A technician was here this morning (August 3, 2023) — and the needed part was in stock. So now we have our main air conditioning system back online, and the part of the house we’re in most of the time is easing back to comfortable conditions.
As for me, I’ve decided on a topic for Saturday’s post. The thing even has a working title, which I may end up using.
Like I said yesterday, what with one thing and another — there’s not enough time for the usual well-researched post. Which may be a good thing. 😉
Since I said that I might talk about the power outage, and probably won’t get much else done today (I started writing this Tuesday), now seems like a good time to pick up that loose thread.
Two Power Lines Plus One Construction Vehicle Equals Zero Power
July 24, 2023, was just another Monday. Until mid-morning.
Then my computer’s monitor went black, and the house got very quiet.
Number three daughter checked the Sauk Centre Public Utilities (SCPU) Facebook page, although I didn’t know it at the time.
When she told me what was going on, I wondered where she got her information: but didn’t think to ask until later. And I’m wandering off-topic.
Anyway, I read these ‘what’s going on’ posts on the SCPU Facebook page. All dates are July 24, 2023.
Sauk Centre Public Utilities “Update on power outage. The City of Melrose came to help with the lines that are down. The crew are working diligently. Hopefully power can be restored by 6 pm. Thank you everyone for your patience.”
Sauk Centre Public Utilities “The Sauk Centre Electric department is working to restore power. Two major electrical lines have been torn down by a construction vehicle. There is no estimated time line as to when power will be restored.”
[redacted] [redacted] no. We still have power on the opposite end of town
[redacted] Is power out for the entire town?
Power came back on around 5:30 p.m. — for this household, at any rate.
Nothing to do online — no sound from the refrigerator, freezer or household air system — and not nearly as much sound from traffic outside — made Monday an exceptional day. Quiet, for one thing.
And a bit warmer than usual.
Thanks to our son-in-law and number two daughter, this house has central air conditioning and heating. So as a rule, we don’t swelter in summer. That’s — nice. Very nice.
I grew up before air conditioning, central or otherwise, was common around here. So opening the house at night and closing it early in the morning would be a familiar routine.
But I don’t yearn for the days of spending part of each summer keeping as still as possible, while not dripping sweat on whatever I was trying to do.
Researching and/or writing wasn’t an attractive option — I type much faster (and more legibly) than I write, and avoid transcribing from handwritten material when it’s practical.
On the Whole, a Pleasant Monday: For Me
I looked for, and found, a book that I’d misplaced; started re-reading Carroll’s Alice books; and did a little on-paper sketching for a story that’s been on the back burner for years. And I just plain relaxed.
That was, on the whole, a pleasant experience. Partly, for me, because I’m a retired guy.
Sauk Centre, Minnesota, isn’t a bustling trade hub like Paris or Singapore. But we’re living in the early 21st century like everyone else.
When there’s no power, there’s no business happening. Cash registers have long since gone digital, so unless the boss gets very creative, there’s no point in keeping a store open.
For offices and industries, it’s the same story. When there’s no power, nothing gets done. Unless someone has backup generators, or highly creative ways to do tasks.
I haven’t heard or read this anywhere, but my guess is that Monday, July 24, 2023, was a blank spot for Sauk Centre’s businesses.
Which is, besides my personal convenience, why I was glad when the power came back on.
This Week? It Could be Worse
U.S. Weather Service map: 22:28 UTC August 2, 2023.
At the moment, there are no severe thunderstorm warnings in effect in Minnesota.
The last I checked, the drought is still “moderate” around Sauk Centre. But that doesn’t doesn’t show on this map.
And, happily, the heat around here is fairly normal for the Upper Midwest in August.
That’s just as well, since our air conditioning went on the fritz Tuesday morning.
I’ve been feeling less than chipper since the weekend. Concentrating has been difficult, and so has trying to concentrate. Or wanting to. I was getting up to speed by Monday evening, and then Tuesday morning the household’s air conditioning was out.
And probably had been since sometime during the night. We live in an old foursquare house, modified by previous owners but essentially still with the favorable surface-to-volume ratio. It takes some time for this place to either heat up or cool down.
My son was more on the ball than I was. By the time I’d started wondering why it was on the warm and not-dry side, he was talking to a repair service. A technician will, I trust, be out here Thursday: to figure out what’s wrong and at least start the process of fixing it.
Tuesday afternoon we had fans set up, giving us indoor breezes. And by Wednesday afternoon we’d bought a couple room air conditioners and set them up. By “we”, I mean my son.
I’m not sure whether I see the room air conditioners as a luxury or as medical equipment.
I don’t particularly enjoy feeling over-warm and defocused. But other members of the household are more sensitive to temperature extremes than I am. So, even if “medical equipment” is putting it rather high, I think buying those things made sense.
Particularly if it turns out that we’ll be waiting days, weeks, however-long, for parts needed to get the household main air system back online.
Like I said, “it could be worse”.
Being Glad We’re Here
We had reserves that made purchasing room air conditioners an option.
We live in a house with a bit of shade from trees, at least in the afternoon.
And we’re in the south side of Sauk Centre: a town that’s home to a bit over 4,000 folks, with a distinct lack of those vast concrete and asphalt expanses which help cities stay cozily hot on days like these.
I do not envy those who, for whatever reason, live in heavily-urbanized areas.
We have the technology. We can design cities that are not solar-powered deathtraps.
And that’s another topic.
Speaking of topics, I’ve picked one for this week’s ‘Saturday’ post. Three, actually.
And I’ve gotten just about no research or writing done so far.
I’m hoping that I’ll feel substantially less fuzzy tomorrow morning. But even if I am, there may not be enough time to get something presentable together.
Time to wrap this up. I started writing this post Tuesday, it’s now Wednesday afternoon.
I’ll have something to show on Saturday. How much and what, I don’t know yet.
Finally, the inevitable links to stuff that’s about Minnesota, me, and something entirely different:
This week I used words like deuterium and magnetohydrodynamics.
And I may have gone into more detail that necessary about why we didn’t have fusion power generators in the 1960s.
A British company’s plans for test-firing a fusion rocket engine got my attention last week. I’d planned on writing about it then, but a dental procedure and household matters got in the way.
So I researched and made more notes over the weekend, and when my town’s power came back online late Monday afternoon: the notes weren’t there any more. That’s something I may talk about, sometime next week.
Anyway, I re-researched, got stuck and/or distracted a couple times — I’ll talk about tralphium and mindsets in a bit — and ended up with this post.
Which, as it turned out, included a bit about NASA’s interest in UAPs and the serious search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Two hydrogen nuclei combine, making one helium nucleus and a fair amount of energy. The helium nucleus is a tad lighter than the two hydrogen nuclei. The missing mass becomes the energy.
All you need to is a ball of hydrogen with a mass about 25,000 times Earth’s.
That’s the mass of a small red dwarf star. The (basically) same fusion reactions are happening in our star, the Sun.
But we didn’t know about these reactions until very roughly a century back.
Speculation about mass and energy being interchangeable goes back at least to the 18th and 19th centuries. That’s when folks like Newton, Swedenborg, Umov and De Preto wrote about particles, ether and kinetic energy.
Around 1900, a whole bunch of folks noticed a connection between the speed and mass of charged particles.
Einstein’s special theory of relativity (1905) sparked ongoing debates. One point was whether E = mc2 is anything more than a first approximation. As of 2009, that question still wasn’t settled. Or, rather, it had been: several times, with assorted answers.
In 1920, Eddington said maybe the Sun stays hot by fusing hydrogen into helium. That was in “The Internal Constitution of the Stars”. As it turns out, he was right.
In 1937, Oliphant smashed hydrogen nuclei together, producing helium nuclei and a whole lot of energy. Actually, he used 2H (deuterium, AKA heavy hydrogen) and got 3He (not-so-heavy helium).
Good news, we had proof that hydrogen fusion was a real thing.1
Rather unsettling news, the Cold War started about a decade later.
Thermonuclear Weapons, History and Ideas: Very Briefly
The Cold War started in 1947. Or it had been in progress since 1917, or it started in 1945: but right now the Truman Doctrine seems to mark the preferred starting line.
I’ve talked about history, periodization and the 20th century’s global war before — along with a very quick look at why I think it may eventually be called the Colonial War.
“…Many Enlightenment-era folks thought going through something like the Thirty Years War again would be a bad idea. I think they were right.
“‘More of the same’ wasn’t an acceptable option.
“It’s just shy of 370 years since the Thirty Years War ended. I don’t know when we started using that name. Not exactly.
“Like I said, names change. Folks living 370 years after the end what we call World War II will almost certainly have another name for it. I don’t know what it’ll be.
“Maybe some will call the 1914-1945 conflict the Colonial War when 2315 rolls past.
“I’m not the first person to call it that. My father suggested the name, somewhere around 1970. His interests, habits and quirky mental processes were much like mine, so likely enough he’d run across the idea somewhere. Or its component pieces.
Again: the simple, natural way to start hydrogen fusing into helium and energy is to pack about 25,000 times Earth’s mass of hydrogen into a star-size ball.
Then, thanks to gravity, the ball’s center gets hot and dense enough to push hydrogen nuclei together.
It’s simple and natural, but making stars is something we can’t do. Not yet, at any rate. And that’s another topic.
Make that fairly simple.
I mentioned 2H (deuterium, or heavy hydrogen) before, and how someone fused deuterium nuclei together to get 3He.
Scientists figure that deuterium fusion, where two deuterium nuclei fuse into a 3He (helium-3) nucleus, is one of two fusion reactions happening in our sun. Another is the proton-proton chain reaction.
Or, rather, others are proton-proton chain reactions: plural. There are three of the things. That diagram shows the one called branch I.
Now, about the last reaction on branch I: 3He + 3He yielding two 1H, one 4He, plus energy that’s not shown on that diagram. That reaction doesn’t make stuff around it radioactive.
It’d be great for a fusion power plant.
But there’s just one problem, Helium-3 won’t fuse unless it’s a plasma even hotter and denser than we need for fusing deuterium. So getting power from helium-3 reactions will wait until we work the bugs out of deuterium fusion reactors.3
Before talking about plasma and a fusion rocket engine that may be ready for testing next year, a few (for me) words about 1H (just plain hydrogen). 2H (deuterium), 3H (tritium), and 3He.
They’re all isotopes. And isotopes are — meh. I’ll quote a couple definitions.
“Introduction to Isotopes“, Understanding Isotopes, A Step-by-Step Tutorial TerpConnect Division of Information Technology, University of Maryland “Isotopes are atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons but the same number of protons. For example, different isotopes of the element Carbon can have 6, 7, or 8 neutrons. The number of protons does not change.”
“What is an Isotope?” (September 26, 2022) MSU Alumni, Michigan State University “Simply put, isotopes are different versions of elements—the same ones you’d find on the periodic table. The core, or nucleus, of each element holds protons and neutrons. Each element contains a fixed number of protons. But when you vary the number of neutrons, you create different isotopes of the same element.
“There are 118 elements on the periodic table. There are more than 3,000 isotopes that we know of and likely thousands more waiting to be discovered. At FRIB, home to the world’s most powerful isotope-making accelerator, scientists can create isotopes that have never been seen before, giving them the ability to look at research through a whole new lens.”
Tralphium?! — or — Gamow, “New Genesis”, God and Chesterton
Another name for Helium-3, 3H, is helion. And yet another name for it is tralphium.
I spent more time than I maybe should have this week, learning where the word tralphium came from.
The earliest use of “tralphium” I could find was in a piece by by George Gamow: a lighthearted look at another scientist’s ideas about nucleosynthesis.
“…However, the key reaction would take place at a sufficient rate only if Carbon-12 had a very particular property…. Fred Hoyle predicted this property; Willy Fowler measured it and found it as predicted.
“Here is Gamow’s comment on Hoyle’s discovery:
“New Genesis”
“In the beginning God created radiation and ylem. And ylem was without shape or number, and the nucleons were rushing madly over the face of the deep.
“And God said: ‘Let there be mass two.’ And there was mass two. And God saw deuterium, and it was good.
“And God said: ‘let there be mass three.’ And there was mass three. And God saw tritium and tralphium [Gamow’s nickname for the helium isotope He-3], and they were good. And God continued to call number after number until He came to transuranium elements. But when He looked back on his work He found that it was not good. In the excitement of counting, He missed calling for mass five and so, naturally, no heavier elements could have been formed.
“God was very much disappointed, and wanted first to contract the universe again, and to start all over from the beginning. But it would be much too simple. Thus, being almighty, God decided to correct His mistake in a most impossible way.
“And God said: ‘Let there be Hoyle.’ And there was Hoyle. And God looked at Hoyle… and told him to make heavy elements in any way he pleased.
“And Hoyle decided to make heavy elements in stars, and to spread them around by supernovae explosions. But in doing so he had to obtain the same abundance curve which would have resulted from nucleosynthesis in ylem, if God would not have forgotten to call for mass five.
“And so, with the help of God, Hoyle made heavy elements in this way, but it was so complicated that nowadays neither Hoyle, nor God, nor anybody else can figure out exactly how it was done. Amen.” (“New Genesis” (1946?) via Ideas of Cosmology, Center for History of Physics, a Division of the American Institute of Physics) (emphasis mine)
And now I’ve got another new-to-me word, “ylem”, which George Gamow, Ralph Alpher and others got from Middle English.
Ylem is the hypothetical stuff from which became everything in this universe: including scientific laws like the balance between gravitational and other forms of energy.
Probably, if current models of the first moments after the Big Bang are accurate.
Scientific laws, by the way, are what scientists have noticed and confirmed about the way stuff works.4
Those are rabbit holes I’ll leave for another day.
“His Gaze Spans All the Ages…”
George Gamow’s “New Genesis”, on the other hand, warrants a bit more attention.
If I thought Gamow’s “New Genesis” was the scientist’s effort to launch a new religion, then I’d have problems with it.
For one thing, God being unable to figure out how nucleosynthesis works downplays God’s knowledge: putting it mildly.
“Immense is the wisdom of the LORD; mighty in power, he sees all things.” (Sirach 15:18)
“His gaze spans all the ages: is there any limit to his saving action? To him, nothing is small or insignificant, and nothing too wonderful or hard for him.” (Sirach 39:20)
“He searches out the abyss and penetrates the heart; their secrets he understands. For the Most High possesses all knowledge, and sees from of old the things that are to come.” (Sirach 42:18)
Repeating what I said earlier this month: God infinite. Eternal. All-powerful. Incomprehensible. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1, 202, 268-269)
God creates and sustains a (basically) good an ordered world. He is present to all creation, and continuously sustains it. (Catechism, 299-301, 385-412)
God is here and now in every here and now, but God is not ‘inside’ space and time. (Catechism, 205, 600, 645)
Basically, God is large and in charge. And, like Sirach said, “possesses all knowledge”.
I could rant and rave about Gamow’s “New Genesis”, ignoring its context. But I figure that makes considerably less than no sense.
Besides, I think G. K. Chesterton is right. Something that stops making sense when deprived of highfalutin solemnity — may not make sense when it is provided with properly pretentious pomposity. It just takes longer to notice the sense gap.
“…It is the test of a responsible religion or theory whether it can take examples from pots and pans and boots and butter-tubs. It is the test of a good philosophy whether you can defend it grotesquely. It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it….” (“All Things Considered“, The Methuselahite, Spiritualism; G. K. Chesterton (1908) via Project Gutenberg of Australia)
And that brings me to magnetohydrodynamics. If I think of a “pots and pans” word for that mouthful, I’ll use it. But I’m not hopeful.
Plasma, Magnetohydrodynamics and My Research Roadblock
Plasma in nature: Edward Aspera Jr.’s photo: lightning over Las Cruces, New Mexico. (March 4, 2004)
The point I’ve been staggering toward is that fusing hydrogen won’t happen unless the stuff is really hot and dense: in the state of matter scientists call “plasma”.
I was going to say that plasma is ionized gas, but — as usual — it’s not that simple:
“…Plasma is typically an electrically quasineutral medium of unbound positive and negative particles…. Plasma is distinct from the other states of matter. In particular, describing a low-density plasma as merely an ‘ionized gas’ is wrong and misleading, even though it is similar to the gas phase in that both assume no definite shape or volume….” (Plasma (physics), Wikipedia)
Basically, as far as fusion reactions go, plasma is stuff that’s very hot, fairly dense, and conducts electricity.
Now, about electricity and magnetism. Where to start?
Science. Electromagnets. Levitating Light Bulbs!
The electromagnetic force is one of the four fundamental forces of nature. The other three are gravity, weak interaction and strong interaction.
Fusion happens in stars because gravity compresses hydrogen and everything else, heating it, which sparks hydrogen fusion. It’s probably the simplest way to start a fusion reaction and keep it going.
But since we don’t have gravity generators and can’t make stars, we’re stuck with using electromagnetism.
And that gets me to magnetohydrodynamics.
It’s an eight-syllable name for a mathematical toolbox scientists use when they’re talking about fluids that conduct electricity. “Fluids” in this case includes plasma and liquid metals.
I could try diving into equations like ρ=Σ mσnσ, but that’s more math than I’m comfortable with. So I’ll over-simplify the situation something fierce.
We’ve known that electric currents and magnetic fields go together since 1820. Since then, we’ve used that knowledge to make everything from telegraphs to particle accelerators.
We’ve also made magnetic levitating toys and novelties, keeping little globes and light bulbs suspended in air.
So how come we can’t ‘suspend’ fusing plasma the same way?
We can, actually. But not for long.
One problem is that plasma that’s hot enough for fusion reactions is so hot that it’ll melt or vaporize anything that’s too close.
Hydrogen bombs work because the fusion reaction only has to last for a very short time.
I gather that the process is over in fractions of a microsecond.
We can start fusion reactions by squeezing little bits of hydrogen into a plasma ball. Or we can hold and squeeze plasma with magnetic fields.
Either way, the trick is getting more power out of the fusion reaction than it takes to start it and — in the case of magnetic containment systems — keep it going.5
Mindsets, Reasonable and Otherwise — or — Angst and Attitudes
This is where I was going to talk about how thermonuclear weapons work, and how that applies to developing practical fusion power generators.
I researched the topic last week, and this week, and found a great deal of nothing much.
Even getting reliable information about what “very short” means in the context of the 1952 Ivy Mike test has been frustrating, putting it mildly.
I suspect that some of the echoing silence I found is due to concerns, real or imagined, regarding “national security”.
With my less than utter awe for the wisdom of my country’s powers that be, I could be mildly surprised that Enewetak Atoll6 is not officially a non-place that never existed.
I also suspect, based on the tone I perceived in many academic discussions of thermonuclear weapons, fusion research and related topics, that a great many scientists remain appalled at what we’ve learned.
There’s much to be said for realizing that ideas may lead to actions, that actions have consequences, and that ethics apply when we act.
Learning the Right Lessons: Eventually
I think many folks had horrifying wake-up calls following September of 1945.
These days, I read and hear more about the first (and so far only) use of nuclear weapons than other matters that became general knowledge: and that’s yet another topic. Topics, actually.
I’m arguably Lebensunwertes Leben, so I see the reality check we got when results of eugenics as a national policy went public as a significant post-war issue.7 Yet again more topics.
Good news — we started, at least in this country, looking at low-status humans as people rather than readily-available lab animals. I talked about that last month.
“…John Lantos, a pediatrician at University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and expert in medical ethics, says the experiments were indicative of America’s post-war mindset. ‘Technology was good, we were the leaders, we were the good guys, so anything we did could not be bad,’ he says. It wasn’t until the ’70s, after the Tuskegee study, that Congress passed federal regulation requiring a specific kind of oversight.’…” (“A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Radioactive Oatmeal Go Down“, Lorraine Boissoneault, Smithsonian Magazine (March 8, 2017))
Accepting that self-righteous cockiness can be embarrassing makes sense.
But I’d prefer seeing less of the “technology is bad, we are the bad guys” attitude. Maybe I’m being unfair.
Doing It With (Magnetic) Mirrors
A magnetic bottle formed by two magnetic mirrors. Illustration by WikiHelper2134.
There’s a whole mess of ways we could — in theory — keep a dense fusion-hot plasma in some sort of magnetic bottle.
With field-reversed configuration (FRC) systems, the plasma is in a “high-beta axisymmetric compact toroid”. Think of it as a smoke ring made from lightning. And that’s still another topic.
FRC systems use magnetic mirrors: electromagnets set up so that a plasma’s charged particles go whirling back and forth between them.
One of these things has been running off and on at Princeton for years. Scientists have been learning a lot from using it, but have yet to get a fusion reaction.
One of the problems is that “plasma stability” isn’t particularly stable.
And that’s why Aksa, Aggreko and Westinghouse didn’t start making fusion generators in the 1960s.8
Describing how hard it is to keep a fusion-hot plasma in place generally involves lots of acronyms and phrases like magnetoacoustic cyclotron instability.
I gather that it’s a bit like trying to run boiling water through pipes made of Jell-O.
That’s not an apt comparison, but it’s the best I came up with.
“Nuclear fusion propulsion technology has the potential to revolutionize space travel in terms of both speeds and fuel usage. The same kinds of reactions that power the Sun could halve travel times to Mars, or make a journey to Saturn and its moons take just two years rather than eight.
“It’s incredibly exciting, but not everyone is convinced this is going to work: the tech needs ultra-high temperatures and pressures to function.
“To help prove the viability of the technology, the largest ever fusion rocket engine is now being built by Pulsar Fusion in Bletchley, in the UK.
The chamber, some 8 meters (26 feet) long, is scheduled to start firing in 2027….” (emphasis mine)
I agree that this is “incredibly exciting” news.
Particularly since, as far as I can tell, Pulsar Fusion’s prototype won’t just be the “largest ever fusion rocket engine”. It’ll be the first.
Granted, I may have missed news of an earlier prototype. But that seems unlikely.
A device that (1) keeps a fusion reaction going, (2) produces more power than it takes in, and (3) is a working rocket engine is front-page news. In the science-and-technology section, at any rate.
I didn’t find detailed descriptions of Pulsar Fusion’s prototype on their website. But I hadn’t expected to find that sort of information on what’s essentially a promotional site.
They did, however, say that they’re planning to have a prototype Direct Fusion Drive (DFD) ready for static testing next year, with orbital flight tests in 2027.
I’m guessing the processes will take a little longer. On the other hand, although this particular application is new and first-of-its-kind; it’s based on tech that’s been in development for decades.
And Pulsar Fusion gives numbers for their fusion rocket engine’s expected performance.
“The Direct Fusion Drive is a revolutionary steady state fusion propulsion concept, based on a compact fusion reactor. It will provide power of the order of units of MW, providing both thrust of the order of 10-101N with specific impulses between 103-105s and auxiliary power to the space system.” (Fusion Propulsion | Pulsar Fusion)
About those numbers: 10-101N is thrust in Newtons; specific impulse is a measure of a rocket engine’s efficiency. I’m not sure why Pulsar Fusion’s unity symbols are a capital N and lower-case s. British usage, maybe.
At any rate, 10 to 101 newtons thrust is about 2.25 to 22.7 pounds. Which may not seem like much for an engine that size. But production models of this DFD would be used for deep space missions, where efficiency is more important high thrust.
Exhaust velocity for the Pulsar Fusion prototype should be 110 to 350 kilometers per second, or about 0.1167% the speed of light.
Which, again, doesn’t sound like much. Not compared to still-theoretical Z-pinch fusion engines, which may have exhaust velocities of around 4% speed of light.
But the Space Shuttle’s main engine exhaust velocity was around 4.4 kilometers per second.9 So I see Pulsar Fusion’s DFD as pretty impressive.
Comparing Princeton’s FRC System and Pulsar Fusion’s DFD
Pulsar Fusion’s schematic diagram of their Direct Fusion Drive (DFD). (2023)Christopher Galea et al.’s schematic: their Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration reactor concept. (2023)
The Princeton Field-Reversed Configuration reactor concept looks a lot like Pulsar Fusion’s Direct Fusion Drive. Probably for the same reasons that Ford and Rolls Royce engines look alike. They’re using very similar tech to do pretty much the same thing.
I’m running short of time, again, so — that RMF antenna in the Pulsar Fusion schematic is a rotating magnetic field antenna: something that helps contain wiggling plasma.10
UFOs, UAPs and NASA
Peter Graves and atomic invaders: “Killers From Space”. (1954)
“The UFO reports piquing Nasa’s interest“ For the first time ever, a team of Nasa scientists is taking unidentified anomalous phenomena seriously. But how will they sift out the incidents worthy of investigation? Zaria Gorvett, Extraterrestrial life, BBC (July 26, 2023)
“It was just a normal day’s flying for Alex Dietrich – until it wasn’t. Streaking through the sky over the tranquil expanse of the Pacific Ocean near San Diego, the US Navy lieutenant commander was taking her F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet on a training mission with a colleague in another plane. Then came a voice through the crackle of the radio.
“It was an operations officer aboard the warship USS Princeton, asking them to investigate a suspicious object flitting around: on several occasions, it had been spotted 80,000ft (24.2km) high, before suddenly dropping close to the sea and apparently vanishing.
“When the two jets arrived at its last known location, close to the ocean’s surface, the water seemed almost to be boiling. Moments later Dietrich saw it: what seemed to be a whitish, oblong object around 40ft (12m) long, hovering just above the water — like a wingless capsule, which she described as resembling a Tic Tac. As they edged in closer, it was gone, accelerating off into the sky at what seemed an impossible speed, leaving a glassy expanse of regular sea behind….”
First things first.
My tax dollars are not being wasted on a pointless search for pop-eyed space aliens.
That 1954 B movie11 profoundly does not represent what NASA is investigating.
I’m not convinced that calling UAPs Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, rather than Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, will keep journalists from trying a relaunch of the mid-20th-century flying saucer craze.
I talked about UAPs and a Bart Simpson balloon last month. You’ll find a link near the end of this post.
But I think the NASA Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena is a reasonable moniker, since right now we don’t know that all UAPs are, strictly speaking, aerial.
And my hat’s off to the BBC author, for writing a level-headed piece.
My own opinion about UFOs, UAPs and the IHTT (Incredible Hovering Tic Tac) is that folks have been seeing things we don’t immediately understand for a very long time.
Wondering what they are is more than just okay. It’s part of being human. We, most of us that is, are curious: we want to learn about what’s around us.
Trying to convince folks who have seen a giant hovering Tic Tac, ball lightning or whatever they’re experiencing is mass hysteria seems silly. So would immediately assuming that an invasion of the Incredible Tic Tac People is imminent.
Sifting through ‘that’s odd’ reports and investigating the ones that warrant closer looks?
Since I think that being curious and learning about this wonder-packed universe is part of being human, I see that as a good idea.
SETI, NASA, Technosignatures and a Flight of Fancy
“Our first confirmed proof of life beyond Earth might not involve biology at all. It’s possible that we might intercept communication through electromagnetic waves, like radio, or find telescopic evidence of epic engineering.
“While the search remains largely focused on non-technological life, NASA scientists also have begun to consider what technological traces of intelligent life — ‘technosignatures’ — might look like. They wouldn’t come from planets in our solar system, but rather far-flung exoplanets that we cannot see up close. Among the possibilities are laser or radio pulses, signs of artificial chemicals in the atmospheres of distant planets, or ‘Dyson spheres’ — massive structures built around stars to collect their energy….”
It’s late Friday afternoon as I write this, so I don’t have time to go on about technosignatures, extraterrestrial intelligence and making sense. Which may be a good thing.
If we have neighbors — people who are free-willed spirits with physical bodies, like us — I figure they’ll be people. It’s like this scientist said:
“…Frankly, if you think about it, any creatures on other planets, subject to the same laws of chemistry and physics as us, made of the same kinds of atoms, with an awareness and a will recognizably like ours would be at the very least our cousins in the cosmos. They would be so similar to us in all the essentials that I don’t think you’d even have the right to call them aliens.” (“Brother Astronomer,” Chapter Three, Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? — Brother Guy Consolmagno (2000))
And I figure that “technosignatures” will, if we notice them, very probably be somewhere outside the Solar System.
But maybe they won’t. Neptune is farther from the Sun than Uranus, but it radiates 2.61 times as much energy as it gets from our star. Uranus only radiates 1.1 times as much.
The last I checked, we don’t know why Neptune is so (comparatively) much warmer.
Uranus is an oddball, too. It’s axis of rotation is tilted 97.77° to it’s orbit’s, compared to Earth’s 23.44° tilt. Odds are that early on in the Solar System’s formation, something about as massive as Earth hit Uranus, giving it a tilt that it’s retained to this day. But we’re not sure.12
Now, I think Neptune’s unexplained heat and the Uranian tilt have natural causes. Probably. It’s the least-unlikely condition.
But, since we don’t know why the poles of Uranus scan the inner Solar System every 42 years; and why something’s keeping Neptune’s interior warmer than we’d expect — I can’t rule out either or both as being the result of planet-scale engineering.
I think it’s very — extremely — unlikely that folks who aren’t human stopped by the Solar System and modified two outer planets. But possible? Maybe.
Here’s a good-enough-for-a-story scenario.
Wildly Improbable, But Not Impossible
Researchers who weren’t human were curious about a collision that had happened in this planetary system’s third track out from the star.
All that was left of the two planets was a roughly doughnut-shaped mass of vaporized rock. Some researchers said it’d sort itself out as a planet with a ring system, others said it’d become a double planet, and still others didn’t care.
The ‘don’t care’ folks wanted to track developments on the system’s second planet.
So they all set up a self-maintaining power station for a data relay in the ninth-track planet’s core. (Neptune is the eighth planet out from the Sun, but Ceres and other asteroids/dwarf planets occupy the Solar System’s fifth orbital track.)
After tilting its rotation axis, the eighth-track planet made a reasonably stable platform for their instruments, which were placed on the planet’s poles. Then the researchers left.
The instrument platforms scanned the inner planets, sending data to the relay. The data relay collected, stored and transmitted data.
Time passed. The instrument platform’s alignment drifted a bit. But either the researchers’ descendants had lost interest in the system, or the misalignment wasn’t worth fixing.
The third track’s rock-vapor bagel sorted itself out into a mismatched double planet.
More time passed, and researchers who lived on the double planet’s larger member got curious about other worlds in their home system.
“The Internal Constitution of Stars*“ A. S. Eddington, The Observatory, Vol. 43, p. 341-358; Presidential Address of Professor Eddington to Section A of the British Association at Cardiff (August 14, 1920) via Harvard ads (astrophysics data system)
John Gilbert’s “Shylock After the Trial” illustration for “The Merchant of Venice”. (19th century)
On this date in 1598 William Shakespeare submitted “The Merchant of Venice” to the authorities. The play was entered in the Stationers’ Register as “The Marchaunt of Venyce or otherwise called The Jewe of Venyce”.
Before I say anything else, I’d better make something clear.
In my considered opinion, late 16th century England is not early 21st century America.
Back then, printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers licensed their products through the Stationers’ Register.
Looking at it one way, it was an early version of copyright protection. From another angle, it was the government’s way of keeping unauthorized content away from the public.
While the Stationers’ Register protected the common folk from naughty ideas, the Master of the Revels entertained royalty. And kept subversive ideas off the English stage.
These days, we call that sort of thing prior restraint. In America, it’s a hard sell. At least for folks who lack unqualified approval of The Establishment’s1 preferences.
Words, Assumptions and Serious Thinkers
Bankside entertainment district, from John Norden’s map of London. (1593)
In 1598, “The Merchant of Venice” was cleared as non-subversive and deemed fit for public performance. By 1600, it had been performed “divers times”. So I figure the non-subversive stamp of approval stuck.
Shakespeare died in 1616.
In 1623, two of Shakespeare’s colleagues published “Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies”. That’s a mouthful, so academics generally call it the First Folio.
Despite the “First Folio” moniker, it’s not the first printed edition of Shakespeare’s plays. That’s another topic: and a complicated one, so I’ll skip it this week.
Where was I?
“The Merchant of Venice”.
Elizabethan England isn’t today’s America.
Shakespeare, censorship and (by implication) why I’m not fond of prior restraint. Right.
“The Merchant of Venice” was classified as a comedy in the First Folio.
Calling “The Merchant of Venice” a comedy doesn’t sit right with a fair number of today’s serious thinkers, since these days it’s the dramatic scenes that stick in our memory.
The play is also, according to at least some serious thinkers, antisemitic. I see their point, but I also see why some serious thinkers called “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” racist.2
“‘…We blowed out a cylinder-head.’ “‘Good gracious! anybody hurt?’ “‘No’m. Killed a [redacted] “‘Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt….’ (“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Part 2 (1885), Chapter XXXII, Mark Twain; via gutenberg.org)
And that’s another yet another topic, along with my reasons for leaving words like [redacted] out of these posts.
And my conversations, for that matter.
I live in today’s America, think that human beings are people no matter how the powers that be classify them, and I’m drifting off-topic again.
A Shylock by Any Other Name
My “Angst at Acme Casting”. (2013)
Another problem with “The Merchant of Venice” is that Shylock is a stereotype villain. He’s greedy, scheming, and eventually thwarted by the forces of justice: and Portia.
The criticism has some merit. “The Merchant of Venice” abounds with stock characters.
Salarino and Salanio, for example, are about as distinguishable as Pat and Mike.
And Shylock — as I see it, “The Merchant of Venice” is a romantic comedy written for London audiences in Elizabethan England.
Again, it is a romantic comedy.
Stereotypes and stock characters are part of the package.
Anticipating anything else makes about as much sense as expecting lyrical locutions and literary allusions in a sitcom.
It’d be astounding if Shylock didn’t conform to at least some of the culture’s expectations and biases.
Let’s remember that Shakespeare and folks at the Globe had to get the play past censors before selling tickets.
Let’s also remember that many in the audience had never seen a Jew. England’s Edward I took care of that, back in 1290, with his Edict of Expulsion.
Yes, Shylock reflects antisemitic stereotypes. And stereotypes can be a problem, even in a romantic comedy, if they reinforce biases.
But one of Shylock’s famous lines, “My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!”, isn’t delivered by Shylock. It’s Salanio, quoting Shylock.
Whether or not the quote’s accurate — that’s a question.
Act II, Scene VIII. Venice. A street. Salanio “…[Shylock] did utter in the streets: ‘My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter! …my ducats, and my daughter!…'” (“The Merchant of Venice“, Shakespeare; via The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, hosted by MIT IS&T)
Act III, Scene I. Venice. A street. Shylock “…If you prick us, do we not bleed? if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die?…” (“The Merchant of Venice“, Shakespeare; via The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, hosted by MIT IS&T)
Or maybe “The Merchant of Venice” is anti-Saxon propaganda which somehow escaped the notice of England’s defenders.
I don’t think so. But that didn’t keep me from looking up “Shylock”. Apparently it was a fairly common Saxon name in Shakespeare’s day.
Scholars have found Hebrew names that sort of sound something like “Shylock”, but the name itself (probably) comes from “æsce locc”: “ash lock” — light grey lock of hair.3
Being (part) Irish
Since I’m about as gentile as it gets, west of the Urals, antisemitism hasn’t directly affected me.
And I’m too young for the old “no Irish need apply” hiring practices to have kept me unemployed.
On the other hand, my father and some of his boyhood buddies got free rides on a roller coaster, back in the day. The ride’s operator, I understand, had to test it each morning: and the kids were about the same weight as the sandbags he could have used.
The free rides ended when my father’s mother caught wind of the situation.
Maybe the ride’s operator was giving some poor Irish kids a break, letting them enjoy a ride they could never afford. Or maybe he figured they were either more expendable than sandbags, or a better test load. Maybe a bit of both, plus other reasons I haven’t guessed.
Either way, that helped me appreciate how attitudes and beliefs of my betters may affect me: or other folks who aren’t near the top of society’s ladder.
Not that I’ve been oppressed something fierce.
Looking Anglo and blatantly male wasn’t exactly an advantage in academia, back when political correctness was in bloom.
But I’ve got a noticeable forehead and voice like James Earl ‘Darth Vader’ Jones. Look a little like him, too, in a way, and that’s yet again another topic. The point is that I won’t play the victim card.
I do, however, think that penalizing — or rewarding — folks based on how others see their ancestors may not be a good idea.
Let’s see how that lines up with how I’m supposed to act.
We All Matter
I’m a Catholic, so loving God and my neighbors is a must. And ‘my neighbors’ includes everybody: No exceptions. (Matthew 5:43–44, 7:12, 22:36–40, Mark 12:28–31; 10:25–27, 29–37; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1789)
‘Loving my neighbors’ isn’t, or shouldn’t be, some light, fluffy, abstractly fuzzy feeling.
I should act as if everyone matters. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1928-1942)
Remembering that each of us has a share in humanity’s transcendent dignity and deserves respect as a person — isn’t always easy. But it’s a good idea, anyway.
A Few Thoughts After a Fraught Week
With a little encouragement, I could be a “serious thinker” myself.
I’m a very emotional man, and never quite lost ideals that were current in my youth, back in the Sixties.
To this day, I think that buying stuff I don’t need with money I don’t have to impress people I don’t like makes no sense. At all.
Small wonder I didn’t enjoy the benefits and penalties of a “successful career”.
I also think that knee-jerk anti-anything is a bad idea.
And I see no point in expecting someone who lived in another century, in another culture, with beliefs, biases and dangers that are not those of my homeland’s last few decades, to live up or down to contemporary standards.
Finally, although I called this a “fraught week”, it really wasn’t all that bad.
One of my teeth has settled down after a routine dental procedure. And I wrapped up my part of a family/household decision Friday afternoon.
The family/household thing involved something that I’ll keep under my hat for the moment: nothing spectacular or spicy, just something that’ll affect us for at least the next few years.
Thing is, doing discussions, organizing ideas and making notes so I’ll remember what we talked about when it comes up again — All that took time. And concentration.
So I couldn’t work on what I’d planned to have ready for today.
Instead, I looked up ‘this date in history’, noticed “The Merchant of Venice”, and started writing this thing. I hope you enjoyed it.
Now, the usual links to stuff that may or may not have anything to do with this post:
Carl Spitzweg’s first version of “The Poor Poet”. (1839) via Grohmann Museum at MSOE.
Storytelling is a very “human” thing. But not all of us are storytellers. And some of us don’t even care for reading stories. Which is just as well, since we’re not supposed to be all alike.
Oddly enough, although I’ve been criticized for talking about both religion and science, I’ve yet to be told that storytelling and my faith don’t mix.
On the other hand, I have heard a few folks declare that they read only non-fiction: because it’s “real”. They’ve got a point.
“Fiction is lies…. All those things are essentially untrue….” (attr. George R.R. Martin)
I could cobble together “Biblical” support for shunning fiction. Along with a rule that Christians should stay inside after sundown: taking 1 John 1:6 at literal face value.
“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) [emphasis mine]
“Rather, living the truth in love, we should grow in every way into him who is the head, Christ,” (Ephesians 4:15) [emphasis mine]
“Now this is the message that we have heard from him and proclaim to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. “If we say, ‘We have fellowship with him,’ while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth.” (1 John 1:5–6) [emphasis mine]
That kind of trouble I don’t need.
However, ‘blessed are the storytellers’ isn’t one of the Beatitudes. (Matthew 5:3–12)
So I could invoke ‘absence of evidence is evidence of absence’ and say this proves that telling stories is sinful. But I won’t. Again, I don’t need that sort of trouble.
Argument from ignorance is an anti-logic landmine1 that’s easy to spot. When it’s defending 24 carat tinplate hooey.
When a person really believes the hooey: that’s another topic.
Giving and Getting Impressions
The Cheshire Cat and Alice, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. (1865)
The 64-dollar question, since I haven’t been warned against the sins of storytelling, is why I thought that fiction might be considered “unbiblical”. Well, maybe a $63.95 question.
For one thing, some — not all — of the folks I’ve heard announce that they never read fiction did so with a tone that mantled their preferences with an air of moral superiority.
For another, I’d gotten an earful of imaginative ‘End Times Bible Prophecies’ on “Christian” radio, back in the 1960s. One chap even said that a Bible bit prophesied a specific item in the then-current Soviet armament inventory.
Then there was the steady drip-feed of guilt, shame and despair. Along with strong implications that ‘blessed are the miserable, for they shall spread misery’ was a Beatitude.
That sort of thing leaves an impression. Not a favorable one.
Bear in mind that I don’t have access to transcripts from that station, and that my memories are of those of a teenager who was experiencing undiagnosed clinical depression: among other issues.
The point is that I’m not surprised when folks afflicted with “Biblical” versions of malignant virtue are — ah, let’s say alternatively-reasonable.
“There are times, Charles, when even the unimaginative decency of my brother and the malignant virtue of his wife appear to me admirable.” (Lord Peter Wimsey, in “Murder Must Advertise“, Dorothy L. Sayers (1933))
“…counting every thing which the most malignant virtue could shrink from, I have culled eighty lines. Eighty lines out of nine thousand!…” (“The Good Gray Poet. A Vindication,” William Douglas O’Connor (1866))
And that, finally, brings me to how I could possibly imagine that anyone might regard storytelling as a Satanic snare.
I’m a Christian. And a Catholic, which isn’t oxymoronic, and that’s yet another topic.
Among other things, being a Christian means I think truth matters.
Fiction is about things that haven’t happened, often happening in places that don’t exist.
That sounds like pretty much the opposite of truth.
Coming at Reality from Different Directions
So how come I’m not denouncing novels, short stories, “I Love Lucy”, “Seven Samurai”, and “Star Trek”?
Basically, it’s the same reason that I’m not denouncing science and insisting that the wonders we’re finding in this amazing universe somehow threaten my faith.
I think truth matters, and that objective reality exists.
But I also think that expecting a poem, a telephone book and a travel guide to express truth the same way would be silly. Even if all three truthfully described the same town.
Recognizing that there’s more to truth than my preferences and favored viewpoint isn’t a new idea.
“…It’s something too many of us forget, that reality has layers. Occasionally people ask me how I can be Catholic and a science journalist. The answer is simple: Truth does not contradict truth. Both science and religion are pursuit of truth. They’re after different aspects of truth, different layers of reality, but they’re still both fundamentally about truth….” (Camille M. Carlisle, Sky and Telescope (June 2017))
“…Religion and natural science are fighting a joint battle in an incessant, never relaxing crusade against scepticism and against dogmatism, against disbelief and against superstition, and the rallying cry in this crusade has always been, and always will be: ‘On to God!'” (Religion and Natural Science, a lecture delivered in May, 1937, originally titled Religion und Naturwissenschaft. Complete translation into English: “Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers“, Max Planck (1968); via archive.org)
“…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))
Now let’s look at the rest of that George R. R. Martin2 quote.
“Fiction is lies; we’re writing about people who never existed and events that never happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of it.” (attr. George R.R. Martin, (George R.R. Martin Quotes, IMDB.com))
“Little Less Than a God”
My “Are You Going to Finish That?” (June 5, 2015)
I can’t say “let there be light” and expect illumination. Not unless I’ve got voice activated lights, or use a wall switch as I speak. God’s God, I’m not, and that’s a good thing.
I am, however, human: and we’re pretty hot stuff.
“God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)
“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)
“What is man that you are mindful of him, and a son of man that you care for him? “Yet you have made him little less than a god, crowned him with glory and honor.” (Psalms 8:5–6)
Since I’m human, I’ve got an imagination. As far as I can tell, that’s standard equipment. What sort of an imagination each of us has varies.
Each of us is unique, and made in God’s image. We share a common nature and dignity, but we’re not all alike. That’s a good thing, although we can misuse our differences. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 355ff, 1934-1938)
And that’s yet again another topic.
I can use, or misuse, my imagination. It’s my choice. The extent to which I can make good decisions and stick to them? That’s complicated. (Catechism, 1730ff, 2520, 2708)
Imaginary Worlds and Human Dignity
My “Island Flight”. (2015)
We’re made “in the image of God”, so it’s hardly surprising that some of us try making our own worlds: in our imaginations. It’s a reflection of God’s creativeness.
I was going to talk about God, secondary causes, human nature and how we got into the current mess. (Catechism, 279-314, 355-379, 385-412, 1701-1709)
But it’s late Friday afternoon, and I’ve got maybe an hour to wrap this up, so that’ll wait for another time: apart from this overly-brief summary.
God started/starts with nothing — picking the right tense may be impossible when talking about God, who’s not ‘inside’ time and space — and is creating everything we see. And that part of reality that we can’t see because it’s not part of the visible world.
Humanity as a whole and me in particular: we’re not God.
But we’re made in the image of God, so I figure it’s hardly surprising that some of us try making imaginary worlds.
I see no problem with using our imagination.
Provided that we remember both who we are, and what we are: people, with a share in humanity’s transcendent dignity.
Our imaginary worlds aren’t “real”, with the profound complexity and interdependence of the visible world. But they can seem real, partly because we start with images, ideas and experiences from the reality we live in.
If we’re doing it right, our imaginary worlds, and stories we make for them, will reflect some truth that’s worth the time and effort spent by both writer and reader.3
I’ll close with an excerpt from what Pope St. John Paul II said to folks in the Los Angeles communications industry, back in 1987. He’d been talking about human dignity:
“…None is excluded because all bear the image of God. Physical and mental handicaps, spiritual weaknesses and human aberrations cannot obliterate the dignity of man. You will understand why the Church attaches such importance to this principle found on the first page of the Bible; it will later become the basis of the teaching of Jesus Christ as he says: ‘Always treat others as you would like them to treat you’ (Matth. 7, 12).
“In particular, social communications must support human dignity because the world is constantly tempted to forget it. Whether in news or in drama, whether in song or in story, you are challenged to respect what is human and to recognize what is good. Human beings must never be despised because of limitations, flaws, disorders, or even sins….
“…I would encourage you in yet another way: to respect also your own dignity. All that I have said about the dignity of human beings applies to you.
“Daily cares oppress you in ways different from those arising in other kinds of work. Your industry reflects the fast pace of the news and changing tastes. … It places you under extreme pressure to be successful, without telling you what ‘success’ really is. Working constantly with images, you face the temptation of seeing them as reality. Seeking to satisfy the dreams of millions, you can become lost in a world of fantasy.
“At this point, you must cultivate the integrity consonant with your own human dignity. You are more important than success, more valuable than any budget. Do not let your work drive you blindly, for if work enslaves you, you will soon enslave your art. Who you are and what you do are too important for that to happen. Do not let money be your sole concern, for it too is capable of enslaving art as well as souls. In your life there must also be room for your families and for leisure. You need time to rest and be re-created, for only in quiet can you absorb the peace of God.
“You yourselves are called to what is noble and lofty in human living, and you must study the highest expressions of the human spirit. You have a great part in shaping the culture of this nation and other nations. To you is entrusted an important portion of the vast heritage of the human race. In fulfilling your mission you must always be aware of how your activities affect the world community, how they serve the cause of universal solidarity….” (To the people of the Communication Industry in Los Angeles Pope St. John Paul II (September 15, 1987))
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))
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.
I live in Minnesota, in America's Central Time Zone. This blog is on UTC/Greenwich time.
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Blog - David Torkington
Spiritual theologian, author and speaker, specializing in prayer, Christian spirituality and mystical theology [the kind that makes sense-BHG]
As for me, I’ve decided on a topic for Saturday’s post. The thing even has a working title, which I may end up using.
