Sin, Original and Otherwise

Posted on November 6, 2016 by Brian H. Gill

There’s trouble everywhere, and that’s not news. It’s not new, at any rate.

“Your princes are rebels and comrades of thieves; Each one of them loves a bribe and looks for gifts. The fatherless they defend not, and the widow’s plea does not reach them.”
(Isaiah 1:23)

“Yes, I know how many are your crimes, how grievous your sins: Oppressing the just, accepting bribes, repelling the needy at the gate!”
(Amos 5:12)

How come the world is such a mess, and has been at least since we started keeping records?

Some of our problems have seemed obvious: not enough food to go around, or someone hogging the supply; outsiders taking what we want or need; and disease.

But we’ve been pretty good, maybe effective is a better word, at making problems for ourselves.

Universities, Death, and Printing Presses

About a millennium back, European scholastic guilds formed the first universities.

Over the next few centuries folks like Hildegard of Bingen and Albertus Magnus, both Saints, were laying the foundations of today’s science. Designers worked the bugs out of Gothic architecture.

The Great Famine of 1315-1317; Black Death of 1346-1353; and Hundred Years’ War, 1337-1453; were major speed bumps in Europe’s history.

Johannes Gutenberg developed an efficient printing press using movable type around 1450 — about five centuries after Bi Sheng’s invention.

We might not know about Bi Sheng, if Shen Kuo hadn’t mentioned him in “Dream Pool Essays,” and that’s another topic.

Anyway, efficient printing tech let folks in Europe share ideas faster and in more detail: upsetting quite a few applecarts in the process.

Thirty Years’ War

I see the potential for a more egalitarian society and better-informed public as a good thing. Events like the Thirty Years’ War, not so much.

Printing presses didn’t cause the the Thirty Years’ War, but the new tech arguably made the Protestant Reformation possible.

That didn’t cause the war either. But northern political bosses arguably used the Reformation to gain increased independence from more powerful states in southern Europe.

The Roman Catholic Church was due for an overhaul — my native culture generally calls it the Counter Reformation, possibly because England ended up on the more-or-less-Protestant side. It’s also called the Catholic Reformation or Catholic Revival.

We had another one recently, much less messy, called Vatican II. Some folks are still upset by it, I’m not, and that’s yet another topic.

The Thirty Years’ War started when the Peace of Augsburg gave rulers of Germany’s 224 states a choice. They could be Lutheran or Catholic — and force their subjects to follow the ruler’s lead. The 1555 deal left Calvinists out of the power grab.

Forcing someone to “convert” is a very bad idea, and we shouldn’t do it, ever. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2104–2109)

Anyway, Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire — we’re still cleaning up the mess he made at Verden — was a collection of largely-independent states by then. Like the fellow said:

“Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire.”

(“This agglomeration which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.”)
(Voltaire, via Wikiquote)

The Holy Roman Empire’s new emperor, Ferdinand II, tried forcing everyone in the empire to be Catholic in 1618 — again, that’s a very bad idea. This time it triggered a massive turf war with religious trimmings.

Three decades and about 8,000,000 unnecessary deaths later, the war was over.

The Enlightenment – – –

Decades of fighting, famines, plagues, and witch hunts had killed more than two thirds of the people in parts of the northern Holy Roman Empire by 1648.

Small wonder that some folks were reevaluating old assumptions about authority, belief, and business as usual.

Depending on who you listen to, Aufklärung, “Enlightenment,” started when applying math to observable phenomena was catching on in the 1620s; or 1715, when France’s Louis XIV died.

I’ll grant that Louis XIV’s spin on the divine right of kings made a difference1 — and helped inspire the French Revolution.

Fans of the Enlightenment didn’t coin the slogan “Sapere aude,” “Dare to know.” That’s from Horace: “Dimidium facti, qui coepit, habet; sapere aude, incipe.” — “He who has begun is half done; dare to know; begin!”

I think it fits the Enlightenment attitude, though: seeing reason as a good idea. Also pushing ideals like liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.

For folks trying to recover from the Thirty Years’ War, those ideals must have seemed really good.

– – – and the Idea of Progress

The French Revolution didn’t turn out quite as well as might have been hoped.

The Fête de la Raison, a celebration of the Cult of Reason, was among the revolution’s more colorful innovations.

“Festive girls in white Roman dress and tricolor sashes milled around a costumed Goddess of Reason who ‘impersonated Liberty’.” (Wikipedia)

Sounds like a toga party, but that doesn’t make reason a bad idea.

Even after the French Revolution, quite a few folks still assumed that since each of us is a rational being, folks would get along — once obstacles like authority, superstition, and potato blight were removed.

Then World Wars I and II happened, and the Idea of Progress lost appeal. I talked about that last week. (October 30, 2016)

About reason and the French Revolution — like I keep saying, thinking is not a sin. But worshiping our ability to reason, or anything other than God, is a bad idea. (Catechism, 2112–2114)

I was going somewhere with this. Let me think.

Universities, movable type, Thirty Years’ War, toga parties. Right.

We’re rational creatures. Using our brains, asking questions and thinking about what we find, is what we’re supposed to do. (“Fides et Ratio,” John Paul II (September 14, 1998); Catechism, 32, 35, 154–159, 299, 1730)

So how come we’ve got problems even when we’re well-fed and well-educated?2

Evil and Time Bandits

This world is basically good, and so are we. (Genesis 1:1–31)

Something went wrong, obviously, but it’s not a design flaw.

Oddly enough, one of literature and drama’s most lucid discussions of evil and the Catholic idea of original sin was in a film by the Monty Python folks:

Kevin: “Yes, why does there have to be evil?”

Supreme Being: “I think it has something to do with free will.”
(“Time Bandits (1981) via imdb.com)

Like angels, that’s yet again another topic, we’re rational beings who can decide what we do. Unlike angels, we are also material beings: spiritual creatures with a body made from the stuff of this world. (Catechism, 311, 325–348, 1704, 1730–1731)

Having a body isn’t the problem.

Believing that the physical world “…is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind…” is not what the Catholic Church teaches. (Catechism, 285)

Satan, like all angels, has no body.3 That didn’t stop Satan and other angels from saying “no” to God. (Catechism, 385–395)

Saying “no” is an option for any creature with free will. (Catechism, 330, 1730)

Sin is saying “no” to God. It’s deciding that I’ll do something I know is bad for myself, or others, and doing it anyway; or deciding to not do something I should. Sin is an offense against reason, truth — and God. (Catechism, 1849–1864)

It happens when I don’t love God and my neighbors as wholeheartedly as I should, or don’t see everybody as my neighbor. (Matthew 5:43–44, 7:12, 22:36–40, Mark 12:28–31; Luke 10:25–27, 29–37)

Since conscience is a “law of the mind,” my reason should control my emotions and impulses, and all of the above would be conformed to God’s will. (Catechism, 1778, 1784, 1790)

I don’t exercise that control as often as I’d like.

That’s partly because we’re all living with original sin: the consequences of a really bad decision. (Catechism, 386–389)

I’m responsible for messes I make, and that’s still another topic. (Catechism, 1781)

Our account of the fall in Genesis 3 describes a real event at the beginning of humanity’s long story: told in figurative language. (Catechism, 390)

Adam and Eve are not German, and I’ve said that before. (September 23, 2016)

Genesis 1:26–27 says that we’re made “in the image of God.” We still are. As Psalms 8:6 says, we’re “little less than a god.” But “little less than a god” isn’t God. We’re pretty hot stuff, but we’re not omnipotent.

In Genesis 3:5, the serpent tells Eve that after eating the fruit “…you will be like gods…” — and we forgot that we already were made “in the image of God.”

You know the rest. Eve listened to Satan.

Adam, like a dummkopf, did the same — and then tried blaming his wife and God. (Genesis 3:12)

That did not end well.

We’ve been living with the disastrous consequences of that bad decision ever since. (Catechism, 396–412)

There’s something wrong with each of us. We’re born — figurative language here — wounded. We’re “…subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin….” (Catechism, 405)

Original sin isn’t something I’m personally responsible for. My job is trying to act as love matters, anyway. (Catechism, 407–409)

More:

1 About the divine right of kings and getting a grip: rational respect for authority is important. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1897–1917, 1951–1960)

That’s not even close to believing that some king, president, or anyone else in a top position, is above the law; much less has some divinely-ordained right to unthinking obedience. (Catechism, 1902, 1960, 2155, 2242–2243, 2267, 2313, 2414)

2 It looks like there are, on average, statistical correlations between socioeconomic status, education level, and getting caught doing something criminal: along with more-or-less-significant correlations between many other factors and getting caught. But folks still act badly. More:

3 “Spiritual” and “good” aren’t synonyms, Artists have struggled to present spiritual realities in visual form, and that’s a passel of topics for other posts.

Posted in Being Catholic | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Near-Earth Asteroids

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Brian H. Gill

Scientists spotted 2016 UR36 days before it passed by Earth. “Killer asteroids” headlines notwithstanding, we knew it would miss our planet by a comfortable margin.

Sooner or later, though, something big will hit Earth: again. We still can’t prevent that, not yet.

  1. Incoming Asteroids
  2. Near-Earth Asteroids: 15,000 and Counting
  3. The Last Really Big One

Why Bother?


(From P. NASA/JPL-Caltech, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(Orbits of known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) in 2013.)

I’ll be talking about the Chelyabinsk meteor, Tunguska event, and why I think we should get ready for incoming asteroids and comets well before we spot something like the Chicxulub impactor headed our way.

The odds are really good that the next major impact event won’t happen in my lifetime, or near my home; so why should I think it matters?

Like I keep saying I think loving God, loving my neighbor, and seeing everyone as my neighbor, is a good idea. (Matthew 5:43–44, 22:36–40; Mark 12:28–31; Luke 6:31, 10:25–27, 29–37; Catechism of the Catholic Churchy, 2196)

I believe that God created and is creating a good and ordered universe, that we’re made in the image of God, rational creatures — and that we are stewards of the physical world. (Genesis 1:27–28, Psalms 19:2; Wisdom 7:17; Catechism, 1, 341, 373, 1730)

That’s stewards, not owners. We’re in charge of this world, and responsible for its maintenance: but it does not belong to us. Part of our job is managing this world’s resources for future generations. (Catechism, 373, 2415, 2456)

I don’t see the point in believing something unless I act like it matters, so ‘my end of the boat isn’t sinking’ isn’t a viable position for me.

Not that there’s much I can do, personally, about setting up a planetary defense system; apart from writing posts like this.

As an American, I’d like to see my country continue maintaining something like NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office. But I’m relieved to see that asteroid impact avoidance is a very international effort.

Stone Tools and Forest Fires

It wouldn’t take a rock like the Chicxulub impactor to cause real trouble.

Something hit our planet about 800,000 years back, spraying tektites — gravel-size bits of molten glass — over much of Asia and Australia.

We’re not sure where the crater is. None of the ones we’ve found so far are big enough.

Folks were living in that part of the world before the impact, and at least some survived. We’ve found their stone tools, mixed in with charcoal from the tektite-sparked forest fires.1

We’d probably survive another impact like that, but our technology has improved considerably since the days of Oldowan tools. If we use our brains, and have time, I think we can keep the next major impact disaster from happening.

1. Incoming Asteroids


(From P. Carril/ESA, via NPR, used w/o permission.)
(“Asteroids regularly pass by Earth, as depicted here. A new NASA system called Scout aims to identify the ones that will come closest to the planet.”
(NPR))

“NASA’s New ‘Intruder Alert’ System Spots An Incoming Asteroid”
Joe Palca, NPR (October 30, 2016)

“A large space rock came fairly close to Earth on Sunday night. Astronomers knew it wasn’t going to hit Earth, thanks in part to a new tool NASA is developing for detecting potentially dangerous asteroids.

“The tool is a computer program called Scout, and it’s being tested at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Think of Scout as a celestial intruder alert system. It’s constantly scanning data from telescopes to see if there are any reports of so-called Near Earth Objects. If it finds one, it makes a quick calculation of whether Earth is at risk, and instructs other telescopes to make follow-up observations to see if any risk is real.

“NASA pays for several telescopes around the planet to scan the skies on a nightly basis, looking for these objects. ‘The NASA surveys are finding something like at least five asteroids every night,’ says astronomer Paul Chodas of JPL….”

This asteroid’s designation seems to be M.P.E.C. 2016-U84: 2016 UR36. Pan-STARRS on Maui, Hawaii, spotted it on the night of October 25-26.

A few hours later, a Web page by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Minor Planet Center published preliminary details about the asteroid. I put links to some resources and background hear the end of this post.2

NASA’s Scout did a quick analysis of data from Pan-STARRS; LPL/Spacewatch II; Tenagra Observatories; and Steward Observatory, Mt. Lemmon Station; which said that the object was headed for Earth, but would miss us by about 310,000 miles.

Those are the facts. Some of the headlines were quite colorful, and almost accurate, like “EXCLUSIVE: The killer asteroids NASA says are heading towards Earth TODAY.”3

310,000 miles, 498,800 kilometers, is close by cosmic standards: very roughly 1.3 times our moon’s distance from Earth. But that doesn’t make M.P.E.C. 2016-U84: 2016 UR36 a “killer asteroid.” Not this time around, anyway.

The NPR article says this asteroid was between 5 and 25 meters across: about 16.5 to 82 feet. That makes it very roughly the size of the Chelyabinsk meteor.

Fireball


(From Aleksandr Ivanov, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(The Chelyabinsk meteor’s fireball, frame from a dashcam video. (February 15, 2003))

A hunk of rock about 20 meters across skimmed into Earth’s upper atmosphere in February of 2013.

Traveling a little over 19 kilometers per second — nearly 56 times the speed of sound, if I did the math right — air couldn’t flow out of its way, building up ram pressure.

The fireball was brighter than the sun before exploding about 23.3 kilometers, 14.5 miles, over Korkino in southern Russia.

Nobody saw it coming, but analyzing CCTV and dashcam video let folks track its path. Before Earth got in its way, this rock had been with the Apollo near-Earth asteroids.4

When it was over, about 7,200 buildings in six cities were damaged, some 1,500 folks needed medical attention, and nobody had been killed.

We were lucky that time.

2. NEOs: 15,000 Asteroids and Counting


(From P. NASA/JPL-Caltech, used w/o permission.)
(“The 15,000th near-Earth asteroid discovered is designated 2016 TB57. It was discovered on Oct. 13, 2016, by observers at the Mount Lemmon Survey, an element of the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona.”
(NASA))

“Catalog of Known Near-Earth Asteroids Tops 15,000”
Jet Propulsion Laboratory news (October 27, 2016)

“The number of discovered near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) now tops 15,000, with an average of 30 new discoveries added each week. This milestone marks a 50 percent increase in the number of known NEAs since 2013, when discoveries reached 10,000 in August of that year.

“Surveys funded by NASA’s Near Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program (NEOs include both asteroids and comets) account for more than 95 percent of discoveries so far.

“The 15,000th near-Earth asteroid is designated 2016 TB57. It was discovered on Oct. 13 by observers at the Mount Lemmon Survey, an element of the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona. 2016 TB57 is a rather small asteroid — about 50 to 115 feet (16 to 36 meters) in size — that will come closest to Earth on Oct. 31 at just beyond five times the distance of the moon. It will safely pass Earth….”

Finding and cataloging orbits for near-Earth asteroids like 2016 TB57 and 2016 UR36 and comets is important to astronomers: and everyone else living on Earth.5

Sometimes these things get really close.

The Tunguska event is the largest known impact event on Earth since we started keeping records, a few millennia back.

Happily, the East Siberian taiga isn’t prime real estate, and was even less populated in 1908, so property damage was light. We don’t know of any fatalities, although a few folks were close enough to see — and feel — fire in the sky, like a second sun.

The explosion flattened about 2,000 square kilometers, 770 square miles, of forest. If it had happened over a city, I seriously doubt that there would have been survivors near ground zero, and we’d probably still be rebuilding the area.

We’ve learned a great deal about Solar System debris since 1908, and can make reasonable estimates about how often rocks fall out of the sky.

Falling Rocks


(From NASA/Planetary Science, via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.)
(“Frequency of small asteroids roughly 1 to 20 meters in diameter impacting Earth’s atmosphere.”
(Wikipedia))

The Chelyabinsk, Tunguska, and 1490 Ch’ing-yang event all happened in Asia, which might suggest that someone’s taking potshots at that continent. My guess is that it’s more a matter our having more thorough documentation for that area.

Also, possibly, because a Tunguska-level event might have had a chance of obliterating a culture along with its records until recently. I think it’s easy to forget how small many ancient civilizations were, by today’s standards.

Impact events aren’t the only hazard, of course. Thera exploded somewhere around 35 and 45 centuries back, archeologists and scientists are still working out the exact time. Possibly by coincidence, what we call the Minoan Civilization ended right around the same time.

The Late Bronze Age collapse happened a century or so later, leaving us with tales of king Minos, the Minotaur and labyrinth; pottery; and a lot of questions. Plato’s story of Atlantis may or may not have been inspired in part by the eruption, and that’s another topic.

Nobody saw the Chelyabinsk meteor coming, but we’ve got a pretty good idea of where and when largish rocks fell over the last couple decades: enough to estimate how often such events happen, on average.

Stony asteroid impacts that generate an airburst6
Impactor diameter Kinetic energy at atmospheric entry Airburst energy Airburst altitude Average frequency
4 m (13 ft) 3 kt 0.75 kt 42.5 km (139,000 ft) 1.3 years
7 m (23 ft) 16 kt 5 kt 36.3 km (119,000 ft) 4.6 years
10 m (33 ft) 47 kt 19 kt 31.9 km (105,000 ft) 10.4 years
15 m (49 ft) 159 kt 82 kt 26.4 km (87,000 ft) 27 years
20 m (66 ft) 376 kt 230 kt 22.4 km (73,000 ft) 60 years
30 m (98 ft) 1.3 Mt 930 kt 16.5 km (54,000 ft) 185 years
50 m (160 ft) 5.9 Mt 5.2 Mt 8.7 km (29,000 ft) 764 years
70 m (230 ft) 16 Mt 15.2 Mt 3.6 km (12,000 ft) 1900 years
85 m (279 ft) 29 Mt 28 Mt 0.58 km (1,900 ft) 3300 years

(From Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh, Gareth Collins (2010). “Earth Impact Effects Program;” via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.)

It looks like we can expect something as big as the Chelyabinsk meteor every six decades or so, on average.

But let’s remember that “average frequency” is just that: an average. Meteors don’t come on a regular schedule. Tomorrow morning’s news might include a Chelyabinsk-size airburst: or we may not see another for a century.

I hope we’ve got at least a few decades before astronomers notice a city-buster headed for a city, and that someone starts prepping an intercept-and-deflect mission now. If not, the best we may manage is telling folks at the impact site how long they have to get clear.

Rep. Stewart:
“… are we technologically capable of launching something that could intercept [an asteroid]?”

DR. A’HEARN:
“No. If we had spacecraft plans on the books already, that would take a year—I mean a typical small mission like a Discovery class mission takes four years from approval to start to launch. Okay. Now, a really accelerated military program would be faster than that but that is a couple of years still….”
(United States Congress hearing, via Wikipedia and gpo.gov (April 10, 2013))

Prediction and Preparation

Beecher, Michigan. June 9, 1953, following the June 8 tornado. From NOAA, used w/o permissionHow successful the evacuation is depends on quite a few things: how much time we get before the impact, the impact site’s size and population, and whether folks in charge decide to issue a warning.

I’d like to think that authorities wouldn’t repeat the 1953 Worcester tornado mistake: but I also think that human nature hasn’t changed much.

For events like the 2003 Chelyabinsk meteor, my guess is that a warning few minutes to an hour or so in advance would let folks get inside and away from windows.

That might be enough to avoid most injuries and deaths. Again, nobody died that time, and I think we were lucky.

If we saw something like the Tunguska event coming, and Delhi was at the target footprint’s center — I don’t know how long evacuating the 21,000,000 or so folks who live there would take.

Emergency evacuations are chancy at best, so getting an asteroid impact avoidance system in place seems like a very good idea.

Right now, we’re doing well to notice incoming objects before they hit. I hope we’re ready when the next really big one comes.

3. The Last Really Big One


(From NASA/JPL-Caltech, via BBC News, used w/o permission.)
(“The outer rim (white arc) of the crater lies under the Yucatan Peninsula itself, but the inner peak ring is best accessed offshore”
(BBC News))

“Chicxulub ‘dinosaur crater’ investigation begins in earnest”
Jonathan Amos, BBC News (October 11, 2016)

“Scientists have obtained remarkable new insights into the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.

“They have been examining rocks from the crater that the 15km-wide space object dug out of what is now the Gulf of Mexico some 66 million years ago.

“The team says it can see evidence in these materials for how life returned to the scene soon after the calamity.

“Descendants of these small organisms are likely thriving today in amongst the crater’s smashed up materials….”

Their goal is learning more about the Chicxulub impact: how much energy was involved, and what happened to stuff were the crater is now. Drilling happened during April and June of this year. Research has started: with interesting but so far inconclusive results.

The plan is to use about half of the rock samples for analysis now, archiving the rest for study when we’ve developed better lab equipment.

The scientists found DNA which may be from “descendants of these small organisms:” or inadvertent contamination of their samples. They’re apparently still figuring out which.

They’re hoping to find “some vestige of the impactor itself,” and sediment from the enormous tsunamis that sloshed back and forth between North America and what’s now the Yucatán Peninsula.

Extinction Triggers

Learning more about the Chicxulub impact will help us understand the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. Scientists still aren’t quite sure how it happened.

The Chicxulub impact was almost certainly involved, and probably played a major role.

But volcanic eruptions where the Deccan Traps are now were releasing massive quantities of sulfur dioxide and other toxic gasses, which likely enough slowed down recovery after the impact.

There may have been other impact events around the same time: the Boltysh crater impact probably happened a few millennia earlier. The Silverpit crater is roughly the right age, but may be the result of a salt dome’s collapse.

The Shiva crater is even more debatable: partly, I suspect, because that part of the world was passing over the Réunion hotspot which apparently produced the Deccan Traps. There’s been a lot of geologic change there in the last 66,000,000 years.

Earth’s sea level was falling, too, so folks who say there wasn’t just one extinction trigger have a good point.

That was a long time ago, and the odds of big rocks falling are a lot slimmer than for small fry like the Chelyabinsk meteor and Tunguska object. That’s the good news.

The unsettling news is that we apparently don’t know the exact odds, much less when the next impact disaster may happen. Different studies have been coming up with different answers. This is one of the more optimistic ones:

“…Objects with sizes greater than 1 km are considered to produce effects that would be catastrophic, because an impact of such an object would produce global effects. Such meteorites strike the Earth relatively infrequently – a 1 km sized object strikes the Earth about once every million years, and 10 km sized objects about once every 100 million years….”
(“Meteorites, Impacts, and Mass Extinction,” Prof. Stephen A. Nelson, Tulane University (December 1, 2014))

Craters and Statistics

A nickle-iron meteor about 50 meters, 160 feet, across hit North America about 50,000 years back; forming the Barringer Crater. We weren’t living near there until at least a dozen millennia or so after that.

The northwest route to Asia flooded around the start of a warm spell in the current/Quaternary glaciation.

Folks who look a bit like me started arriving a few centuries back, and that’s yet another topic.

Arizona isn’t heavily populated these days, so if another meteor like the object that formed Barringer crater hit exactly the same spot — Western civilization would survive. Folks working at and visiting the Barrihger Crater Company, not so much.

Plugging numbers into “Earth Impact Effects Program;” by Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh, Gareth Collins; Imperial College London/Purdue University; I learned that the nearest town should be comparatively safe.

Winslow, 29 kilometers east, would experience a Richter 5.2 earthquake about 5.8 seconds after the impact. Damage would range from minimal to serious, depending on construction quality, with some broken chimneys.

A 30 mile an hour wind gust would arrive a bit over a minute later. It would be a frightening and expensive event, but quite survivable at that distance.

Impacts like that are, happily, few and far between, compared to events like hurricanes and earthquakes. But they do happen.

Stony asteroids that impact sedimentary rock and create a crater6
Impactor diameter Kinetic energy at atmospheric entry Impact energy Crater diameter Average frequency
100 m (330 ft) 47 Mt 38 Mt 1.2 km (0.75 mi) 5200 years
130 m (430 ft) 103 Mt 64.8 Mt 2 km (1.2 mi) 11000 years
150 m (490 ft) 159 Mt 71.5 Mt 2.4 km (1.5 mi) 16000 years
200 m (660 ft) 376 Mt 261 Mt 3 km (1.9 mi) 36000 years
250 m (820 ft) 734 Mt 598 Mt 3.8 km (2.4 mi) 59000 years
300 m (980 ft) 1270 Mt 1110 Mt 4.6 km (2.9 mi) 73000 years
400 m (1,300 ft) 3010 Mt 2800 Mt 6 km (3.7 mi) 100000 years
700 m (2,300 ft) 16100 Mt 15700 Mt 10 km (6.2 mi) 190000 years
1,000 m (3,300 ft) 47000 Mt 46300 Mt 13.6 km (8.5 mi) 440000 years

(From Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh, Gareth Collins (2010). “Earth Impact Effects Program;” via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.)

Numbers in that table are estimates, based on what we’ve been learning over the last few decades. I’m pretty sure we’ll fine-tune them as we learn more. But I’m also pretty sure that they’re good enough for a ballpark estimate.

So — if rocks 100 meters across hit every 5,200 years, on average, how come we don’t have records of an impact like that?

Maybe there hasn’t been one since some of us started keeping records: about 5,200 years ago. Again, these are averages; so the next 100-meter impactor isn’t ‘due any time now.’

52 centuries back, the First Dynasty of Egypt was laying the groundwork of Pharaonic Egypt, and the Liangzhu culture was creating jade masks.

If something blasted a kilometer-wide hole back then, the odds are pretty good that it happened far from these comparatively high-tech centers. Besides, about three quarters of Earth is covered in water.

But with falling rocks in the 10-meter range hitting every decade or so, and 100-meter ones every few thousand years, I we should start getting ready to react before experiencing too many more surprise airbursts: or worse.

More of how I see life, the universe, and being human:

1 Stone tools and an impact event:

2 Keeping watch, getting ready:

3 Radar images from last year’s close approach by 2015 TB145 inspired nicknames like “Great Pumpkin” and “Skull Asteroid:” ‘Skull Asteroid’ passing by Earth today.” (WHIO)

4 No relation to the Apollo moon program. Apollo asteroids get their name from 1862 Apollo, the first one spotted. Why it got called “Apollo” I’m not sure. Maybe because it got closer to our star than many asteroids.

5 More about near-Earth objects:

6 From Robert Marcus; H. Jay Melosh; Gareth Collins (2010). “Earth Impact Effects Program,” Robert Marcus, H. Jay Melosh, Gareth Collins; Imperial College London/Purdue University; via Wikipedia.

Posted in Science News | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Happy Halloween!

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Brian H. Gill

Showing this picture to a few online groups, I learned that Halloween, our version, is a somewhat “American” holiday.

Today is also the feast day of St. Wolfgang of Regensberg, AKA The Almoner. He had a good reason for throwing his ax into a thicket, and that’s another topic.

In the (Roman Catholic) liturgical year, Allhallowtide starts today. It’s a three-day thing: All Saints’ Eve (Halloween), All Saints’ Day (All Hallows’) and All Souls’ Day.

I’m not sure why some folks get upset over this holiday. Maybe it’s the scary, and occasionally disturbing, costumes. Or the arguably-unhealthy opportunities to eat too much candy. Or maybe it’s where some Halloween traditions apparently came from.

I don’t doubt that my Gaelic ancestors, and their Welsh neighbors, brought some of their pre-Christian customs over here. It’d be odd if they didn’t. The autumnal equinox is important to quite a few folks, my ancestors included.

Some seasonal traditions, like divination games, are not good ideas. “Game” isn’t the problem. “Divination” is, no mater what day it is. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2116)

I’ve seen ‘adult’ costumes that are in dubious taste, and that’s a topic for another post.

But getting upset over jack-o’-lanterns, Christmas trees, or Easter eggs? I don’t see a point to that. On consideration, I could complain that my Norwegian ancestors are disrespected, because lefse isn’t part of the traditional Thanksgiving menu, but that would be silly.

Then there’s the notion that evil runs rampant tonight. More than usual, that is.

I’m not happy about destructive behavior on any day, but found this interesting:

“No fear, crime stays normal on Halloween”
Elizabeth Rembert, The Daily Nebraskan (October 28, 2016)

“Despite what some may think of Halloween’s relation to increased criminal activity, University of Nebraska-Lincoln police department’s daily crime logs from the past 10 years show that crime on the last day of October is actually below average.

“Oct. 31 has an average of 4.7 reported crimes, a number hovering just below the daily average of 5.2 in the same amount of time.

“UNLPD Captain Jerry Plessel said while daily averages of all crimes may be lacking on Halloween, statistics do indicate an increase in intoxicated persons and minor in possession charges….”

Back to Halloween here in central Minnesota — I can’t, or shouldn’t, eat candy these days. But I can enjoy seeing families having fun this evening, and I rather like the look of most jack-o-lanterns.

I hope you enjoy Halloween, too.

More of how I see faith, culture, and getting a grip:

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The Rosary

Posted on October 30, 2016 by Deacon L. N. Kaas

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2016:

Rosary Homily

By Deacon Lawrence N. Kaas October 30, 2016

Reverend. father, brothers and sisters in Christ. For those of you who noticed things like this, I was not with you a couple weeks ago because I took a few days off and went on a private retreat to West Bend, Iowa. I’m sure you would all agree that when you go on retreat there should be a purpose, at least a theme to make any retreat profitable. In my case, the theme was, “to know Jesus better, through the eyes of His Mother Mary,” while praying the Rosary and meditating on the Mysteries. This I will share with you a little later but first some background.

This to give us a reason to reflect on what father Greg has shared with us this month on stewardship. With what’s going on in our world today all that would have to happen is that good people stop praying. Proof of your willingness to pray is the fact that you are here today celebrating Mass with our Priest. I have been convinced for a long time that the most beneficial happening of the day for our world, our parish, and each one of us individually is to be able to celebrate Mass with our Priest, for sure, on weekends and daily if possible. According to the little handout the father gave us, number one on the list of stewardship is the Mass. This is the preeminent prayer of the church.

I would like you to consider that the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary is second to the Mass as a most powerful, reflective Prayer.

To back up a little bit: when I was a little boy a priest came here to preach on the value of the Rosary, also to pray for the conversion of Russia. His name is father Peyton. I don’t remember the exact date but it must’ve been some where between 1943 in 1950. If any of you remember exactly let me know and I will add it to my notes. I became so enamored at what he preached and taught about the Rosary that the Rosary has been a daily prayer for me, virtually ever since. It is rare that I would miss praying the Rosary each day.

I remember too: that one evening praying the rosary with my family, kneeling at the end of the couch, and wondering to myself, what Mary had to do with all of this. She spoke to me as clearly, as if she was speaking right into my head, “my role is to bring you to my son.” I am convinced that she has been doing exactly that.

There are stories to support the power that the rosary has: for example, the battle of the Lapinto where an invasion by the enemy was eminent and the people were asked to pray the Rosary. The Rosary was given credit for turning back this invasion force, so that it never happened. Another story, of the recent past, where an Easter Right Bishop had a vision of Christ. Christ was handing him a sword, and you know how that’s done with the handle first. When the Bishop reached out for the sword it was a rosary. To say that the rosary is a Sword in the hands of Christians, is almost an understatement because this sword is a two edge sword. Prayer works. The prayer of the rosary works.

Again a long time ago: my mother was telling us of how they prayed the rosary in German, up in Bluffton. She said that as they prayed the Hail Mary they would put a little insert in the prayer after the word of Jesus, to reflect the Ministry that they were praying. This to I was gradually able to do, rather gradually as I learned the mysteries the rosary. One day I reminded mother of this, and she said, ah, I never did! But I know she did, and I shall continue to give her credit for that.

As a matter of fact: in the last days Pope Francis said,, “the Rosary is the prayer that always accompanies my life, it is also the prayer of simple people and Saints … It is prayer of my heart,” he said. He also explains that the rosary is “a synthesis of Divine Mercy.”

I have used this insert idea, while praying the rosary for many many years. Some of you may well say, how can you keep your mind on the ministry while praying the rosary, while saying words? As a matter of fact sometimes we’re are accused of just saying a lot of words, I assure you it is a lot more than that.

You remember when you would holler at the kids to turn off the music and gift your studying done, and they would respond by saying I am studying! Maybe this will work with the rosary as well as you say the words of the Hail Mary that becoming quite automatic, by this time, maybe meditating on the mystery could really work!

So here’s how it works: for example, you would be praying, Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with you blessed are you among women blessed is the fruit of your womb Jesus, this is where you would put a little insert but let us say today you are paying the Joyful Mysteries, the first of the Joyful Mysteries is the Annunciation. So you would say Jesus, who was Announced, Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners know and at the hour of our death, Amen. And you would say this Hail Mary with the insert for each one of the Hail Mary’s in that Mystery.

Let’s do a few more so that you get the idea: the second of the Joyful Mysteries is the Visitation. So you would say, Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with the blessed are, women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus, who Visited, Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. To finish that rosary, you would say, Who was born into the world, Who was presented, Who was found in the Temple.

Every ministry of the complete Rosary can be said in this way even the new five mysteries of the Rosary of Light.

This is what I found myself doing on my retreat. I was so crazy tired that I just laid on my bed and prayed rosary after rosary in this fashion and as I reminded you earlier to get to know Jesus through the eyes of His Mother. And taking notes for this Homily.

You can even use this meditation while praying the Rosary in common and I am convinced that you will find there is so much more to the Rosary than just the multiplication of words.

So you be Good, be Holy, preached the Gospel always using Words if necessary!

(‘Thank you’ to Deacon Kaas, for letting me post his reflection here — Brian H. Gill.)

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Authority, Superstition, Progress

Posted on October 30, 2016 by Brian H. Gill

Authority, superstition, and misapplied technophilia (it’s a real word) rate at least one post each: but that’ll wait until another day. Days.

This time I’ll take a quick look at all three, and then say why I don’t believe in Progress with a capital P — and don’t yearn for the ‘good old days.’

My attitude toward authority, real and imagined, hasn’t changed much since the ’60s. But as my wife showed me a few years back, it’s not authority I dislike.

It’s pompous nitwits with delusions of competent authority that set my teeth on edge.

I must respect authority, but must not indulge in blind obedience. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1900, 1951, 2155, 2242-2243, 2267)

That’s gotten folks killed, like Thomas More and John Fisher, and I’ve talked about that before. (August 14, 2016)

Superstition is a bad idea and we shouldn’t do it. It feels a bit like religion; and can affect worship if someone gets the idea that prayer, for example, depends on ‘going through the motions.’ (Catechism, 2110-2111)

I’ll grant that some Catholics are superstitious: and incredibly gullible.

The tale that you can boost your property’s value by burying a statue of a particular saint was current in 2007, it popped up again in 2015, and still appears in ‘advice’ forums. It’s supposed to work like a charm: which is also a bad idea. (Catechism, 2117)

Progress, Imagined

The ‘science and technology will make the future wonderful’ attitude was fading in my youth.

I think it’s no more sensible than the ‘science and technology will destroy us all’ attitude that’s been fashionable more recently.

Like I keep saying, science and technology, studying the universe and applying our new knowledge, are part of being human. What counts is how we decide to use them. (Catechism, 2292-2296)

Giving science, technology, or anything else, the priority God deserves is a bad idea. (Catechism, 2112-2114)

That’s why I don’t ‘believe in’ Progress as the answer to our problems and the source of our hope.

I do, however, think that progress, lower case, happens: on average, given time. Lots of time.

Sumerian Renaissance, Roman Law

Ur-Nammu brought a measure of prosperity and stability to folks from Akshyak to Eridu, although some probably yearned for the ‘good old days’ of the Akkadian Empire or Gutian rule.

His law code seems a bit harsh in spots. Robbery carried a death penalty, for example. Other parts seem familiar, like monetary penalties for causing injury.

The Code of Ur-Nammu reflected the Sumerian Renaissance two-tier society: lu, free men and women; and arad or geme, male or female slaves. A slave could be freed, a slave and a free person could marry, but slavery is a bad idea. (Catechism, 2414)

Ur-Nammu’s Sumeria wasn’t a perfect society.

Two millennia later, Rome was building roads which tied their empire together. The roads, like my country’s Interstate highways, had military uses.

But they also helped folks travel and trade with each other.

Roman law was more complex than Ur-Nammu’s code, and arguably an improvement. Slavery, however, was still legal; but folks could still change their status. We get a look at that in Acts 22:25–29.

Watermills let folks process materials like grain, ore, or wood, without having people or livestock providing power. Locks on Necho’s Canal made moving bulk cargo a lot easier.

Rome’s wasn’t a perfect society.

Radioactive Rubble and Law

Another two millennia, and slavery still exists. But it’s illegal in several countries.

Even more remarkable, I think: it’s becoming unfashionable.

That’s progress. Agonizingly slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

We’ve made some other major changes over the last few centuries. I think that’s a good thing, but some folks don’t.

International law in the sense of agreements between rulers, predates nations; but didn’t get traction until the First Geneva Convention. That was 152 years back now.

The Articles of Confederation was, arguably, an early effort at supranational law: a form of international law, based on sovereign nations giving some of their rights to a supranational authority.

The Articles of Confederation didn’t work, but the United States Constitution has held up for about 227 years, with only one major internal war. We’re still tweaking it, but I think it’s a good effort.

While digging out from World War II’s rubble — some of it radioactive — many folks decided that enough was enough. Some still act as if they prefer slaughtering each other in wholesale lots as a conflict resolution strategy.

I don’t.

I also don’t trust the United Nations1 any more than I do America’s Congress: but I’m pretty sure that it’s better than the alternative.

And I’m quite sure that we can do better.

Looking Back


(From D. Gordon E. Robertson, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

Folks who thought science and technology, and better education, would solve all our problems were overly-optimistic. I’m oversimplifying the Idea of Progress something fearful, and I think they had a point.

I’m living in “the future,” which isn’t nearly as good — or bad — as folks hoped or feared in my youth. On the whole, I like it: partly because I remember ‘the good old days,’ and what came before.

The McCormick Reaper, patented in 1837, didn’t end world hunger.

But it was part of a process that arguably started about a dozen centuries back. Around the mid-17th century, rapidly-changing technology and economic systems streamlined growing and distributing food.

Food still isn’t getting to all the folks who need it: but I think it’s a distribution issue.

Oliver Wendel Holmes Sr. published “The Contagiousness of puerperal fever” in 1843.

Ignaz Semmelweis also noticed that fewer women died after childbirth when doctors washed their hands. That was 1847. Quite a few doctors didn’t like the idea of personal hygiene, but many years and unnecessary deaths later they started washing.

I’m not at all sorry to see more women get back into the healing arts, and that’s another topic.2

Thomas Beddoes and James Watt developed a machine that produced “Factitious Airs,” nitrous oxide; publishing their results in 1794.

“Laughing gas” was a moderately popular recreational drug for the upper crust by the early 1800s. Humphry Davy was a nitrous oxide addict, and used it as a hangover cure. Several decades later, doctors started using it as an anesthetic.

We’ve gotten a lot better at pain management since then. I can use, or endure, pain. But controlling it is okay, and can be a good idea. (Catechism, 1431-1490, 2279)

Francis Ronalds developed an electric telegraph in 1816. The British Admiralty promptly rejected it as “wholly unnecessary,” but wireless telegraph eventually caught on.

The RMS Carpathia’s wireless operator learned that the Titanic needed help, a bit late, and the Radio Act of 1912 required ships to continuously listen for radio distress signals.

Working for Future Generations


(From Diliff, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)

Today’s world doesn’t have any perfect societies: mine included, although I like being an American, on the whole. I also like being Catholic: part of an outfit that’s literally catholic, καθολικός, universal, not tied to one era or culture.

We’ve been passing along the same message for two millennia: God loves us, and wants to adopt us. All of us. (Ephesians 1:3–5; John 3:17; Catechism, 52, 1825)

We’re helping build a better world, one with a greater degree of justice and charity, and respect for “the transcendent dignity of man.” (Catechism, 1928-1942, 2419-2442)

More accurately, that’s what we should be doing. Some of us don’t act as if it’s true, but that doesn’t change our ‘to-do’ list.

Building a better world for future generations is a reasonable extension of a few basic ideas: that each of us should love God, love our neighbor, and see everyone as our neighbor.3

If we help others keep what is good and just in our societies, change what is not, and act as if we really believe that loving our neighbors makes sense: I think we can make a difference. We must be patient, though.

Folks can’t be forced to embrace truth: particularly when it means giving up some cherished injustice, or long-established privileges. But I am convinced that truth wins — eventually.

Maybe, if we keep working at it, two millennia from now we’ll have an “international authority with the necessary competence and power” to resolve conflicts without war. (Catechism, 2307-2317; “Gaudium et Spes,” 79 § 4)


(Cityscape, Inlakechh/Marco Bauriedel, used w/o permission.)

And two millennia after that, we’ll still have social ills.4 Humanity has an enormous backlog of unresolved issues. But like I said: we’re making progress. Slowly.

Posts that aren’t entirely unrelated:

1 Groundwork for the European Union got started the same year, 1945, but the EU’s launch was 1958. I have no idea how long it will last, but think the basic idea is a good one. Certainly better than more-or-less-constant warfare.

2 Happily, we’re recovering (my viewpoint) some measure of wisdom. One of my sisters-in-law is a radiologist; and my wife a self-taught expert on how to find and prepare healthy food, and appropriate use of herbs.

I haven’t researched this, but it seems to me that the wounded hero in old stories would get help from a woman who knew where to find useful plants. The old coot next door might be useful for other reasons.

I don’t know what went so hideously wrong in the millennium since Saint Hildegard of Bingen wrote “Physica” and “Causae et Curae.” She’s credited with starting scientific natural history in Germany. She studied healing uses for various plants, stones, fish, reptiles, and animals.

This is a good idea. (Catechism, 2288)

Trying to force spirits to cure disease is not allowed, for pretty much the same reason that divination is a bad idea. (Catechism, 2116-2117)

3 I say that a lot. (Matthew 5:43–44, 22:36–40; Mark 12:28–31; Luke 6:31, 10:25–27, 29–37; Catechism, 2196)

4 It’s possible that our Lord will return before the 61st century. But as I’ve said before, I’ll leave the ‘big picture’ decisions up to God:

My guess, and it’s just a guess, is that our long watch has barely begun; and that’s yet another topic.

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