Sifting Through the Ash Heap of History

Posted on October 30, 2021 by Brian H. Gill

Willem van Nieulandt's 'View of the Forum Romanum.' (ca. 1601-1625)

Petrarch called Rome “a rubbish heap of history.”

That’s what Ferdinand Gregorovius says Petrarch wrote in a letter, at any rate.

“…Petrarch, who was then in Avignon, wrote on this occasion his patriotic epistle in Latin verses to Aeneas Tolomei of Siena. He bewails the ruin of his native country, on which a baibarian(!) prince was now again descending….
“…we may observe the pompous processions of senators … In poverty and obscurity she withered away, decayed and crushed, a rubbish heap of history, while the Pope, forgetful of her claims, accumulated gold and treasures in distant Avignon….
(“History of the City of Rome, in the Fourteenth Century, FROM 1305 until 1354;” Ferdinand Gregorovius; Translated from the fourth German edition by Annie Hamilton (1898) via Cornell University Library, Internet Archive)

The Gregorovius book’s translation is as far back as I’ve been able to track that Petrarch quote. I gather that Petrarch’s hopes for a glorious rebirth of the noble Roman Republic had suffered a head-on collision with 14th century European politics.

A bit over a half-millennium after Petrarch, a fair number of notables have used variations on “rubbish heap of history:”1

  • “Ash heap of history”
    (Ronald Reagan (1982))
  • “trash heap of history”
    (Somebody or other (probably 20th century))
  • “Dustbin of history”
    (Leon Trotsky (1917))
  • “That great dust heap called ‘history'”
    (Augustine Birrell (1887))

George Vertue's procession portrait of Elizabeth I of England, with her Knights of the Garter. (ca 1601)Referring to people, places or things who don’t matter any more, it’s an effective figure of speech.

But assuming that all history is an ash heap, a dream world or Erewhon, where folks dress funny, talk funny and aren’t worth remembering?

That doesn’t make sense. Not to me.

So I’ll be sifting through our ash heap: starting with a wrap-up of what I said about Pericles and good times (for some) in Athens three weeks back.

“The Glory that was Greece”

Leo von Klenze's 'The Acropolis at Athens.' (1846)
(From Leo von Klenze, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(The Athenian Acropolis, remembered with rose-colored glasses.)

Three millennia after the Trojan War and a nearly-forgotten apocalypse, two and a half millennia after Pericles ran Athens, a poet reminisced about ancient times:

“…Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome….”
(“To Helen,” Edgar Allen Poe (1845) via Wikipedia)

I’ll enjoy nostalgia. In small doses.

But I think remembering that Pericles and Aristotle, Plato and Thucydides, are people as well as Famous Names in History is prudent.

They’re not ‘just like everyone else,’ of course, since their actions and/or publicists have made them famous. Take Pericles, for example.

“…Brilliant General, Orator, Patron of the Arts….”

I’ll occasionally see introductions to the Age of Pericles that make the Athenian leader seem too good to be true.

“…Athenian culture flourished under the leadership of Pericles (495-429 B.C.), a brilliant general, orator, patron of the arts and politician….”
(Pericles, History.com)

In fairness, the History.com page also explains that a helmet always tops Periclean statuary because he had a big head. Literally.

Or maybe an unusually long head.

Poets of his day nicknamed him “Schinocephalos,” “Squill-head” or “sea onion-head.” That’s what Plutarch said, at any rate.

“…His personal appearance was unimpeachable, except that his head was rather long and out of due proportion. For this reason the images of him, almost all of them, wear helmets, because the artists, as it would seem, were not willing to reproach him with deformity. The comic poets of Attica used to call him ‘Schinocephalus,’ or Squill-head (the squill is sometimes called ‘schinus’)….”
(“The Parallel Lives,” The Life of Pericles, Plutarch (ca. A.D. 100) Loeb Classical Library edition (1916) via The University of Chicago)

I’m guessing that Plutarch’s squill is Drimia maritima, AKA squill, sea squill, sea onion, and maritime squill. The plant’s bulb looks a bit like a pointy onion’s.2 If Pericles’ head looked like that, I can see why he’d encourage ‘with helmet’ portraiture.

And I can certainly see why comic poets would dub him ‘onion-head.’

So, aside from giving poets something to joke about, what did Pericles do for Athens and Athenians?

Periclean Legacy

Singinglemon's map of ancient Athens, ca. 430 B.C..First, what Pericles didn’t do.

He didn’t free Athenian slaves, extend voting rights to women or establish child labor laws.

But he did make a difference. Maybe for the better. And arguably continuing a process started by Cleisthenes.

For example, Pericles sponsored a law that limited citizenship to children whose mother and father were both Athenians.

Up to that point, having an Athenian father was all that mattered.

Men from aristocratic families often married non-Athenian women, so the Periclean proposal threatened the sons of Athenian aristocrats who had married outsiders.3

I’m not sure whether I like that Periclean reform or not.

On the one hand, giving non-aristocrats a break looks like a good idea.

On the other, denying citizenship to folks whose mothers didn’t come from Athens strikes me as unreasonable. At least partly because I’m an American whose ancestors didn’t come on the Mayflower. And weren’t even English.

Either way, my opinion doesn’t matter. Not to Periclean Athens. I live on a continent Pericles never heard of, and he’s been dead for two and a half millennia.

Times have changed. A lot. Human nature, not so much. I’ll get back to that.

And slavery? That’s a bad idea. Period. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2414)

Empire and Nomenclature

'The Athenian Empire at its Height (about 450 B.C.). 'Historical Atlas,' William R. Shepherd (1926)
(From William R. Shepherd’s 1926 ‘Historical Atlas;’ via the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection; U. of Texas, Austin; used w/o permission.)
(The Athenian “Empire,” around 450 BC: where the Delian League used to be.)

What’s big and what isn’t depends on your frame of reference.

For example, the town I call home, Sauk Centre, is huge compared to Funkley, Minnesota.

Funkley is up in northern Minnesota, between Blackduck and Northome: two other places you’ve probably never heard of.

As of the 2010 census, five folks lived in Funkley. About 800 times as many live in Sauk Centre. Like I say, my town is huge. Comparatively speaking.

But Periclean Athens was even bigger.

Between a quarter and a third of a million folks called Athens home, back when Pericles was running the place.4

That’s about the population of Anoka, Minnesota. Anoka County, that is.

A Suburb, Cities and Names

Unless you live in Minnesota, you probably haven’t heard of Anoka: the self-described Halloween Capital of the World.

Anoka County is a suburban county at the edge of what we call the Twin Cities. Or, occasionally, the Metro. About a third of a million folks live there. That’s a lot of people, not quite a hundred times as many as live here in Sauk Centre, my town.

Then there’s Minnesota’s Metro, the Twin Cities: Minneapolis, St. Paul and their suburbs.

Three and two thirds or four million people call the Twin Cities home. The Metro’s population depends on whether I define the Cities as the Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN-WI CSA or Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI MSA.

That’s a big metropolis, for the Upper Midwest, although not in Chicago’s class.

But Minnesota’s Minneapolis-St. Paul isn’t a big city. Not in a world with cities like Tokyo (population 37,400,000), Dehli (pop. 28,514,000) and Shanghai (pop. 25,582,000).

Back when Pericles was running Athens, having a third of a million people in one place was a very big deal. In its heyday, the city was huge.

One place? Make that one area.

Some historians write about Athens and Attica as if they were the same thing.

It’s confusing, but I can’t say that I blame them. Attica is Athens, and vice versa, sort of. Attica is, or was, territory south of the Cithaeron range. Athens was the area’s big city.5

If Attica was a sociopolitical region in America, we might call it GAMA — the Greater Athens Metropolitan Area. I suspect we caught our penchant for acronyms from ancient Rome, and that’s another topic.main004

Towns, Cities and Places

Sauk Centre's Ash Street South, Our Lady of the Angels church in the distance. (May 22, 2021)I called Sauk Centre, where I live, a town. But it’s officially a city.

A bit over 4,000 folks live here, so in Louisiana this would be a town. Officially.

Here in Minnesota, since we’ve got a “city council,” we’re a city. Again, officially.

Seems that Minnesota has four tiers of “cities,” ranked by population. And since fewer than 10,001 folks live in Sauk Centre, we’re one of 835 fourth-class cities.

On the whole, I’d prefer living in a plain old “town” instead of a “fourth-class city.”

But I can’t change whatever events, attitudes and decisions led to Minnesota’s current system. And I sure don’t think our official definitions matter enough to warrant protest. Not as far as I’m concerned, anyway.

I also learned that the U.S. Census —

“…defines a place as a concentration of population; a place may or may not have legally prescribed limits, powers, or functions. This concentration of population must have a name, be locally recognized, and not be part of any other place….”
(“Geographic Areas Reference Manual” (GARM), Chapter 9 — Places, United States Census Bureau (Last Revised: October 8, 2021))

So I live in a “place” that would be a “town” in it was in Louisiana, but is a “city” since it’s in Minnesota. And I think of the place I live in as a “town” because I think of cities as, well, as cities.

Making this matter of names more complicated, Minnesota’s parishes are called counties. Or Louisiana’s counties are called parishes. I live in the Our Lady of the Angels parish, but that’s not the same kind of parish.

Well, actually, it is: etymologically.6 And that’s another topic.

End of an Era

'The Piraeus and the Long Walls of Athens,' 'The story of the greatest nations, from the dawn of history to the twentieth century,' John Steeple Davis. (1900))
(From John Steeple Davis, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(The Long Walls, connecting Athens to Piraeus, the city’s port.)

Recapping, we figure Attica’s population in the fifth century B.C. was somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000.

That’s a little smaller than Anoka County, here in Minnesota.

But back then, Athens was huge. And it was the thriving center of an archê. That’s what Thucydides called the Athenian realm.

Scholars have been translating archê as “empire,” which may or may not be accurate.

At any rate, many Athenians were enjoying good times around 450 B.C.. Thanks to, or in spite of, Periclean leadership.

Then a war started between the Delian League — or Athenian Empire, I’ve seen both names used — and Sparta’s Peloponnesian League.

Pericles moved much of Attica’s population into Athens.

It seemed like a good idea, since it kept them comparatively safe from Sparta’s armies.

Athens was the big Aegean naval power, and its Long Walls secured access to the city’s port, so running short of supplies wasn’t a problem.

Reconstruction of Myrtis, 11 years old when she died during the plague of Athens. Her skeleton was found in the Kerameikos mass grave. Tilemahos Efthimiadis's photo, forensic reconstruction by professor Manolis Papagrigorakis and others, National Archaeological Museum of Athens. (September 25, 2010)But the city’s infrastructure couldn’t handle both residents and suburbanites.

Patient zero for the Plague of Athens was probably in Piraeus, the city’s port.

About one of every four folks in Athens died, including Pericles. And an 11-year-old girl researchers dubbed Metis.

Athens never recovered.

Not politically or economically. The city-state stopped being the Aegean pond’s biggest metaphorical frog.

On the other hand, it weathered the Alexandrian, Parthian, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires; and the 20th century’s global war(s).

And the city of Athens is alive and well and prospering in the 21st century. But it hasn’t been Western civilization’s shining city on a hill for millennia.7

Small wonder that some folks say 429 B.C. was the end of the Athenian Golden Age.

Socrates, Plato and Aristotle: Brilliance in the Afterglow

Schematic diagram of Peter Apian's (Petrus Apianus) cosmology, largely reflecting Aristotelian physics and cosmology. From Peter Apian's 'Cosmographia,' annotated by Gemma Frisius. (1524) Reproduced in Edward Grant's 'Celestial Orbs in the Latin Middle Ages.' (1987)On the other hand, Socrates survived the Peloponnesian War and the Plague of Athens; but not postwar politics.

He was tried and convicted in 399 B.C. of lacking faith in the gods of the state and corrupting Athenian youth.

Then he obligingly drank hemlock and died.

Plato’s achievements include starting the Platonic Academy, arguably my civilization’s first academic institution. Aristotle studied there before opening his Lyceum.8

Maybe their era wasn’t the Athenian Golden Age by some standards.

But that trio — Socrates, Plato and Aristotle — kept adding to my civilization’s store of methods, ideas and the occasional bit of wisdom for a century after Pericles died. That’s an achievement worth remembering.

Ancient Empires and an Apocalypse We Nearly Forgot

'States of the Diadochi, c. 300 B.C.', 'Historical Atlas,' William R. Shepherd (1911)
(From William R. Shepherd, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(Kingdoms in 301 B.C. — and, in the upper left, the Roman Republic.)

Aristotle is also remembered for tutoring Alexander III of Macedon, Philip II’s son.

Philip II had formed an Aegean alliance against the Persian empire. Some historians call it the Corinthian League these days. Or the League of Corinth. Tomayto, Tomahto, and that’s another topic.

Philip II’s alliance seems to be the first time (almost) all Greek city-states were part of a single political entity.

I don’t know why that achievement doesn’t qualify Philip II’s era as the start of a Grecian golden age. Particularly since we call his son Alexander the Great.

Maybe it’s because Alexander’s empire died with him.

And maybe because we realize that another empire had been brewing in southern Etruria.

I gather that at least since Pliny the Elder’s day, there’s been debate over whether the post-Alexander Hellenistic period was good news or bad news.9

Alleged Hellenistic decadence, degeneration, enlightenment and academic attitudes are cans of worms I’ll leave for another day.

Etruscan Civilization’s Uncertain Origins

Aerial view, The Coriglia/Orvieto Excavation Project, Archaeological Institute of America. (Season: May 17, 2020 to June 26, 2020)
(From Archaeological Institute of America, used w/o permission.)

Archaeologists and historians generally agree that Etruscan civilization started just shy of three millennia back: mostly where Tuscany is now.

Etruscans had always been where they were when Phoenicians founded Carthage — According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who lived around Julius Caesar’s time.

In 1942, Italian historian Massimo Pallottino said maybe they were the alleged Sea Peoples. Or a Sea Peoples colony.10

“Sea Peoples?”

The Sea Peoples came from somewhere. Maybe Asia Minor, southern Europe, or someplace in between.

Wherever they came from and whoever they were, they weren’t called “Sea Peoples” until 1855.

That’s when a French Egyptologist inferred their existence from a mural and snippets from Egyptian records. He called them peuples de la mer: “peoples of the sea.”

If he and scholars of the last century and a half are on the right track, the “Sea Peoples” were one or more of up to maybe nine groups. Maybe.

They’ve been identified as folks from the Hittite Empire, a tribe of Israel, pre-Sardinian Sardinians, and an assortment of other groups you probably haven’t heard of.

They may have been a formal confederation. Or maybe their joint effort to invade Egypt was an impromptu affair.11

There’s a great deal we don’t know about them.

Late Bronze Age Collapse: Unburied Corpses, Lost Records

Finn Bjørklid's (?) map showing the Bronze Age collapse.
(From Finn Bjørklid(?), via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.)
(Late Bronze Age Collapse: yes, what’s on the evening news could be worse.)

If the ‘Sea Peoples’ or their pre-invasion neighbors had written records, those documents did not survive the Late Bronze Age Collapse. Or haven’t been found yet.

Events leading to that catastrophe might help explain why they thought invading Egypt was a good idea.

But like I said, whatever documents they had have been lost or destroyed. That’s hardly surprising, under the circumstances.

As far as I’ve been able to learn, we didn’t know that the Late Bronze Age Collapse had happened until after I earned my degree in history.

A half-century later, we’ve got lively discussions going over how fast it happened. As well as when it happened, exactly what happened and what caused it.

What’s more certain is that well upwards of a dozen places made an abrupt transition from thriving cities to fire-gutted ruins inhabited by unburied corpses.

We haven’t experienced anything quite like it since, happily. I think our 20th century near miss inspired films like “Mad Max/Road Warrior” and “On the Beach.”

I also think academia’s getting back to recognizing that the Trojan War really happened. Although I gather that they’re still not convinced that Homer was really real.”12

And now; Etruscans, scholars, and villages on the Etruscan borderland.

Origin Stories, Attitudes and Assumptions

Livy and Pliny the Elder said Etruscans came from a confederation of Alpine tribes.

Herodotus said that a Lydian story involved a famine and a king who ordered half of the population to leave. The evicted Lydians went west, literally but not figuratively, and became the first Etruscans.

Each version has eloquent supporters.

I gather that supporting Herodotus is out of vogue at the moment. Partly because there isn’t recognized archaeological evidence making it the only viable explanation. Etruscan stuff doesn’t look like Lydian stuff.

But archaeologists in the 46th century might conclude that Puritans in New England couldn’t possibly have come from England. Because New England Puritan churches didn’t look like King’s College Chapel in Cambridge.

It doesn’t help that Herodotus and Lydia are both what we think of as “Greek.” Maybe “Hellenistic” would be more accurate.

Rejecting the Lydian account as repeated by Herodotus because it reminds contemporary academics of American jingoism almost makes sense.

I wouldn’t insist that Herodotus has to be right, but I’m willing to remember that he was four centuries closer to Etruscan origins than either Livy or Pliny the Elder.

Whoever the Etruscans were, they grew and prospered.

So did folks living in a few villages on hills near a river at the south edge of Etruscan territory. The villages became Rome, and kept growing.13

History and Human Nature

Detail of 'The Apotheosis of Washington,' United States Capitol rotunda; Constantino Brumidi. (1865)As I see it, learning from history is an option, and a good one. Part of the trick is remembering the right lessons.

And remembering both that we’re living in what will be history, and that we’re often too close to people and events to see the ‘big picture.’

Dr. Benjamin Franklin: “Don’t worry, John, the history books will clean it up.”
John Adams: “Hmm… Well, I’ll never appear in the history books anyway. Only you. Franklin did this, and Franklin did that…. Franklin smote the ground and out sprang George Washington — fully grown and on his horse. Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them, Franklin, Washington and the horse, conducted the entire revolution all by themselves.”
(“1776” (1972) quotes via IMDB.com)

I also think remembering that laws, customs and hairstyles change: but human nature hasn’t.

Still “Very Good,” but Wounded

'Expulsion from the Garden of Eden,' Thomas Cole (1828) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.That’s good news, actually.

“God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
“God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed—the sixth day.”
(Genesis1:27, 31)

So, if we’re “in the image of God” and “very good,” how come we’re not perfect people living perfectly in perfect societies?

It’s because the first of us decided that ‘what I want’ outvotes what God says. Then the man tried blaming his wife: and God. The interview did not end well, and we’re living with a wounded nature. But we are still “very good.” Basically. (Genesis 3:1–20; Catechism, 385–412)

And we’re learning, slowly, that acting as if ‘love God, love your neighbor and everyone’s your neighbor’ makes sense — is a good idea.

I’ve talked about that sort of thing, and history, before. Rather often:

1 Metaphors, famous names and a little history:

2 Plutarch, Pericles and plants — a distinctly non-comprehensive look:

3 Democracy, Athenian style:

4 Funkley and other places:

5 More places:

6 Places and names in America:

7 Athens after Pericles:

8 Famous names, mostly:

9 Alexander and after:

10 Not-entirely-forgotten names:

11 (Almost) remembering an ancient apocalypse:

12 A poet, a war and two movies:

13 Perspectives:

Posted in Golden Ages, Series | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

October 25, 2021: A Blue Day in Sauk Centre

Posted on October 25, 2021 by Brian H. Gill

Looking across Ash Street South in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. Our front yard is green again, after the summer's drought. (October 25, 2021)

Autumn color in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. This isn't our best 'fall colors' year, but I've been enjoying what we do have. (October 25, 2021)

October’s weather isn’t necessarily “bright blue,” here in the Upper Midwest.

But today was a bright blue day. So I spent a little time this afternoon, sitting on the front stoop, enjoying sunshine and what autumn colors we have this year.

And remembering this poem:

“October’s Bright Blue Weather
“O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October’s bright blue weather;
“When loud the bumblebee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And goldenrod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant….”
(Helen Hunt Jackson (published 1893) via AllPoetry.com)

Looking west across Ash Street South, Sauk Centre; in mid-June. (June 14, 2021)This summer’s drought was a bad one. An ‘up’ side to the nearly-rainless weather is that I didn’t see a mosquito until August.

I’ve talked about that — the drought, not the mosquito — and other stuff:

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

HD 63935: Two Sub-Neptunes and Maybe More

Posted on October 23, 2021 by Brian H. Gill

Designations like HD 63935 b and c don’t exactly roll of the tongue.

Although with a little work I might pronounce them “trippingly on the tongue,” as Hamlet put it.

Maybe saying “sixty five ninety three five bee and cee” would do the trick. Then again, maybe not. I thought, briefly, of calling HD 63935, HD 63935 b and HD 63935 c “Sam, Fred and Chuck;” but thought better of it.

At any rate, I’d been catching up on ‘exoplanet’ notes from the last year or so when I read about the HD 63935 planetary system.

HD 63935’s known planets there, sub-Neptunes, should help scientists learn more about how planets form. Or, rather, observing them and analyzing those observations should.

Defining and Detecting Planets

We’ve known about five planets since long before we started keeping written records.

Six, maybe, if you count Uranus.

Seven, including Earth, but we didn’t start thinking of our world as a “planet” until recently. Then there’s Earth’s moon and the sun, and that’s another topic. Topics.

How we define “planet” has shifted, most recently in 2006, when the International Astronomical Union issued a definition that’s still debatable. And debated.

Today’s telescopes let us see the Solar System’s planets, and about two dozen exoplanets: planets orbiting other stars.

The vast majority of exoplanets, however, aren’t directly visible. Not yet.

We know they’re there because they affect the stars they orbit.

Some are massive enough to move their stars toward and away from us as they orbit, or move the star back and forth across the sky.

Others pass between us and their star during each orbit. I’ll be talking about two of these transiting exoplanets.1

HD 63935’s Twin Sub-Neptunes

Scarsdale et al's Figure 4: transits of HD 63935 b and c. (2021)
(From Scarsdale et al., via Phys.org, used w/o permission,)
(“Phase-folded transits of HD 63935 b and c.”
(Phys.org.))

“Astronomers discover twin sub-Neptune exoplanets orbiting nearby star”
Tomasz Nowakowski , Phys.org (October 20, 2021)

“By analyzing the data from the TESS-Keck Survey (TKS), an international team of astronomers reports the detection of two almost identically sized sub-Neptune exoplanets orbiting a nearby star. The newly found alien worlds, designated HD 63935 b and HD 63935 c, are about three times larger than the Earth. The finding is detailed in a paper published October 13 on the arXiv pre-print server.

“NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is conducting a survey of about 200,000 of the brightest stars near the sun with the aim of searching for transiting exoplanets. So far, it has identified over 4,500 candidate exoplanets (TESS Objects of Interest, or TOI), of which 161 have been confirmed so far….”

HD 63935 is about 159 light-years out, in the general direction of Procyon. It’s a tad cooler than our star: 5,534 °K or maybe 5,560 °K, compared to Sol’s 5,772 °K.

The lower number for HD 63935 is from The Extrasolar Planet Encyclopaedia’s page, the arXiv paper’s number is 5,560 °K.

“K” temperatures are degrees Kelvin. The Kelvin temperature scale starts at absolute zero. Comfortable room temperature is 294 °K, eggs fry at 343 °K or thereabouts, and a nicely-burning hearth fire may be around 534 °K.

Getting back to HD 63935, that star is slightly cooler than ours, not quite a tenth as massive and chemically similar. It’s not a ‘Solar twin,’ but it’s close.2

Designations: A Digression

The Winter Triangle: Procyon, Betelgeuse and Sirius. From Akira Fujii; via Hubble Space Telescope, ESA, NASA; used w/o permission.As far as I know, neither HD 63935, HD 63935 b nor HD 63935 c have names yet.

But they’ve got other designations.

I talked about star names and designations last month.3

Basically, now that astronomers are studying far more than the 10,000 or so stars we can see without telescopes, catalog numbers and other designations are more convenient than names.

The planet HD 63935 b, for example, is also TOI 509.01; and the star is TIC 453211454.

The “HD” in their designations stands for Henry Draper Catalogue, which lists spectroscopic classifications for about a quarter-million stars.

HD 63935 is also known as HIP 38374 and TIC 453211454. “HIP” stands for the Hipparcos catalog: data from ESA’s Hipparcos observatory, first published in 1997.

The ESA project’s named after Hipparcus. He was an astronomer, geographer, and mathematician who lived when Mithridates I was putting Parthia on the map. We lost his star catalog sometime during the two millennia that’s elapsed since then.

Finally, TIC stands for Third International Conference, Titanium Carbide, Thermal Imaging Camera and Thames Innovation Centre.

But in this context TIC means TESS Input Catalog.4

Twin Sub-Neptunes: Unlike Anything in the Solar System

Goddard Space Flight Center's illustration of transmission/absorption spectroscopy.
(From NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, used w/o permission.)

The diameters of HD 63935 b and c are about 2.99 and 2.9 times Earth’s. That’s big, but not as big as Neptune’s 3.883 Earth-diameters.

On the other hand, HD 63935 b has only around 10.8 times Earth’s mass, which makes its density 2.2 g/cm3. Give or take.

HD 63935 c is smaller but heavier, with around 11.1 Earth masses. Its density is about 2.5 g/cm3.

Neither is nearly as dense as Earth — 5.514 g/cm3 — but they’re more tightly packed than Neptune’s 1.64 g/cm3.

And they’re much warmer than either Earth (287 °K) or Neptune (72 °K where air pressure is like Earth at sea level).

HD 63935 b’s calculated ‘surface’ temperature is between 884 and 938 °K. HD 63935 b’s is a bit cooler, 663 to 705 °K. By comparison, the Solar System’s Mercury surface temperatures max out at around 700 °K at the equator.

That’s because their sun is nearly as bright as ours, and both their orbits are smaller than Mercury’s. HD 63935 b orbits the star every 9.06 days, while a year for HD 63935 c 21.4 days long. Earth’s 24-hour days, that is.5

Exploring the “Radius Cliff”

Fulton and Petigura's exoplanet radius distribution (2018), illustrated by Edwin S. Kite et al. to show 'radius cliff' at ca. 3 Earth-radii. (2019)Since they’re smaller than the Solar System’s Neptune, the recent paper calls HD 63935 b and c “sub-Neptunes.”

Although the label’s accurate by current standards, neither is particularly like Neptune. Or Earth.

The Solar System’s Uranus and Neptune are almost, but not quite, twin planets: almost exactly four times Earth’s diameter and 3.883 Earth-diameters, respectively.

Oddly enough, we’ve been finding a whole lot of planets less than three Earth-diameters, but not nearly as many in the Neptune-Jupiter range. Not with short-period orbits, at any rate.

Scientists have been calling this discontinuity the “radius cliff.”

One of the best, or least-improbable, explanations is that larger planets have a sort of plateau in their growth curves. If this is the case, then when a planet’s core and atmosphere reaches about three Earth-diameters, pressure at the surface of its magma ocean lets the magma start absorbing hydrogen.

The planet keeps on gathering gas, but won’t get bigger until the magma’s saturated.6

Or maybe there’s another explanation. If so, I figure we’ll discover it as we collect more data: and review what we’ve already learned.

“Space Oddities…” — or — Studying Starlight

NASA/STScI's illustration, showing how absorption spectroscopy works. (1998)
(From NASA/STScI, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission,)

Light from HD 63935 travels some 159 light-years before reaching us, which is almost next door or unimaginably distant, depending on what distance scale is in play.

And that’s yet another topic.

The point is that HD 63935 isn’t a particularly dim star and it’s close enough to for spectroscopic analysis. “Spectroscopic analysis” is a five-dollar phrase that means taking a look at the colors in starlight.

And, since the two sub-Neptunes orbiting HD 63935 pass between their sun and our planetary system, scientists can measure what happens to light passing through their atmospheres. Assuming that they have atmospheres, which seems like a safe bet.

Three of the scientists who published the paper discussed in that Phys.org article made a case for follow-up observations back in January.7

  • “HD 63935’s Space Oddities: Two Atmospheric Targets in Sparse Regions of Mass-Radius Space”
    Nicholas Scarsdale, Joseph M. Akana Murphy, Natalie M. Batalha; American Astronomical Society meeting #237 (January 2021)

“Space oddities” is hardly an original phrase, and far from the erudite appellations bestowed upon many of yesteryear’s documents of natural philosophy.

On the whole, I’ve enjoyed watching scientists unstarching their collars in recent decades, and that’s yet again another topic.

Worth a Closer Look

Nicholas Scarsdale et al.'s chart of radial velocity points for HD 63935. (2021)With two sub-Neptunes, HD 63935 is already a two-for-one research opportunity.

But there’s a good chance there’s at least one more planet in that system.

After Scarsdale et al. sorted out radial velocity measurements attributable to HD 63935 b and c, the remainder looked a lot like a wobble made by a third planet.

Or maybe it’s the star’s surface bouncing, but these scientists figure that’s not likely.

The radial velocity remainders probably aren’t linked to the star’s rotation period, 30 to 35 days, either.

On the other hand, Scarsdale et al. didn’t find reasonably certain evidence of a third planet. Which, if it’s there, doesn’t produce effects that would affect the data they did analyze.8

Bottom line? HD 63935 b and c are high-value targets for scientists, and their planetary system may include more worlds for us to study.

Perspectives and Paying Attention

NGC 4848 and other galaxies, image by Hubble/ESA.

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

We’ve learned a bit about this universe during the two millennia that have passed since those thoughts were recorded.

But as I see it, they’re still true. From God’s viewpoint, a drop of morning dew and our world of planets, stars and galaxies are — all pretty much the same size.

Which, I suppose, could be a scary thought.

Or a reassuring one, since:

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

So, again as I see it, God is large and in charge. And if we pay attention to this wonder-filled creation, we can learn a little more about the Almighty.

“For from the greatness and the beauty of created things their original author, by analogy, is seen.”
(Wisdom 13:5)

And that, I think, is a good idea:

1 Planets past and present:

2 Units of measure and stars:

  • Wikipedia
  • “TKS V. Twin sub-Neptunes Transiting the Nearby G Star HD 63935”
    Nicholas Scarsdale, Joseph M. Akana Murphy, Natalie M. Batalha, Ian J. M. Crossfield, Courtney D. Dressing, Benjamin Fulton, Andrew W. Howard, Dnaiel Huber, Howard Isaacson, Stephen R. Kane, Erik A. Petigura, Paul Robertson, Arpita Roy, Lauren M. Weiss, Corey Beard, Aida Behmard, Ashley Chontos, Jessie L. Christiansen, David R. Ciardi, Zachary R. Claytor, Karen A. Collins, Kevin I. Collins, Fei Dai, Paul A. Dalba, Diana Dragomir, Tara Fetherolf, Akihiko Fukui, Steven Giacalone, Erica J. Gonzales, Michelle L. Hill, Lea A. Hirsch, Eric L. N. Jensen, Molly R. Kosiarek, Jerome P. de Leon, Jack Lubin, Michael B. Lund, Rafael Luque, Andrew W. Mayo, Teo Močnik, Mayuko Mori, Norio Narita, Grzegorz Nowak, Enric Pallé, Markus Rabus, Lee J. Rosenthal, Ryan A. Rubenzahl, Joshua E. Schlieder, Avi Shporer, Keivan G. Stassun, Joe Twicken, Gavin Wang, Daniel A. Yahalomi, Jon Jenkins, David W. Latham, George R. Ricker, S. Seager, Roland Vanderspek, Joshua N. Winn; The Astronomical Journal (Submitted October 13, 2021) via arXiv
  • The Extrasolar Planet Encyclopedia
  • Fireplace Safety
    Adapted from Shawn Shouse, Iowa State University Extension Field Specialist/AG Engineering; Backyards & Beyond; The University of Arizona

3 Some stars have names, many don’t:

4 Names, catalogs and descriptions:

5 Introducing the HD 63935 planetary system; and, for comparison, Mercury:

6 Background: planets and magma oceans:

7 Starlight and science:

8 Looking ahead:

Posted in Exoplanets and Aliens, Science News, Series | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

New on My Blogroll+: mr o shays (Still Learning)

Posted on October 19, 2021 by Brian H. Gill

I’ve added “mr o shays (Still Learning)” to my link list page: Blogroll+ > Bloggers and other writers.

And, while I was at it, reviewed and updated the page’s other links.

Now I really should start writing. Or maybe get a cup of coffee.

Posted in Journal | Tagged , | 2 Comments

A Trilobite With a Hyper-Compound Eye

Posted on October 16, 2021 by Brian H. Gill

It’s barely over two weeks since scientists at the University of Cologne published what they’d learned about a trilobite’s unique eye.

Their research vindicated an amateur paleontologist’s observations, and very likely will raise more questions than it answers.

That’s par for the course.

Answering a few questions and raising many more, I mean.

So is discovering something new. New to us, that is. This trilobite’s ‘hyper-compound’ eye last saw the light of day — or dark of the ocean floor — 390,000,000 years ago.

I had fun writing this, and hope you enjoy reading it. Who knew trilobite eyes could be so entrancing?

Welcome to the Devonian Period

Map of Earth in the Early Devonian, 390,000,000 years ago, from Christopher R. Scotese's PALEOMAP Project at scotese.com
(From Christopher R. Scotese, used w/o permission.)
(Earth, 390,000,000 years ago: early or middle Devonian, depending on who’s talking)

Dragons flight's 500 million years of climate change, via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission. (2004)Most of Earth’s land was in the southern hemisphere 390,000,000 years ago.

The climate was nice, if you like it warm.

We’re pretty sure that water near tropical beaches was around 86 °F, 30 °C, and didn’t get much cooler near the poles.

Wattieza forests were home to insects that flew and tetrapods that did well to galumph from one bit of water to the next.

Wattieza weren’t ferns, exactly, but they were much like today’s ferns and horsetails.

Don’t bother trying to remember all those names. There won’t, as I’ve said before, be a test on this.

We started calling this era the Devonian about two centuries back, after Roderick Murchison, Adam Sedgwick, Henry De la Beche and George Bellas Greenough didn’t agree about how old a bunch of rocks were.

What matters, sort of, is that Murchison and Sedgwick’s name for a particular slice of Earth’s history has been used ever since: Devonian. They named the era after Devon, British real estate between Cornwall and Somerset.1 Again, don’t bother with those names.

And never mind the plants that aren’t ferns and galumphing tetrapods.

This week I’ll be mostly talking trilobites. Mostly.

Good Times for Trilobites

Major trilobite clades summarized. Figure 6, 'The Evolution of Trilobite Body Patterning,' Nigel C. Hughes, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences (2007)
(From Nigel C. Hughes, used w/o permission.)
(Trilobite diversity: the trilobite family tree, from the Cambrian to the Permian.)

The Ordovican, Silurian and Devonian eras were good times for trilobites. Judging from how diverse the critters were, at any rate.

Agnostida, Asaphida and Ptychopariida trilobites had gone the way of Nineveh and Tyr by the early(ish) Devonian, 390,000,000 years ago. Although those two cities wouldn’t exist until after the most recent glacial melt, and I’m drifting off-topic.

Agnostida may or may not nave been trilobites. There’s ongoing discussion of that, partly because they look funny.

That’s how I see it, at any rate. They look like they’ve got two front ends. Most agnostid species didn’t have eyes.

Which reminds me. Trilobite eyes, in species with eyes, had calcite lenses.2

I’m not sure whether the main question is why trilobite eyes had calcite lenses, or why only Ophiomastix wendtii have calcite lenses today. O. w. is a sort of brittle star.

The Trilobite With a Hyper-Eye

Phacops geesops. The trilobite's eyes have 200 single 'outside' lenses each. Behind each 'outside' lens is a six-facet compound eye.
(From University of Cologne, used w/o permission.)
(Phacops geesops: Devonian trilobite with unique eyes.)

“Primordial ‘hyper-eye’ discovered”
PD Dr. Brigitte Schoenemann, Press release, University of Cologne (September 30, 2021)

“Trilobites of the suborder Phacopina had a unique eye in which about 200 large lenses in each eye spanned at least six individual facets, each of which in turn formed its own small compound eye / 40-year-old X-ray photographs by amateur paleontologist Wilhelm Stürmer show fossilized eye nerves.

“An international research team has found an eye system in trilobites of the suborder Phacopina from the Devonian (390 million years B.P.) that is unique in the animal kingdom: each of the about 200 lenses of a hyper-facet eye spans a group of six normal compound-eye-facets, forming a compound eye itself. In addition to the hyper-facetted eyes, the researchers, led by zoologist Dr. Brigitte Schoenemann at the University of Cologne’s Institute for Didactics of Biology, identified a structure that they believe to be a local neural network which directly processed the information from this special eye, and an optic nerve that carried information from the eye to the brain. The article, ‘A 390 million-year-old hyper-compound eye in Devonian phacopid trilobites,’ has been published in Scientific Reports….”

This trilobite’s eyes are “hyper” because a compound eye lay behind each outer lens. The inner compound eyes had at least six facets, in one or two rings. These eyes were exactly like nothing else we’ve discovered.

I think Wilhelm Stürmer’s trilobite was a Geesops sparsinodosus, but haven’t confirmed it. That’s one of five species in the Geesops genus.

Like all trilobites, the critters in the Geesops genus had clacite lenses in their eyes. The ones that had eyes, at any rate.3

Look at That!

From 'A 390 million-year-old hyper-compound eye in Devonian phacopid trilobites,' B. Schoenemann et al., figure 4. Structure of the visual unit of phacopid trilobites. Scientific Reports (September 30, 2021)
(From Schoenemann et al., via Scientific Reports, used w/o permission.)
(Trilobite eyes.)

You’re looking at:

  • (o) Schematic drawing of Ampelisca’s eye
  • (p) Schematic drawing of Geesops schlotheimi’s eye.

There’s more at “A 390 million-year-old hyper-compound eye in Devonian phacopid trilobites,” Science Reports. (September 30, 2021)

More than you may need, or want, to know.

Now, back to Wilhelm Stürmer and X-rays.

X-Rays and an Amateur Paleontologist

From 'A 390 million-year-old hyper-compound eye in Devonian phacopid trilobites,' B. Schoenemann et al., figure 3. Structure of the hyper-compound eye of phacopid trilobites. Scientific Reports (September 30, 2021)
(From Schoenemann et al., via Scientific Reports, used w/o permission.)
(More trilobite eyes.)

Stürmer’s day job was running the Siemens X-ray department. Off the clock, he was a paleontologist; doing field work and making x-rays of fossils.

“…To facilitate his palaeontological research, he bought a minibus, installed an X-ray machine within it, and between 1960 and 1986, travelled from quarry to quarry in the Hunsrück, part of the Central German uplands, and visited numerous collectors to investigate the faunas of dark-coloured slates, originally intended to be roofing tiles…”
(“A 390 million-year-old hyper-compound eye in Devonian phacopid trilobites,” B. Schoenemann et al., Scientific Reports (September 30, 2021))

At any rate, Stürmer had spotted and marked fossilized soft tissue in and near trilobite eyes. He said the filaments were probably optic nerves. Or maybe light guides, optical fibers.

But this was the 1970s.

Many professional paleontologists assumed that soft tissue doesn’t fossilize. Just teeth and bones and hard stuff like that. And they assumed that visual systems of animals don’t have optical fibers.

At the time, given the data they had, those were reasonable assumptions.

And, as it turns out, they were wrong.

Then, in the 1980s, scientists found deep-sea crab eyes with optical fibers. Recently, by my standards, scientists have been finding fossilized soft tissues. Sometimes with traces of the original organic matter.

Fossilized soft tissue is very rare, but it does exist.

Anyway, one of Stürmer’s heirs gave zoologist Dr. Brigitte Schoenemann his marked-up x-rays. She found that he’d marked structures that almost certainly include optic nerves.4

A Little History: Geissler Tubes, Lenard Windows and the Royal Society

From 'A 390 million-year-old hyper-compound eye in Devonian phacopid trilobites,' B. Schoenemann et al., figure 3. Structure of the hyper-compound eye of phacopid trilobites; detail highlighting Stürmer's red arrow. Scientific Reports (September 30, 2021)X-rays aren’t new.

No, that’s not quite what I meant.

X-rays have been part of this universe from the start.

An X-ray is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelengths that’s shorter than ultraviolet and longer than a gamma ray. We’ve known about X-rays since about 1895.

That’s when Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen noticed, measured and defined that particular sort of radiation. He had been experimenting with cathode rays from a tube designed by Philipp Lenard.

Lenard had been studying cathode rays, high-speed electrons from a the cathode in a vacuum tube, since 1888.

Scientists had been experimenting with cathode rays since 1857, when Heinrich Geissler invented the Geissler tube.

Assorted researchers tweaked the Geissler tube design between 1869 and 1875. We call one version the Crookes tube, maybe because William Crookes invented it. He’s English.

At any rate, Philipp Lenard invented Lenard Windows, thin metal surfaces that kept air out of cathode ray tubes but let radiation out. That let scientists measure cathode rays outside the not-quite-vacuum tubes.

Lenard also denounced Einstein’s work as “Jewish physics.” I’ll get back to that, briefly.

Röntgen analyzed, defined — and so “discovered” — X-rays in 1895 or thereabouts.

But Geissler and company had noticed them the 1850s.

Then again, William Morgan and Joseph Priestley arguably did the same in the 1780s. The Royal Society got a paper describing Morgan’s research in 1785.5

Now, about Lenard, Einstein and attitudes.

Seeking Truth and Other Options

From NASA/ESA: Galaxy UGC 9391.As I said before, Philipp Lenard denounced Einstein’s work as “Jewish physics.”

Back in 1905, when Lenard got his Nobel Prize and Einstein published his theory of special relativity, physicists had legitimate reasons for testing Einstein’s new ideas.

Testing, not denouncing.

By the 1930s, when Lenard published his “Deutsche Physik,” physicists had decided that general relativity made sense. Although it wasn’t until around the 1960s that they saw it as more than a sort of footnote to Newtonian physics.

Meanwhile, Lenard had asserted that relativity was a “Jewish fraud” and became Chief of Aryan Physics. I am not making that up.

I’m a Christian. And I’ve been talking about scientific stuff.

So, how come I’m not supporting “creation science”6 and condemning paleontology as a Satanic snare?

Basically, it’s because I’m a Catholic and think truth is important.

Even if I hadn’t decided to become a Catholic, I’d value truth. If I had my head on straight, that is. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2467)

And because I’m a Catholic, I must respect folks who have other faiths; recognizing that, like pretty much everyone else, they’re seeking truth. (Catechism, 839-843)

Then there’s the whole ‘faith and reason, science and religion, don’t mix’ viewpoint.

Again, I’m a Catholic: so I must recognize that although faith isn’t reason, faith and reason get a long fine, or should. And that seeking truth is a good idea. (Catechism, 31-35, 159; “Fides et Ratio;” “Gaudium et Spes,” 36)

Another point, also an important one. Being a Catholic means I must think that being anti-Semitic is a bad idea. Or being anti-anyone, for that matter.

On the other hand, it also means I must be against actions and beliefs that aren’t right. Like genocide, and that’s another topic. (Catechism, 2313)

Next Step: Educated Guesses

Dwergenpaartje's photo of trilobite Phacops rana's schizochroal eye. (October 2011) via Wikimedia Commons, used w/o permission.Figuring out why Phacopina trilobites had ‘hyper-eyes’ would be easier if we could study living Phacopina trilobites.

The last of those critters died about 360,000,000 years ago, give or take a bit; and the last trilobite of any sort that we know of died some 352,000,000 years back.

So studying hyper-eyed trilobites in their natural habitat isn’t an option. Or in laboratories, for that matter.

But scientists can make educated guesses about why they had such complex eyes.

“…The trilobite’s ‘hyper-eye’ may have been an evolutionary adaptation to life in low light conditions, Schoenemann believes. With its highly complex visual apparatus, it may have have been much more sensitive to light than a normal trilobite eye. ‘It is also possible that the individual components of the eye performed different functions, enabling, for example, contrast enhancement or the perception of different colours,’ the biologist said. So far, such an eye has only been found in the trilobite suborder Phacopinae: ‘This is unique in the animal kingdom,’ she concluded. In the course of evolution, this eye system was not continued, since the trilobites of the suborder Phacopinae died out at the end of the Devonian period 360 million years ago.”
(“Primordial ‘hyper-eye’ discovered,” PD Dr. Brigitte Schoenemann, Press release, University of Cologne (September 30, 2021))

The trick will be figuring out how to test those educated guesses. The good news there is that we’ve been learning a great deal about how vision and visual processing works.7

At least, I see that as good news; and I talked about truth and making sense earlier.

We may even learn why these ‘hyper-eyes’ are unique to that one suborder of trilobites.

Finally, the usual link list of stuff I’ve said before:

1 Plants, animals and names:

2 Trilobites, mostly:

3 More trilobites and crystal eyes:

4 Vindicating Stürmer:

5 A radiographical ramble:

6 Science and attitudes:

7 Miscellany:

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