Wisdom, Love, Life, Voting and Making Good Choices 0 (0)

Posted on October 19, 2024 by Father Greg Paffel

A man asked Jesus “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” in last Sunday’s Gospel reading. That’s what Fr. Greg talked about — our Lord’s answer is simple, by the way, and can be boiled down to ‘be prudent’.

There’s an election looming in our country, so Fr. Greg also talked about acting as if love matters, and making prudent choices. Then he shared a prayer that I’ve had in my daily routine for a while. But (more than) enough about me. Here’s what Fr. Greg said:

Eternal Life

“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What must I do?”

Well, he answers by saying he keeps all the commandments. That’s good.

And then Jesus — okay: ‘just one more thing. Go sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow me’.

Sounds like three things to me, but Jesus says ‘one more thing’.

Definitions and Choosing Wisely

I think we could in essence boil it down to this: be prudent.

To inherit eternal life, be prudent.

So one of the definitions of prudence by St. Thomas Aquinas is this: ‘love chooses wisely, love that chooses wisely’: that’s prudence.1

So if love chooses wisely, guess what: you’re going to honor your father and mother; oh, you’re not going to kill, you’re not going to commit adultery, you’re not going to steal, you’re not going to do all these things.

Love chooses wisely, and our first reading, from the Book of Wisdom, tells us, ‘I prayed, and prudence was given to me’. ‘I prayed, and prudence was given to me’.2

He who is the source of love — is so eager to answer our prayers. So eager to inspire us to choose wisely: that’s our God, a God who loves us and helps us to love as well.

Love, Choices, and Wisdom

Our second reading, at the end, reminds us that we have to make an account for everything at the end of our life — to Jesus, who is our judge, at the end of our life — and how is he going to judge us?

On whether we love, and chose wisely.3

Wow.

Prudence

Lord, send our spirit of prudence, a double portion of prudence, to us: in our family lives, in our personal lives; and in the life of this election, huh? Oh, my gosh. Our world could use more prayer, our nation.

So, I have a prayer for our country.4 Right here, it’s got the Blessed Virgin on the front. There are some in the back. You’re welcome to take one on your way out if you like. I’ll do this at the end of my homily.

I’ve been just thinking about some of the topics, some of the things that are going on in our election. I’ll address a few this week and probably a few next week.

Just some of those issues.

Judges, the Constitution, and Freedom

The first one I want to start with, though, is Supreme Court justices. Right?

Boy, if we want anybody to be prudent, wouldn’t it be a judge? And a judge who judges over large things, like our nation?

And so, a Supreme Court justice, that’s one of the jobs of the president, is to recommend Supreme Court justices.

So we pray for the president to be prudent in choosing, and we also pray for those judges to be prudent. And if they’re really doing their job, it’s really not about being conservative or liberal. That’s not the job of a judge.

The job of a judge is to interpret the Constitution: that’s their job; to intercept the Constitutions, and to interpret it as much like the original writers meant it. That makes a good judge.

So when you go to the election poll, think about who you want selecting the judges. Okay? Think about that.

One of the things that they end up judging a lot on are things like our First Amendment: freedom of speech, freedom of religion.5 We might extend that a little bit to freedom of conscience. Right?

I was just thinking of just a couple things in the past the Supreme Court had to make some decisions on: and depending on who’s on the court could go different directions, right?

So it depends on how they interpret the Constitution.

A Wedding Cake

One was the wedding cake company. If you remember that?

And they were being asked by two people, I don’t remember if it was two men or two women, I don’t remember, but they were asking for a wedding cake with the two men or two women on the top.

And the wedding cake company says: you know, we’re happy to make cakes and stuff, but we’re not going to put that on the top. We don’t do that.

And they went, had a case against them, they said they were being discriminatory, blah-blah-blah.6 I don’t even remember how the case turned out, to be honest.

But those are the kinds of things.

Were they able to practice their conscience as business owners, even while letting somebody else practice their conscience in who and how they get married?

Man, do we through (!) that stuff. We gotta have some wisdom, right?

And wouldn’t you want people to choose wisely, with love.

Artificial Contraception

And one of the other things was: remember the religious sisters, they were being pressed by the government of all places (!), that they have to provide contraception to their workers in their insurance packages. Right? It had to be one of the things.

And the government was imposing that on the sisters, and obviously, religious sisters — wherever you stand is one thing — but where the religious sisters were standing, their conscience was being pummeled by the government.

And so the Supreme Court justices, they made a decision on that as well: like, let it go government, they’re sisters. Okay. Get over it. That’s my language, I don’t remember all the details.7

So, we want people in the court who will judge wisely, with love, on those kinds of things.

Second Amendment and the Right to Defend Myself

And I was thinking, you know, there’s an awful lot of controversy over guns. Right? And wherever you sit and stand on guns, that’s its own thing, but sometimes they have to decide if the Constitution is being interpreted rightly.

And I don’t remember this last case, somebody said it was a win for the NRA, I don’t even know what the case was. But that’s the Second Amendment. The right to bear arms.

When I hear ‘the right to bear arms’, what I hear is ‘the right to defend myself’.

It’s not the right to go out and shoot whoever or whatever I want, it’s the right to defend myself when my life, or my family, or my property, is being threatened. Do I have the right to defend myself? That’s what I hear.8

But again, things like that go to the Supreme Court.

Abortion

Pamphlet cover: 'The Catholic Church is a Pro-Life Church', People of Life, the pro-life action campaign of the Catholic Church in the United States, under the direction of the USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities. see https://www.usccb.org/resources/catholic-church-pro-life-churchAnd then of course we can always talk about abortion. Right?

Abortion.9

And I think the Supreme Court got it right. I really do.

So, the Catholic Church would say that the right of life is the most fundamental right of all.

I have this brochure here from the — all of the United States bishops, the USCCB, the United States Bishops — put together a short, little pamphlet on — what’s the name of it? “The Catholic Church is a Pro-Life Church” .10 Okay?

I like the tone of this. The tone here is one of compassion, but also instruction. Right?

And so I’ll just read some of this for you today, and kind of just give you a teaser. There’s some of these in back of church. There’s not enough for everybody, but there’s some of these in back, if you’re interested.

And they write:

“All persons, not just Catholics, can know from scientific and medical evidence that what grows in a mother’s womb is a new, distinct human being. All persons can understand that each human being merits respect. At the very least, respecting human life excludes the deliberate and direct destruction of life.

“Throughout her rich tradition, the Catholic Church has always been pro-life. As Saint John Paul II reminded us, we believe that ‘all human life is sacred, for it is created in the image and likeness of God.’ Aborting an unborn child destroys a precious human life which God has called uniquely into existence….”
(“The Catholic Church is a Pro-Life Church ” 10 People of Life, the pro-life action campaign of the Catholic Church in the United States)

And so it goes on further:

“…Our Faith also obliges us to follow … Jesus Christ….”
(“The Catholic Church is a Pro-Life Church ” 10 People of Life, the pro-life action campaign of the Catholic Church in the United States)

Oh, that was the command Jesus gave that young man today in the Gospel: ‘go sell what you have and follow me’. Obviously, Jesus himself is pro-life.

This is why, as a church, we are pro-life.

It’s got a nice tone to it, it’s got some quotes from some Saints and different things in here, if you want one of those, it’s a good read.

And I was thinking about abortion from a different angle this time.

Choice: and Responsibility

I was thinking, you know, people who say ‘I’m pro-choice’ — right?

They have good hearts, they have good meaning, too, you know — Wherever they’re coming from, whatever experience they have.

The problem is the premise on which they found their reasoning. The premise. That is, the beginning point from the reasoning.

So, one of the slogans that I keep hearing over and over again is “my body, my choice”. That makes a lot of sense.

It makes a lot of sense: “my body, my choice”. If I want a haircut, I go get a haircut; if it’s time to clip my fingernails, I go clip my fingernails; if I’m feeling ill or injured, I go see the doctor.

“My body, my choice” — that makes a lot of sense.

The problem is the premise. When they say “my body, my choice”, they’re forgetting that it’s actually a second body. There’s a second person. It’s that person from the embryonic state up through nine months of gestation and infancy in the womb.

That is another person that God himself brought into existence at that moment of conception.

Oh, my gosh: that’s where our faith helps us so much.

And so the premise can’t be that it’s just your body. It’s more than just your body. There’s two of you now.

And then the question becomes: do we have the right, over somebody else, living inside of us?

That’s the fight, right?

And as Catholics, we would say ‘they have dignity, and they have the right to life’. That’s where our slogan comes from.

Bodies and Rights

A second way I was thinking about this issue was “my body my choice”: well, even though I agree with that premise, it’s not always right.

If you’ve ever had somebody in your family, or a neighbor, or somebody who’s thinking about or planning suicide; do you think you should do whatever you could do to stop them?

Or do you think you should just say, ‘yeah, no big deal, go ahead, pull the trigger’.

Right?

So even though there’s a certain sense of “right” to our own bodies, you’re not going to just stand by while you watch your best friend say ‘you know, I am so tired of my left arm, I’m going to cut it off’.

No, you’re going to do something to say ‘wait a minute, let’s think about this: let’s think about this, let’s talk it through, cause from what I can tell, that left arm is pretty important’.

Now, I mean it’s different if it’s gangrened and it needs amputation.11 I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about a health arm, right?

So, the premise: the premise is “my body, my choice”, but it’s wrong, because there’s two bodies. There’s two bodies when we’re talking about pregnancy.

Which brings us back to the Supreme Court.

Roe v. Wade, the Constitution, and a Eureka Moment

They have this case, the Dobbs case I guess we call it now. And they had to address abortion.

And after they reviewed the first decision, of Roe versus Wade, and as they reviewed the Constitution, what they decided and realized was: the Constitution itself doesn’t say anything about abortion.

It doesn’t.

And so, as a Supreme Court, they decided ‘we need to not uphold Roe v. Wade, we need to kick it back down to the states’.12 And boy are there battles in the states. Right? There’s a lot of work to be done at the state level.

But that was the decision.

Let Love Choose Wisely

And so, as you go to the ballot box, as you go to pull the lever, or mail it in: just ask you (!), choose wisely. Let your love, let your discernment, choose wisely those things that most align with God.

Because Jesus says, ‘give up everything else, and follow me’.

I think Jesus is happy he doesn’t have to cast a vote. It’s like, ‘whoo! Escaped that one!’

But he’s there to help us.

So let’s go to this reading from Wisdom: let’s pray: “…I prayed, and prudence was given [to] me”. [Wisdom 7:7]

Let’s pray that prudence would be given to us, and also to our nation, as we go to the ballot box. Let love choose wisely.

And I’m going to end with this prayer. Again, this pamphlet and this prayer are in the back if you’d like one.

I’d invite you to close your eyes and bow your head with me:

O Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Mercy, at this most critical time, we entrust the United States of America to your loving care.

Most Holy Mother, we beg you to reclaim this land for the glory of your son. Overwhelmed with the burden of the sins of our nation, we cry to you from the depths of our hearts and seek refuge in your motherly protection.

Look down with mercy upon us and touch the hearts of our people. Open our minds to the great worth of human life and to the responsibilities that accompany human freedom. Free us from the falsehoods that lead to the evil of abortion and threaten the sanctity of family life.

Grant our country the wisdom to proclaim that God’s law is the foundation on which this nation was founded, and that He alone is the True Source of our cherished rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

O Merciful Mother, give us the courage to reject the culture of death and the strength to build a new Culture of Life. Amen.
(“A Prayer for Our Country”,4 from Men of the Sacred Hearts)

Video: Gospel Reading and Homily at St. Paul’s, Sauk Centre, MN; October 13, 2024

Gospel reading for Sunday, October 13, 2024; the video should start playing just before the start of this reading:

“As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, ‘Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’

“Jesus answered him, ‘Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: “You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother.”‘

“He replied and said to him, ‘Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.’

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, ‘You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to [the] poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’ At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

“Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, ‘How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!’ The disciples were amazed at his words.

“So Jesus again said to them in reply, ‘Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through [the] eye of [a] needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’ They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, ‘Then who can be saved?’

“Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For human beings it is impossible, but not for God. All things are possible for God.’

“Peter began to say to him, ‘We have given up everything and followed you.’

“Jesus said, ‘Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come. But many that are first will be last, and [the] last will be first.'”
(Mark 10:17–30)

Acting as if love and neighbors matter isn’t easy, but it’s a good idea anyway:

1 ‘Prudence is love choosing wisely’, discussed in:

  • “Summa Theologiae”, Second Part of the Second Part, Question 47; St. Thomas Aquinas (13th century) translation via New Advent
  • St. Thomas quotes St. Augustine of Hippo’s De Moribus Ecclesiae Catholicae / “Of the Morals of the Catholic Church” (388) translation via New Advent

2 First reading for Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 13, 2024:

3 Thinking about last things:

  • Second reading for Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 13, 2024: Hebrews 3:12–13
  • The particular judgment, a sort of final performance review: Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1021-1022

4 “A Prayer for Our Country”, from Men of the Sacred Hearts, menofthesacredhearts.org:

OriginalMy adaptation, for personal use

O Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Mercy, at this most critical time, we entrust the United States of America to your loving care.

Most Holy Mother, we beg you to reclaim this land for the glory of your son. Overwhelmed with the burden of the sins of our nation, we cry to you from the depths of our hearts and seek refuge in your motherly protection.

Look down with mercy upon us and touch the hearts of our people. Open our minds to the great worth of human life and to the responsibilities that accompany human freedom. Free us from the falsehoods that lead to the evil of abortion and threaten the sanctity of family life.

Grant our country the wisdom to proclaim that God’s law is the foundation on which this nation was founded, and that He alone is the True Source of our cherished rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

O Merciful Mother, give us the courage to reject the culture of death and the strength to build a new Culture of Life. Amen.

O Most Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Mercy, at this critical time, I entrust the United States of America to your loving care.

Most Holy Mother, I beg you to reclaim this land for the glory of your son. Overwhelmed with the burden of the sins of this nation, I cry to you from the depths of my heart and seek refuge in your motherly protection.

Look down with mercy upon us and touch the hearts of this people. Open our minds to the great worth of human life and to the responsibilities that accompany human freedom. Free us from the falsehoods that lead to the evil of abortion and threaten the sanctity of family life.

Grant this country the wisdom to proclaim that God’s law is the foundation on which this nation was built, and that He alone is the True Source of our cherished rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

O Merciful Mother, give us the courage to reject the culture of death and the strength to build a new Culture of Life. Trusting in your most powerful intercession I pray —

[The Memorare]

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession was left unaided.Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto thee, O Virgin of virgins, my mother, to thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful.O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy hear and answer me. Amen.

5 Freedom of expression, a persistently pesky proposition:

6 Dealing with homosexual/LGBTQ+/LGBTI+/LGBTIQA+/whatever issues, and a recent ‘wedding cake’ case:

7 A religious order, government preferences, contraception, being human; very briefly:

8 The situation is not, putting it mildly, simple:

9 Human beings are people, all human beings:

  • Human life is sacred, a gift from God: every human life, each human life. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2258-2317)
    • Each human being is a person, no matter how young he or she is; killing an innocent person is a bad idea and we shouldn’t do it. (Catechism, 2270-2275)

10 Valuing human life, and knowing why we value human life:

  • USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops)
    • USCCB Committees: Pro-Life Activities
      “We proclaim that human life is a precious gift from God; that each person who receives this gift has responsibilities toward God, self and others; and that society, through its laws and social institutions, must protect and nurture human life at every stage of its existence.”
    • “The Catholic Church is a Pro-Life Church ”
      Pamphlet by People of Life, the pro-life action campaign of the Catholic Church in the United States, under the direction of the USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities

11 Life, health, responsibility, and not despairing:

  • Human life is precious, sacred, a gift from God (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2258)
  • Staying alive and healthy, within reason, is a good idea. (Catechism, 2288-2289)
  • Deliberate mutilation, unless done for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, is a bad idea and I shouldn’t do it. (Catechism, 2297)
  • Killing myself would be, in effect, murder; with no time later for me to repent. (Catechism, 1021-1022, 2280-2283)

However:

“2283 We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.”
(Catechism, 2283)

12 Roe v. Wade and the Constitution:

Posted in Being a Citizen, Being Catholic, Reflections | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

First Helene, Now Milton; Yikes: Another Major Hurricane 0 (0)

Posted on October 12, 2024 by Brian H. Gill
U.S. Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Jacob Hancock's photo: 'U.S. Airmen assigned to the 202nd Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers (RED HORSE) Squadron, Florida Air National Guard, clear roads in Keaton Beach, Florida, after the landfall of Hurricane Helene....' (September 27, 2024) via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.
Staff Sgt. Jacob Hancock’s photo: Keaton Beach, FL, after Hurricane Helene landfall. (September 27, 2024)

First, the good news.

Zoo Miami goodwill ambassador Ron Magill's photo: flamingos sheltered in a men's restroom during Hurricane Andrew. (1992) via BBC News, used w/o permission.Folks in Florida knew that another major hurricane was heading their way. That, and some out-of-the-box thinking, helped them get ready.

Now, the bad news.

Folks in Florida were still cleaning up after Hurricane Helene, when Hurricane Milton hit.

Cleaning up after this double-header disaster won’t be easy. But there are a few bright spots, which I’ll eventually get around to.

Topical Twaddle

Chicago Tribune's political cartoon, after the 1927 Chicago mayoral general election: reacting to politicians who publicly endorsed candidates in a general election, after denouncing them in the primaries. (April 6, 1927)There’s still an election looming, so I’ve been seeing more twaddle than I like.

But that’s nothing new. Election season or not, a few of us can be counted on for declarations of doom and gloom. Like this selection, from about a decade back:

The Usual Doom, Gloom, and Politics

Cover of HRH The Prince of Wales, Tony Juniper and Emily Shuckburgh's book; 'Climate Change' (2017) The Ladybird Expert Series, via BBC News, used w/o permission.About that last item — “…God’s Judgment on America” — sure enough, someone’s making the usual claims about God’s wrath and the current calamitous crisis. This one’s coming from a different quarter, but the sentiment is all too familiar:

Hurricane Milton wasn’t more than a “disturbance” when that op-ed popped up, so I can’t fault the author for missing the ‘double feature’ angle.

The headline’s “killing dozens” may either be masterful understatement, journalistic caution, or something completely different.

Helene’s death toll is much worse: well upwards of 200, with at least that many folks still missing as I write this.

Many of Helene’s victims weren’t in Florida.

North Carolina got hit hard, mostly in the state’s western Appalachian region.

Some of the twaddle I mentioned earlier involves where Helene’s rain fell. Apparently the storm’s involved in some sort of conspiracy. Allegedly.1

Now, about God’s alleged wrath.

I’m a Christian. But I’m not the sort of Christian who sees God’s wrath — directed at ‘those sinners over there’ — in every storm. I’ve spent the bulk of my life in the Upper Midwest, and that’s almost another topic.

Basically, I think God does not have anger management issues. I also think storms happen: and that part of our job is dealing with them. Maybe even planning ahead.

“Up, Up and Away”: Weather Modification and the Montgolfier Brothers

WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Tracks' storm track for 1947 Atlantic hurricane 8, 1947 Hurricane Sable. (October 9-16, 1947; original storm track plotted 2006, revised 2014)
The Cape Sable hurricane turned back to the Atlantic coast after a weather modification experiment. (1947)

Analog magazine cover, June, 1962; featuring 'The Weather Man', by Theodore Sturgeon. Via David David Szondy's Tales of Future Past (https://davidszondy.com/futurepast/weather-control.html), used w/o permission.Helene MIGHT be the tool of some mysteriously malevolent campaigning conspiracy — but I seriously doubt it.

Weather modification is real; and has been possible, in a limited way, since around the mid-20th century.

But diabolical masterminds, aiming a storm at America’s Last Hope? That’s more what I’d expect from Ming the Merciless, malevolent monarch of Mongo.

On the other hand, there was a time when it looked like we were on the threshold of a world with no storms, gentle rains coming at exactly the right time, with blue skies and buttercups every summer weekend.

Then researchers modified a storm, which destroyed more than 1,335 homes and killed 238 people.

That was in the summer of 1972. As I recall, the courts eventually decided that there wasn’t enough evidence linking the experiment to the deaths and destruction.

But I very strongly suspect that the 1972 Black Hills flood, and memories of the 1947 Cape Sable Hurricane, put a severe crimp in those shining hopes for large-scale and reliable weather modification.

Comparing weather modification’s current status to aviation technology, I’d say we’re a little past the Montgolfier brothers’ balloon: but not by all that much.2

Tenants of Tampa Bay

Jungle Prada Site History Tour / Discover Florida Tours St. Pete's photo and text: 'The Jungle Prada Site was part of a Tocobaga Indian village for roughly 600 years ....' Used w/o permission.
Discover Florida Tours St. Pete: Tocabaga Village, the Jungle Prada Site.

US Census map, modified by Ruhrfisch, Donald Albury: 'Map of the approximate area of the Safety Harbor archaeological culture, based on the map on page 390 in Milanich, Jerald T. (1994). Archaeology of Precolumbian Florida. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida. ISBN 0-8130-1273-2.' Via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.Folks were living around what we call Tampa Bay at least as far back as the days when other folks were installing those huge sarsen blocks at Stonehenge.

Tampa Bay background, briefly:

  • Several as-yet-unlabeled cultures
    ca. 7000 B.C. – ca. 500 B.C.
  • Manasota culture
    500 B.C. – ca. 900 A.D.
  • Weeden Island culture
    500 – 1000 A.D.
  • Safety Harbor culture
    ca. 900 – 1700 A.D.

About a half-millennium back now, the folks living around Tampa Bay convinced explorers that they had no gold (true), but that there was lots of gold north of them (unlikely).

The explorers left, and we think the Tampa Bay residents got sick. Possibly caught something from the explorers. At any rate, there’s a two-century gap when pretty much nobody called Tampa Bay home.

Before 1824, there had been a mound — built by someone, we’re not sure who — with a big hickory tree growing on it, at the mouth of the Hillsborough River. It was on the north side of Hillsborough Bay, where the Tampa Convention Center is now.

The tree, and the mound, are long gone. So are many or most of the other earthwork mounds folks had been building and maintaining in those parts.

The mounds that remain range from maybe a dozen feet to more than 20 feet in height.

Interestingly enough, storm surges in the 1848 Tampa Bay hurricane were about 15 feet high at the mouth of the Hillsborough River. That’s the area’s highest recorded storm surge: the highest since we started keeping such records.

I won’t insist on this, but I suspect that the folks who built those mounds did so partly because they wanted to survive the next big storm.3

This May Be the End of Civilization As We Know It

image by Robert Simmon, NASA GSFC, via NOAA / SuperManu / Uploaded by Pierre cb. Illustration: storm surge effect.
Storm surge effect. (R. Simmon,/NASA/GSFC/NOAA/SuperManu/Pierre cb)

Leveling those mounds probably made sense during the Florida land boom of the 1920s.

Economic good times seemed like they’d never end, the 1848 storm was history. Folks who hadn’t experienced the 1921 Tampa Bay hurricane were eagerly spending money on their very own tropical paradise.

The 1926 Miami hurricane served as a reality check, and so did the 1929 Wall Street crash.

But when good times rolled around again, folks with tropical dreams came back, and now we’ve got whole neighborhoods built on barrier islands.

Barrier islands are good at absorbing storm-driven waves. And, although they’ll shift around as wind and wave work on them, they’re very durable.

They’re basically sand dunes with the occasional coral reef. And since a barrier island may not be in exactly the same spot it had been before a storm, they’re really bad places to build neighborhoods.

That hasn’t kept folks from building neighborhoods on barrier islands. I can see their appeal: gorgeous views, lovely sand beaches, and maybe the risks aren’t obvious. I hope folks living in municipalities like Venice, Florida, got out in time.4 Or found shelter.

Customary Protocols, Private Citizens, and Pinellas County

'Debris trash Pinellas ', Photo from WFTS, via ABC Action News, used w/o permission.
Dump site in Pinellas County, Florida. (WFTS photo, via ABC Action News, used w/o permission.)

I figure just about everyone who understands English and has an Internet connection knows that another hurricane has been heading toward Florida. And that its projected course would bring it very close to Tampa Bay.

That brings me to Pinellas County, part of the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater Metropolitan Statistical Area. It’s west of Tampa, on the Florida coast, and home to just shy of one million folks.

I can see why the people running Pinellas County need to be perhaps a bit more regimented than we are, out here in central Minnesota.

However, with a major hurricane bearing down on them, folks scrambling to clear debris from Helene, and Florida’s governor signing off on an order to keep landfills open5 — I’d have hoped that whoever was in charge would have shown more good sense.

Even if the some of those who were hauling debris were not the usual persons.

“… ‘When we did the executive order, we said 24/7 debris pickup and being able to have these landfills be open. We did the executive order on Saturday and what happened over the night? It was closed. So what did we do? We cut the locks and we let people bring the debris. Overnight yesterday, what did we have? We had hundreds of cars, not just state vehicles, not just private contractors, we had private citizens loading up their F250s with debris to bring it — that’s helping, that’s a public service for them to do that and the gate was closed and there was no one [redacted] it. So we opened it.’

“DeSantis said they need all hands on deck and that the state has helped to make a huge dent in the debris. But there’s still more work to do.

“‘No bureaucracy, no more red tape, no more excuses about this debris,’ DeSantis said….”
(“‘No bureaucracy, no more red tape, no more excuses’: Governor orders county landfills to open for storm debris” , Kylie McGivern, ABC Action News (October 7, 2024)) (emphasis mine)

Under normal circumstances, I can see how locking a landfill’s gate at the appointed hour makes sense.

But folks in the Tampa Bay area have not been experiencing normal circumstances.

So my sympathies are more for those private citizens who ignored the ‘normal circumstances’ rules, and helped their neighbors anyway. As well as the private contractors, city employees, and everyone else who was lending a hand.

Flamingos and Being Human

Zoo Miami goodwill ambassador Ron Magill's photo: flamingos sheltered in a men's restroom during Hurricane Andrew. (1992) via BBC News, used w/o permission.
Flamingos kept safe during Hurricane Andrew. (1992) Photo by Ron Magill.

An ‘up’ side I’ve seen this week is how many — most, I’m guessing — folks in positions of responsibility have been behaving responsibly.

Take zoos, for example. I gather that most in Florida include metal and concrete ‘bedrooms’ for their critters. The bunkers are part of their enclosure, the animals use them every day, so going inside during a storm isn’t more than a slight break in routine.

Others, like flamingos, normally stay outside.

Folks at Zoo Miami kept their flock safe in a men’s restroom during Hurricane Andrew (1992), Hurricane George (1998), and Hurricane Floyd (1999).

I figure it was a good choice: no windows; tile floor and walls, so cleanup wasn’t a huge problem; and — gross, but practical — after a thorough cleaning, the toilets gave them a water source.

Getting flamingos into a restroom with minimal fuss and stress takes planning.

“… Similarly, the animals need prepping. Flamingos, for instance, live outside and must be moved to hurricane shelters during storms, so several times a year, zookeepers at Palm Beach Zoo, Florida, train the birds to follow them to shelter.

“‘We’re not sure if the flamingos think they are shorter humans or they think that we’re really pale flamingos, but because of that relationship, they want to hang out with us, and so we just ask them to walk with us,’ says Mike Terrell, the zoo’s curator of animal experiences. They practice this regularly by strolling around the zoo on clear days, so when the emergency time comes ‘it’s just part of their day’, he adds. …”
(“‘We’ve used hallways, we’ve used bathrooms’: How zoos protect animals when hurricanes hit” , Sofia Quaglia, BBC Future (October 9, 2024))

Sometimes even the best planning doesn’t keep bad things from happening. That’s been the case before, and it’s a near-certainty that this year’s hurricanes won’t be an exception.

But I see what Florida zookeepers have been doing as an example of folks acting like humans — the way we should behave.6

Making Sense: It’s an Option

Dik Browne's 'Hagar the Horrible:' 'It may be the end of civilization as we know it.' (February 25, 1973)Getting back to a Pinellas County landfill, chaos running rampant and anarchy unleashed — I do not see a problem with folks who haven’t received formal authorization through proper channels lending a hand when there’s an imminent disaster bearing down on the county.

Double negative there, but I’ll let it stand.

And I have noticed what could be considered a disturbing trend, regarding unofficial and unsanctioned responses to recent natural disasters.

In many cases, the hoi polloi have been extracting victims from dangerous situations, clearing streets, and aiding their neighbors — without permission, and before the proper authorities and functionaries arrived on the scene.

Some even had the temerity to start hauling supplies to stricken regions.

Now, I realize that well-intentioned folks can cause trouble: slowing or blocking traffic on already-damaged roads, bringing material that can’t be used or stored, maybe even ‘rescuing’ folks who’d have been safer where they were.

But I think folks doing what we can, before the proper authorities can get around to us, is a good idea.

Even if does disturb others, who may sincerely believe that we should sit on our hands until someone comes to make decisions for us.

I’ve talked about making sense when things go wrong before.

“…I figure that whatever happens to me, pleasant or otherwise, what matters most is what I do about the experience. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1704-1707, 1730, 1852-1869) …

“… If I take my faith seriously, I’ll at least try to love my neighbors — and see everyone as a neighbor, no matter who or where they are. (Matthew 5:43–44, 22:36–40, Mark 12:28–31; Luke 10:25–37; Catechism, 1706, 1776, 1825, 1849-1851, 1955)

“I should be promoting truth and justice, contributing to the common good and getting involved as best I can. Acting as if mercy matters is another good idea. (Catechism, 1915, 2239, 2447, 2472, 2475-2487)

“I can use suffering, joy, any experience, as a reason to pray and rejoice. (1 Thessalonians 5:16–18; Catechism, 2648)

“None of that is easy. But it’s still a good idea. …

“… I don’t see calamities as ‘God’s judgment on those sinners over there.’ On the other hand, I don’t think they’re meaningless. They’re opportunities to practice charity: which is a virtue. (Catechism, 1813, 1822-1829) …”
(“Disasters, Deaths, Decisions” (September 17, 2018))

Wednesday Evening: Hurricane Milton Arrives

Julio Cortez/AP photo: 'Max Watts, of Buford, Ga., walks in the parking lot to check on a trailer parked outside the hotel where he is riding out Hurricane Milton with coworkers, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024, in Tampa, Fla. Watts, who works for a towing company, was deployed with colleagues to Florida to aid in the aftermath of the storm.' Via AP News, used w/o permission.
Someone riding out the storm in Tampa, waiting to help. (October 9, 2024) AP photo, used w/o permission.

There’s going to be a lot of news like this, coming from Florida:

“Hurricane Milton live updates: Category 3 storm makes landfall in Siesta Key, Florida”
The Associated Press (October 9, 2024 (03:23 UTC, October 10, 2024))

“Hurricane Milton crashed into Florida as a Category 3 storm Wednesday, pounding the coast with ferocious winds of over 100 mph (160 kph), heavy rain and producing a series of tornadoes around the state. Tampa avoided a direct hit.

“The cyclone had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (205 kph) as it made landfall at 8:30 p.m. near Siesta Key, the National Hurricane Center said. Siesta Key is a prosperous strip of white-sand beaches home to 5,500 people about 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Tampa.

“More than 1.5 million homes and businesses were without power Wednesday night in Florida, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports. The highest number of outages were in Hardee County, as well as neighboring Sarasota and Manatee counties….”

Bad as the situation is, it could have been worse. Looks like Milton’s center is missing the heavily urbanized part of Tampa Bay.7 Which is cold comfort to those who are losing loved ones and homes.

But people work in downtown Tampa, and if that area comes through the storm more-or-less intact, many survivors may at least have jobs. And therefore be able to keep paying bills: which, I’ve found, is a good thing.

It’s late Wednesday night now, I need sleep, and I still haven’t talked about the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Milton in Context: Numbers and a Little History

Tavantius's map: Hurricane Milton path during the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. Background image from NASA, tracking data from NHC. (up to October 10, 2024)
Hurricane Milton (October 2, 2024 – October 10, 2024). Map by Tavantius, used w/o permission.

Hurricane Milton had been a Category 5 storm during its approach to Florida, and was Category 3 when it hit Siesta Key.

I’ve talked about hurricanes before, but not the Saffir-Simpson scale: which is where those Categories came from.

A Handy Hurricane Wind Scale

'Saffir-Simpson scale, 1-minute maximum sustained winds', table from Wikipedia, used w/o permission.Depending on who’s talking, the Saffir-Simpson scale is the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale (SSHWS), Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale (SSHS): or just plain Saffir-Simpson scale.

There are other systems for describing hurricanes/typhoons/tropical cyclones, but it’s the one used by the US National Hurricane Center / Central Pacific Hurricane Center.

Back in 1969, the United Nations had civil engineer Herbert Saffir study low-cost housing in hurricane-prone areas.

The idea was to give folks in areas without hurricane building codes a fairly simple and practical system for thinking about hurricane strengths.

By 1971, Saffir and meteorologist Robert Simpson had developed a scale that combined objective wind speeds with somewhat-subjective damage estimates. The general public heard about it in 1973, or maybe 1975, and the Saffir-Simpson scale got traction in 1974.

Anyway, it’s been in use since then. Some experts aren’t satisfied with it: because it’s too simplistic, or because it should be like the Richter scale.

They’re probably right, at least partly so, and I’m pretty sure the Saffir-Simpson scale isn’t the last ‘how bad is that hurricane’ system we’ll use.

But for now, I think it’s a good-enough system.

Here are those categories, leaving out TS (tropical storm) and TD (tropical depression:

  • Category 1 — 74-95 mph
    Very dangerous winds will produce some damage
  • Category 2 — 96-110 mph
    Extremely dangerous winds will cause extensive damage
  • Category 3 — 111-129 mph
    Devastating damage will occur (including no power or water for several days to weeks)
  • Category 4 — 130-156 mph
    Catastrophic damage will occur (including no power for weeks, maybe months)
  • Category 5 — 157 mph or greater
    Catastrophic damage will occur (including no power for months) (Affected area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months)

The National Hurricane Center gives more detail about ‘very dangerous’, ‘extremely dangerous’, ‘devastating’, and worse, winds.8

Just How Bad Was It?

National Hurricane Center map: Atlantic tropical cyclones and disturbances. (4:35 p.m. EDT October 10, 2024)
NHC map: Atlantic tropical cyclones and disturbances. (4:35 p.m. EDT October 10, 2024)

By Thursday evening, Hurricane Milton had crossed Florida, and I started learning how bad the storm had been.

“Although Milton has moved on, at least 8 are dead and millions remain in the dark”
Julio Cortez, Kate Payne, Haven Daley; AP (Updated 9:11 PM CDT, October 10, 2024)
“…Arriving just two weeks after the misery wrought by Hurricane Helene, the system also knocked out power to more than 3 million customers, flooded barrier islands, tore the roof off a baseball stadium and toppled a construction crane.…”
(emphasis mine)

“Three million still without power in Florida, DeSantis says”
BBC News live coverage (13:41 British Summer Time, October 10, 2024)
“DeSantis continues by saying there are still 3.1 million accounts without power in the state, with 635,000 restorations completed since Hurricane Milton hit.”
(emphasis mine)

Friday morning, no surprises here, the number of known dead had gone up.

“Hurricane Milton leaves path of destruction across Florida, at least 16 dead”
Alex Sundby, Faris Tanyos, Emily Mae Czachor, Cara Tabachnick, Jordan Freiman; CBS News (Updated 7:58 a.m. EDT, October 11, 2024)

“What to know about Hurricane Milton

  • “Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida, Wednesday night as a Category 3 storm.
  • “At least 16 people died from the storm, officials confirmed to CBS News.
  • “Milton moved across the Florida peninsula Thursday and over the Atlantic Ocean.
  • “Nearly 2.5 million customers were without power in Florida on Friday morning, according to utility tracker Find Energy….”

(emphasis mine)

Part of the good news is that Hurricane Milton is still heading east. And it’s not as strong as it was.

More than three million customers/accounts without power isn’t good news. But having 635,000 restored a day after the hurricane hit — that’s not bad.

And three million without power becoming two and a half million the day after that: also not bad. Technicians and engineers working on Florida’s power grid have been busy.

Sadly, I’m pretty sure that the number of known dead from Hurricane Milton will keep going up. There’s a lot of wreckage in Florida that’ll take time to search and clear.

Right: Eric Hasert/TCPALM/USA TODAY NETWORK's photo, 'The St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office was damaged in Fort Pierce as Hurricane Milton crossed into Florida...'. Left: Tristan Wheelock/Bloomberg(Bloomberg)'s photo: 'Destroyed homes after Hurricane Milton in St. Pete Beach, Florida...' October 10, 2024. via USA Today (right), Hindustan Times (left); used w/o permission.
After Milton — St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, left; St. Pete Beach, right.
(photos: E. Hasert, T. Wheelock)

But there’s been good news. Or ‘on the whole good news’, at any rate. Like that AP article’s “toppled a construction crane”.

The thing was on a construction site near the Tampa Bay Times building. Although the crane cut a divot out of the Times building, nobody got hurt. Seems that Milton blew down other construction cranes, too.9

With several days of weather forecasts showing that Milton was coming, I have no idea why those construction cranes were still standing Wednesday night.

How long it takes to disassemble the things, what they cost, and how much damage they can cause when they collapse — are questions I don’t have answers for. I’m just glad nobody got hurt when one sliced a corner off the Times building.

Memorable Hurricanes

From From NOAA Central Library, Silver Spring, Maryland: 'Surface weather analysis of the 1935 Labor Day hurricane on 4 September 1936.' (September 4, 1936) via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.
Surface weather, 1935 Labor Day hurricane. (September 4, 1936)

Superlatives, like “strongest”, “most intense”, or “worst”, can be tricky.

Or, rather, they involve picking some particular aspect of an event or entity as the part that’s most important.

For example, the “Hurricane Milton” Wikipedia page has a table of the top 10 “Most intense Atlantic hurricanes”. Milton is in fifth place: between Rita (2005) and Allen (1980). Helene doesn’t appear on that list.

The “Hurricane Helene” Wikipedia page’s “Strongest landfalling tropical cyclones in the U.S. State of Florida” is another ‘top 10’ list. It ranks “strongest” by wind speed at landfall. “Fourth” and “seventh” rank storms each had the same recorded wind speed.

Strongest landfalling tropical cyclones in the U.S. state of Florida† as of October 8, 2024
RankHurricaneSeasonWind speed
mphkm/h
1“Labor Day”1935185295
2Andrew1992165270
3Michael2018160260
4“Florida Keys”1919150240
Charley2004
Ian2022
7“Miami”1926145230
“Okeechobee”1928
Donna1960
10Helene2024140225
Source: HURDAT, Hurricane Research Division, NHC;
via Hurricane Helene, Wikipedia (October 7, 2024)
†Strength refers to maximum sustained wind speed
upon striking land.

Helene is on the ‘wind speed’ list, since the storm had sustained wind speeds of 140 miles an hour on September 26, 2024, when it hit Florida. But its lowest air pressure was 938: not low enough for the ‘intense’ pressure list.

Milton had sustained winds of 180 miles an hour on October 8, but didn’t reach Florida until the next day. By then, its winds were down to 120 miles an hour: again, not enough to make that list.

The 1935 “Labor Day” hurricane was arguably worse than either of 2024’s famous storms, killing at least 485 folks.10

Now What?

NathanF's photo: 'Cypress Gardens at Legoland Florida'. (February 4, 2012) via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.
Cypress Gardens at Legoland Florida. (February 4, 2012) Photo by NathanF.

Meanwhile, up here in Minnesota:

“First snow of the season, widespread frost coming to Minnesota”
Meteorologist Sven Sundgaard, Bring Me The News (October 11, 2024)

“Here comes the first round of what the National Weather Service describes as ‘conversational snow’ in Minnesota this fall.

“What is conversational snow, you may ask? The NWS Duluth didn’t provide a definition, but it’s easy to surmise that it’s not that serious, but it’s fun to talk about anyway….”

The “conversational snow” won’t be much: maybe a quarter-inch in far northeastern Minnesota, what I call arrowhead country. The nickname comes from my state’s shape on the map, not actual arrowheads, and I’m drifting off-topic.

Our climate is very different, but Minnesota’s lake country looks like much of Florida: at least on maps. We’ve both got an overabundance of lakes, ponds, marshes: seriously damp land, that is.

More seriously, Florida is still at the top of my news feed: which is seldom if ever a good thing for the folks involved.

I did, however, find a bright spot or two.

Looks like many folks have been getting their part of the world back in good working order, which won’t be easy.

Folks running Legoland Florida had the good sense to close down during the storm, along with other theme parks in the area. Since they reopened Friday, I figure there hasn’t been overly much damage there. Which I see as a good thing.

I was also glad to see that Cypress Gardens, a theme park that’d been where Legoland is now, is still there: in a sense. A Cypress Gardens is just southwest of the Lego Wave Pool, Joker Soaker, and Splash Safari.11

None of which I’ll be talking about this week: or, probably, next. But I was happy to see that Cypress Gardens is still (literally) on the map: as a small botanical park.

I’ve never been to Cypress Gardens, and won’t visit Legoland. This household, economically, is on the upper end of lower class or low end of middle class; and we haven’t prioritized visiting theme parks.

But they can be fun for families and individuals: and that’s yet another topic.

Something I Can Do

Pieter Claesz's 'Vanitas Still Life.' (1630)I can’t offer much help, in what my culture calls practical terms, for the folks recovering from Helene and Milton.

Something I can do, however, is pray.

Some time back, I signed up for my parish’s intercessory prayer chain.

(Intercessory prayer: that’s one of the main categories of prayer: blessing or adoration, intercession, petition, praise, and thanksgiving. (Catechism, 2623-2643))

Anyway, my daily routine now includes a quick prayer for folks whose situations have been brought to my attention — usually with a level of anonymity that’s culturally-appropriate.

Thursday, I added an intercessory intention of my own: on behalf of folks who weathered the recent storms, and will be dealing with varying degrees of loss. I don’t see that as a big deal: but like I said, praying is something I can do.

I’ve talked about disasters and making sense before, and probably will again:

1 Mountains, storms, and politics (you can’t make this stuff up):

2 Meteorology, getting a grip, a famous balloon, and Ming the Merciless:

3 Florida mounds, mostly:

4 Hurricanes and beachfront property:

5 Preparations:

6 21st century zoos aren’t 17th century menageries:

7 Arrival:

8 Categories, numbers, and a very little history:

9 Two weeks, two hurricanes:

10 Storms, including a few really bad ones:

11 In central Florida:

Posted in Discursive Detours | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Porphyrion: Black Hole Jets on a Cosmic Scale 0 (0)

Posted on October 5, 2024 by Brian H. Gill

E. Wernquist / D. Nelson (IllustrisTNG Collaboration) / M. Oei's illustration: '...the longest black hole jet system ever observed, nicknamed Porphyrion. Porphyrion dates back to a time when our universe was less than half its present age. (2024) via Sky and Telescope, used w/o permissionWe’ve known about “black hole jet systems” for some time, but never one as big as Porphyrion: a 23,000,000 light-year giant.

I’ll be talking about that today, along with how astronomers have been studying it, a plausible explanation for its extraordinary length, and a quick overview of how we’ve been thinking about this universe.

Cosmology: From the Cosmic Ocean to the Cosmic Web

NASA and the European Space Agency, Edited by Noodle snacks: 'The Hubble Ultra Deep Field ... a small region of space in the constellation Fornax...'. (September 3, 2003 - January 16, 2004) via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.
Hubble’s view of galaxies in the constellation Fornax. (2003-2004)

One of the problems — or needful decisions, take your pick — I deal with when I write these things is figuring out where to start.

On the one hand, I could start talking about radio galaxies, cosmic walls, and active galactic nuclei.

On the other hand — I’ll try starting with stories folks have told about the universe. I’ll be covering nearly four millennia in a few hundred words, so this’ll be concise.

Mesopotamian Musings

From N. F. Gier's 'God, Reason, and the Evangelicals', chapter 13, University Press of America (1987) Used w/o permission.Around the time Ahmose the First put Egypt back under Egyptian management, folks in Mesopotamia were spinning tales involving a flat, circular Earth surrounded by a cosmic ocean.

If that sounds familiar, it should.

It’s imagery we see in the Old Testament.

“Then God said: Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters, to separate one body of water from the other.
“God made the dome, and it separated the water below the dome from the water above the dome. And so it happened.
“God called the dome ‘sky.’ Evening came, and morning followed—the second day.”
(Genesis 1:6–8)

Instead of being shocked, horrified, and upset about Genesis including cultural references that folks living near the eastern Mediterranean understood — I’ll accept that descendants of Abraham lived there, and move on.

About a millennium later, folks like Anaximander and Democritus were thinking about the universe in what we’d call “scientific” terms. In other words, they were making sense of reality by considering what we can observe, without mythic elements.

Parmenides generally gets credit for showing that Earth is spherical, not a cylinder; and we’re still not sure about Anaximander’s multiple universes.

Fast-forward again, this time about two millennia. European scholars were overly-impressed by Aristotle, but folks like Galileo Galilei started using what we’d call a spyglass.

In the half-millennium since then, we’ve been developing technologies that let us see more: and make more precise measurements. That’s led to new ideas about how this universe works.1

Quite a few new ideas, actually. And, so far, each time scientists got their hands on more data; the universe they’ve been describing got bigger.

William Herschel, “Our Sidereal System”, and Finding Galaxies

William Herschel's illustrations for '. By William Herschel, Esq. FRS'. (1785) via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.
William Herschel’s “Section of our sidereal system”. (1785)

A musician and composer, Frederick William Herschel, fled to England in 1757. There’s a story behind that, involving the Seven Years’ War, and that’s another topic.

Somewhere along the line, Herschel got interested in astronomy. Serious, professional astronomers were mostly interested in studying the planets, but not Herschel.

He was interested in stars, and planets, and the Moon, and sunspots — and building telescopes. Lots of telescopes.

He also thought he’d worked out a method for mapping the universe. Making not-unreasonable assumptions, like the sun being pretty much in the center, and stars being evenly distributed.

Seriously: that made sense. Observation told us that the sky is more-or-less equally crowded with stars in opposite quadrants, no matter which pair we’re looking at.

About “quadrant”: despite the name, the sky’s been divided into eight quadrants. When, and why, that happened: I don’t know. Mercifully, I don’t have to say “celestial quadrant” all that often.

Anyway, Herschel mapped “our sidereal system”, publishing his results in 1785.

By that time, Fr. Angelo Secchi had shown that our Sun is a star, or the stars are suns. Take your pick.

Astronomers, including William Herschel, had been studying nebulae: those fuzzy patches that kept getting mistaken for comets. William Huggins analyzed their spectra. He learned that about one out of three nebulae were luminous gas, while the rest were massive collections of stars.

By 1924, with 20-20 hindsight, we see that Edwin Hubble had proof that the Andromeda Nebula was huge, made of stars, and far outside our galaxy. By the time I was in school, a few textbooks talked about “island universes”.2

Galaxies, Clusters, Superclusters, and the Cosmic Web

NASA/ESA/STScI's Hubble image: Abell 2744 galaxy cluster, in the constellation Sculptor. (2014) from JPL News Release see https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/pia17569Meanwhile, physicists were working out how the sun made light and heat. Astronomers were making increasingly accurate — and puzzling — measurements of distant galaxies.

Working together, they learned that this universe is right around 13,787,000,000 years old: give or take 20,000,000.

Probably.

The Big Bang theory, with tweaking, has been a pretty good match with observations for nearly a century. My guess is that it’s an essentially-accurate model for how this universe has been working.

But I figure we’ll keep learning, and develop a more-nearly-complete model.

Just over 40 years ago, the Center for Astrophysics finished charting around 2,400 galaxies, out to a distance of approximately 600,000,000 light-years: their first 3-dimensional map of our cosmic neighborhood.

Margaret Geller and John Huchra spotted CfA2, ‘the Great Wall’, in 1986. It’s (very) roughly 300,000,000 light-years wide, 15,000,000 light-years thick, and at least 500,000,000 light-years long. Probably longer, but dust in our Milky Way galaxy blocks our view.

We’ve been learning that, on a large scale, this universe is bubbly.

Galaxies, galaxy clusters, and superclusters, are concentrated along vast sheets and filaments; separated by even vaster voids. NASA calls it the cosmic web, focusing more on the filaments than on the walls.3

Collage, observable universe to Earth.We’ve also been learning that this universe is big. That awareness can be unsettling.

“…The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. … The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age….”
(“The Call of Cthulhu” , H. P. Lovecraft (1929); via WikiQuote)

As it happens, I like living in a vast and almost-unthinkably ancient universe. But even if I didn’t, my opinion wouldn’t change reality. Besides, I wasn’t consulted when this place was planned: which is just as well.

Porphyrion and Cosmic Scale

E. Wernquist / D. Nelson (IllustrisTNG Collaboration) / M. Oei's illustration: '...the longest black hole jet system ever observed, nicknamed Porphyrion. Porphyrion dates back to a time when our universe was less than half its present age. (2024) via Sky and Telescope, used w/o permission
Artist’s illustration of Porphyrion, the longest known black hole jet system.

“Black Hole’s Colossal Jets Pierce the Cosmic Void”
Monica Young, Sky & Telescope (September 18, 2024)

“A pair of plasma jets powered by a supermassive black hole span far beyond their host galaxy — potentially affecting the cosmic web around it.

“The supermassive black hole at the center of a massive galaxy has powered a giant pair of plasma jets, spanning 23 million light-years long from tip to tip. That’s almost 10 times the distance between our Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy.

“Astronomers have nicknamed the record-breaking system Porphyrion, after the king of the giants in Greek mythology. And the giant is indeed the king of many: A new catalog of such radio-emitting giant jet pairs tallies more than 11,000 of them, each spanning more than 2.3 million light-years.

“‘Giant jets were known before we started the campaign, but we had no idea that there would turn out to be so many,’ says Martin Hardcastle (University of Hertfordshire, UK), coauthor on two associated studies. Porphyrion’s discovery is published in Nature; the accompanying catalog will appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics….”

Black holes — good grief. If I start talking about those things, and what we’ve been learning about them, I’ll still be working on this next week.

Backgrounder: Black Holes, Accretion Disks, and Relativistic Jets

cmglee, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's illustration: 'Stellar evolution of low-mass (left cycle) and high-mass (right cycle) stars, with examples in italics.' (2014) via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.Short version: black holes are parts of spacetime where gravity is so strong that light — or any other electromagnetic radiation, or matter — can’t escape.

Some black holes are as massive as big stars: which they used to be, before the star ran out of fuel, collapsed, had one spectacularly bright moment as a supernova; and collapsed again.

Other black holes are bigger — they’re called supermassive black holes, which isn’t a particularly imaginative name, but is quite descriptive.

There’s a supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way: and very probably one inside every large galaxy.

Stuff falling toward a supermassive black hole ends up orbiting it in an accretion disk. That’s a disk — more like a flat doughnut or Saturn’s rings, actually — where stuff whips around the black hole until it falls across the event horizon, or gets shot off into space.

The accretion disk gets hot, very hot. Physics happens — it’s complicated — and then ionized matter goes shooting out at right angles to the accretion disk.

That ionized stuff isn’t just hot, it’s clipping along at a fair fraction of the speed of light. Which is why such things are called relativistic jets.4

Radio Galaxies and Porphyrion’s Position

LOFAR Collaboration / Martijn Oei (Caltech)'s image. 'This picture, taken by the LOFAR radio telescope, shows the longest-known pair of black hole jets, spanning 23 million light-years. The galaxy hosting the supermassive black hole is a dot in the center of the image.' (2024) Via Sky and Telescope, used w/o permission.
LOFAR radio telescope image: the longest-known pair of black hole jets, spanning 23 million light-years.

Depending on who’s talking, Porphyrion is a Fanaroff-Riley class II radio galaxy. I’ll get back to Fanaroff-Riley classes, briefly, in a bit.

Radio galaxies look bigger in radio frequencies than they do in the visible spectrum. That’s because they’ve got “energetic radio lobes”, lit up by jets from an active galactic nucleus.

Sometimes you’ll see radio galaxies called “black hole jet systems”. That’s supposed to be less confusing than calling them “radio galaxies”, but I have no idea why.

“…The term ‘radio galaxy’ is often used to refer to the entire jet system, rather than solely to its host galaxy. Some scientists consider the term ‘black hole jet system’ more accurate and less confusing. Radio galaxies that reach the size of around 0.7 megaparsecs or more, are commonly called ‘giant radio galaxies’….”
(Radio galaxy, Wikipedia)

One more thing. A megaparsec is 1,000,000 parsecs.

A parsec is about 3.26 light-years. “Parsec” is short for “parallax of one second”. Astronomer Herbert Hall Turner coined the term in 1913. Astronomers and astrophysicists use it because it makes working with their data easier.

I talk about light-years, because that’s what pretty much everyone else says.

IAU / Sky and Telescope magazine (Roger Sinnott, Rick Fienberg)' sky chart: constellation Draco, position of Porphyrion (radio galaxy) (J152932.16+601534.4) marked by red circle. Via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.Getting back to Porphyrion, it’s a radio galaxy that’s about 7,500,000,000,000 light-years out, in the general direction of Iota Draconis. I put a red circle around its location in that sky chart.

Iota Draconis is a star in the constellation Draco, with at least two planets. It’s just over a hundred light-years away, and that’s yet again another topic.

Porphyrion’s host galaxy is J152932.16+601534.4, which is about 10 times as massive as the Milky Way — as I keep saying, don’t try memorizing these names and designations. Unless you feel like it, of course.

It’s the biggest radio galaxy/black hole jet system in what Sky & Telescope called a “new catalog of such radio-emitting giant jet pairs”. I think it’s the LoTSS Data Release 2 (DR2).

I’ve put links in the footnotes, as usual.5

I’ll wrap up this bit with a three minute, 37 second video.

Black Hole Jets and the Scale of the Cosmic Web

And there you have it.

Up to now, the longest know black hole jet was Alcyoneus, a Fanaroff–Riley class II radio galaxy that’s 3,5oo,000,000 light-years away, in the constellation Lynx.

The giant jet pairs qualify as “giant” if they’re more than 2,300,000 light-years long. That new catalog lists upwards of 11,000 of them.

The point is that Alcyoneus is big, Porphyrion — 23,000,000 light-years long — is bigger, and both are on the scale of features in the cosmic web.

Comparison time.

RJHall.'s 'Illustration of the Milky Way profile with major features labelled. GNP/GSP = direction of galactic north/south pole.' (2012)A light-year is the distance light travels in one year. That’s 5,879,000,000,000 miles. Multiply it by 4.25 and you’ve got the distance to the nearest star.

The Solar System is a few dozen light-years ‘north’ (GNP in that illustration) of the Milky Way galaxy’s central plane, and 27,000 light-years from our galaxy’s center.

Since we’re inside the Milky Way, we’re not sure about its size, but it’s right around 80,000 light-years across.

The Milky Way, where we live, is the second-largest galaxy in the Local Group, after the Andromeda Galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy is 2,500,000 light-years away.

The Local Group is 10,000,000 light-years across. We’re also in the Virgo Supercluster, which is something like 110,000,000 light-years across.

I checked, and sure enough: Porphyrion’s length is “on the scale of the cosmic web”, as that video said.6 Within a power of ten, at any rate.

To Milky Way center27,000 light-years
Across Milky Way80,000 light-years
To Andromeda Galaxy2,500,000 light-years
Across Local Group10,000,000 light-years
Alcyoneus length16,000,000 light-years
Porphyrion length23,000,000 light-years
Across Virgo Supercluster110,000,000 light-years
Grus Wall length300,000,000 light-years
Perseus-Pegasus Filament length1,000,000,000 light-years
Sloan Great Wall length1,300,000,000 light-years
To Prophyrion7,500,000,000 light-years
A Sampling of Cosmic Distances

Radio Telescopes: LOFAR and —

LOFAR / ASTRON's photo: 'The LOFAR core near Exloo, Netherlands'. (2010) via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.
The LOFAR (Low-Frequency Array) core, in the Netherlands. (2010)
LOFAR / ASTRON's photo: 'The LOFAR core near Exloo, Netherlands'. (2010) via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.
The LOFAR core, detail: a road and parking lot, from upper left of larger photo.

LOFAR Collaboration / Martijn Oei (Caltech)'s image. 'This picture, taken by the LOFAR radio telescope, shows the longest-known pair of black hole jets, spanning 23 million light-years. The galaxy hosting the supermassive black hole is a dot in the center of the image.' (2024) Via Sky and Telescope, used w/o permission.The radio telescope image of Porphyrion isn’t all that eye-catching. As my oldest daughter said, news services had obvious reasons for using an artist’s impression for their main graphic.

Even so, I think that grainy green-and-sort-of-yellowish image is impressive.

It was made with LOFAR: the Low-Frequency Array that’s mostly in the Netherlands, but — as of 2019 — spreads out onto seven other European countries.

It’s a phased array of about 20,000 dipole antennas, where signals get combined in analog electronics, digitized, recombined — eventually ending up at a central station. There’s a mind-boggling amount of math involved, but all that equipment lets us “see” things like Porphyrion.

The LOFAR image lacks the pizzazz of artistic interpretations, but it’s an actual image of something that’s longer than the Local Galaxy Group is wide — and is an image from a radio telescope.

I remember when the Arecibo Observatory and Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex were putting radio astronomy on the map. Getting decent-resolution images from radio telescopes — it impresses me. A lot.

LOFAR uses interferometry to make images, still another topic. topics, actually.7

— GMRT

NCRA's photo: the GMRY, Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, in Pune, Western MaharashtraIndia, India. via NCRA, used w/o permission.
Part of the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope near Narayangaon, Pune, MaharashtraIndia, India.

Okay. These scientists spotted Porphyrion, a “radio galaxy” or “black hole jet system”, but still hadn’t found the galaxy those jets came shooting out of.

So they teamed up with folks in Maharashtra and Arizona.

“…The giant black hole jet system was named after Porphyrion, a Giant from Greek mythology, by co-discoverer Aivin Gast from the University of Oxford.
“To find the galaxy from which Porphyrion originated, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India was used along with ancillary data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument in Arizona….”
(Porphyrion (radio galaxy), Wikipedia) (emphasis mine)

And that explains why “black hole jet system” is less confusing than “radio galaxy”. I still think “radio galaxy” is easier to say, write, and — arguably — remember; but the folks have a point.

Data from the the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) and Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) showed that Porphyrion’s host galaxy is J152932.16+601534.4: which doesn’t, as far as I know, have a catchy name yet.

GMRT uses interferometry to make images, but it’s an array of 30 parabolic radio telescopes, each 45 meters. 49 and a fraction yards, across. I’ve read that it’s “the biggest and most sensitive radio interferometer in the world at low frequencies”.

A little checking showed me that LOFAR ‘sees’ wavelengths of 30 to 1.3 meters and is effectively 1,000-plus kilometers across. GMRT ‘sees’ at wavelengths of 6.00 0.2 meters, or upwards of 0.299 meters; with an effective diameter of up to 25 kilometers.8

Maybe I’m comparing apples, oranges, and the price of peanuts. In any case, sorting out which, if either, of those radio telescopes is the bigger and more sensitive would take more time than I’ve got this week.

What is important, I think, is that they’re both very effective scientific instruments: and that scientists are using both. I remember when this level of cooperation was as newsworthy as the latest research papers.

— and DESI?!

Friedrich Graetz's political cartoon (March 5, 1883): 'An appalling attempt to muzzle the watch-dog of science', from the cover of Puck magazine. (March 14, 1883) and see https://loc.getarchive.net/media/an-appalling-attempt-to-muzzle-the-watch-dog-of-science-f-graetzThe other observatory, DESI: these names! I’ve gotten the impression that scientists — particularly those involved with physics and related fields — have gotten a whole less stuffy, and I mentioned that a couple months back.

DESI stands for Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument; and as far as I know has nothing to do with Desi Arnaz.

DESI isn’t a radio telescope. It’s sensitive to wavelengths between 360 and 980 nanometers: a unit of measure that’s handy for describing things on an atomic scale. That range runs from the short end of infrared to the long end of ultraviolet.

DESI Isn’t particularly big, either, but it does have 5,000 fiber-positioning robots on its focal plane, with a bank of spectrographs fed by those fibers. It’s been used by scientists making surveys of distant galaxies.9

Fanaroff-Riley Classification

Emma Alexander's illustration: 'The traditional Fanaroff Riley classification of radio galaxies (Fanaroff and Riley, 1974). FRI galaxies are centre-bright, and FRII galaxies are edge-brightened (often with 'hotspots' towards the edge). (2010) via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.
Emma Alexander’s illustration: Fanaroff-Riley classification of radio galaxies.

Back in 1974, an astronomer and an astrophysicist noticed that they could sort 57 radio galaxies out into two groups. One subset was brighter near their sources than at their ends, the other were brighter at the ends.

The bright-in-the-middle bunch is Fanaroff-Riley Class I (FR-I), while a bright-at-the-ends radio galaxy’s label is Fanaroff-Riley Class II (FR-II).

Porphyrion is brighter at its ends, so it’s a Fanaroff-Riley class II radio galaxy.10

There’s probably a reason, or reasons, why radio galaxies fall neatly into those two categories; but either scientists don’t know yet: or, at least as likely, I didn’t find the reason(s).

That’s Odd: Porphyrion’s Size, and an Explanation

CNN/Caltech/NASA's artwork: 'An illustration of the Porphyrion black hole jets is compared with an inset showing the Milky Way galaxy.' (2024) via CNN, used w/o permission.
Illustration: the Porphyrion jets compared with a Milky Way-size galaxy. (CNN/Caltech/NASA)

What’s really odd about Porphyrion isn’t so much being brighter at its ends than its middle, as it being so cosmically long.

Material in “black hole jet systems” is moving fast.

The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability — wave-like billows like the ones we see in clouds, Earth’s ocean, and the Solar corona — should have slowed or stopped Porphyrion’s jets before they got to be some 23,000,000 light-years long.

That didn’t happen.

I was going to talk more about this, but suboptimal time management and a couple household tasks got in the way. So I’ll highlight parts of this Sky & Telescope article, which covers most of what I was going to say.11

“…’Although [Porphyrion] is certainly an extreme and curious case, the reason why [its] jets are so long is related with the position of the galaxy in the cosmic web,’ explains Manel Perucho (University of Valencia, Spain), who was not involved in the study.

We’re seeing the jet and its massive host galaxy as they were when the universe was half its current age and, generally, about 10 times denser than it is today. But the environment around this galaxy is unusually sparse. As the jets exit the galaxy, they penetrate millions of light-years into a cosmic void, where the galaxies and even the gas between galaxies is much more spread out. There, the Kelvin-Helmholtz effect is weaker, Perucho says: ‘With these ingredients, a long and fantastic trip is ensured.’

“The circumstances are unusual not only in the surroundings but also in the black hole itself. ‘My interpretation is that we need an unusually long-lived and stable accretion event around the central, supermassive black hole to allow it to be active for so long — about a billion years,’ [University of Hertfordshire, UK’s Martin] Hardcastle [coauthor on two associated studies] says. What’s more, the jets have to be pointing in the same direction for the duration, so that means the black hole has wobbled very little on its spin axis during that time….”
(“Black Hole’s Colossal Jets Pierce the Cosmic Void” , Monica Young, Sky & Telescope (September 18, 2024)) (emphasis mine)

“…The Heavens … Like a Tent to Dwell In”

NASA, ESA, STScI; Image processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)'s image: 'This Hubble image features an unusually close-knit collection of five galaxies, called The Hickson Compact Group 40. Though such cozy groupings can be found in the heart of huge galaxy clusters, these galaxies are notably isolated in their own small patch of the universe. One possible explanation is that there's a lot of dark matter holding these galaxies together.'
The Hickson Compact Group 40 (NASA, ESA, STScI), and Wisdom 11:22.

As I said earlier, I like living in a vast and ancient universe.

Maybe that’s because I grew up during a time when we were learning a great deal about this cosmos. Or maybe it’s just me and my personality.

H. P. Lovecraft also lived during a time when science was opening “terrifying vistas of reality”, and he wrote “The Call of Cthulhu”.

Whatever explains personal preferences like this, we’ve known about cosmic scale and “our frightful position therein” for a long time.

Me? I’m okay with it.

“The one who is enthroned above the vault of the earth,
its inhabitants like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a veil
and spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.”
(Isaiah 40:22)

“Raise your eyes to the heavens,
look at the earth below;
Though the heavens vanish like smoke,
the earth wear out like a garment
and its inhabitants die like flies,
My salvation shall remain forever
and my victory shall always be firm.”
(Isaiah 51:6)

“Indeed, before you the whole universe is like a grain from a balance,
or a drop of morning dew come down upon the earth.
But you have mercy on all, because you can do all things;
and you overlook sins for the sake of repentance.”
(Wisdom 11:22–23)

I’ve talked about studying this universe before:

1 A little history, a little philosophy:

2 Opening new vistas:

3 Studying this universe:

4 Stuff that’s real, and how some of us think about stuff that’s real:

5 Astronomy and physics, mostly:

6 Charting the cosmos:

7 Opening new windows:

8 Telescopes and a giant jet:

9 Miscellania:

10 Two scientists and a useful classification system:

11 Fluid dynamics and a big discovery:

Posted in Discursive Detours, Journal, Science News | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Minnesota is Not Burning 0 (0)

Posted on September 30, 2024 by Brian H. Gill
National Weather Service map: U.S. (September 30, 2024, 19:22 UTC)
National Weather Service map, Monday afternoon. (September 30, 2024)

I’ll be talking about something else this week, but I’ve noticed that the stalking specter of climate change has shifted from California to the east coast.

Meanwhile, here in central Minnesota, we’re under a Red Flag Warning. In other words, conditions are right for wildfires to get out of hand. If we let them.

Since we’re both encouraged to not set our homes ablaze, and allowed to take common-sense precautions, wildfires in these parts seldom if ever make national news. I suspect that Minnesota’s status as a non-coastal state is a factor, too.

There’s a Freeze Warning in effect, by the way, for western North Dakota — over on the other side of the Red Flag Warning area.

I haven’t noticed an expert analysis of this week’s situation, explaining how Minnesota is dry and windy: and therefore climate change is dooming us all.

Again, I suspect it’s because Minnesota isn’t all that important — or maybe it’s because experts read somewhere that the Upper Midwest goes through this every year.

We call it autumn.

Don’t get me wrong.

I think Earth’s climate has been, is now, and will continue to be, changing. I think taking that into account when deciding on whether or not to build high rises on sand bars, or subdivisions in canyons, is prudent.

I also think studying how we’re affecting those changes makes sense.

But I would be far less uncomfortable, discussing such things, if my betters would turn the hysteria down a bit in their pronouncements of perilous portents.

Getty Images, via BBC News: 'Many of the protesters in Hamburg were demonstrating against Donald Trump's position on climate change' (BBC News; 2017) used w/o permission.I’ve talked about this before:

Posted in Discursive Detours, Journal | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Neanderthals: Sensible, Decent Homebodies; and My Ancestors 0 (0)

Posted on September 28, 2024 by Brian H. Gill
František Kupka's illustration: reconstruction of the La Chapelle-aux-Saints Neanderthal, in the Illustrated London News. (February 27, 1909) Via 'How Humanity Came to Contemplate Its Possible Extinction: A Timeline', Thomas Moynihan, The MIT Reader (September 23, 2020), used w/o permission.
František Kupka’s Neanderthal, in the Illustrated London News. (February 27, 1909)

A long time ago, some folks were — apparently — living happily in the Rhône River Valley.

Whether or not they were happy there, we’ve found evidence that they stayed near what we call the Grotte Mandrin for 50,000 years. And that they somehow managed to keep newcomers from disturbing their solitude: and isolation.

Idyllic as that may seem, keeping themselves free from what my culture called miscegenation may explain why Neanderthals aren’t part of today’s world. Not as identifiable individuals, at any rate.

Neanderthals: Finding a New Page From Their Story

Ludovic Slimak's photo: 'Researchers discovered Thorin's fossilized remains in 2015 in a cave in southern France.' Via Smithsonian Magazine, used w/o permission.
A Neanderthal’s remains, found in Grotte Mandrin, a cave in southern France.

“Ancient DNA Reveals Neanderthal Group Was Isolated for 50,000 Years“
Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine (September 12, 2024)

“In 2015, archaeologists discovered the remains of a Neanderthal in a cave in southern France. They nicknamed him ‘Thorin’ after a dwarf character from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

“For the last nine years, researchers have been painstakingly excavating Thorin’s teeth and bones at the site, called Grotte Mandrin. Now, a new analysis of Thorin’s ancient DNA suggests he belonged to a previously unknown lineage of Neanderthals that was isolated for 50,000 years, despite the fact that other members of their species were close by….”

These days, everybody looks a bit like me: more-or-less pointy chin; around 171 centimeters or 159 centimeters tall for men or women, respectively. That’s five foot seven or three inches.

We’re very aware of individual and regional differences, but I figure that’s because we’re very social creatures: which makes being able to tell who’s who very important.

We didn’t know about, or remember, the folks we call Neanderthals until the mid-1800s. That’s when two researchers studied and described parts of a skull, legs, arms, and torso of someone who’d died about 40,000 years back.

The bones had been in a cave that’s not there any more. They showed up during quarrying operations in the Neandertal Valley, east of Dusseldorf.

These weren’t the first Neanderthal remains found, but they were the first that were studied by folks who realized what — who — they were looking at.1

Recognizing the Homo Neanderthalensis Type Specimen: Eventually

Illustration of Neanderthal 1 upper skull: 'calotte crânienne découverte à Neandertal en 1856 (premier Homo neanderthalensis reconnu comme tel.' / 'skull cap discovered in Neanderthal in 1856 (first Homo neanderthalensis recognized as such)'. (1856)The quarry’s owners figured the bones were from a cave bear, but the researchers saw that they were human.

Or, rather, human — but different.

The top of this individual’s skull strongly suggested that the missing face wasn’t nearly as delicate as the current model’s.

Good news, the bones and papers describing what we now call Neanderthal 1 didn’t get lost.

Not-so-good news, biological sciences in Germany were mostly filtered through the ideals of Rudolf Virchow, a very smart chap who recognized evolution as a threat to his political preferences.

He had a point. One of the basic ideas of evolution is that an organism’s ancestors affect how the organism looks and lives.

Since Virchow thought that a person’s skills should matter more than the person’s ancestors, he stuck the ‘elitism’ label on evolution. He was also a socialist, didn’t believe in germ theory, was a staunch anti-Darwinist, and I’m not going to try discussing 19th century politics this week.

Orlando Ferguson's 'Map of the Square and Stationary Earth.' (1893) The legend at top says, in part, 'this ... is the Bible Map of the World.'I don’t know why Virchow turned the Neanderthal bones over to an anatomist and eye specialist who apparently was also:

“…a resolute supporter of the Christian belief of creation in its traditionalist form….”
(“Lag Eden im Neandertal? Auf der Suche nach dem frühen Menschen” / “Was Eden in the Neandertal? In search of early humans”, Martin Kuckenberg (1997) via Wikipedia)

I didn’t find much about August Franz Josef Karl Mayer, the “resolute supporter”, and didn’t spend all that much time looking.

The first two researchers who looked at Neanderthal 1’s remains decided that he had been like us, but different, was solidly built, and had lived a very long time ago.

That wasn’t what Virchow and Mayer wanted to be true. So for a long time, Neanderthal 1 was — according to smart people — a Russian Cossack. A Cossack, poor fellow, who had suffered from rickets before dying in the Neandertal Valley.

In fairness, other smart people who looked at Neanderthal 1 weren’t dedicated to making evidence fit their preferences.2

The Vanished Neanderthals: Still an Enigma

Ségolène Vandevelde's upload: 'Fig 1, aerial view of Mandrin Cave, and its location in Malataverne municipality (Drôme), Rhone Valley, left bank (east), France. Via ResearchGate.net, used w/o permission.
Aerial view of Mandrin Cave, Grotte Mandrin, in the Rhône River Valley; and its location in southern France.

Now let’s look — briefly — at what these researchers said about the Neanderthal they nicknamed “Thorin”.

“Long genetic and social isolation in Neanderthals before their extinction”
Ludovic Slimak, Tharsika Vimala, Andaine Seguin-Orlando, Laure Metz, Clément Zanolli, Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Marine Frouin, Lee J. Arnold, Martina Demuro, Thibaut Devièse, Daniel Comeskey, Michael Buckley, Hubert Camus, Xavier Muth, Jason E. Lewis, Hervé Bocherens, Pascale Yvorra, Christophe Tenailleau, Benjamin Duployer, Hélène Coqueugniot, Olivier Dutour, Thomas Higham, Martin Sikora; Cell Genomics (September 11, 2024)

“Summary
“Neanderthal genomes have been recovered from sites across Eurasia, painting an increasingly complex picture of their populations’ structure that mostly indicates that late European Neanderthals belonged to a single metapopulation with no significant evidence of population structure. … These dentognathic fossils, including a rare example of distomolars, are associated with a rich archeological record of Neanderthal final technological traditions in this region ∼50-42 thousand years ago. Thorin’s genome reveals a relatively early divergence of ∼105 ka with other late Neanderthals. Thorin belonged to a population with a small group size that showed no genetic introgression with other known late European Neanderthals, revealing some 50 ka of genetic isolation of his lineage despite them living in neighboring regions. These results have important implications for resolving competing hypotheses about causes of the disappearance of the Neanderthals.…”
(emphasis mine)

Something I liked in summary was their using “disappearance” instead of “extinction” to describe the Neanderthals’ current status.

It’s a real puzzle, since Neanderthals had endured for something like 400,000 years, living in Europe and as far east as the Altai Mountains. Then, about 40,000 years ago, they went off the radar.

Make that almost off the radar. Folks whose recentish ancestors weren’t living in Sub-Saharan Africa have between 1% to 4% Neanderthal DNA in their gene pool.

Odds are that, since my (recent) ancestral homelands are scattered across northwestern Europe, around 4% of my DNA is good old Neanderthal coding. Probably.

I’ve had my DNA tested, but that analysis focused on solving an issue for another family member: not satisfying my genealogical curiosity.

Folks who look a bit like me, early/anatomically modern humans, Homo sapiens, or just plain “humans”, showed up some 300,000 years ago.

We’re still unsure about exactly when we left Africa. But it’s a near-certainty that we lost little or no time before spreading out.

Rubbing elbows with Neanderthals and other folks who’d left humanity’s homeland earlier helps explain how we’re preserving their genes.3

But it doesn’t explain why the Neanderthals stopped being part of the mix. Or how Thorin’s people ended up with none of our DNA.

Living Happily in the Middle Rhône River Valley

Detail of a photo from Ludovic Slimak: '...scientists working at the entrance of the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France. ...' Via AP, used w/o permission.
Scientist working near the Mandrin Cave’s entrance. (Ludovic Slimak, via AP, used w/o permission)

Ludovic Slimak and the other scientists haven’t, I think, given us the final word on what happened to the Neanderthals. But I think they’ve uncovered an important clue.

Neanderthals, at least those living near the Mandrin Cave in the middle Rhône River Valley, may have felt that their home was the best place anyone could imagine.

They may have been right. But that, and having the happy valley to themselves, may also help explain why Neanderthals aren’t part of today’s ethic mix.

That Smithsonian Magazine article summarized what this month’s “Neanderthal” study said about Thorin and his community:

“…To learn more about Thorin, scientists used a fragment of a root from one of his fossilized molars. This sample allowed them to generate a whole-genome sequence, which revealed evidence of recent inbreeding.…”

“…Thorin belonged to a small group of Neanderthals who lived between 42,000 and 50,000 years ago. He seems to have lived at the more recent end of that window, but his DNA is similar to a much older group that diverged from the main Neanderthal population around 105,000 years ago. After separating from other Neanderthals, the evidence suggests that group remained isolated for the next 50,000 years.

“This discovery raises new questions. Why was this group cut off from other Neanderthals? And did their separation ultimately contribute to the species’ extinction some 40,000 years ago?…”
“Ancient DNA Reveals Neanderthal Group Was Isolated for 50,000 Years“
Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine (September 12, 2024) (emphasis mine)

Many Questions, Still Finding Answers

Ludovic Slimak's photo: 'Scientists work at the entrance of the Mandrin cave, near Montelimar, southern France.' Via Franks Jordans, The Sydney Morning Herald (February 10, 2022), used w/o permission.
Scientists at the entrance of the Mandrin cave.

Mandrin Cave, Grotte Mandrin, is named after Louis Mandrin, by the way: a French Robin Hood analog.

The cave is at a strategic spot, and has a beautiful view. It was used by alternating sets of Neanderthals and folks who look like us long before French tax collectors got rich by adding personal fees to the official taxes-due figures. And that’s yet again another topic.

“…The isolated Neanderthals were apparently content to stay in one place. Homo sapiens, meanwhile, were interacting and sharing knowledge.

“‘They were happy in their valley and did not need to move, while Homo sapiens all the time they want to explore, to see what is there after this river, after this mountain,’ [Ludovic] Slimak tells CNN’s Katie Hunt. ‘[We have] this need, this need to move, and this need to build a social network.’”
“Ancient DNA Reveals Neanderthal Group Was Isolated for 50,000 Years“
Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine (September 12, 2024) (emphasis mine)

We’ve been studying molecular biology and tracking DNA codes for less than a century. Applying that knowledge to studies of evolution didn’t take off until the last few decades.

We have, however, been keeping track of genetically isolated groups for quite some time: like the Spanish Habsburgs.

That family’s habit of marrying close relatives kept their wealth intact, but it also ensured that whatever genetic problems they had also stayed in the family.

There have been lively debates over just how the shrinking Spanish Habsburg gene pool correlates with their heritage of epilepsy, insanity, and early death. The last of them, Charlies II of Spain, somehow managed to not die for 38 years. And that’s yet another topic.

Getting back to the Mandrin Cave Neanderthals, they’re just one community. We don’t know whether their habit of keeping to themselves was typical Neanderthal behavior, or if we’re looking at a prehistoric Hapsburg scenario.

This recent research does, however, suggest that at least some Neanderthal communities were careful about letting outsiders move in.

On the other hand, we know that Neanderthal DNA is in today’s gene pool. So even if most Neanderthals were “happy in their valley”, and kept newcomers out, a few twitchy individuals kept heading for the horizon, becoming some of our long-forgotten ancestors.4

Point, Counterpoint, Neanderthals, the Campbells, and Me

hairymuseummatt's photo, image modified by DrMikeBaxter: modern human (left) and Neanderthal (right) skulls from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. (original photo: 2008) See https://www.cmnh.org/ , https://www.cmnh.org/in-the-news/press-room/new-human-origins-gallery
Modern human (left) and Neanderthal (right) skulls, from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

Brian H. Gill. (March 17, 2021)Neanderthals would have a time blending into a crowd today.

And so would I, if I tried mingling with locals in, say, Kyoto.

Neanderthals weren’t all that tall, about 165 centimeters or 153 centimeters for men or women, respectively: five foot five inches or five foot even.

But they weren’t nearly as delicate-featured and spindly as we are.

Muscle attachment points on their bones, and genetic analysis, tell us that your average Neanderthal was almost ridiculously strong. By our standards.

But don’t let that, and their heavy features, fool you.

They had big brains. Bigger than ours.

We’d know a lot more about Neanderthal brains — and behavior — if they were part of today’s population.

An image from Brian H. Gill's brain scans in 2018.As it is, we’re limited to informed speculation, taking our knowledge of the current model’s brain architecture as a starting point.

The last I checked, researchers were still considering the Neanderthals’ different head shape; and speculating about how good they were at being social, tech-savvy and artistic.5

Confirming or refuting those speculations will be tricky. At least until we develop new analytic tools. And finally get over the notion that looking English, German, French, or whatever, correlates positively with being smart.

Maybe Neanderthals really weren’t all that bright, and didn’t have a refined sense of touch; but were really good at seeing and smelling.

Or maybe Neanderthals didn’t perceive the world quite the way most of us do: and were at least as smart. Smart in different ways, maybe, but smart.

Smarter? Could be. I’m willing to consider the idea: since no matter how strong and smart folks are, if they don’t keep having kids who grow up and have more kids — it won’t be long before they’re gone.

European, Yes; Biased, Yes; “Anglo-Teutonic”, No

Strickland Constable's illustration of 'low types'. (1899)
“Low types”, left and right; a person of the “superior races”, center. (1899)

Illustration of two dvergar, for Lorenz Frølich's 'Den ældre Eddas Gudesange'. (1895) via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.I’ll admit to having a bias.

My recent ancestors include those ‘other’ Norwegians: the short, black-haired ones. Like the Sámi peoples, except that we didn’t get listed. Or maybe we did, under “folklore”.

Then there’s the other side of the family. Not all that long ago, an Irishman came sniffing around the daughter of a decent American family. Asked about the suitor’s lineage, one of my ancestors replied, “he doesn’t have family. He’s Irish.” The kids got married anyway, and a couple generations later I came along.

I’m also descended from the clan Campbell. My father showed me a group photo from a few generations back — and sure enough, they all had the clan’s cam beul: a “crooked” or “wry” mouth.6

I don’t have a cam beul, and neither did my father; possibly thanks to that Irishman’s genetic influence. But I don’t see myself as more ‘human’, or less, because I don’t look like part of the clan.

With my family background, it’s a small wonder I’ve got biases, of a sort, against seeing folks who are clearly not from the ‘proper’ families as not — proper. Or maybe not even quite really ‘people’. Not like the proper people are.

Turning that around, I don’t immediately assume that someone whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower are automatically jerks. No great virtue: the assumption just doesn’t make sense to me.

Familiarity, Forensic Reconstructions, and Another Piece of the Puzzle

Pressebilder Neanderthal Museum, Mettmann's photo: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis 'Mr. N'. (January 22, 2008) via Wikipedia, used w/o permission.Another point, admittedly an unscientific one, is that recent reconstructions of Neanderthal features — using forensic reconstruction techniques — have a familiar look to them.

I’ve never seen anyone who looks quite like that reconstruction (right) of an old Neanderthal man.

But I have known old-timers, first-generation immigrants from northern Europe, who looked a little like him. It’s mostly the nose.

But again: that’s unscientific, and I won’t insist on it.

I’ve run across criticism of recent Neanderthal reconstructions, pointing out that they involve (some) guesswork and artistic license.7

Fair enough. I think recognizing differences between evidence and analysis is a good idea. But I think that accepting evidence, even if it doesn’t fit what the textbooks of my youth said: is also a good idea.

As for the latest study of “Thorin’s” DNA, and the implications it has for our understanding of his community?

I think we’ve found one small piece of a very large puzzle.

It may be an important piece. But we have a great deal more to learn, before we understand that part of humanity’s long story.

Muscles, Mammals, and Much More Left to Learn

Finally, it’s starting to look like Neanderthals may be the ‘normal’ ones: at least in terms of strength.

“…we looked at genetic variants previous studies had shown to be associated with elite power or sprint athletes. We found that the majority of these power-associated genetic variants were in fact much more common in Neanderthals than in humans today. So it does seem that our theory derived from the study of Neanderthal ecology stands up to provisional genetic scrutiny.
“It is important to note that these results are based on a relatively small number of Neanderthals whose DNA has been read.…”
(“Neanderthals were sprinters rather than distance runners, study surprisingly suggests” (John Stewart, The Conversation, via Phys.org (January 31, 2019)) (emphasis mine)

Encyclographia's drawing of a slow loris. Slow lorises are called malu malu (shy one) in Indonesia, because they freeze and cover their faces when spotted.The current human ratio of slow-and fast-twitch muscles isn’t unique. There’s at least one other mammal that’s like us in that respect: the slow loris.

“…characterization of fiber-type distributions in the muscles of lemurs, galagos, and macaques suggests that a predominance of MHC II (IIa + IId) isoforms (i.e., fast fibers) is common among primates, as well as other terrestrial mammals (SI Appendix, SI Methods and Table S5). Indeed, the slow loris (Nycticebus coucang) is the only other mammal measured to date with a predominance of slow fibers across its skeletal muscles. Thus, we suggest that the high percentage of MHC I fibers in human skeletal muscle is a derived trait within the hominin lineage, rather than a characteristic of African apes or other nonhuman primates in general….”
(“Chimpanzee super strength and human skeletal muscle evolution” ; Matthew C. O’Neill, Brian R. Umberger, Nicholas B. Holowka, Peter J. Reiser; PNAS (June 26, 2017)) (emphasis mine)

That doesn’t mean that we’re slow lorises, or that slow lorises are people.

And, since there is very likely more than genetics involved in how many of which fibers are in our muscles8 — as I keep saying, we have a great deal left to learn.

Which is exciting, considering how much we’ve already discovered:

1 Neanderthals, a little background:

2 (Finally) recognizing Neanderthals:

  • Wikipedia
    • Aryan race (A particular set of folks living in northern Europe who were better than everyone else: according to some of those folks. Pseudoscience, but still appeals to some audiences.)
    • August Franz Josef Karl Mayer (Researcher who studied the Neanderthal 1 remains, after Fuhlrott and Schaaffhausen did their research.)
    • Germ theory of disease (The idea that microorganisms can cause disease. A ‘down’ side is that it encourages washing one’s hands.)
    • German campaign of 1813 (‘Wars of liberation’, defending Germany from Napoleon.)
    • Hermann Schaaffhausen (“This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations….”) (One of two researchers who first studied the Neanderthal 1 remains.)
    • Johann Carl Fuhlrott (One of two researchers who first studied the Neanderthal 1 remains.)
    • Junk science (Fraudulent research: something the other side in a political screaming contest does.)
    • Neanderthal
    • Neanderthal 1 (First Neanderthal specimen identified as being one of a distinct species.)
    • Pseudoscience (Sounds scientific, but isn’t: phrenology, determining someone’s character by measuring the bumps on the subject’s head, is a good — or bad — example.)
    • Rickets (An unpleasant medical condition resulting in weak or soft bones, pain, and trouble sleeping.)
    • Rudolf Virchow (Scientist, prehistorian, writer, editor, resolutely anti-Catholic; apparently believed in the importance of maintaining political purity when doing science.)
    • Type (biology)
  • “Hominin life history: reconstruction and evolution“
    Shannen L. Robson, Bernard Wood; Review; Journal of Anatomy (2008)

3 People, places, and practices:

4 Miscellanea:

5 Brawn, brains, and categories:

6 Legacies:

7 Putting faces on our past:

8 Mainly muscles:

Posted in Journal, Science News | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments