. What they say makes sense. My opinion.

But “biomarker?”

A biomarker, for them, is something that “…can be used to identify a planet in orbit around a solar-type star where global-scale biological activity is present….” Fair enough.

I’ll use the term “biosignature” instead.

Other literature I’ve seen, and the National Institutes of Health, use “biomarker” when talking about “molecular or cellular events that link a specific environmental exposure to a health outcome.” It’s something used by medicos to diagnose cancer and other disorders.

“Biosignature” is something measurable that’s evidence of present or past life. I get the impression that quite a few folks see biomarkers as something for medial diagnosis. When many or most scientists are looking for life, they look for biosignatures.2

Oxygen and Solar Worlds

These scientists took a look at the one planet we know supports life, Earth, and other Solar worlds.

Not Mercury, though. There’s precious little atmosphere to study there.

Oxygen is part of many atmospheres. It’s usually part of a complex mix of gasses.

Earth’s atmosphere, down where we live, is pretty simple. It’s nearly 21% oxygen. The rest is nitrogen. Except for about one half of one percent that’s mostly carbon dioxide.

That’s not just simple. It’s a lot of oxygen.

The oxygen hasn’t always been there. Microcritters started converting sunlight to energy about two and a half billion years back, with oxygen as a byproduct. What little they produced promptly reacted with iron or organic debris.

Then, roughly 2,300,000,000 years back, all that changed. Likely enough, the microcritters got better at converting sunlight. Pretty soon, on a cosmic scale, there wasn’t enough stuff to absorb the oxygen they were dumping.

We’re still uncovering details, but the results are clear enough.

Oxygen levels rose. Not enough for our comfort, not then. But more than enough to kill critters that can’t tolerate the element. The Great Oxygenation Event set off at least one mass extinction. And, probably, the Hurorian glaciation. (April 14, 2017)

A Reliable Biosignature, Maybe

Earth’s atmosphere isn’t the same all the way up. From 90 to 150 kilometers, sunlight starts breaking molecular oxygen (O2) into oxygen atoms: ionized oxygen.

It’s why Earth’s day side lights up like a neon sign. In far ultraviolet.

That, Mendillo and the rest say, is unique in the Solar System. They’re probably right.

They also say that Earth’s bright oxygen ion dayglow should be unique: found only in the ionospheres of worlds with plants like ours. They may be right about that.

If so, it’ll make looking for ‘Earth 2.0’ easier. Not easy: easier. There’s still the matter of sorting out oxygen-generated dayglow from the planet’s sun.

I also figure scientists will be discussing this. The data seems straightforward enough. What’s debatable, probably, will be how the data gets analyzed.

Even if ionized oxygen isn’t a surefire biosignature, we’ll learn quite a bit from this research. And the research it encourages.

Enthusiasm


(From Rami Niemi, via Wired, used w/o permission.)

“Nasa’s new telescope will give our hunt for alien life a major boost”
Kai Staats, Wired (January 21, 2018)

“So far we have found over 550 exoplanets that could sustain life. Nasa’s Tess Telescope is about to dramatically increase that number

“While we haven’t yet discovered life beyond planet Earth, our investigations into planets that orbit stars other than our Sun – known as extra-solar planets, or exoplanets – have only just begun. In 2018, we will discover the first exoplanet with atmospheric indications of life, thanks to the launch of Nasa’s new space telescope, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (Tess), which will begin a two-year survey of more than 200,000 of the closest, brightest stars, in March….”

I’ll give Kai Staats points for enthusiasm and a positive attitude.

I’m not sure what happened with the first and second sentences after his article’s title and blurb. The first sentence is fine: “…we haven’t yet discovered life beyond planet Earth….”

The next one starts with “in 2018, we will discover the first … indications of life….”

Like I said, points for enthusiasm and optimism.

Logic, not so much. Unless he somehow knows that TESS will find a biosignature.

That would take some doing, because the satellite’s job is to detect planets. Not see what sort of atmosphere, if any, each has. Or probe beneath the ice of an Enceladus analog.

Maybe one or more of the stars it scans harbors life. If that’s so, we’ll find out. Later.

Maybe Staats wrote something else. And then an editor with a strong preference for emotional appeal over logical integrity ‘improved’ the article’s lead. Or something happened to the file, and it got auto-corrected. Or something entirely different.

Whatever the explanation, I enjoyed the article’s illustration and bubbly attitude.

Now, about TESS. Briefly.

NASA’s TESS


(From NASA, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(TESS, Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite; Artist’s concept.)

NASA seems nearly as enthusiastic and optimistic about TESS as the Wired writer.

The Goddard Spaceflight Center’s TESS page says their satellite “…will discover thousands of exoplanets in orbit around the brightest stars in the sky….”

That may be a bit optimistic. It assumes, for starters, that the TESS mission won’t have science-stopping technical problems.

But as I said last week, we’ve learned a great deal since the 1950s. Ships almost never explode before reaching space.

And this isn’t the first time folks have looked for exoplanets.3

Even the detection method has been done before. What makes TESS special — is something I plan on talking about later. Maybe around April 15. That’s the earliest date planned for launch.

With upwards of 200,000 stars scheduled for observation and thousands of already-known exoplanets, I think NASA and MIT are justified in thinking they’ll detect at least a couple thousand new ones.

Many of those newly-discovered worlds may have atmospheres. At least one might harbor life. That’s something we’d learn after follow-up observations. As far as I can tell, TESS is designed to detect planets. That’s all.

That’s important. Data from TESS will help scientists pick which new worlds to focus on. Discovering what sorts of worlds they are? In detail? Like I said: that’ll come a little later.

Still Looking

We’re learning a great deal about planets in general. It’s not what we expected.

We’ll probably find planetary systems like ours, with small rocky planets near their sun and big gassy ones further out.

We may have spotted the ‘Jupiter’ of a Solar System analog.

HIP 11915 b is about 190 light-years out in the general direction of Dalim and Baten Kaitos/Tiān Cāng sì. The planet has around Jupiter’s mass and orbit.

There may be terrestrial planets in smaller orbits. The last I checked, we hadn’t found any. That doesn’t mean they’re not there. Just that we’ve got more to learn.

What we have found so far have been hot Jupiters, mini-Neptunes and super-Earths.

Those are the comparatively ‘normal’ planets.

Scientists, some of them, think we’ll be finding chthonian planets: gas giants that lost their hydrogen and helium from orbiting too close to their sun.

HD 209458 b may be on its way to becoming one. It orbits a star that’s a bit like ours, about 159 light-years out. HD 209458 b is about seven tenths as massive as Jupiter, but is closer to its sun than Mercury is to ours. It’s hot. Very hot.

Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph found a huge extended atmosphere around HD 209458 b. The planet is shedding hydrogen, carbon and oxygen.

Like I said earlier, oxygen doesn’t mean life. The planet’s surface is around 1,000 Centigrade, 1,800 Fahrenheit. That wouldn’t melt iron. But lead would be a liquid. Life as we know it? We won’t find it there.

Unless we think building a refrigerated lander makes sense. Then we’ll be there. And that’s yet another topic.

We’ve found enough mini-Neptunes and super-Earths to have a statistically-meaningful sample.

Scientists have started revising how we figure planets form. (June 30, 2017)

What we haven’t found is life on another planet. I figure that’s because it’s not there. Or maybe we haven’t found it yet.

Either way, I think we’ll keep looking.

Beliefs

Someone could “believe in” Martians. Or nisse. And leave a bowl of milk out at the winter solstice.

The person might even be a scientist. But that’s quite a stretch, even for me.

Science is, or should be, a systematic study of how this universe works. That sort of thing vexes some folks. I talked about Aristotle, Anaxagoras and angst last month. (January 12, 2018)

I don’t believe in nisse. The Norwegian pixie analogs are part of my cultural heritage, but not part of the family’s current beliefs. On the other hand, it wasn’t that many generations back when one of my kinsmen was a bit too emphatic about not believing in such things.

I don’t believe in Martians, either. Not in the ‘flying saucer religion’ sense. Putting anything where God should be in my priorities is a bad idea. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2112–2114)

Given what we’ve been learning recently, I also don’t think we’ll find ruins of a Martian civilization. Tech left by travelers, maybe. But that’s not likely. And yet again another topic. Almost.

I’ve run into folks who seem convinced that someone can’t be a Christian and “believe in” extraterrestrial life. What they apparently mean is that being Christian and thinking there may be life elsewhere are mutually incompatible.

Some of them are smart, well-educated Catholics. Maybe they ran into someone who took ‘salvation by flying saucer’ beliefs seriously, and overreacted. I don’t know.

My own opinion about extraterrestrial life, and whether or not we’ve got neighbors in this universe, is pretty much what I read in a comic strip:

“I been readin’ ’bout how maybe they is planets peopled by folks with ad-vanced brains. On the other hand, maybe we got the most brains…maybe our intellects is the universe’s most ad-vanced. Either way, it’s a mighty soberin’ thought.”
(Porky Pine, in Walt Kelly’s Pogo (June 20, 1959) via Wikiquote)

Reality

My opinion about life in the universe won’t change reality. God’s God, I’m not, which suits me just fine.

Part of my job is admiring God’s work. Not telling the Almighty how it should have been designed. I say that a lot.

Maybe because strident foes of newfangled ideas sometimes justify their views with “religious” arguments. It’s embarrassing.

My youthful encounters with ‘Bible-based’ opposition to science in general and evolution in particular left a deep and regrettable impression.

It wasn’t all bad news, though. The rants sent me on a search that led me to become a Catholic. And that’s still another topic.

About ‘Bible-based,’ I take the Bible very seriously. Some of that’s my Protestant roots showing. But what was a preference is now an obligation. (Catechism, 101–133)

Truth

Taking the Bible seriously is one thing. Thinking that folks knew everything there was to know when Genesis and Job were written is daft.

That’s my view. I’ll grant that I see no point in basing my faith on poetic metaphor rooted in Mesopotamian beliefs.

Or being upset that Aristotle was wrong about celestial spheres. Or that Newton got some of his math wrong. Or that Einstein didn’t see eye to eye with Bohr.

We didn’t know everything there is to know about this universe before the Late Bronze Age Collapse.

We’ve learned quite a bit since then. But we still don’t know everything. We may have more unanswered questions today. I see it as more fascinating puzzles to solve.

Which likely as not will unlock still more puzzles. For someone like me, it’s like living in a cosmos-size toy store. Fully stocked.

I can’t reasonably be upset that we’re learning more about this vast universe.

That’s because I’m a Catholic. For me, faith means willingly and consciously embracing “the whole truth that God has revealed.” (Catechism, 142–150)

The whole truth. Not just what folks knew in the ‘good old days.’

I’ll find truth in the Bible. But it’s not ‘just the Bible and me.’ I’ve got the Bible, our Tradition, and the Magisterium. Tradition with a capital “T” isn’t trying to live in the past. At all. (Catechism, 74–95, 105–108)

I’ll also find truth in this universe. If I pay attention.

There’s truth in the natural world’s order and beauty. Noticing it and appreciating God’s work is a good idea. That’s because everything ultimately points back to God. (Catechism, 32, 41, 74, 283, 294, 341, 2500)

Finding Life

Getting back to Barbara Moran’s question, “Is anyone else out there?”

I’m quite sure that we’re alone. That in all this vast universe, life exists only on Earth.

Or that we’ll find life on other worlds. Single-celled life, but extraterrestrial just the same.

Or we’ll find life on other worlds. And learn that we have neighbors. Creatures like us, free-willed spirits with physical bodies. People, but not human.

It’s not my decision.

If God decides to do something, it’ll happen. It’s that simple. And I’m quite sure God can handle whatever’s out there.

“Our God is in heaven and does whatever he wills.”
(Psalms 115:3)

“Indeed, before you the whole universe is as a grain from a balance, or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth.”
(Wisdom 11:22)

Whether or not we share this universe with others is a God-level decision. If we do, I’m pretty sure we’ll meet. Sooner or later. Or we’ll find traces they left. Meanwhile, I’m quite sure we’ll keep looking:

1 Pulsars, precession, and planets:

2 Oxygen ions and life:

3 Searching for and studying exoplanets:

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Mass Murder: No Fast Fix

Posted on February 18, 2018 by Brian H. Gill

This year’s Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day were the same day.

Folks exchanged greeting cards. Many got their foreheads marked with ashes. And 17 were killed at a high school.

Someone’s already called last Wednesday’s mass murder the ‘Valentine’s Day Massacre of 2018.’ The famous Valentine’s Day Massacre was in 1929. It happened when a Chicago gang tried resolving a disagreement over bootleg booze. It didn’t succeed. Not quite.

Last week’s murders almost certainly weren’t gang-related.

Maybe I could come up with a catchy name that wasn’t related to the date, but that seems like a waste of effort. At best.

Life

Philippe de Champaigne's 'Still-Life with a Skull', a vanitas painting. (c. 1671) left to right: life, death, and time.I’m quite sure the 17 folks killed at Stoneman Douglas High School will be missed by their families, friends, and acquaintances.

One was a football coach. One of the dead students had won a swimming scholarship to the University of Indianapolis.

Others were on the school honor guard, enjoyed playing soccer or dancing. A geography teacher died while trying to barricade a door. Like I said, they will be missed.

Nothing I say or do will change what happened. But I can talk about why I think murder is a bad idea. Among other things.

Deliberately killing an innocent person is wrong. That’s because human life as sacred. All human life. My life — and everyone else’s — is a gift from God. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2258–2317)

I decide what I do with my life. I can try helping or hurting others. We all can. (Catechism, 1701–1709, 2258)

Here’s where it gets complicated.

Every human life is precious. That’s why defending our lives, using the least force necessary, is okay: even if that action results in the attacker’s death. (Catechism, 2263–2267)

Like I said: complicated. (January 22, 2017; January 11, 2017)

Opinions

Some media outlets lost no time giving their views on what oughta be done.

It’s nice, in a way, seeing so many cries for consciousness raising, or whatever it’s called these days. It’s arguably better than not caring, or enjoying the carnage.

I think they’re right. We’ve got problems. I’m none too satisfied with the status quo. And haven’t been since the 1960s.

Hoo boy. That, I’d better explain.

I’m not a soft-headed liberal or heartless conservative.

I sometimes get pegged as “conservative.” Partly, I suspect, because I’m not on the same page as today’s establishment. Not even close.

What I think is too well-defined to be “moderate.” Not in the blandly placating sense.

I think social justice, the kind that makes sense, is a good idea. So is private property, within reason. It boils down to taking love and hope seriously. And God:

For fun, and to see what happened, I’ve tried some of those ‘what are your political views?’ online freebies.

The ones I checked kept it simple, no more than maybe 20 or so questions. Each picked a different theme: economics, civil rights, that sort of thing.

I wasn’t surprised when some results showed that I was pretty far into the ‘right wing conservative’ spectrum. Others identified me as a liberal. One showed me as a libertarian.

Each, I think, was accurate: sighting along the angle the test designers chose.

Crazy Ideas

Getting back to current news and views, nobody has said that Hallmark is to blame, or that we should abolish all holidays with religious origins.

Or that we should remove environmental regulations and ban environmentalist “propaganda.”

Folks with that view could point out that Stoneman Douglas High School is named after Marjory Stoneman Douglas. She’s an environmentalist, feminist and journalist. Was. She died 20 years back. At age 108.

More accurately, I haven’t seen those opinions in my news feeds or social media. And I don’t plan to go looking for ‘news and views from the weird side.’

On the other hand, I could share a crackpot notion. And will.

I made this up, and most emphatically do not believe it. I figure it’s safe to post, since only a few folks might take it seriously. And they almost certainly won’t read this blog. Even if they do, I doubt it’d get much attention. Apart from discussions of weird notions. Maybe.

It starts with a fact: and a preference I occasionally see, and do not think makes sense.

Every mass murder at a school has happened — at a school.

Other mass murders happened when folks got together. For fun. Like music festivals or night clubs or suchlike suspicious things.

‘Obviously,’ we should outlaw public gatherings. And private ones.

Or at least abolish schools.

While we’re at it, outlaw education. It just gives kids ideas.

At least stop telling those impressionable youngsters that Earth is round.

And stop teaching them to read. There’s no telling what they’ll learn.

Given today’s background ‘nonsense’ noise, I’d better make a disclaimer: I’m kidding!

I think reading is a good idea.

So is education.

One reason reading is a good idea is that it makes studying the Bible easier. The whole Bible, not just a few favorite verses.

About that last, Catholics are strongly encouraged “…to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures….” (Catechism, 101–133)

There’s no ‘reading requirement’ for being Catholic. But it makes studying the Bible easier. Which doesn’t mean what some folks may assume.1

Another crazy idea would be outlawing cars. From what I’ve read, many recent mass murderers drove cars. One used a car to kill people. (August 14, 2017)

I’ll get back to that.

Thinking

I get the impression that few if any Americans are delighted, or even smugly certain, that our country is just fine the way it is.

Some yearn for the imagined halcyon days of the 1940s or ’50s. Others apparently feel that the answer is doing what we did in the 1960s and ’70s: only moreso. Or “more so,” for those who prefer pre-21st-century spelling.

I’m not at all happy about current events and attitudes. But I don’t think being frantic or hopeless will help. I’m slightly sympathetic with folk longing for ‘happy days’ America and those carrying a torch for ’60s sensibilities. (January 21, 2018; June 4, 2017)

A particular technology is a hot-button political issue. I’m sure folks on both, all, sides are passionately convinced that they must be right.

I understand feeling good or bad about something. I’m a very emotional man. But I think feelings are a poor substitute for facts and reason. (October 8, 2017; July 2, 2017)

My son-in-law is as interested in facts and analysis as I am. And better at making practical use of them, which is another topic. Anyway, he looked up a few numbers:

Aaron McWilliams
February 14 ·

“Chances of being killed in a School shooting: 1 in 67,500

“Today we learned of yet another tragic school shooting. Let us remember the families of all of those effected in our prayers both today and for years to come.

“I pondered why these things happen, how often they happen, and how big of a problem it is. What are the chances of getting killed in a school shooting? After collecting some data and doing some math it comes out to about 1 in 67,500 or a .0015% chance. This mean that you are 104 times more likely to git hit by a car over your lifetime.

“Why post this? I believe it is important to put things into perspective. Yes, all school shootings are terrible and should never happen. It is good and right to speak out against evil but we must not allow ourselves to live in fear and sacrifice our freedoms. Fear is not of the Lord.”

I think he’s right. Mass murder at schools is not right. It’s wrong. Saying so is a good idea.

But letting fear take control is not good. It is a bad idea, and we shouldn’t do it. Feelings are fine. But we’ve got brains. We should use them. (Catechism, 1730, 1762–1770, 1778, 1804, 2339)

Many Questions, Few Answers

Details of what happened Wednesday and who was involved are still unsettled.

We know that 17 folks were killed.

I don’t think there’s reasonable doubt that a 19-year-old former student killed them.

There’s the usual speculation, and a few facts.2 The speculation ranges from common sense to what may be the usual demonizing, or overly-imaginative memory at work.

The young man sounds like other recent mass murderers: a depressed loner. He’s still alive. And in custody.

In 20-20 hindsight, someone should have done something different. Probably several ‘someones.’ Folks will be playing blame games for quite a while.

I hope and trust that others will look at the facts and see what should be changed. And what went right, and shouldn’t be changed.

I am quite sure that 17 folks were killed, that one person killed them, and that the killer is not an immediate danger to others. Aside from that, I don’t know enough to have an informed opinion.

It’s not all bad news and slanted views.

I have seen a refreshing lack of appeals for putting tighter restrictions on crazy people.

How we treat folks with psychological and psychiatric conditions occasionally needs review. I suspect it does now, but haven’t researched the issue.

I also think ‘lock them all up’ isn’t a reasonable policy.

Partly because I’m one of ‘them.’ That doesn’t make me a menace to society. I’m pretty sure about that. (January 7, 2018; December 17, 2017; November 19, 2017)

I’d love to have a simple solution to the world’s woes. Simple and easy. Preferably a nice slogan or sound bite.

Simple I can do. Simple and easy, no. Not even close.

Love

Mass murder isn’t our only problem.

Wars are in progress around the world. Small ones, but lethal just the same. Food isn’t getting to folks who need it. Neither is adequate medical care. Slavery is illegal in some places, and surprisingly unfashionable. But it’s still done, and a bad idea. (Catechism, 2414)

Those aren’t the only problems, sadly.

I think the solution is simple. And very, very far from easy.

I should love God, and my neighbors. I should see everyone as my neighbor. Everyone. No exceptions. (Matthew 5:43–44, 22:36–40; Mark 12:28–31; Luke 6:31 10:25–27, 29–37; Catechism, 1789)

It’s not just me, of course. That’s why I keep suggesting that loving neighbors, respecting humanity’s transcendent dignity, makes sense. (Catechism, 1929)

Knowing what I should do, and actually doing it, isn’t the same thing. But doing what’s right and avoiding what’s not is still a good idea.

“…The answer to the fear which darkens human existence at the end of the twentieth century is the common effort to build the civilization of love, founded on the universal values of peace, solidarity, justice, and liberty….”
(“To the United Nations Organization,” Pope St. John Paul II (October 5, 1995))

Building something like St. John Paul II’s civilization of love3 won’t be finished in my lifetime. I think we’ll be doing well to get a first approximation in a few centuries.

I also think we can do better. I am sure that we must try:

1 Taking the Bible seriously doesn’t mean trying to ignore what we’re learning. I keep running into Christians, some of the Catholics, who seem convinced that evolution can’t happen because it’s not ‘Biblical.’ (July 23, 2017)

But oddly enough, I’ve yet to meet a Christian who thinks Earth is flat. Copernican heliocentrism is another matter. (January 19, 2018; December 2, 2016)

2 What happened Wednesday, from Friday’s news:

3 A civilization of love; it’s a work in progress:

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Lent: Not Doing Too Much

Posted on February 18, 2018 by Brian H. Gill

Quite a bit happened this week.

We started Lent’s 40-day stay with our Lord in the desert. Not literally. That’s mentioned in today’s Gospel: Mark 1:12–15. I’ve talked about deserts and Deuteronomy, penance and porridge, before. (February 11, 2018; February 26, 2017)

There’s a more technical — and more useful, probably — discussion in the Catechism of the Catholic Church 538–540.

This year’s Ash Wednesday was also St. Valentine’s Day. We’d been celebrating St. Valentine of Rome for centuries before the High Middle Ages. That’s when he got associated with courtly love. His feast day has been February 14 ever since.

St. Valentine of Rome’s portfolio includes engaged couples, beekeepers, happy marriages, love, plague and epilepsy. “Courtly love” is a can of worms I’ll leave for another day.

Starting Lent

If I believed Lent was all about feeling far less than chipper, I’d be pretty impressed with myself.

I’m not. Either chipper or impressed. The latter would make about as much sense as seeing health as a reward for holiness. (January 7, 2018)

I’m not quite sick, not enough to warrant medical attention. But I’m not well either.

It’s frustrating, and kept me home on Ash Wednesday. My wife and #3 daughter did the same, for the same reason.

My son, happily, is less under par, and brought home this year’s cross and necklace. I’m wearing both now. I haven’t timed it, but the ‘chaplet’ prayers are probably the shortest part of my Lenten ‘add-on’ routine.

Keeping it Simple

What I’m doing for Lent is pretty minimal. Along with the chaplet, I read whatever’s on a Lent 2018 Calendar. It’s from the USCCB.

Each day there’s something from the Bible, a prayer, something written in the last two millennia. That sort of thing.

There’s a printable copy: six sheets/pages. My copy is virtual: a *.pdf I filed under ‘devotionals.’ That lets me get at it easily, without expending paper and ink.

I could waste time and effort, agonizing over my ‘keep it simple’ decision. But I won’t. This reading-and-prayer routine is something I can do. I figure doing what I can is more productive than fretting about what I can’t.

It seems I’m not the only one who thinks being reasonable makes sense. “Don’t do too much” is the sixth of ten points on a ‘what to remember’ list:

I’ll probably look at how ‘dying to myself’ doesn’t mean indulging in self-inflicted pain and suffering. Eventually.

What with flagellants and ‘more ascetic than thou’ enthusiasts, it’s a wonder more folks don’t assume “Christian” and “crazy” are synonyms. And that’s another topic.

Then there’s observing Lent’s ‘meatless Fridays’ by going to a swanky restaurant and ordering Lobster Thermidor. That’s not how it works.

Or why. The goal is taking my cues from our Lord:

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Mars and Beyond

Posted on February 16, 2018 by Brian H. Gill

Falcon Heavy’s test flight last week wasn’t perfect. But I’ll call it a success. That’s good news for SpaceX. My opinion isn’t the good news, I’m nowhere near that influential. It’s the largely-successful flight.

The test flight’s dummy payload included an actual dummy. “Starman” is the mannequin wearing a spacesuit at the wheel of a red Tesla roadster.

I’ll be talking about that, also how I see the news, technology, and humanity’s new horizon.

Tickets to Other Worlds


(From Falcon Heavy Demo Mission, SpaceX; via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(Falcon Heavy Lift side boosters landing: February 6, 2018.)

We still don’t have spaceliners or daily low Earth orbit commuter runs. But we’re another step closer to those science fiction staples.

I’ll probably talk about energy costs, efficiency, and the economics of spaceflight in more detail. Eventually. Not this week.

Briefly, going from Earth’s surface into orbit is more expensive than taking a flight from Houston to Dallas.

Partly, I think, because there’s not much traffic between the surface and orbit.

It’ll always be a bit more pricey, probably. Lifting something into Earth orbit takes a fair amount of energy.

But that’s not, I think, the main reason we don’t have passenger service to Lunar cities. Lunar cities? That’s another topic. Several, actually.

We’ve had ocean liners for generations. Cruise ships are still a vacation option. Airlines make global travel possible for many folks. Including transpacific flights.

None of that would be possible if airlines had to buy a new Airbus for each trip. Or Royal Caribbean International needed a new Harmony of the Seas for each cruise.

Which gets me to why we don’t have spaceliners. Yet.

Harmony of the Seas cost about $1,350,000,000. It carries 5,479 passengers at “double occupancy.”

How they get an odd number out of “double,” I don’t know. There’s also a crew of 2,300 or so.

A new cruise shop would cost — only $246,395 per passenger. That’s not ridiculously expensive. Beyond my household’s budget, though.

Getting a vehicle isn’t the only expense, of course. Figuring out wages, fuel, maintenance and the rest — would take time. More than I’m willing to spend this week.

I’ll be optimistically vague instead.

Let’s say that ticket cost per passenger with a new Harmony each time would be around a million dollars. Probably more, since folks with that sort of money might want roomier quarters and more staff.

If each of the world’s 2,000 or so billionaires took a million-dollar Caribbean cruise each year? My guess is that most would prefer their own yacht to a cruise ship. Assuming they didn’t have other plans, or put vacations off until retirement.

Developing Tech


(From NASA, used w/o permission.)

I might be around when the first humans set out for Mars. Or not.

I’m about as sure as I can be that we’ll get there. Whether it takes decades, centuries or millennia depends more on economics and preference than technology. My opinion.

We don’t have the tech now. Not quite.

Outfits like SpaceX are very close to launching commercial vehicles capable of getting to Mars. Keeping folks in good shape on the way? That’s in development. Making it reliable and ready will take time.

Whether or not the first human arrivals are explorers or colonists, they’ll almost certainly set up a habitat. One that’ll support them for months.

That’d suit scientists with a new planet to study. But they’d be stuck there anyway, regardless of their druthers. Physics makes the stopover necessary.

Round Trip to Mars

Getting to Mars and back takes roughly 21 months with something like today’s tech.

Walther Hohmann‘s 1925 book described the orbital mechanics.

Hohmann transfer orbits aren’t spot-on accurate, since they don’t take the Solar System’s gravity fields into account. Other than our sun’s, that is.

But they’re close enough for ballpark estimates.

Using minimum fuel, it takes nine months to reach Mars from Earth. Heading back to Earth’s orbit can be done any time after that.

Folks who want Earth to be there when they arrive must wait three months. Then it’s another nine month coast to Earth. Roughly.

That’s something like 21 months, living on whatever we bring along. For six people, that’d be about 3,000,000 pounds of supplies. That’s around 1,500 tons. U.S. measurements.

If I’m reading the numbers right, that’s very roughly how much cargo many container ships carry.

Building a life support module that big should be possible. Expensive, but possible.

Adding enough fuel to get the thing to Mars and back? Even leaving used parts behind for the return trip?

I doubt anyone would see the proposal as affordable.

Knowing how something can be done, the science involved, is one thing. Working bugs out of prototype tech is another. Next comes putting the pieces together and making it all mildly reliable. That’s assuming that resources and interest kept up.

It took us nearly two millennia to go from aeolipiles to steam engines and robotic spaceships. We managed the last step in a few centuries. (February 5, 2017)

We’ve got much more effective data storage, retrieval, and analysis tech now, which should speed things up. Yet more topics. (January 26, 2018; December 1, 2017)

Plans


(From NASA/Clouds AO/SEArch, used w/o permission.)

The first Martian habitats may not look quite like the Langley/Clouds Architecture Mars Ice Dome. But they won’t be much different either.

Most plans include intensive agriculture, high tech gardening, and pressure vessels to keep the plants and people alive.

Since Mars has a thin atmosphere and no magnetic field to speak of, plants and people both need radiation shielding.

That makes getting light to the plants and providing folks with a view outside a bit challenging. We don’t need to see out the way plants need light. But looking outside is arguably important psychologically.

Something like the Mars Ice Dome would work for explorers. As a combination home and workshop/lab, it’s not overly roomy.

Clouds AO and SEArch’s plans seem to show enough elbow room, though. It’s more like today’s Antarctic research stations than the huts built by early expeditions.

Settlers could make do with habitats like that at first. Folks planning to live on Mars will almost certainly want more room, though.

Options

Why go to Mars at all? Or anywhere besides where we live today? And why waste valuable time and resources learning about anything new, when we’ve got so many problems here in Earth?

If it was an either/or situation, I’d probably opt for solving current issues first.

I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works, though: any more than I think it’s caring about either people or the environment. (August 11, 2017)

That “probably” needs explanation. Maybe. I couldn’t support a ‘people first’ proposal I thought would make matters worse. I shouldn’t, at any rate.

Some folks think sending robot probes to other worlds makes sense, but not humans. They have a point. We’re learning quite a bit about Mars from flybys, orbital missions, and surface rovers: without ever leaving Earth.

Automated probes can be smaller, lighter and less expensive than something carrying us. Safer, too, since ground controllers don’t have to endure anything except rush hour traffic.

Reducing risks and expenses makes sense.

So, I think, does seeing what other worlds look like with our own eyes: not through a probe’s cameras. Video from Apollo 17 showed that plainly enough, I think.

Harrison Hagan “Jack” Schmitt, a geologist, was one of the two astronauts on the surface.

Astronauts on earlier missions had done geological — selenological? — survey work. They followed procedures with professional skill, bringing back samples we’re still analyzing.

Schmitt did the planned survey work, too. But he was a geologist, the first one on a new world.

I’ve seen puppies less excited than he was.

He did something in one spot I hadn’t seen before. He lifted his suit’s outer gold-coated sun visor.

My guess is that lifting the visor wasn’t part of official procedures. The visor is there to block light and heat. It’s useful, even necessary, on the lunar surface.

There was no immediate reason for Schmitt to lift his visor. But doing so almost certainly gave him a better view of the rock he was holding. Can’t say that I blame him.

The risk would have been minimal. Plus, he had three days to see what he could between the South Massif and Sculptured Hills in Taurus-Littrow. Observing as much as he could, as well as he could, made sense.

I share Schmitt’s excitement over the airless world circling ours.

The Apollo missions probably weren’t the most important thing happening in the 20th century. But I think there’s wisdom in remembering the excitement they inspired around the world. I’ll be talking more about that, and what I see ahead.

After talking about the Falcon Heavy launch and red roadster.

Falcon Heavy Test Flight


(From Falcon Heavy Demo Mission, SpaceX; via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster on the Falcon Heavy upper stage.)

“Elon Musk’s Falcon Heavy rocket launches successfully”
Jonathan Amos, BBC News (February 7, 2018)

“US entrepreneur Elon Musk has launched his new rocket, the Falcon Heavy, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

“The mammoth vehicle – the most powerful since the shuttle system – lifted clear of its pad without incident to soar high over the Atlantic Ocean.

“It was billed as a risky test flight in advance of the lift-off.

“The SpaceX CEO said the challenges of developing the new rocket meant the chances of a successful first outing might be only 50-50.

“‘I had this image of just a giant explosion on the pad, a wheel bouncing down the road. But fortunately that’s not what happened,’ he told reporters after the event….”

The Falcon Heavy test mission wasn’t flawless. Only two of the three boosters landed. But I’m going to look at this as a ‘glass half full’ situation. More that half, actually.

Even so, I see it as a successful test flight. Apart from the center booster’s crash landing. It hit the water at about 300 miles an hour, 500 kph, a hundred yards off target. One of its engines fired on the way down. The others didn’t.

We’ve come a long way since the 1950s.

Just getting a vehicle off the pad and clear of the umbilical tower was something of an accomplishment in those ‘good old days.’

The first Vanguard launch got four feet up before heading back down.

The satellite survived the explosion and kept transmitting. It was in no shape for use, though, and ended up in the National Air and Space Museum.

Journalists came up with imaginative nicknames. Like kaputnik, flopnik, puffnik and stayputnik.

The latter two were misnomers, I think. It didn’t actually go “puff,” and traveled several yards from the launch site. The launch was far from a success, though.

In sharp contrast, the Falcon Heavy’s test flight went pretty much as planned.

Including sending a sports car toward the stars. Toward the stars. The roadster won’t be leaving the inner Solar System. I’ll get back to that.

Technicians at SpaceX will almost certainly be going over telemetry with the proverbial fine tooth comb. Still, landing two of the three boosters is good. Landing all three would have been better. They’ll want to learn what went wrong with the third booster.

Those things are expensive, which is why so many folks have been developing practical designs for reusable spacecraft.

And a Red Roadster


(From Falcon Heavy Demo Mission, SpaceX; via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

I’m happy to see systems like India’s GSLV in operation. But it’s nice to see folks in my country keeping up, too. (June 9, 2017)

The Falcon Heavy is impressive, the first American vehicle its size since the Saturn V and Shuttle. It’s currently the world’s most powerful rocket. I’m pretty sure that’ll change soon.

I didn’t know what to think of that red sports car in space.

Given Elon Musk’s theatrical flair, it wasn’t a surprise. My view is that it’s his company and his car. If he wanted to have its virtual driver take selfies, that’s his decision.

Aside from ruffling a few feathers in excessively serious circles, I don’t see the harm. And launching a red sports car into space gave me topnotch images for this post. There’s more to it than a publicity stunt, though.

Having Fun


(From Falcon Heavy Demo Mission, SpaceX; via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

SpaceX designed the Falcon Heavy to lift satellites into geosynchronous orbit. Or low Earth orbit. Or both. Or toward Mars. The Falcon Heavy’s upper stage can restart in space, delivering packages to different orbits.

Since this isn’t one of those ‘Earth’s fate hangs in the balance’ movies, testing the vehicle with something less valuable than a high-tech satellite made sense.

The dummy payload would normally have been something like steel or concrete blocks. But a red roadster was more fun.1

“…SpaceX decided it would be more worthwhile to launch something fun and without irreplaceable sentimental value: a red Roadster for the red planet. Following launch, Falcon Heavy’s second stage will attempt to place the Roadster into a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun.

“It’s important to remember that this mission is a test flight….”
“Falcon Heavy Demonstration Mission,” SpaceX (February 2018)

Concrete blocks would have been a less expensive dummy payload. I gather that a Tesla Roadster sells for between $200,000 and $250,000 or thereabouts.

On the one hand, that’s a pricey bit of “fun.” On the other, pictures from the Falcon’s outward-bound upper stage gave SpaceX and Tesla the sort of publicity you can’t buy.

Orbits


(From nagualdesign, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(The Tesla sports car’s orbit (red) takes it a little farther out than Mars.)

I don’t know how many folks think the Tesla is headed for Mars. It’s not.

It could have been, if Earth and Mars had been elsewhere in their orbits at launch. Even then, the roadster wouldn’t have done much. The Falcon Heavy upper stage wasn’t rigged for deep space course corrections, for starters.

As it is, the rocket and roadster will be orbiting our star for a long time. We’ll be tracking them, at least for a while. About that — Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s HORIZONS web interface lists the Falcon’s upper stage and Tesla roadster as 2018-017A, or Starman.

It’s a good thing that nobody’s in that SpaceX spacesuit. Folks in the company’s Dragon 2 will wear it, or something like it, on the way up and back down. It’s designed for short-term safety and comfort inside a spaceship. Not working a shift outside.

Zeal and Amos


(From SpaceX/Shutterstock, via The Guardian, used w/o permission.)

The SpaceX roadster’s publicity hasn’t been all positive.

I appreciate Mr. McKenna’s zeal in protecting Earth’s ozone layer, class-struggle causes, and all that.

I might not have picked a sports car running on lithium-ion batteries as my target. But environmental and social justice concerns can be reasonable. Or not.

Some folks with wealth and influence don’t use their power well. That was a problem when Hammurabi’s law code was new. It’s a problem today. I figure it’ll be a problem when Hammurabi, Spartacus and Karl Marx seem roughly contemporary.

The problem isn’t wealth. It’s misused wealth and misplaced priorities. It’s the sort of problem we’ve had almost from the start. (Amos 8:4–6; Proverbs 23:3; 1 Timothy 6:1; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 396–406, 1928–1942)

And that’s yet again another topic.

Space Junk

The ‘space junk’ criticism is somewhat reasonable. It’s stuff, mostly in Earth orbit, that we’ve left there.

Some is small, like dust from solid rocket motors. Some is about as big as that roadster.

Most of the debris is in geosynchoronous orbit, along with a great many working satellites. It’s pretty much everywhere we’ve been. Either in person, or through our robotic proxies.

It’s not “permanent” on a cosmic scale. Some will drop back into Earth’s atmosphere in a matter of years or decades. If left alone, some will orbit for millennia.

We can track the larger pieces, spotting collisions before they happen. The ISS has gotten out of the way a few times, giving reporters something to do.

We’re developing national and international standards for debris control. That should help slow down how fast it’s accumulating. Clearing what’s already there is an issue I’ll leave for another day.

“Depressing” News?

‘Glass half empty’ viewpoints are always an option.

Even when the glass is completely, full, a dedicated doomsayer could remember that it might be empty someday.

Or broken. Or maybe the water is polluted. I don’t see the allure in that attitude.

Back to technology and crepe hanging.

The Falcon Heavy test launch hasn’t inspired a lasting peace in Congo, ended poverty, or proven the Reimann hypotheses. Not that I know of, anyway. But it’ll help folks reach space with less expense and waste.

Now, a ‘glass half empty’ viewpoint.

Quite a few folks were killed in Syria on the day of the launch. A Mr. Robinson found that “depressing:”

He’s got a point. English-language news media focused on the launch and the sports car that day. Not the sad business-as-usual in Syria. Or Congo, Mexico, Darfur, or dozens of other places.

What I found surprising, looking back, is the SpaceX launch’s headline treatment. And generally upbeat treatment, at that.

I enjoyed the break from sturm und drang over who’s in the White House. When the press seemingly has nothing but praise and adulation for our beloved leader? It’s rare, but has happened. It’s also downright troubling. To me.

I haven’t felt unqualified loyalty to or antagonism against any president since I started paying attention, about a half-century back.

I’m “political” only in the sense that I’ve got opinions galore. But not unyielding support for some party or politico. (February 4, 2018; September 17, 2017; January 22, 2017)

And that’s still another topic.

Horizons

One of my opinions is that if folks from America, India, China, or somewhere else don’t visit Mars: someone else will.

That’s not Manifest Destiny with a global perspective. Not the way you probably heard about it in school, anyway.

I think we’ll return to Earth’s moon, visit Mars, and keep going because we’re human.

We’ve improved our tech, and look a bit different than we did when we first left home.

But we haven’t stopped being the sort of creature we are. For something like two million years, some of us have wondered what’s over the next hill. And headed for the horizon.

Politics drove the Apollo program — in part. Getting to the moon by lifting the whole works off in one launch worked. Spectacular as that was, I don’t think it was the optimal strategy. But it got the job done fast.

I think we’ve been on a more reasonable track recently. Skylab and Salyut 1 were a good tests-of-concept. The ISS is, I think, a good step too. I’m quite sure it won’t be humanity’s last orbital workshop/lab/observatory.

Low Earth orbit isn’t quite ‘over the next hill’ today. But it’s a good place to camp on our way out.

If I thought we shouldn’t ever leave Earth, I might be worried. I’m not.

I’ve enjoyed Lovecraft’s tales. But I’m not concerned that we’ll learn ‘too much.’ I do not think ignorance is our only defense against cosmic horrors. Or a good idea. (November 24, 2017; June 16, 2017)

We can learn about God by noticing order and beauty in the universe. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 31–32, 35–36, 301, 303–306, 311, 319, 1704, 2293–2296)

Curiosity is part of being human, or should be. We’ve also got free will, so ignoring the wonders around us is also an option. But not, I think, a reasonable one. (March 26, 2017)

Puzzles

My guess is that Elon Musk’s roadster will stay in orbit for quite a while.

Most of it, anyway.

The roadster’s paint, plastic, leather and tires won’t last more than maybe a year.

It’s not the vacuum. Radiation’s an issue beyond Earth’s atmosphere and Van Allen belt. So are micrometeoroids: nature’s own “space junk.”

In time, anything with carbon-carbon bonds will break down; leaving the aluminum frame, inert metal parts and the roadster’s glass.

The roadster is “space junk” in the sense that it’s not doing much. Apart from orbiting and shedding bits and pieces.

At the moment, it’s a point of potential philosophical angst, not a practical problem. I’m pretty sure that’ll the case for decades, probably longer.

But I don’t think it’ll orbit for a billion years. My guess is that it’s got no more than a few more centuries, tops.

Somebody’s going to notice something that size in orbit between Earth and the asteroid belt. What folks make of the rocket-riding roadster will depend partly on how many records of this era get preserved.

If its origins are completely forgotten, it could be quite a puzzle.

In that case, some scholars may say it’s a hoax or forgery. That’s been done with the Phaistos Disc.

Hoaxes happen. But dealing with unsolved puzzles by saying ‘I don’t understand it, therefore it must be a fake’ doesn’t seem reasonable.

Let’s see. I’ve talked about technology, being human, more technology, dealing with puzzles. There’s one more item I wanted to at least mention: life on Mars.

I don’t know if there’s life on Mars now. But I’m quite sure there will be. It’s one of our obvious ‘next steps.’

Looking Ahead


(Detail of “city night,” by molybdenumgp03, used w/o permission.)

I’ve seen opinions shift from near-certainty that we’ll find life on Mars to near-certainty that we won’t.

Few scientists took Lowell’s canal-builders seriously. But quite a few thought we’d find something like lichens or maybe moss.

Then the first flyby showed nothing but craters. ‘Pop’ went hopes for life on the Red planet. Orbiters changed that. We saw other features. Including what looked like rivers. Dry, but the sort of sinuous channels we see on Earth.

We don’t know details of the Martian hydrologic cycle. But we’re reasonably confident that there’s water there. Probably in copious supply. Frozen, for the most part.

Martian life is still an unknown. If it’s there, it’s defied detection so far. I think one of the smartest ‘life experiments’ would have been a good microscope. But nobody asked me, and we did get interesting data from chemical tests.

If there is Martian life — that’s a very big “if.”

If we do find Martian life, at least some scientists will most likely insist that nothing but scrupulously-sterilized probes be sent anywhere near Mars.

They’ll have a point. Studying Martian critters would be harder if we first had to decide whether they’re originally from Mars, or hitched a ride from Earth.

Even if the civilization that first reaches Mars makes it a ‘no visitors’ nature preserve, I’m pretty sure that we’ll land there. Eventually. Our civilizations come and go. We keep going.

We might decide to hold off Martian settlement until after sprucing the place up. Maybe.

Terraforming an entire planet is beyond today’s tech, almost.

We’re a bit sketchy about exactly what would happen as we warm the place up and adjust the air.

And we certainly have no economic or political need to terraform Mars.

It’d be an enormously expensive job. One that’d almost certainly take millennia to show usable results.

Besides, by the time we’ve got outfits with resources on that scale, I think much of Mars will already be ‘terraformed.’

That little Mars Ice Dome is a good start. But like I said, folks will want more room. I don’t think it’ll be long before folks visiting Mars will decide to stay. ‘Not long’ by my standards, anyway. Maybe a century or so.

The first ‘settlement’ habitats probably wouldn’t be much larger than the Mars Ice Dome. Connecting several domes could work for quite a while to accommodate newcomers.

At some point folks would, I think, decide it makes more sense to build larger domes, cylinders, or other readily-pressurized shapes.

Eventually their settlements could grow into towns, cities. Some might not attract many tourists. But ‘compact’ needn’t be cramped and unpleasant. Think Positano or Ravello on the Italian coast.

I can easily imagine someone like me living in a small community not far Athabasca,2 talking with a more conventional chap. He’d be countering my interest in newfangled ideas with his version of common sense.

We’d be discussing proposed settlement plans for a nearby planetary system. He’d see that as a bad idea. Folks, in his view, should live where God intended: in places like Winnipeg, Athabasca, or Gusev City.

Looking back, around, and ahead:

1 Technology, mostly:

2 Athabasca Valles is an outflow channel on Mars, near the equator and generally south of Eleysium Mons. Gusev is a crater in the same general area.

Winnipeg is a city in North America. I live south of there, northwest of the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

Posted in Science News | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Skydiving and Lent

Posted on February 11, 2018 by Brian H. Gill

Lent is fast approaching. How I see it and what I do is up to me. Ash Wednesday is next week, so I don’t have much time to decide.

Christians, Catholic and otherwise, in my culture generally change what we eat for this season. I’m a Catholic, so I’ve got rules.

But not all that many. Mostly they’re guidelines. I put a link to my territory’s rules about diet under ‘Fast & Abstinence‘ near the end of this post. Other resources, too.1

Days of Yore

The rules probably wouldn’t suit folks who yearn for the ‘good old days.’

They’ve changed. The rules, I mean.

I strongly suspect that kvetching about today and longing for days of yore is as old as humanity.

Some rules and definitions haven’t changed much, though.

For Lenten purposes, I see “meat” as what we get from mammals and birds, but not seafood. I’m not sure where frogs fit in.

Living in the era I do, I realize that muscle tissue in different sorts of animals is pretty much the same stuff. Not quite identical, and that’s another topic.

Some differences are important for cooks and butchers, others for scientists. I can use those viewpoints if I’m thinking about food or natural philosophy. That won’t stop me from switching to my faith’s definitions where they’re needed.

Common Sense

One of the rules I live with says Catholics should fast during Lent.

That doesn’t mean I stop eating and expect a miracle to keep me alive until Easter. It’s a bit more complicated. And reasonable.

Ash Wednesday is a ‘fasting’ day.

In my territory fasting is one complete meatless meal and optional other food that doesn’t add up to a meatless meal. That’s what I did until recently. The rule doesn’t apply to folks over 59, which includes me.

More complications. Catholics between 18 and 59 follow the fasting rules. Unless a physical or mental illness means choosing between fasting and taking health risks.

Bishops in my country put it this way: “…In all cases, common sense should prevail….”

My diabetes makes fasting dubiously prudent. That’s true for some healthy folks, too.

Women who are nursing would most likely survive fasting, and so would their babies. But like the bishops said, we’ve got brains and should use them. Holiness and healthiness aren’t at war.

Shish Kebab vs. Baked Fish

Those jousters in the foreground notwithstanding, I’m pretty sure Bruegel the Elder didn’t see Lent as a war between shish kebab and baked fish.

Or something like that. Shish kebab is marinated meat and vegetables on a skewer. All I see there is meat.

Oh great. Now I’m hungry.

My next meal won’t come for a while, so I’d better think of something besides food. Or maybe not.

I saw an obvious bit of symbolism in Bruegel the Elder’s painting. Obvious to me, anyway. The joust between rotisserie meats and baked fish clearly represents our great struggle.

On the one hand we have diet food that makes you look sick and wish you were dead. On the other are hearty meats that won’t put a bucket on your head.

The hearty food fellow seems to be pushed by someone wearing a lampshade. Likely enough there’s quite a party going on somewhere. Probably the inn.

Much more seriously, I still haven’t picked what I’ll do for Lent this year.

Balance

I could be giving up skydiving this year. And mountain climbing. I could renounce trying out for the Olympics, too.

That might work for other folks, but not me. I could fall out of a plane or off a building, but never tried. Or wanted to.

The other two activities? I can’t do either. I might as well “give up” my nonexistent pro basketball career.

I have many options. Some reasonable, some less so.

Some folks in my circles are going offline for Lent — refraining from socializing online. It might make sense. Maybe.

But I won’t be changing my online habits.

Not much, anyway. I’d consider a Web-less Lent if superficial chatter and sharing cat photos was the attraction. Or seeing what various artists are doing. Which occasionally is photographing a cat. Not often, though. Nothing wrong with any of that, I think.

I see it as a matter of balance.

Quite a bit of what I do online involves this blog, prayer, or other related activity. It’s my “work,” in a sense. Or vocation as a Catholic layperson. (August 14, 2016)

Besides, I’m human.

Part of the human vocation is being in communities. Communities can be good or bad news, depending on how we act. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1878–1889)

The communities I’m in are mostly online. Dropping out is an option. But putting my human vocation on ‘pause’ during Lent doesn’t seem prudent.

Doing What I Can

Internet communities aren’t like societies where folks meet face-to-face.

Some descriptions of ‘real’ communities approach the lyrical.

“…We can see his face, evaluate the sincerity of his smile, the purity of his gaze. We can shake his hand and measure his conviction, and his human warmth. In my body I experience the beauty of relationships, of which the physical limits are not a mortal shell, but a permeable boundary that permits communion….”
(“Technology and the New Evangelization: Criteria for Discernment,” Fr. Jonah Lynch, FSCB; Michelle K. Borras; Catholic Information Service (2012))

I’d probably prefer ‘real’ socializing to online interaction. If observing and analyzing what the other person was doing was less challenging.

It’s what most folks apparently do almost without thinking. That’s not quite my experience. I deal with something on the autism spectrum, among other things. (December 17, 2017)

I’m getting better at interpreting facial expressions and body language. Accurately replicating appropriate expressions and gestures is something else.

I gather it’s “natural” for most, as well as involving learned skills. It’s almost certainly more “learned” and less “natural” for me.

I’m moderately competent at interacting with others.

The good news is that decades of effort produced results. The less-than-ideal news is that folks with psychiatric and psychological training identify my autism thing in a few seconds. My guess is that many or most non-professionals just notice that I’m odd.

And they’re right. That’s okay. Being “normal” might be nice, but it’s not an option. I’ve spent my life doing and enjoying what I can. (November 12, 2017; March 19, 2017)

Giving up some optional pleasure for Lent is a good way to unite “… to the mystery of Jesus in the desert.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 540)

thefreedictionary.com says it’s a sort of penance: “an act of self-mortification or devotion performed voluntarily to show sorrow for a sin or other wrongdoing.”

Penance isn’t NSSI, Non-Suicidal Self Injury. More about that later. Penance, that is.

Gloominess, Giddiness, and Weirdness

Despite the impression some folks give, “blessed are the miserable” isn’t one of the Beatitudes. (Matthew 5:3–12)

If sociologists have a ‘conservation of weirdness’ principle, I’m pretty sure it’s called something else. “Weirdness” doesn’t sound very scholarly.

My guess is that there’s something like ‘conservation of weirdness,’ recognized or not. That’s just a guess, though.

Over the last half-century, I seem to have been seeing about the same fraction of oddballs. What’s changed is what they’re dismal about.

I ran into more ‘gloominess is next to Godliness’ in my youth. I’m seeing more ‘we’re all gonna die’ disciples of environmental angst these days. It’s a real shift in cultural focus, more in my head than real, or something else.

Giddiness doesn’t strike me a path to Godliness either. It’s not happiness that’s a problem, and that’s yet another topic. Or maybe not so much.

Decades of undiagnosed depression and what I think is a basically upbeat personality don’t encourage me to see despondency as a virtue. (October 22, 2017; May 12, 2017; February 10, 2017; July 10, 2016)

Let’s face it. I’m a mess. But that shouldn’t keep me from seeking truth, holiness, and God.

Penance

Getting back to penance: it’s part of the conversion, penance, and satisfaction process we need when we mess up our relationship with God. It’s a good idea. (Catechism, 1431–1470)

Doing stuff others can see might be useful, or not. What matters is what happens inside me, turning my thoughts and desires away from offenses against truth and reason. And toward God. (Catechism, 1430–1432)

This interior penance gets done — mainly — by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. (Catechism, 1434)

I’m not doing all the ‘conversion’ work myself, happily. Part of the trick is cooperating with God. (Catechism, 1428)

Today’s American culture doesn’t encourage self-inflicted pain and suffering. Not as an allegedly-pious practice that is. Some folks apparently get a kick out of being hurt, and that’s a whole different sort of weirdness.

Over the last couple millennia, some Christians have gotten overly-enthusiastic about penance. Or maybe they didn’t quite see distinctions between self-imposed limits and self-inflicted pain. And that’s yet again another topic, for another post. Maybe. Someday.

I’ve talked about health, virtue, swooning Saints and ham sandwiches before. I’m not sure what I’d make of a beatific vision. (January 7, 2018; July 2, 2017; October 16, 2016)

Choices

Having access to two millennia of assorted spiritual exercises is a good thing. But it can be a tad overwhelming.

The trick isn’t finding something.

It’s finding something that I can do that fits my native culture.

That’s a good sort of problem to have.

So is having a few more days before Lent starts.

Ash Wednesday is my deadline for deciding what I’ll do for Lent, and getting last year’s palms to the church. And that’s still another topic.

More; mostly life, the universe, and inner conversion:

1 Lenten resources, a short list:

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