Utopian and dystopian futures, clockwise from upper left: “The Shape of Things to Come” (1936); “Metropolis” (1927), “Judge Dredd” (1995), “Across the Park” digital art by Jadrien Cousens (ca. 2016).
This week I’ll be talking about what’s changed over the last century, what hasn’t, and why I think progress isn’t inevitable. On the other hand, I don’t think we’re doomed. That last may take explaining.
Populations perished as climate change swept the globe (they called it “drought”).
Death and disease ran rampant as chaos stalked the streets.
In the aftermath of a war unlike any other, scientists meddled with powers that might destroy humanity — and the great globe itself.
Meanwhile, crosswords threatened the very foundations of society.
It was as if the unsinkable Titanic’s sinking had been the harbinger of a particularly dreadful doomsday.
That was the situation, back in 1924.
Small wonder Alfred Döblin wrote “Mountains, Oceans, Giants”: a tale of social, economic and ecological collapse; followed by a man-made environmental catastrophe.
And melting Greenland’s ice cap had seemed like such a good idea at the time.
Anyway, M.O.G. is “perhaps the most forgotten modernist epic of the Anthropocene”, according to Alex Langstaff (Los Angeles Review of Books).1
O Tempora, O Mores, O Wow!
In the news: war in the Middle East, the continuing climate change crisis, more war in the Middle East.
A century later, I can count on reading headlines heralding the latest dreadful developments, including but not limited to: climate change, war in the Middle East, and the looming threat of artificial intelligence.
Details have changed since Döblin’s day, but not by all that much.
They had the 1918-1920 flu pandemic. We had, and still have, the COVID-19 pandemic.
They were getting over “The War That Will End War”. We’ve recovered from World War II and the boom times that followed.
But these are sincerely not peaceful times.
Although New York City rebuilt their World Trade Center, blaming the “Great Satan America” is still easier than facing social issues. My opinion.
They had fictional dystopias. We have fictional dystopias.
I’m not sure how many folks take atomic Nazi zombies, chrome-plated robot cops, and giant mutant frogs seriously.
Make that took them seriously. Times have changed, along with our A-list boogeymen.
These days, dystopian malefactors are more likely to be climate change, fossil-fuel crises, the fatal lure of online communities, and — of course — evil corporations. Impressively, that calamitous quartet was the collective big bad in one movie.
We’ve had utopian fiction, too. The Star Trek franchise, for example, has somehow avoided diving into the conventional ‘we’re all gonna die but it doesn’t matter because life has no meaning’ platitudinous profundity.
How and why “Logan’s Run” ended up in a “Utopian films” category, I don’t know.2 And that’s another topic.
Progress is Inevitable Possible
Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay. (2019)
I’ll occasionally run across an opinion piece suggesting that we’re not doomed.
That happened last year, and again last week; which got me started writing this.
Here’s where I’d like to talk about golden ages, Aristotle, both nostalgia and optimism above and beyond the call of reason, and a bunch of other stuff.
But it’s Thursday afternoon. I’m having a time focusing this week — I’ll get back to that, maybe — so I’ll pick up part of humanity’s continuing story, about two and a half centuries back. And lean heavily on a few ‘for example’ excerpts.
“…The Good or Evil Performed by Nations … in a Cosmopolitical View…”
I’ll start with Immanuel Kant’s ‘big picture’ look at history:
“…what seems complex and chaotic in the single individual may be seen from the standpoint of the human race as a whole to be a steady and progressive though slow evolution of its original endowment….”
“…we know that History, simply by taking its station at a distance and contemplating the agency of the human will upon a large scale, aims at unfolding to our view a regular stream of tendency in the great succession of events,—so that the very same course of incidents which, taken separately and individually, would have seemed perplexed, incoherent, and lawless, yet viewed in their connexion and as the actions of the human species and not of independent beings, never fail to discover a steady and continuous, though slow, development of certain great predispositions in our nature.…”
“…Reason in a creature … works, however, not instinctively, but tentatively, by means of practice, through progress and regress, in order to ascend gradually from one degree of illumination to another. … or else, supposing the actual case that Nature has limited his term of life, she must then require an incalculable series of generations (each delivering its quota of knowledge to its immediate successor) in order to ripen the germs which she has laid in our species to that degree of development which corresponds with her final purpose.…
“…My object in this essay would be wholly misinterpreted if it were supposed that, under the idea of a Cosmopolitical History which to a certain degree has its course determined a priori, I had any wish to discourage the cultivation of empirical History in the ordinary sense. On the contrary, … There is no doubt that they will estimate the historical details of times far removed from their own, the original monuments of which will long have perished, simply by the value of that which will then concern themselves,—viz. by the good or evil performed by nations and their governments in a cosmopolitical view. To direct the eye upon this point as connected with the ambition of rulers and their servants, in order to guide them to the only means of bequeathing an honourable record of themselves to distant ages, may furnish some small motive (over and above the great one of justifying Providence) for attempting a Philosophic History on the plan I have here explained.”
I don’t know why translators, including Thomas de Quincey, translated “weltbürgerlicher” in Kant’s title — “Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht” — as “cosmopolitical”.
Google Translate says it means “cosmopolitan” or “more cosmopolitan”, which lines up with another source.3
Science, Religion, Progress, and — Maybe — Mything the Point
Anyway, fast-forwarding to the century I was born in.
Kant’s view of a slow but steady progress throughout history had morphed into the notion that progress is inevitable.
Bear in mind that I’m simplifying the situation something fierce.
Now, about this next excerpt: I prefer citing my sources accurately.
But in this case, the source’s format was — sophisticated. I’ve assumed that what they formatted as a link was the title, and put the rest down in the order they did.
“…The myth of progress states that civilization has moved, is moving, and will move in a desirable direction. Progress is inevitable. The myth in its origin coincides with the gradual decline in the christian belief in heaven and hell. According to the Christian myth man is only saved from damnation by Divine intervention. The great strides recently made in scientific discovery and invention have encouraged man in the belief that the millennium is not far distant. Science has become god. Philosophers, men of science and politicians have accepted the idea of the inevitability of progress. But the hopes built on science are proving as illusory as those built on religion and other myths.…” [emphasis mine]
Oh, boy: there’s a lot to talk about there. Starting with what “myth” means.
Oxford Reference: myth In popular usage, a widespread belief which is untrue, distorted, stereotypical, or romanticized, as in ‘the myth of the American West’
In my dialect of English, what Oxford Reference calls “popular usage” has “myth” meaning “something that is not true”.
That may be what the author(s) had in mind. Or maybe the “myth of progress” was seen as a narrative which served to put the idea of progress in a larger context: like “religion and other myths”: which are “illusory”.
Maybe because I grew up in a time and place where ranting radio preachers were doing their best to support the notion that someone could either accept what we’re learning about this wonder-packed universe or be “Christian” —
Never mind.
One point is that by 1932 science “had become a god”, at least in the eyes of a few.
And that at least a few folks had noticed that methodical study of natural phenomena wasn’t up to filling a god’s role: let alone God’s.
Another point is that, although various flavors of “progressivism” are still in play — often relabeled and rebranded4 — saying that progress is inevitable is no longer in fashion. Unless it’s “progress” toward doom and destruction.
Truth, Facts, Science: and Hope
Looking ahead: and not screaming in horror.
Now, finally, I’m coming to what got me started with this week’s post.
Articles in BBC Future (“We believe in truth, facts, and science. We take the time to think. And we don’t accept — we ask why.”) occasionally pop up in my feeds. Probably because I have a habit of clicking on ‘science news’ items.
That could have filled me with fear and dread of the omnipresent botnets which even now probe our minds, seeking to enslave us in the hive mind of — Oi. No. I’m nowhere near as obsessed with privacy/anonymity as some folks, and that’s yet another topic.
Seeing “future” and “hope” in the same title got my attention. So did the article’s introduction:
“Historian Thomas Moynihan explores what we can learn from the hopeful and ‘flagrantly fictional’ forecasts written 100 years ago, just as humanity was emerging from a global pandemic, the end of the First World War and encountering rapid technological change.…”
It’s now late Thursday afternoon, I won’t have time Friday to work on this, so here’s another whacking great excerpt, with highlights.
I’ll be back, after “… from X-rays to radioactivity….”
“…If we look back 100 years, how was tomorrow imagined back then? A century ago, there were dystopias and utopias, but many writers and thinkers also approached the future in other ways: with an open, nuanced and often playful perspective. And they did so despite the grave challenges they faced in their societies. What might we learn from these visions?…”
“…Understandably, back then, there was similarly a burst of dystopian fiction. There were chilling visions of tech-fuelled totalitarianism, where Earth’s oceans are filled in and its mountains levelled, whilst humans become drones serving like neurons powering one centralised, mechanised mega-brain. There were even prescient visions of climate disaster. …
“…Amid the dystopias, there remained widespread conviction that technology could be harnessed, in harmony with the natural world, to emancipate, rather than to suppress, humanity. Speaking to a crowded hall in Yorkshire in 1923, Keir Hardie — who founded the UK’s left-leaning Labour Party in 1900 — directly compared science’s empowerments to those of his movement. He noted how physicists had recently discovered entirely new forms of energy, from X-rays to radioactivity.…” [emphasis mine]
I strongly recommend reading Thomas Moynihan’s article. He’s probably not on exactly the same page as I am, but he does know history.
And he realizes that if progressive and allegedly-scientific eugenics policies hadn’t been reversed, “…many of us wouldn’t be here today….”
Today’s world is no more stable and serene that it was in 1924. Blind optimism didn’t make sense then, and it still doesn’t.
But neither does blind pessimism.
And I am convinced that hope is a reasonable option.
Works in Progress
“Summer Walk”, MeganeRid / Ridwan Chandra. (2012)
I think Kant had a point. Progress does happen. Slowly.
Life is better now, on average, in many parts of the world, for most folks, than it was a thousand years back. Or two thousand, or three and a half thousand plus a few centuries, when Hammurabi’s law code was new.
Granted, a few centuries after Hammurabi, something went horribly wrong. But on the ‘up’ side, we haven’t had anything like the Late Bronze Age collapse since.5
Basically, I see slow — very slow — progress over the millennia. On average.
We keep learning new ways of staying healthy, or getting healthy when we’re not.
Producing enough food has become less difficult.
Seeing to it that food and other necessities get to the folks who need it — that’s a work in progress, but I think the key word is progress.
Basically, progress can happen: but it’s not automatic.
It depends on enough of us deciding to do what’s right, instead of what’s easy or selfish. And that’s another work in progress.
Now, I’m done for this week.
I’ve talked about science, technology, and using our brains before; and probably will again:
Gorgosaurus lancensis (1946), Nanotyrannus (1988), or juvenile T. rex (1999): take your pick.
Headlines about Tyrannosaurus rex, scientists, and “what we thought we knew” being wrong started showing up in my news feed last week.
It’s been a while since I talked about dinosaurs, and I found Nicholas R. Longrich and Evan T. Saitta’s research paper: a pre-publication copy, at any rate.
So this week I thought I’d talk about T. rex, Nanotyrannus, and what they’d learned.
That’s what I thought.
Here’s what I wound up with, after diving down delightfully diverse rabbit holes:
Tyrannosaurus, Nanotyrannus: New Study, Old Debate
This week’s dinosaur headlines: a selection. (January 24-25, 2024)
Headlines like these started showing up in my news feed last week:1
“What we thought we knew about T. rex was wrong, researchers say in new study” New York Post (January 7, 2024)
“Research Resurrects Dinosaur Debate Over ‘Baby T. rex’ That Roamed Wyoming” Cowboy State Daily (January 7, 2024)
“Nanotyrannus vs. T. rex saga continues: Controversial study ‘doesn’t settle the question at all'” Live Science (January 3, 2024)
“‘Teenage T. Rex’ skulls belong to different dinosaur, scientists say after decades of debate” Sky News (January 3, 2024)
“What’s in a Name? The Battle of Baby T. Rex and Nanotyrannus.” The New York Times (January 2, 2024)
I think the Live Science headline’s quote is right. The Gorgosaurus lancensis — Nanotyrannus — teen T-rex question is not over.
“…But other experts aren’t backing the idea that the fossils belong to Nanotyrannus. ‘The article doesn’t settle the question at all,’ Thomas Carr, a vertebrate paleontologist and an associate professor of biology at Carthage College in Wisconsin, told Live Science in an email. ‘The authors don’t seem to have a solid grasp on growth variation in tyrannosaurs.’…” “Nanotyrannus vs. T. rex saga continues: Controversial study ‘doesn’t settle the question at all’“, Sascha Pare, Live Science (January 3, 2024) [emphasis mine]
I’m no expert in dinosaur physiology, so I won’t insist that Nicholas R. Longrich (University of Bath) and Evan Thomas Saitta (University of Chicago) must be right. Or that they must be wrong, because their analysis doesn’t agree with another expert’s.
But I do think that we have a great deal left to learn about dinosaurs in general, and fossils of a sports-model tyrannosaurid — juvenile T. rex — or something else — in particular. And that’s what I’m talking about this week.
T. Rex, Tyrant King Lizard: Science, Cinema, and King Kong
Charles Robert Knight’s painting of Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops. (1919)
I remember when dinosaurs were supposed to be slow-moving, cold-blooded, and none too bright. That last was mostly implied by saying that stegosaurus had an almost ridiculously small brain. Which it did, and I’m drifting off-topic.
Textbook illustrations of dinosaur superstars like Tyrannosaurus rex still looked like C. R. Knight’s 1919 painting.
I gather that the head’s the wrong shape: too short, maybe, although the ‘this is wrong’ text didn’t get specific.
More to the point, C. R. Knight gave T. rex an extra finger.
But we didn’t find a complete T. rex forelimb until 1989, so that detail doesn’t bother me all that much.
Particularly since the first (1915) public display of T. rex (American Museum of Natural History, under the direction of Henry Fairfield Osborn) showed the critter with three fingers.
Why Henry Fairfield Osborn — he’d described T. rex in 1905 — decided to equip his dino-display with overly-long three-fingered forelimbs, that I don’t know.
I do know that I can hardly blame artists like Charles Robert Knight for accurately rendering what an expert described.
By the time I was out of high school, folks like Robert T. Bakker had been publishing convincing arguments for dinosaurs being warm-blooded. Some of them, at any rate.
I gather that where various dinosaur metabolisms rank on a ‘lizard-to-bird’ scale is still a hot-button topic in some circles.
One more item before moving on.
H. F. Osborn named his dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex. The name’s based on Greek and Latin: tyrannos (tyrant) and sauros (lizard), plus rex (king). So the critter’s monker, translated, is “King Tyrant Lizard”.2 Which, more than a century later, is still a pretty cool name.
Trix the Tyrannosaur Takes a Walk
Since dinosaurs — other than the ones we call birds, and that’s another topic — haven’t been around for something like 66,000,000 years, studying them in their natural habitat isn’t an option.
But we have been developing pretty good analytic tools that let scientists work out how critters move, and how they can move. Even when all we’ve got are bones and footprints.
“…On the big screen, the Tyrannosaurus rex is often depicted as a predator that could easily catch up to a speeding car with a few swift stomps. That’s probably because paleontologists had suggested that the T. rex clocked a top speed of 30 miles per hour and a walking speed between 4.5 and 6.7 miles per hour, reports Jeff Spry for SYFY Wire….
“…According to the new study published in Royal Society Open Science, the predators walked at just under 3 miles per hour….”
“…Dinosaurs overall had unique tails that are not found in any other animals today and may have played a crucial role in the way they walked….”
“…To calculate how the tail propelled the T. rex, the researchers used an adult T. rex specimen at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden known as ‘Trix.’ They scanned and modeled Trix’s tail bones to find where the ligaments would have been attached….”
This reconstruction used one particular T. rex, and a specific set of footprints. So I figure that what they’ve shown is how this individual could have walked.3
Whether or not that individual could have run, and what that run would have looked like: that may show up in someone else’s research.
I see the Netherlands study as another piece of a puzzle: and I’m quite sure we’ll keep finding others.
‘What is Wrong With This Picture?’
William D. Matthew’s drawing of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. (1905)
That drawing is the first published restoration of a Tyrannosaurus skeleton — the holotype, CM 9380.
And it’s wrong. That’s what its Wikimedia Commons page says, anyway, and whoever made the entry has a point. Several. Including the T. rex posture.
“Note: This historical image is not a factually accurate dinosaur restoration. “Reason: Skull shape is wrong, Tyrannosaurus had two fingers (not three as pictured), tail was held level with body in real life.” (File:Tyrannosaurus skeleton.jpg, Wikimedia Commons)
I’m not sure what makes the skull shape “wrong”. Maybe the problem is that it’s too short, or the holes are in the wrong places. And the wrong shape.
Or maybe Henry Fairfield Osborn — he was the American Museum of Natural History president at the time, and set up the first T. rex display — based his research on an oddly-shaped T. rex skull. That seems unlikely, though.
Osborn’s also the one who defined the T. rex species, in 1905. He was working with the AMNH 973 fossil — it’s been re-designated CM 9380 — which is now in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.4
The human skeleton’s hands strike me as a bit wonky, too; which may not matter so much, since it’s just there for scale.
A Hodgepodge of Oddments
If Osborn’s T. rex had been a caveman, I’d suspect that his ideas about Nordic and Anglo-Saxon superiority over folks like me was a factor in his T. rex being shown with the “wrong” shape head.
But I’ve never run across someone saying that ‘inferior races’ are degenerate dinosaurs. And that’s yet another topic. Topics, actually.
Let’s see, what else?
I’ve mentioned that Osborn gave his T. rex three fingers instead of two, and that we didn’t have a complete T. rex forelimb until 1989. Or 1988. I’ve seen both years given as the ‘found it’ date.
A holotype is the single specimen or illustration used in a species description.
A species description is a formal scientific description of a species: generally a ‘haven’t seen this before’ plant, animal or whatever.
Osborn knew that Gorgosaurus looked a lot like T. rex and had two fingers, but instead he apparently used Allosaurus as as the model for his T. rex arms. Why, I don’t know.
Gorgosaurus, Albertosaurus, and T. rex are all tyrannosaurids; and at the moment they’re seen as different species. Allosaurus is the name of a genus, not a species. Genus is the next step up from species in our taxonomy of critters.
I’ve mentioned taxonomy, and how we’ve been revising Linnaean taxonomy for centuries, but I’ve yet to talk much about the system itself.
I haven’t talked at all about taphonomy. That’s the study of happens as organisms decay and (sometimes) fossilize. It ties in with taxonomy, since bones and other bits don’t always stay the same size and shape.5
Enough about taxonomy, taphonomy, and “The Mystery of the Three-Fingered Dinosaur”.
A Skull, a Caption, and As-Yet-Unsolved Puzzles
“Skull of Tyrannosaurus rex. From the US Department of the Interior”. Wikimedia Commons.
That’s almost the entire description for the “Skull of Tyrannosaurus rex. From the US Department of the Interior” photo in Wikimedia Commons. The rest is mainly when it was taken: “1900s”.
“Skull of Tyrannosaurus rex…” looked a bit like the Osborn T. rex skull, so I went looking for its origins.
By Thursday noon, I’d done a middling-fair online search for another copy of that photo and found nothing. Nothing in English, that is. But I did find a caption for the photo on the German-language Wikipedia Tyrannosaurs page.
“Das Typusexemplar von T. rex am Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Dieser Schädel wurde stark ausgebessert, wobei Allosaurus als Vorlage diente.“ “The type specimen of T. rex at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. This skull was heavily repaired using Allosaurus as a model.“ (Caption for ‘skull of Tyrannosaurs rex’ photo on Tyrannosaurus, Deutsche Wikipedia; translation by Google Translate) [emphasis mine]
And that led me to the page’s discussion of “Das Typusexemplar von T. rex/The type specimen, or holotype, of T. rex”.
“…Barnum Brown entdeckte das erste fragmentarische Skelett eines Tyrannosaurus rex im Jahr 1900 im östlichen Wyoming. Ein weiteres Skelett fand Brown im Jahr 1902 in der Hell Creek Formation in Montana. Henry Fairfield Osborn beschrieb beide Skelette im Jahr 1905 in ein und derselben Veröffentlichung. … “…Insgesamt entdeckte Brown fünf Teilskelette von Tyrannosaurus. Im Jahr 1941 wurde Browns Fund aus 1902, das Holotyp-Exemplar, an das Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh (Pennsylvania) verkauft. Browns vierter und größter Fund, ebenfalls aus der Hell-Creek-Formation, ist im American Museum of Natural History in New York zu besichtigen….”
“…Barnum Brown discovered the first fragmentary skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex in 1900 in eastern Wyoming. Brown found another skeleton in 1902 in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana. Henry Fairfield Osborn described both skeletons in one and the same in 1905 Publication. … “…In total, Brown discovered five partial Tyrannosaurus skeletons. In 1941, Brown’s 1902 find, the holotype specimen, was sold to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Brown’s fourth and largest find, also from the Hell Creek Formation, can be viewed at the American Museum of Natural History in New York….” (Tyrannosaurus, Deutsche Wikipedia; translation by Google Translate) [without footnote links] [emphasis mine]
That would make what I’ll call the Carnegie skull specimen, CM 9380, the T. rex holotype: but CM 9380 isn’t mentioned in either the English- or German-language Wikipedia page, and I didn’t spend time trying to confirm my suspicion with a wider search.
Given time, I could probably track down why B. Brown’s AMNH (American Museum of Natural History) 973 specimen was re-designated CM (Carnegie Museum) 9380.
My guess is that the re-designation happened because AMNH 973 ended up at the Carnegie Museum. But I don’t know.
I also don’t know why the comparatively-famous Henry Fairfield Osborn’s name is on the 1905 paper describing T. rex as a new dinosaur species.
The German-language caption for that T. rex skull photo, however, strongly suggests that the 1905 T. rex drawing — and later paleoart based on it — is “wrong” because someone filled in the gaps of specimen AMNH 973 with what was known about Allosaurus.
And that helps explain why today’s Carnegie Museum T. rex doesn’t look like Osborn’s version.6 Maybe they’ve still got the old ‘tyranno-allo-saur’ skull, but they’ve had more than a century to update their exhibits.
Best Supporting Monster?
‘My human!’ King Kong and a three-fingered T. rex in “King Kong”. (RKO 1933)
Tyrannosaurus rex may not have the star quality that made King Kong a perennial title character, but the dynamic dinosaur did dominate the occasional dramatic moment on the silver screen.
T. rex may be among the few dinosaurs — maybe the only one — folks who aren’t scientists or science fans know by it’s binomial “Tyrannosaurs rex” moniker.
How much of that’s thanks to Osborn picking a cool-sounding name has probably been debated, along with the influence of cinematic productions such as “King Kong”.
Speaking of which, the 1933 RKO “King Kong” T. rex has the Osborn three-fingered forelimbs and — judging by a quick look at a YouTube film clip — Osborn’ s tyranno-allo-saur head. Which, in 1933, may still have been the consensus scientific reconstruction.
Review and revision of T. rex didn’t, I gather, pick up until the 1960s, when 42 new T. rex skeletons showed up, one of them 80% complete.
By then, paleontologists had realized that the Osborn semi-upright posture for T. rex was somewhere between cripplingly difficult and downright impossible. Seems that Osborn took his cue from an 1865 Hadrosaur reconstruction.
Anyway, folks kept finding T. rex fossils: including RTMP 81.6.1, “Black Beauty”, the first T. rex fossil given a nickname. That habit caught on, so now we have Sue the dinosaur and Stan the dinosaur, both named after the folks who found them.7
T. Hawkins, H. P. Lovecraft: and a Little Science
North America, during the Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous epoch.
“…They, … belonged to something horribly remote and distinct from mankind as we know it; something frightfully suggestive of old and unhallowed cycles of life in which our world and our conceptions have no part..” (“The Call of Cthulhu“, H. P. Lovecraft, Weird Tales (February 1928) via Wikisource)
I was born during the Truman administration, and grew up in a world where folks who weren’t ranting against communism and Catholicism acknowledged that we live in a vast and ancient universe.
So I probably can’t understand the horror and distress which such knowledge held for earlier generations. May have held, that is. For some.
Making matters worse, again for some, by the mid-19th century it was obvious that our world was not only way older than Ussher said it was — that’s a can of worms I’ll consign to a footnote this week — it had been chock-full of monsters!
That brings me to what an English geologist wrote about Lucifer and “Dragon Pterodactyles” and Noah and — I am not making this up:
“…’Adam,’ the Lucifer and Protagonist of Antiquity, doing mis-prision against Sovereignty, turns the weapons of Loyalty upon his Liege, and plunges them into the Bowels of his Mother Earth. Forsaken of Angels, groaning, she bringeth forth grim Monsters, which ravage her Garden, the Locusts that consume it away…. “…Then a Vision of Abysmal Waters, swarming with all wondrous creatures of Life, and gelid Swamps with amphibious things , and Dragon Pterodactyles flitting in the hot air with Vampire Wing…. “…Then a Vision of brute Savages haunting Eldritch Caves: of gaunt Lords of wassail, war, blood, and perdition: Blasted Continents, and withering pines, and briars and thorns: Rebellion, Violence, horrors manifold: Prometheus chained, the Vulture, the Liver: The World at the brink of Death. “Apollo transfixing Python, The booming Flood, driving, rolling, roaring, wrenching, wrecking, whelming the accursed Titans in endless destruction. “Righteous Noah saved….” (“The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri,” Thomas Hawkins, pp. 4, 5 (1840))
I suspect, strongly, that works such as “The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons…” inspired H. P. Lovecraft, but that’s a rabbit hole I’ve avoided so far. On the other hand, the full title of Thomas Hawkins’ tome is too weird to ignore:
“The book of the great sea-dragons, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, [gedolim taninim] gedolim taninim, of Moses. Extinct monsters of the ancient earth. With thirty plates, copied from skeletons in the author’s collection of fossil organic remains, (deposited in the British museum.)” Thomas Hawkins (1840)
Getting back (finally!) to T. rex, “Tyrant King Lizards” — which weren’t lizards, and that’s yet again another topic — were around for a couple million years, right before about three quarters of all plant and animal species on Earth stopped living. Abruptly.
Odds are very good that the mass extinction happened because something slid out of the sky and blew a hole more than a hundred miles across in what’s now the Yucatan Peninsula. There’s also a pretty good chance that other factors were in play, including lava floods where Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra are now.
When the dust settled, all non-avian dinosaurs were extinct.8
Great Western Seaway: From Hadrosaurs to Prairie Chickens
Studying dinosaurs like T. rex would be easy, or easier at any rate, if researchers could camp along the shore of the Western Interior Seaway, and track the movements and growth of individual critters.
That’s not an option.
Back then, places like the Hell Creek Formation enjoyed a subtropical climate, and were oceanfront property.
That was then, this is now. What was a shallow inland sea is now the Great Plains. Flowering plants survived whatever happened about 66,000,000 years back, but non-avian dinosaurs didn’t.
I’ve noticed that maps of North America during the Maastrichtian age of the Late Cretaceous epoch — if I get started on how scientists divvy up geologic time I’ll never get this thing finished — show several different versions of the Great Western Seaway.
I figure that’s partly because Earth’s sea level was changing around that time. Maybe the ocean was sinking, or maybe the continents were all rising. Either way, the Great Western Seaway isn’t there any more.9
And neither is T. rex, so all scientist have to work with in their studies are fossils and an increasingly useful array of analytic tools.
“…There is a Great Deal We Do Not Know….”
Thin sections of femur from (A), BMRP 2002.4.1 (“Jane”) and (B), BMRP 2006.4.4 (“Petey”). (2024)
This is where I was going to talk about the research paper that triggered those headlines.
It’s now Friday afternoon. And, although I found the paper’s published version —
— I haven’t had time to read it. Skim, yes. Read, no.
So I’ll pick a few points they made that I think make sense, and then see if I can wrap this thing up before Saturday.
Maybe the most important point is at the end of their Discussion > 4.6 Implications section:
“…It is remarkable that the systematics of an animal as famous, as well-known, and as intensively studied as Tyrannosaurus have remained so incompletely understood and controversial. This emphasizes how little we really know about past diversity. If we still do not understand T. rex, what else do we not understand? There is a great deal we do not know, and may never know, about the life of the past.“ (“Taxonomic status of Nanotyrannus lancensis…”, Nicholas R. Longrich et al, Fossil Studies (January 3, 2024)) [emphasis mine]
Acknowledging a lack of omniscience impresses me more that saying that others “don’t seem to have a solid grasp on growth variation in tyrannosaurs.”
Now, maybe what these researchers identify as Nanotyrannus lancensis actually is a juvenile Tyrannosaurus rex.
Despite not resembling confirmed juvenile T. rex fossils, having an apparent growth pattern that suggests the N. l. specimens were young adults, and having distinctive jaws.
Another point is that the N. l. skulls ‘look grown-up’:
“…Nanotyrannus individuals show skeletal fusion and rugose facial bone, suggesting they were approaching maturity….” (“Taxonomic status of Nanotyrannus lancensis…”, Nicholas R. Longrich et al, Fossil Studies (January 3, 2024)) [emphasis mine]
“Rugose” is science-speak for “wrinkled”, sort of,10 which may explain why Lovecraft used the word as much as he did:
“…I might call it gigantic—tentacled—proboscidian—octopus-eyed—semi-amorphous—plastic—partly squamous and partly rugose—ugh!…” (“Out of the Aeons“, Lovecraft) “…his body was like those of the others—rugose, partly squamous, and curiously articulated in a fashion mainly insect-like….” (“Through the Gates of the Silver Key” Lovecraft, E. Hoffmann Price) “…It was all eyes—wolfish and mocking—and the rugose insect-like head dissolved at the top to a thin stream of mist….” (“The Shunned House“, Lovecraft) (via The H. P. Lovecraft Archive)[emphasis mine]
Good grief. There’s a reason why I’m distracted this week, and that’s still another topic.
Wrenching myself back to the the latest turn in the Nanotyrannus matter —
Growth Rates and (No) Overlap, Foxes and Wolves
Nick Longrich et al’s comparison of T. rex and Nanotyrannus lancensis skulls. (January 2024)
Another point that impressed me was the assertion that there’s no overlap in size, between juvenile T. rex individuals and big Nanotyrannus individuals.
“…Although it is conceivable that young Tyrannosaurus sometimes showed slow growth rates due to sickness, lack of food, or other stresses, it is unlikely that all three individuals sectioned would exhibit similar growth anomalies; it is more likely that they exhibit typical growth rates for their taxon…. “…3.5. Existence of Juvenile Tyrannosaurus Refutes Identification of Nanotyrannus as Juvenile Tyrannosaurus “The hypothesis that Nanotyrannus is a juvenile Tyrannosaurus predicts that the two forms should not overlap in size; that is, all Nanotyrannus will be small, and all Tyrannosaurus will be big. No small Tyrannosaurus should exist. Conversely, if Nanotyrannus is a distinct species, then small juveniles of Tyrannosaurus—approaching the size of Nanotyrannus or smaller—must exist. Juvenile dinosaurs tend to be extremely rare; however, potential juveniles of Tyrannosaurus are known, including a partial skull. “The smallest unambiguous Tyrannosaurus skeleton known is LACM 28345. This specimen exhibits diagnostic features of T. rex, including broad, posteriorly tapering nasals, short nasal processes of the frontals, … “…The skull of LACM 28345 is an estimated 800 mm long. This is 40% longer than the holotype of Nanotyrannus lancensis (CMNH 7541), … “Although it is conceivable that the differences in morphology seen could rapidly develop as the animals mature at this size, it seems unlikely.…” “Taxonomic status of Nanotyrannus lancensis (Dinosauria: Tyrannosauroidea) — a distinct taxon of small-bodied tyrannosaur“; Nicholas R. Longrich, Evan T. Saitta; Fossil Studies (Submission received: 4 November 2023 / Revised: December 18, 2023 / Accepted: December 21, 2023 / Published: January 3, 2024) via MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute) [emphasis mine]
If there really is a gap between big Nanotyrannus lancensis fossils and small or juvenile T. rex fossils: I’m willing to think we’re looking at two different species.
Some of the ‘T. rex or not T. rex’ debate started me thinking about what scientists might make of today’s North American critters, if all they had were bones and tracks to study. Seeing foxes as immature wolves might make sense. At least at first.11
Odds, Ends, and Probably-Baseless Speculation
Good news: scientific papers now routinely include a “Funding” section, so readers can consider whether or not where the researchers were getting their money affected their conclusions.
Frustrating news: I tried double-checking something in the “Taxonomic status of Nanotyrannus lancensis…” paper, and now I get a “Bad Gateway” notice when I try accessing it.
That happens now and then. And sometimes I’m not allowed re-entry to a site that’s (apparently) reserved for members of a professional group. Or has some other reason for an ‘only us’ policy.
Not news at all: we live in a less-than-ideal world, so each of us can make decisions based on bad motives.
Probably-baseless speculation: A Smithsonian Magazine article mentioned that a T. rex fossil (“Chomper”, but not the toy) is for sale: for $20,000,000. That’s a fair chunk of change. So were the million-dollar amounts mentioned in a Wikipedia page listing of T. rex specimens.
I’d prefer thinking that scientists wouldn’t let finances affect their better judgment.
But if I was in the Paleontology Department of Wassamatta U., and I knew that Billy Bigbucks, the barrel and balance beam big shot, had recently purchased an (alleged) T. rex fossil for more than I’d make in my lifetime —
And that B. B. was Wassamatta U.’s biggest donor —
Well, maybe I’d be somewhat diffident about suggesting that B. B. hadn’t bought a piece of something that co-starred with King Kong.
Then there’s the aura of coolness surrounding Tyrannosaurus rex. Which, in a way, does matter: scientists are human. Just look at what happened when Pluto’s status changed.12
Invitations “…to Even Greater Admiration….”
Finally, the reason I’ve been distracted this week is something that I may discuss.
Later, when I have enough information to make it worthwhile.
I was going to talk about H. F. Osborn’s concerns regarding Anglo-Saxon/Nordic purity, and why that doesn’t make me ignore his contribution to paleontology. But that’s something that would take more time than I have.
Instead, I’ll touch on why I’m okay with learning about God’s universe.
I’m human, so I’m a rational animal. Make that optionally rational. I have free will, so using my brain is a choice, not a hardwired response. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1730, 1778, 1804, 1951, 2339)
Like every other human, I’m made from the stuff of this world.
“then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7)
We’ve known that for a long time. What’s changed during the last few generations is how much we know about the “dust of the ground” we’re made from.
I could let that bother me. But it didn’t before I became a Catholic, and it sure doesn’t now.
As for science and religion, faith and reason, I think faith and reason get along fine. God makes everything, so nothing we learn can threaten an informed faith. (Catechism, 159)
Truth matters, in science and in faith. (Catechism, 31, 159)
None of this is new, and neither are the following excerpts. I’ve used them before:
“…if methodical investigation within every branch of learning is carried out in a genuinely scientific manner and in accord with moral norms, it never truly conflicts with faith, for earthly matters and the concerns of faith derive from the same God. … we cannot but deplore certain habits of mind, which are sometimes found too among Christians, which do not sufficiently attend to the rightful independence of science and which, from the arguments and controversies they spark, lead many minds to conclude that faith and science are mutually opposed.…” (“Gaudium et Spes,” Pope St. Paul VI (December 7, 1965)) [emphasis mine]
“…God, the Creator and Ruler of all things, is also the Author of the Scriptures — and that therefore nothing can be proved either by physical science or archaeology which can really contradict the Scriptures. … Even if the difficulty is after all not cleared up and the discrepancy seems to remain, the contest must not be abandoned; truth cannot contradict truth….” (“Providentissimus Deus,” Pope Leo XIII (November 18, 1893) [emphasis mine]
“Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air…. They all answer you, ‘Here we are, look; we’re beautiful.’… “…So in this way they arrived at a knowledge of the god who made things, through the things which he made.” (Sermon 241, St. Augustine of Hippo (ca. 411))
Basically, I see what we’re learning about this wonder-packed universe as opportunities for “even greater admiration” of God:
“…These discoveries invite us to even greater admiration for the greatness of the Creator….” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 283)
Even if — no, make that particularly since — that means thinking about how all this fits in to what we’ve already learned.
“What’s in a Name? The Battle of Baby T. Rex and Nanotyrannus.“ (A dinosaur fossil listed for sale in London for $20 million embodies one of the most heated debates in paleontology.) Julia Jacobs, Zachary Small; The New York Times (January 2, 2024)
“Willis O’Brien, Unsung Pioneer of Animation and Special Effects“ Christian A. Bice, 3130 Advanced Composition, Fall 2019, Best Essays (Kevin E. O’Donnell PhD, Professor of English, Department of Literature and Language, East Tennessee State University)
“Miniature Effect Shots“ Willis O’Brien, The International Photographer (May 1933, pp. 38-39) via Internet Archive
What they found may become a double planet, like the Earth-Moon system, once it cools down. Or a planet with a giant moon, again like the Earth-Moon system.
Then again, an oddly-uneven dusty disk may be orbiting this young, very “Sun-like” star. Either way, ASASSN-2qj is much more interesting than it was a few years back.
I suspect one reason scientists generally call Earth and Earth’s moon a planet and its satellite is that we live on Earth and have been thinking of the Moon as — well, as the moon — since long before we started thinking about the planētai, planets, as other worlds.
Another reason may be that the center of mass for the Earth-Moon system is about a thousand miles below Earth’s surface.
“Barycenter” is a fancy word for center of mass. It’s the point that two objects, like Earth and Moon or Jupiter and our Sun, orbit around.
The Jupiter-Sun barycenter is a little more than 28,000 miles above the Sun’s surface. But we don’t call the Sun-Jupiter system a binary star. Mostly because Jupiter isn’t a star: although if it was thirteen times more massive, it would be: a brown dwarf.1
An advantage and disadvantage of being my own editor is that I can go chasing after information, even if there’s a looming deadline.
I’d noticed a piece in the Sky and Telescope February 2024 issue’s News Notes section. That’s right: February 2024, it’s only the first week of January, and that’s another topic.
Anyway, the short article mentioned a “young, sun-like star” and colliding exoplanets. The situation sounded a great deal like a recent explanation for how the Earth-Moon system formed, which caught my attention.
The article didn’t mention the star’s designation, but did include several names. That’s more than I sometimes have to start with. So by Tuesday, I’d learned that the star’s designation was, for the scientists who’d noticed its odd behavior, ASASSN-21qj.
And from that point on, every time I saw the star’s designation, I read it as “Assassin-Twenty-One-Que-Jay”. Why, I don’t know. Although my reading has included a fair fraction of pulp fiction, most of it was of the science fiction variety.
Getting back to ASASSN-21qj and a probable planetary pileup.
Before it was labeled ASASSN-21qj, it’d been 2MASS J08152329-3859234: and still is, for that matter. Its ASSASSN designation is (probably) mostly for folks working in and with the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) network.
The ASAS-SN network collects and organizes data from 20 robotic telescopes,2 and if I go off on that tangent I’ll never get this ready by Saturday.
Professional Scientists, Amateur Astronomers, Teamwork and Twitter/X
After I learned that I was looking for ASASSN-21qj, I found a NASA article that told how professional scientists, amateur researchers, and social media, went from speculation about something “weird” in a database to — oh, never mind.
Sharing an excerpt will be easier than paraphrasing the article.
But first, about that animation with what I assume are years and months displayed at the top.
It’s from the NASA Science Editorial Team article, and I suspect it’s a series of images taken between 2010 and 2021. If that’s so, the black blotch in the middle is very probably ASASSN-21qj.
And although the animated GIF’s caption says who made it, —
“NASA Volunteer Arttu Sainio saw the star Asassn-21qj brightening, possibly due to crashing planets. “Credit: Dan Caselden, NASA”
— I’ve yet to learn when it was made, or where the data came from. Thursday afternoon I finally decided that its origins would remain a mystery.
Here’s an overly-long excerpt from that NASA article. I’ve highlighted a few bits:
“…A recent paper in Nature describes how an international group of professional and amateur astronomers teamed up to measure the heat glow of two ice giant planets colliding and see the resultant dust cloud moving in front of the parent star several years later.
“The story began back in 2021, when the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) network noticed that a Sun-like star 1800 light years away was rapidly fading. Some 30 days later, NASA volunteer Arttu Sainio was reading X (formerly Twitter), and caught professional astronomers Dr. Matthew Kenworthy and Dr. Eric Mamajek speculating about this weird event. Arttu decided to further investigate this star, called Asassn-21qj, on his own, using data from NASA’s NEOWISE mission. Arttu was surprised to find that the star had demonstrated an unexpected brightening in infrared light two years before the optical dimming event. So he joined the talk on social media and shared his finding with the two astronomers.
“‘Out of the blue, amateur astronomer Arttu Sainio on social media pointed out that the star brightened up in the infrared over a thousand days before the optical fading,’ said Kenworthy. ‘I knew then that this was an unusual event.’
“More contributions from amateurs helped determine the nature of the star. Amateur spectroscopist Hamish Barker tried to capture a spectrum of Asassn-21qj in late July, 2022. A spectrum spreads out the colors of the starlight, revealing the star’s temperature. However, the star turned out to be too dim, so Hamish asked Olivier Garde from a French amateur astronomy team if they could add ASASSN-21q to their target list. The team, called the Southern Spectroscopic project Observatory Team (or ‘2SPOT’), succeeded in collecting the needed spectrum in early September, 2022 and forwarded it Kenworthy. The 2SPOT team members are Stéphane Charbonnel, Pascal Le Dû, Olivier Garde, Lionel Mulato and Thomas Petit.
“Two more amateur astronomers also independently observed the star and contributed their data to the study….” [emphasis mine]
The point, one point at any rate, is that today’s information technology lets folks living on different continents share data and ideas as easily as folks living in the same neighborhood could, a generation or so back.
I see that as a good thing.
“…So Slow Smart”
I would have saved myself a lot of time, if I’d thought to check Sky and Telescope’s website. There’s another version of the “February 2024” article there, posted in October of last year: with a link to one of the scientists’ Twitter/X posts.3
Since Matthew Kenworthy’s Twitter/X post included the star’s designation (ASASSN-21qj), if I’d gone there first, I’d have saved most of a day’s search.
As an old Norwegian-American said, “I get so quick old, and so slow smart”.
ASASSN-21qj: Once Obscure, Now Intriguing
Matthew Kenworthy et al.’s sketch, showing how a synestia may have formed near ASASSN-21qj. (2023)
After I had one of the star’s designations, ASASSN-21qj, I could start checking out just what various discussions of it meant by ‘sun-like’.
Along the way, I learned that ASASSN-21qj is Gaia DR3 5539970601632026752 in the Gaia Data Data Release 3, and I’m drifting off-topic again.
Previous experience told me that ‘sun-like’ could mean anything from a G2V star that’s about four and a half billion years old, to simply a star that’s on the main sequence.
Happily, I found what I needed in a pre-publication copy of that Nature paper. The “2SPOT” researchers, mentioned in that NASA article, found that light from ASASSN-21qj “is consistent with being a G2 type dwarf star”.
Normally, I’d go off on a tangent about stellar evolution: but it’s now Friday afternoon. Long story short, looks like ASASSN-21qj is very much like our Sun, but much younger: 300,000,000 years old. Give or take 92,000,000.
That makes ASASSN-21qj and its probable planets about as old as the Solar System was; when our Sun had settled onto the main sequence, but the planets were still playing bumper cars.4
A Very Sun-Like Star
From Matthew Kenworthy et al.’s simulation of collision between super-Earths and mini-Neptunes. (2023)
What had caught my attention about discussions of this “young, sun-like star” was the probable planetary collision: which sounded like giant-impact hypothesis for how the Earth-Moon system began.
Turns out, ASASSN-21qj might have a terrestrial planet, orbiting in its habitable zone. It might even have a churning filled doughnut of planet-stuff that’ll become Earth-Moon 2.0.
But that’s not what the scientists have been studying.
What’s been making ASASSN-21qj flare in the infrared and dim in visible light may have been two “two ice-giant type exoplanets of several to tens of Earth masses”, as a Wikipedia page says.
What the scientists said was that the two probable planets were massive enough to be ice giants like Uranus and Neptune.
“…an infrared brightening consistent with a blackbody temperature of 1000 K and a luminosity of 4% of that of the star lasting for about 1000 days, partially overlapping in time with a complex and deep wavelength-dependent optical eclipse that lasted for about 500 days. These observations are consistent with a collision between two exoplanets of several to tens of Earth masses at 2-16 au from the central star….” (“A planetary collision afterglow and transit of the resultant debris cloud“, Summary paragraph; Matthew Kenworthy et al. (2023) via arXiv)
That distance from ASASSN-21qj is two to 16 astronomical units. One au (or AU — capitalization varies) is how far Earth is from our Sun – roughly. It’s complicated, it’s now mid-afternoon Friday, so I’ll move along.
Mars is very roughly one and a half AU out and the asteroid belt goes from 2.3 to 3.3 AU, so even if ASASSN-21qj’s probable planetary collision involved something like what became the Earth-Moon system, habitable it won’t become.5
If it’s 16 AU out, that’d make it only slightly less distant from ASASSN-21qj than Uranus is from the Sun. So “ice giants” isn’t an unreasonable term for the planets. Probably.
Uncertainty and Science
Matthew Kenworthy et al.’s chart of visible and infrared light from ASASSN-21qj. (2023)
I’ve said “probably” a lot, and you’ll find phrases like “observations are consistent with” in a great many scientific papers.
That’s because, however sure they are about their data and analysis, scientists generally acknowledge they don’t know everything. That’s been my experience, at any rate, reading what they’ve written, and looking through their research.
As for me? Well, I enjoy knowing stuff, and like getting my facts straight. But I figure that “observations are consistent with” means that something may be so. But that the “something”, whatever it is, may not be so.
My guess is that scientists will be taking closer looks at ASASSN-21qj for years. Centuries, very likely, given how long conditions in the star’s vicinity may be changing:
“…The team acknowledges that it’s possible the infrared brightening and the starlight blockage were in fact two separate events, but they make the case that two such events would be even more rare than a planetary-scale collision.
“Their calculations show that such a collision would vaporize both worlds, with a relatively small amount escaping to orbit the star. ‘Over the next few orbits (around a few hundred years), the dust will smear into a ring around the star,’ Kenworthy explains. For now, the debris is in a long, giant cloud a quarter of an a.u. in size, and the dust is thick enough to block much of the star’s light as the cloud passes in front of it.
“Most of the mass, though, has remained gravitationally bound, albeit in vaporized form. Team member Simon Lock (University of Bristol, UK) has previously proposed that such remnants might take the shape of a synestia, a donut-shape cloud with a bit of material straddling the middle (perhaps more akin to an extremely puffy Danish). This collision gives the researchers an opportunity to test that idea.…
“…Another team, led by Jonathan Marshall (Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Taiwan), has published a different explanation in the Astrophysical Journal, suggesting instead that an uneven dusty disk surrounds the star, perhaps originating in the breakup of comets. That team notes a marked similarity between this system and the curious Boyajian’s Star….” “Two Worlds Have Ended in a Planetary Collision — and a New One Has Begun“ Monica Young, Sky and Telescope (October 12, 2023) [emphasis mine]
Boyajian’s Star, by the way, is KIC 8462852, informally called Tabby’s Star, and that’s something I talked about back in 2016.6
‘…A Star to Steer By….’
Argo Navis: a huge constellation in Johannes Hevelius’ “Uranographia”. (1690)
Light from ASASSN-21qj traveled 1,850 years before reaching Earth.
The star isn’t the only more-or-less-Sun-like star orbited by unexpectedly-warm dust, but it’s the only one I know of where scientists have ‘before and after’ observations from what’s probably a planetary collision.
No wonder at least two teams have crunched data and published papers. Despite ASASSN-21qj being so far away.
ASASSN-21qj is in the general direction of Zeta Puppis, Naos, a whacking great overly-hot star that’s been studied a great deal more that the ‘assassin star’ — and that’s yet another topic.
Both stars are in the southern constellation Puppis, which we got when de Lacaille split up the ancient Argo Navis: which may go back to Sumerian times.7 Or may not. Scientists aren’t the only ones who don’t know everything. 😉
And that’s yet again another topic: also my cue to stop writing, start proofing this thing, and add the usual links:
“A planetary collision afterglow and transit of the resultant debris cloud“ Matthew Kenworthy, Simon Lock, Grant Kennedy, Richelle van Capelleveen, Eric Mamajek, Ludmila Carone, Franz-Josef Hambsch, Joseph Masiero, Amy Mainzer, J. Davy Kirkpatrick, Edward Gomez, Zoë Leinhardt, Jingyao Dou, Pavan Tanna, Arttu Sainio, Hamish Barker, Stéphane Charbonnel, Olivier Garde, Pascal Le Dû, Lionel Mulato, Thomas Petit, Michael Rizzo Smith (October 12, 2023) via arXiv
“A planetary collision afterglow and transit of the resultant debris cloud“ Matthew Kenworthy, Simon Lock, Grant Kennedy, Richelle van Capelleveen, Eric Mamajek, Ludmila Carone, Franz-Josef Hambsch, Joseph Masiero, Amy Mainzer, J. Davy Kirkpatrick, Edward Gomez, Zoë Leinhardt, Jingyao Dou, Pavan Tanna, Arttu Sainio, Hamish Barker, Stéphane Charbonnel, Olivier Garde, Pascal Le Dû, Lionel Mulato, Thomas Petit, Michael Rizzo Smith (October 12, 2023) via arXiv
“A planetary collision afterglow and transit of the resultant debris cloud“ Matthew Kenworthy, Simon Lock, Grant Kennedy, Richelle van Capelleveen, Eric Mamajek, Ludmila Carone, Franz-Josef Hambsch, Joseph Masiero, Amy Mainzer, J. Davy Kirkpatrick, Edward Gomez, Zoë Leinhardt, Jingyao Dou, Pavan Tanna, Arttu Sainio, Hamish Barker, Stéphane Charbonnel, Olivier Garde, Pascal Le Dû, Lionel Mulato, Thomas Petit, Michael Rizzo Smith (October 12, 2023) via arXiv
Something new each Saturday.
Life, the universe and my circumstances permitting. I'm focusing on 'family stories' at the moment. ("A Change of Pace: Family Stories" (11/23/2024))
Blog - David Torkington
Spiritual theologian, author and speaker, specializing in prayer, Christian spirituality and mystical theology [the kind that makes sense-BHG]
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
Meanwhile, crosswords threatened the very foundations of society.
A century later, I can count on reading headlines heralding the latest dreadful developments, including but not limited to: climate change, war in the Middle East, and the looming threat of artificial intelligence.
They were getting over “The War That Will End War”. We’ve recovered from World War II and the boom times that followed.
I’ll occasionally run across an opinion piece suggesting that we’re not doomed.
I’ll start with Immanuel Kant’s ‘big picture’ look at history:
Anyway, fast-forwarding to the century I was born in.
2 Fiction, a few facts, opinion and attitude:
