Posts

Showing posts with the label earth

Interview With an 'X'

The 'X' is definitely one of the most important letters in the alphabet. Not only that, but it is the most valuable variable in all math equations and scientific chases for the unknown, and in the entire history of human riddles, and I mean not always related to math, it always marks the most interesting spot. Sometimes the one with the treasure. It was no coincidence that the old Romans used it for the most important number of them all. 10. The very base of our widely used numeric system. But we are not here to talk about mathematics or treasure hunting per se. It will be more about age. Of ten. My son Viktor is turning this magic number on this year's Earth Day (April 22nd), and I decided, in addition to our previous topic and post Interview With an Expert, to fire another set of questions for him to answer. This time it's more general and within various realms of life and... well, stuff...



So let's start with favorites. I guess they say a lot about personality. And they don't require a polygraph to confirm the truthfulness of the given answers. For some reason, I believe everybody, or most of us, will answer these honestly. Probably because of their benevolence (if this is even a word). Even we adults will not curve the truth with these ones. And yet, answers to these questions probably reveal a lot about a person. In the modern world, it is comparable to the browser history; if you want to learn about your friend's likes and dislikes, just have a glimpse or two of his or her bookmarks and history.

So, let's start the interview in that fashion. Here it goes:

 What are your favorite subjects in school?
Physical education, sports, music, and math—because they are so much fun, and I like numbers and solving puzzles.

 What sport do you like the most, and why?
Basketball: It is the best sport and great for body practice. It makes you stronger and faster.

 What are your favorite regular and comic books? And why?
The best book I've read so far was '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' because it was so mysterious and adventurous. The greatest comic book is definitely 'Il Grande Blek'—he 'and all his friends are very interesting and super funny.

 What are your favorite board and video games? Why these?
Battleship and Connect 4—they are interesting and tense. The best video game is definitely Minecraft, because I can build things and make my own worlds.

What about your favorite movie and TV show? How so?
Avengers for the movies—great fight and smart play. The Flash for TV shows—because they are funny and mysterious. Also Discovery Channel's Mythbusters—they do amazing myth testing, especially what they find on YouTube.

 What's your favorite food?
Rolls, pie, and pastry. Also Milka chocolate and marshmallows.

 What about favorite color(s)?
Something between green and black.

Well, that was easy and nice to warm up the interviewer and interviewee. No big surprise there. To be honest, if I exclude color and food, it could be the same answers I would offer. Then again, back then, when I was around 10 years old, maybe even the food and colors would be the same. Perhaps only the movie would be different, but I have to say he nailed the book. Ok, let's move to more interesting questions and see what happens next. But not to the boring ones yet. Serious questions should be at the bottom of the pit for now... or never asked. So, let's continue with just a couple of those from the realm of movies and games. And fantasy.

What superpower would you like to possess? Don't say to be rich.
Jedi Force mastering and telekinesis.

 What do you think about the greatest mystery of the universe, women?
Well, I think that... wait, what?

 Sorry, it was a line from Back to the Future... But seriously, what do you think is the greatest mystery of the universe?
How did it all start in the first place?

 What part of the world would you like to visit some day?
America and Germany. I would like to visit their museums.

 You like museums? What kind?
Natural museums and museums about fighting machines of all kinds. Old and new.

 Would you rather live at the North Pole or in the desert?
Definitely the desert. (I like warm weather better).

 If you could be any animal, which one would you be and why?
Fox (they are fast and smart) or snake (because they are careful and cautious).

Okidoki, now we are getting warmer. With the exception of the snake, I would easily predict all the answers. However, even though the snake looks odd, when I think about it, there's wisdom in there. Ever since the book of Genesis, we have been taking snakes for granted and always in the realm of evil, and children's thinking is definitely not weighted with stereotypes and dogma. Museums look nice too. Ok, let's go into a more personal area now and see how the 'X' will describe himself by answering these generic questions (I found them online and changed them a little to better fit the age).

 What is one of your greatest talents? What do you do best?
I remember things for a long time.

 What makes you nervous, and what makes you happy?
I am nervous when I don't know what to say or how to answer questions and happy when I do things properly.

 What is your happiest memory so far? 
When I bought the Darth Vader Pig plushy from the Angry Birds franchise when I was 4... I couldn't believe it when I saw it on the shelf in the store when we were on vacation in Greece.

I have to admit, as it seemed, these questions gave Viktor a hard time. He did think a lot before answering, and I had to help him a little with offering answers in the form of A, B, C... It looks like with him and probably lots of children his age, happiness is not the same as with us adults. It's more about moments and great times they enjoy the most. I guess they live in present time more than we do. Ok, that indeed was something interesting, so what is next? Oh yes, if those questions up to now were describing a young boy indetail, the following ones will go even further. Like they say... To the bone... The time is now for hard questions.

 What age do you look forward to—and why?
22

 Really? Can you be more precise than that?
Because I was born on the 22nd...

Ok, I give up. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Game designer and software developer in general.

 What do you think you will be doing 10 years from now? 
Programming. And making more successful YouTube videos.

 How do you think Earth will look when you grow up?
I am not sure. Not so different than today. Maybe there will be lots of robots?

 What is God? 
There are many gods—the sea god, heaven god, and hell god (I like the sea god the most)—and I saw in Greece lots of sculptures and monuments. People say they lived long ago, and they created animals.

 Who created people?
Monkeys. Over time, they rose up, lost their fur and hair, and became humans.

Ok, thanks for all the answers. Do you have anything to ask me?
Not really... Maybe on your birthday.

 For the end, what advice would you give to your parents?
To play with me more often.

 So there you go. I know I could have been more thorough with this interview and created more serious questions for the last section, but I thought that this post should stay in the entertaining thread on the blog and represent just one short and funny conversation between a father and son and a small generation gap in between. For the very end and to get back to the post opening, Viktor's birthday and Earth Day (unofficial Earth's birthday) are celebrated on the same day every year, and for this special occasion, I want to give them both the same message:

 

Gravis Gravity by Gravitons

Don't take this title too seriously. It's wrong on multiple levels. Grammatically and scientifically. Nonetheless, it fits perfectly for this post. As for grammar amiss, I used the Latin root word 'Gravis', which means heavy, and it is actually the perfect adjective for gravity as we perceive it here on Earth. As for the scientific issue, the rest of the title might be all wrong. If we glimpse into the features of the three main natural forces of the universe, it is obvious that they work in more or less the same fashion—they use carriers or elementary particles to mediate the force through the force field. The photon is one of them, and it carries electromagnetism, while strong and weak forces in the nucleus, respectively, are mediated by gluons and W/Z bosons, and they are all confirmed in experiments. Gravitons are supposed to be the same thing as gravitational force, but they are never found and confirmed either directly or consequently. Ever since Einstein, we have had second thoughts about whether or not gravity is acting as a 'normal' force at all or if it is something entirely different.


Think about this: you are located in the spacecraft far in space outside of the big, heavy planets and stars and truly experience microgravity. You start the engine, and your fancy spaceboat starts accelerating with about 10 m/s, and each second increases the speed with 10 m/s more. Actually, the right number is 9.806 m/s per second, which is the measurable 1 g force of the planet Earth. In our thought experiment, a spacecraft that works in a fashion that always uses constant acceleration and half the journey from, i.e., Earth to Mars, pushes with 1g, and the other half turns around and uses backthrust with the same 1 g, could not only provide a normal human environment inside the craft, but it would also be very fast and reach the red planet in just three days*. If you can't imagine how this would be working in real space travel, I will only state the name of one fictional spaceship from the sci-fi literature. Its name is Rocinante**, and it is one great piece of interplanetary Corvette from the amazing franchise "The Expanse".

Well, science fiction aside, the point here is that gravity and acceleration seem to be one thing. The obvious conclusion in this chain of thoughts is that Earth and Rocinante are both capable of creating gravity of one steady g. At least it looks the same from the observer's point of view. However, we know for sure that Earth is round and rotates, and no matter where you are standing, it will pull you toward its center without accelerating anything. It's just enormously big and does something to the very fabric of spacetime itself, which is actually pulling you by invoking some mechanism we don't understand yet. Perhaps by using gravitons—our friendly force carriers from the title? Actually, both particle and string theories predict gravitons as real things. In the former case, it is a massless boson with spin-2, while in one of the string theories, it is sort of a closed string with a low-energy vibrational state. I will not go into further scientific details in both theories, but it is evident that a massless particle or low-energy string is very hard to observe, as it either never or extremely rarely interacts with other particles on subatomic levels. Let's compare it with neutrinos for a moment—an elementary particle with no charge and the tiniest mass we can detect. Their large, super-awesome underground detectors, like the Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Detector in Japan, detect only a handful of neutrino interactions with regular matter over a long period of time. For example, when light from the Big Kaboom from supernova SN1987A reached the Earth, Kamiokande detected the sum of only 19 neutrinos from this super explosion. And to use Carl Sagan terminology, there were billions and billions of neutrinos only from that event. Detection of a single graviton, even if we consider some theories that suggest gravitons with non-zero mass, would be extremely hard.


Ever since Einstein's general theory of relativity, scientists have been struggling to find the best description for gravity. If we are looking at it as a fourth natural fundamental force, compared to the other three, it is the weakest by far; for example, gravity is about 36 orders of magnitude weaker than electromagnetic force, and it probably has a trivial influence on subatomic particles. However, it is cumulative and always attractive and therefore plays the major role in the macroscopic realm, making it possible for planets to orbit their stars, and it is behind the recently experimentally confirmed gravitational waves by the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) experiment. Einstein himself first noticed the difference in behavior of four fundamental forces and spoke of gravity as not a 'normal' force per se but more as a fictitious (or apparent) force that is observed only as a consequence of the curvature of spacetime caused by the presence of large masses or energy throughout the universe. A very nice example of one apparent force is the Coriolis force, or Coriolis effect. It is observed as a force, but in reality it is just an apparent deflection of an object that is moving in the spherical system, such as Earth, that rotates. Deflection is caused by the fact that the rotating speed of the Earth is faster for a moving object located near the Equator than for one near the pole. In simple words, the system you are moving in is also in its own motion that must be included when you want to calculate the actual path of yours; otherwise, you will never reach your intended target. And in the universe, everything is in motion. Gravity could be just that—an apparent force that is caused by the interaction of large moving masses with the fabric of the universe itself that might be in its own motion as well. Or perhaps gravity could be the outcome of the interactions of mass with the potential energy of that fabric itself. In science fiction and also in the quantum science realm, this is known as zero-point energy, quantum vacuum zero-point energy, or simply vacuum energy. If I understand this correctly, by applying Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (we can only know the position or velocity of a moving particle, but never both), every quantum system to sustain this principle must have minimum non-zero energy. In the case of a vacuum, this is the minimum energy of all fields in the universe, including the necessary Higgs field needed to provide the existence of every mass everywhere in the cosmos in the first place.

In the conclusion of the scientific part of this post, I am hoping that whether the future will confirm gravitons and 'pronounce' gravity as a real fundamental force or we finally find how big masses influence the tiny quantum world of the universe's fundamental ingredients, in the end we will have our answers, which might bring more challenges and questions for future generations. Maybe even ways of mastering it by applying some ingeniously clever engineering of future gravity-related devices and tools. Of course, how exactly the world would be changed with full understanding of gravity and gravity-based appliances; perhaps the best vision is in the science fiction of the amazing futuristic thriller "Influx", written by Daniel Suarez.


I am always eagerly acquiring novels with gravity premises in the background if the plot teaser is interesting enough, so I bought 'Influx' a while ago and stored it in my Kindle's queue for future reading. I was a little busy with my work and reading a couple of other novels, but now I have this regret of why I didn't read it sooner. It was really amazing! Just exactly as comprehensive and entertaining as I was hoping for when I saw the book cover in the first place. The science behind the gravity mirror or deflector invention in the book is perfect and just in the realm of sci-fi plausibility I am always looking for. It was explained perfectly well in both the science behind the invention and also in the workflow of all engineering vehicles, armor, satellites, and other appliances that were built on it. If you add to the main 'gravity' twist all 'regular' sci-fi inventions such as AIs, robots, cold fusion, quantum computers, futuristic weapons, immortality, and other non-sci-fi thriller stuff, please believe me that my additional regret after reading this book was that it had only 500+ pages. I wouldn't mind if Daniel added more stories to it and created a sequel. I read somewhere that FOX is interested in the movie, and hopefully this will see the daylight in the end. It perfectly fits for a motion picture, not just because of the science and story but also because of the potential artistic and visual aspect of gravitational falls in all directions that was extraordinary.

Image refs:
https://www.artstation.com/artist/deningart
http://www.thethoughtarchitects.com/2014/04/14/detecting-neutrinos-neil-degrasse-tyson/
http://www.thedaemon.com/

In-text refs:
* http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/30/flying-to-mars-in-three-days/
** http://expanse.wikia.com/wiki/Rocinante

Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/01/08/national/science-health/japans-super-k
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/coriolis_effect.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2mec3vgeaI
 

Solar System Weirdness

Do you know how big our solar system is? I can't be sure, of course, but there's a strong possibility that common knowledge about our planetary neighborhood ends with enumerating most of the planets—one dwarf planet and a couple of named moons, asteroids, and comets. Amazingly, the truth is far, far beyond that, and believe it or not, if we include the Oort cloud, the solar system, with us representing its only living residents, is approximately 3 light-years in diameter. This is, more or less, equal to 3e+13 kilometers, or 30,000,000,000,000 km. The distance is about 100 million times bigger than the distance to the Moon. It is tremendously huge and just about one and a half light-years shorter than the distance from our sun to the nearest star!

The layout of the solar system*

So next time when you, through your polluted sky, look up and see the Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and occasionally some comet tail or shooting star, remember that what you see is just a fraction of all the weirdness of everything that is gravitationally bonded to the Sun and to each other. So let's see what we don't see with our eyes and check out some weird places, some of them not so far away from our own Earth. And just to be clear, the words 'weird' and 'weirdness' I added in the title and throughout the post are here more for theatrical reasons. Surely, the fact is that what's weird to me and you is only natural behavior and property of the physics of the solar system. We are just trying to understand it.

In such a way, let's start with the first and probably the oldest mystery of the orbiting laws around the Sun. Back then, in the 19th century, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier tried to study Mercury's orbital motion around the Sun in order to post an orbital model based on Isaac Newton's laws of motion. It happened almost a century before Einstein's theory of relativity, which is a current, state-of-the-art mathematical model of gravity and orbital physics, but back then, Verrier's model simply failed to match the observations. In short, Mercury refused to spot itself on predicted spots on the skies, and in every orbit, its perihelion (or orbital spot where the planet is closest to the sun) moved away from predicted places by a small amount. Unfortunately, instead of doubting the equations, like many times before and after in the history, Verrier posted a theory of a new planet or a large orbital body 'inside' Mercury's orbit that might be responsible for Mercury's misbehavior. He even proposed the name 'Vulcan' because of its potentially very hot orbit so near the Sun. This triggered a series of searches for the Vulcan, and until Einstein came up with the theory of relativity (and its predictions of heavily banded space and time continuum near the heavy objects) that perfectly explained all the observations of one system so close to the massive Sun observed from the distance, many professional and amateur astronomers claimed that they found the Vulcan and spotted its transit over the main star. Perhaps the final dots to the mystery were posted by the SOHO and STEREO solar missions, and neither of them found anything planetoid-ish inside Mercury's orbit. Recent calculations go even further and rule out any asteroid revolving around the Sun inside Mercury's orbit that is bigger than 6 km in diameter.

Lagrange points *2

The next weirdness of the gravitational three-dimensional geometry of the solar system (and all the other star systems out there) is called Lagrange points. Physics was observed and defined by the great Italian mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange in the 18th century. He identified five points in the orbital system of two massive bodies from the perspective of a third small mass. In short, if we consider, for example, the Sun and Earth, there are three points on the connecting line between the star and the planet (L1, L2, and L3) and two more, L4 and L5, positioned on the top of equilateral triangles where two other vertices are occupied by the Sun and Earth. Now, what is special about these places is that small objects positioned in those points would be able to maintain a stable position relative to the large masses. If you check the image to the left, a small rock positioned at point L1 would be able to revolve around the sun with the same orbital period as the Earth. The same goes with the other four points. However, the first three points are pretty unstable, and objects positioned there would tend to fall out of orbit due to gravitational potential energy shown in the image as well with red and blue arrows. L4 and L5, on the other hand, are completely different stories and very stable, and while a spaceship parked in the first three points would need to fire engines constantly in order to stay put, the same spaceship in L4 and L5 would be able to shut the engines down and park it there for eternity. Think of it like the 'egg vs. equinox' myth: even though you can balance the egg on short or narrow ends (and not just on the equinox), this position is pretty unstable, and even a little vibration would knock the egg out of balance. Similarly, L4/5 points would be like putting the egg in the eggcup. Scientifically speaking, within the Earth-Sun system, L1 is very interesting as the point of monitoring the Sun without any orbital interruptions (SOHO is located there), L2 is a great place for orbital telescopes (Planck and the James Webb Space Telescope), and L3 is pretty useless as it is always hidden by the Sun and therefore the origin of all science fiction stories with a counter-Earth located in that very point, sharing the orbit with us while we would always be unable to see it. Of course, there is no planet on the other side of the sun; otherwise, we would detect its gravitational influence. However, if some aliens exist on the mission of monitoring humankind, they would pretty much choose this place to hide their mothership.

Of course, the solar system is crowded with plenty of large orbiting objects, and Lagrange points, i.e., the Sun-Earth system, are not really points per se, and due to gravitational influences of other planets, they vary in position depending on the current positions of other planets in their orbits. The same goes for the Lagrangian system of Earth-Moon with their L4/5 points, for example, suffering additional complications due to the influence of the Sun. But still, these points are ideal for some futuristic space cities orbiting the Earth, and some 40 years ago, Carolyn Meinel and Keith Henson founded 'The L5 Society' around the idea of Gerard K. O'Neill to build a colony that would be positioned in a tiny orbit around the L5 point in the Earth-Moon system. In addition, there are also plans to use L1 and L2 points in the system to build lunar elevators with appropriate counterweights and 'cables' with the use of materials that already exist in production today since they don't require a lot of strength in the process.

Jupiter and inner-solar system asteroids *3

Lastly, the absolute winner in the weirdness competition of the solar system related to Lagrange points is Jupiter and its L4 and L5 points, or in this case, regions. Due to the nature and stability of the orbits within, Jupiter is using them as a, well, sort of, garbage collector. Believe it or not, these two regions are home to more than 6,000 asteroids. They all travel around the sun with the same speed as their father, Jupiter. By astronomical convention, these asteroids are named after the Trojan War, and therefore the entire regions are called 'Jupiter Trojans'. Surely, the three largest asteroids in there are conveniently named Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hector, and the region around L4 is called the 'Greek camp', while all the others in L5 belong to the 'Trojan camp'. Other planets also collect junk, dust, and small and big asteroids in their L4/5 points, and even Earth owns one (discovered so far). It is a rock 300 meters in diameter orbiting the Sun along with Earth in L4. There are also space rocks detected in Saturn's moons and their L4/5 points, as well as the dust detected in the moons. It will be interesting what we will find in the (far) future when we start exploring the solar system for real. Lagrange points will surely be on the top of all lists to explore, study, and use. I am more than positive that lots of L4 and L5 points throughout the solar system will be used for various space lighthouses, radio beacons, and a wide variety of communication devices. Besides the large number of asteroids caught by Lagrange, there is one more group of 1000+ asteroids gravitationally bonded with Jupiter. Their name is Hildian asteroids, and they are in so-called orbital resonance with the solar system's biggest planet. In this case, it means that Hilda's aphelion point (the farthest distance from the elliptical center) is in resonance with the planet, and on every third orbit it is positioned directly opposite from Jupiter. The story with inner system asteroids doesn't end here, and if we travel a little bit inside the Jupiter orbit from Trojans and Hildas, soon enough we would stumble into a famous asteroid belt with more than a million rocks larger than 1 km in diameter. At the beginning of the 19th century, among certain groups of astronomers, including Heinrich Olbers, the so-called Bode's law stated that each planet in any star system would be approximately twice as far from the star as the one before. Remarkably, it fits nicely in the solar system with the exception of Neptune and the planet between Mars and Jupiter. Bode initiated a search for the planet to confirm the theory, and when, during the years 1801 and 1802, Ceres and Pallas were found in more or less the same orbit, Olbers suggested that they might be remnants of a large planet named Phaeton. The theory flourished in later years, especially after the discovery of other belts's large and small asteroids. Today we know more about asteroids in the belt and their composition and mass (which is around 4% of the mass of the Moon), and the current theory is that Phaeton never existed and that it was more likely that it was never formed due to heavy attraction from nearby giants. Nevertheless, both Vulcan and Phaeton continued to live in the sci-fi realm and also a couple of mythologies.

If we continue our travel toward the outer edges of the system and pass four gas giants, around 30 AU starts another belt full of heavy objects. Actually, astronomers identified two separate subsystems, one named 'Kuiper belt' and the other 'Scattered disc'. Just like the main 'inner' asteroid belt, they contain many rocky objects and dwarf planets, with Pluto as the most famous one, but also objects composed of methane, ammonia, and water ice. The scattered disk can be described as an elongated subset of the Kuiper Belt containing objects with highly eccentric orbits, like short-period comets that orbit the Sun in less than 200 years. The best-known comet from this bucket is no doubt Halley's Comet. The Kuiper Belt was discovered only recently, in the late 20th century, and its discovery owes a big thank you to conspiracy theorists and science fiction writers. Actually, after the last gas giant, Neptune, is found by following the lead of the deviations in Uranus's orbit that were caused by Neptune, the same lead is pursued further, following similar perturbations in Neptune's orbit. This directly led to the discovery of Pluto, but as soon as it was found that its mass wasn't enough, the search continued further, and many were sure that there was another big planet further away, conveniently named Planet X. In the fiction, its name was 'Nibiru', with connections to 'ancient astronauts' theorists who gave it an orbit of 3600 years with a pure doomsday scenario, as once in a while it crosses with Earth's orbit and creates a living hell and pretty much the end of life as we know it. Of course, this was just another nonsense and pseudoscience, but eventually, and most thankfully to astronomer and unofficial father of the 'Kuiper Belt', Mike Brown, who discovered lots of small trans-Neptunian objects beyond Pluto, we today know a great deal about the Kuiper Belt, and in this regard, I will just quote Mike Brown: 'Eris (the biggest TNO along with Pluto so far), and Pluto and all of the rest of them have only a trivial impact on our solar system. You could get rid of any of them (I have a vote which ones, too), and nothing much would change.' Recently, with more precise measurements of Neptune's mass, a new calculation of its orbit accounted for all observed perturbations and deviations. However, this didn't mean Planet X doesn't exist. The new theory just pushed it more beyond toward the edge of the solar system, and it earned a new name. This time it is called Tyche, and its location might be somewhere in the Oort cloud. But before we encounter this final system's weirdness, let's first see what happens just after the Kuiper Belt in the very region where a couple of man-made robots are currently still flying!

Solar system Heliosphere *4

Gravity is, of course, the main property of any star system, but from the 'weird' point of view, our path brings us to the region of the solar system just outside the most eccentric orbit from the swarm of all objects within the scattered disk. And it has nothing to do with rocky objects, tidal forces, or orbital physics. Its name is heliosphere, and it's the first boundary of our system we can positively identify. This is the real edge of the system, where ultimately solar winds finish their travel. Solar wind represents ionized particles emitted by the solar corona, and they start traveling at around four times the speed of sound in the interstellar medium. Geometrically speaking, the heliosphere is actually a bubble around the sun and all the planets and other objects, and it starts from the point where solar winds, due to interaction with solar system particles, slow down to the subsonic speed and end at the point when they fully stop, or more precisely, reach pressure balance with the interstellar medium. What is interesting about the heliosphere bubble is that it is not really spherically shaped. The sun is traveling around the center of the Milky Way, and this bubble follows, forming a comet-like shape with a tail called a heliotail, composed of particles that escaped the heliosphere, slowly evaporating because of charge exchange with interstellar media and particles from other stars. It was also speculated that throughout solar system travel, the front edge might create a turbulence edge, a bow shock, similarly to the meteors or satellites that enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn on top. The bow shock is still not confirmed, and perhaps it doesn't exist, as the sun might not travel with enough speed to form it. But it was observed in the motion of a star system called Mira, a red giant in the constellation Cetus, by GALEX, an orbiting ultraviolet space telescope, in the previous decade. Thanks to both Voyagers, we today know more about the composition and pressure of interstellar gases. Voyager 1 already 'crossed' the heliosphere edge, while Voyager 2 is still inside in the so-called "Heliosheath" region.

However, if solar wind stops at the outer edge of the heliosphere, the sun's gravity goes on and influences much further. The proposed boundary where the sun's gravity weakens and loses its dominance is at about 1.5 light-years from the sun. This edge is also the edge of the theoretical Oort cloud, a spherical disk filled with remnants of the original protoplanetary disc from around the Sun at the time of solar system creation, about 4.6 billion years ago. Due to the large distance, it is suggested that it might contain objects captured from other stars from the time of the 'birth cluster' or the beginning of the solar system and other systems while they were in the process of departing from each other. The Oort cloud, even though not scientifically confirmed today, could start with its inner circle at about 2000 AU or so. One day, when Voyager 1 reaches the region (in about 300 years), it will need another 30000 years to pass it through entirely. Unfortunately, V'Ger will not be operational by then (unless something happens to its power source, like in the first Star Trek movie from 1979). The Oort cloud is so big that its outer circle is not only influenced by the sun's gravity alone but also by the gravity of nearby stars as well as all the influences of the tidal forces of the entire Milky Way.

Imagined view of the Oort cloud *5

In a nutshell, the Oort cloud is one giant swarm of icy objects and the potential source of all long-period comets. It is also suggested that many, if not all, short-period comets originated also from the Oort cloud and were captured by gas giants, especially Jupiter. The story of long-period comets is the one responsible for the new planet X location, or Tyche, I mentioned before. Some 15 years ago, astrophysicists John Matese, Patrick Whitman, and Daniel Whitmire proposed a theory that long-period comets, instead of coming from Oort clouds in random orbits caused by gravitational perturbations originating in galaxy tidal forces, might be fully clustered and notably inclined to orbital planes of planets. As the solution to this clustering or grouping of long-period comets, they proposed the existence of one giant planet inside the Oort cloud that is either similar to Jupiter, only 3-4 times bigger, or even a brown dwarf, a failed star that would count our solar system as a sort of binary star system, which is the most common system in the galaxy. However, this theory, even though the most plausible of all encountered, to add more big planets into our solar system, lacks enough data to spot clusters of long-period comets, as their orbital periods are in the realm of thousands of years. Additionally, within the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer space telescope mission and its all-sky infrared survey data, no such dwarf or big planet was found. Even more, WISE ruled out the possibility of a Saturn-sized object at 10,000 AU and a Jupiter-sized or larger object out to 26,000 AU. If it still exists, Tyche might be even further away, which also might mean that it could also harbor large moons of its own. Another bold theory, but more likely, is that it doesn't exist at all, and we just need to learn more about Oort cloud complex physics to understand it fully.

I will be careful while concluding anything substantial out of this post. The fact is that I am not a real scientist or astronomer and definitely not a conspiracy theorist or pseudo-science admirer. To be on the safe side, I can say this: posting new theories in astronomy and cosmology from the surface of Earth is way easier than confirming them. We are talking about a vast region of space, and while astronomical instruments, along with science itself, are more sophisticated and better every year, I have no doubts that the real breakthrough in this realm will come only when we eventually rise up and approach closer 'and see' for ourselves. I also have doubts that this will not happen any time soon, especially not in my or your life span.

Until then, metaphorically speaking, we will continue peeking out of the window and doing math from a distance. And continue to dream about the wonders and weirdness of the heavens, waiting for us to come, see, and finally understand.

Image credits:
* Credit: Charles Carter/Keck Institute for Space Studies
   https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1400/interstellar-crossing-the-cosmic-void/
   http://www.universetoday.com/32522/oort-cloud
*2 http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/observatory_l2.html
*3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_trojan
*4 http://sci.esa.int/ulysses/42898-the-heliosphere/
*5 http://www.sciencemag.org/mysterious-oort-cloud-objects

Refs:
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/new-planets
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/astronomers-skeptical-over-planet-x-claims/
http://www.universetoday.com/89901/pluto-or-eris-which-is-bigger/
http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/mike-brown-planetx-pluto.htm
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/36092/why-are-l4-and-l5-lagrangian-points-stable
http://www.astrosociety.org/edu/publications/tnl/62/equinox2.html
http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/L5history.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L5_Society
https://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-s-ibex-provides-first-view-of-the-solar-system-s-tail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Brown
 

The Sixth Great Dying

Just like a single ant who's lost in the large expanse of Brazilian Casino Beach (Praia do Cassino, 250 km in length, considered to be the largest beach on Earth) and feels as small as possible in the surrounding space, we humans are experiencing a similar sensation when it comes to space and especially time. But, contrary to ants, we have the ultimate tool, called science, that is allowing us to see beyond the horizon. If we could place ourselves in an ant's shoes, we would find clues and evidence all around us, and, metaphorically speaking, no matter the large quantities of sand grains, we would know that we were on the beach.


And with time, when it comes to the history of life, all the clues lie in fossil records of coral reefs. The main study, performed by J.E.N. Veron in his publication "A Reef in Time", identified five periods in Earth's history with major extinction of corals that built reefs. In all five periods, fossil records of the reefs show that it took millions of years for reef systems to recover fully, and these five periods in time are now called "reef gaps". In simple words, five major events attacked life on Earth in the previous 500 million years, and corals successfully recorded them all. We now recognize these time periods as "The Five Mass Extinction Events" that successfully wiped out 99.9% of all species that ever evolved and lived on Earth. That includes all marine life, plants, and animal species crawling on the surface. We and everything that moves and considers itself alive today are just descendants of those 0.01% that survived five great cataclysms. Here's a short glimpse of all five events and their cruel aftermath.

1. 430+ million years ago, the first great mass extinction event took place at the end of the Ordovician, with 60% of both terrestrial and marine life being exterminated.

2. 360+ million years ago in the Late Devonian period, the second armageddon was probably the sum of several extinctions over a short period rather than just one massive one. 70 percent of marine species died, but due to the long-lasting nature of the multiple events, terrestrial plants and animals were largely unaffected.

3. The third extinction happened 250+ million years ago, and it was the most devastating one so far. It is nicknamed "The Great Dying", as up to 96% of all species went extinct. Reefs didn't reappear for about 10 million years, and everything that exists today is a remnant of those 4% who survived it.

4. The end The Triassic mass extinction, which happened 200+ million years ago, was the Pangea splitting event due to a large amount of volcanic eruptions and lava floods. Around 80% of all land quadrupeds also went extinct in the process of forming the Atlantic Ocean.

5. The end of the Cretaceous mass extinction, 65 million years ago, is the most famous dinosaur killer event. Virtually no large land animals survived. 16 percent of marine families, 47 percent of marine genera, and 18 percent of land vertebrate families, including the dinosaurs, died.

In addition to reef records, a couple of other studies help and give us a clearer picture of what really happened and how exactly all those armageddons came to take place at all. The major one is the astronomical study of Earth's complex motion over time. The theory is known as Milankovitch Cycles I wrote about before in the post "Ice Age vs. Global Warming". In short, it summarized several planetary motions that lead to periodical dramatic changes of the climate. The main period is identified as a 100,000-year cycle that forces our planet to go into glacial periods, or what we are familiar with as "The Ice Ages". As it seems, reef gaps don't correspond to this cycle at all. They don't even match the recognized 400,000-year cycle we today know as carbon dioxide variations in oceans, but the first thing we notice in the below chart is the period of more or less 100 million years between two extinctions. Does there really exist some kind of cycle, or was it just a cosmic coincidence? We don't know, but it seems that planetary cycles are not enough to trigger such a big event. I am guessing that several conditions should be met in order to make it happen. In addition to the regular cycle, the smoking gun could also be a massive supervolcanic event or an extraterrestrial collision with a large comet or mountain-sized rock from space.


Recently, and what triggers me to write this post, I read a couple of articles that are claiming we are dangerously close to or even living in the sixth extinction event that will have the power to get rid of us entirely. I am not really convinced at this point. Of course, there's the fact that many species have already vanished due to human activities (like some bird species due to deforestation or the Japanese sea lion that was harvested to the last one by fishermen). The energy needed to sustain all life on Earth is definitely limited, but nobody knows exactly where the red line is. According to Dr. Hans Rosling and his research, nature has already started to reduce the human population, and its peak is supposed to be within next decades from now, considering observed fertility rates so far. After that, the human population might start degrading in numbers and be more or less regulated by nature. The same goes with other species that could be following natural equilibrium as well. However, these are just speculations and scientific guesses, and it remains to be proven in the near future. On the other hand, industrialization and pollution are two completely different issues. Something we need to take more seriously. They are ultimately dangerous.

Perhaps centuries ago, just like the ant from the beginning of the story, humans were also small in numbers, but today we have grown enormously and become, considerably and astronomically speaking, the most dangerous player for our own home. We saw that the smoking gun in a couple of previous mass extinctions was large and massive volcano eruptions and/or solar system collisions, but in the potential upcoming sixth event, as it seems, we would not need any inner or extraterrestrial excuses. CO₂ and other greenhouse gases we keep producing and letting out in the air could be enough. Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations that I checked two years ago are slightly bigger today, and the curve has been going up ever since measurement started. In May 2015 it was 403.70 ppmv (parts per million volume), and it was 150+ ppmv higher than normal. Sixty years ago the number was 320 ppmv.


Global warming, which is a direct consequence of the risen gases in the atmosphere, is the least of our worries. A further problem with CO₂ is that all the water in planetary oceans is acting as one giant CO₂ eater. It was calculated that ppmv of greenhouse gases should not be over 240±5 ppmv in order for normal glacial-interglacial cycles to function. The substantial increase in CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere, over a short amount of time, that we are facing right now is dramatically reducing the pH of the oceans, and it is happening right now. Even if we stop emitting CO₂ completely, the process might continue to the point of fatal acidification effects in the face of dramatically reduced oxygen in water.

And we will have dead corals again. All over the place. Life will try to adapt, but whether or not it will be successful, we will definitely bring ourselves a worldwide catastrophe, if not another and this time mortal event with the "civilization killer" nickname written all over it.

Refs:
https://www.co2.earth/co2-ice-core-data
https://hiddencause.wordpress.com/the-fate-of-corals/
 

Ice Age vs Global Warming

Do you know what one significant difference is between Uranus and all the other planets in the solar system? Unlike the other seven planets, which, more or less, rotate in a "normal" up-down position (or down-up in the case of Venus), Uranus is quite abnormal. Its north-south pole rotational axis lies almost in the ecliptic because it is tilted by 97.8 degrees and rotates in an almost vertical direction toward the orbiting plane. In simple words, Uranus is one giant rolling ball where, if you are located on its pole, you would be experiencing only one day and one night during its 84-year-long orbit, while if you are settled near the equator, thanks to the ultra-fast rotation time (for a giant planet) of 17 hours, you would be experiencing fast switching between day and night, and during both solstices, the Sun would always be on the horizon. Thanks to this strange position of Uranus' axis (probably due to some cosmic collision that happened in the early solar system), the weather and climate on Uranus are always dramatic in the form of huge apocalyptic storms one after another.

Uranus—a hypothetical view from the nearest moon

Of course, we don't have to go that far outside the Sun's habitable zone to prove that the position of the rotational axis can cause dramatic climate changes on the planet's surface. Let's look in our own front yard and see how a couple of main astronomical properties influence the climate on Earth. Is it possible that even a slight change in, for example, Earth's orbit can cause some dramatic climate changes over the years? I am sure this question was exactly what was itching Milutin Milankovitch's mind almost a century ago when he first read James Croll's bold idea of the effects of variations of the Earth's orbit on climate cycles. Croll's theory was generally rejected by the scientific mainstream at the time, but this didn't stop Milankovitch from expanding his idea and eventually creating a mathematical model capable of calculating the time frames of all climate changes that happened in the past half a million years and further. Today this theory is well known as Milankovitch Cycles or Insolation Theory, with approximately 100,000 years of cyclicity between ice ages.

Unfortunately, Milankovitch died some 20 years before his model was proven in 1976, when one geological study confirmed consistency of the calculated data with the examined deep-sea sediment cores. Past records of temperature measurement provided by the Foresight Institute recovered from a Greenland ice core also show a drop in temperature for the past 50,000 years similar to the Milankovitch graph shown below. The last curve in the graph represents stages of glaciation, or, in simple words, turning the Earth into a giant ice ball in the past million years. The peaks (hot and cold) are called interglacial and glacial periods. Right now we are living in the fourth interglacial period in the past 400,000 years, and soon, astronomically speaking, we are going to start heading back toward another ice age. Exactly when it is going to happen is hard to predict, but before speculating about future time frames, let's first try to understand the first three curves.


The basics under the theory are so-called insolation calculations based on orbital cycles (cycled amount of sunlight hitting the Earth). Milankovitch used Ludwig Pilgrim's orbital calculations to make a detailed model of insolation periods initially for the previous 130,000 years (later expanded to 650,000 years). Three orbital variations are used in this complex math. The first one is changes in Earth's orbit around the sun (eccentricity), the second is the tilt of Earth's axis (obliquity), and the third represents the wobble of Earth's axis (precession).

The Eccentricity Cycle (Elliptical Cycle)
Due to other planets' gravitational influences, Earth's orbit has an approximate 100,000-year cycle of slight changes. It goes from a nearly circular orbit toward a mildly elliptical one. During the "elliptical" period, Earth is receiving less solar radiation compared to the "circular" part.

The Obliquity Cycle (Axial Tilt)
We saw in the beginning how Uranus' unusual axial tilt can cause dramatic climate. With the exception of Mercury and Venus with their almost vertical no-tilt position of rotational axis (if we disregard Venus's almost 180° tilt positioning the planet upside down), all other planets are tilted around 25 degrees. This means that a planet's hemispheres can be tilted toward or against the Sun, giving the planet seasons with different amounts of sunshine during one orbit cycle. The lower angle means that sun rays are penetrating the atmosphere better, warming the surface more compared to the planet's other hemisphere, where the angle is higher. Now if we add the fact that the axis angle is changing over time, and in Earth's case this goes from 22.1° to 24.5° and back again over a period of 41,000 years, it is obvious that when this axial tilt changes over time by as little as 1 degree, it can cause serious effects to the global insolation mentioned above.

The Precession Cycle (Wobble)
The last, but not the least, motion in this equation is Earth's wobbling. Not only is that axis changing its angle over time, but it also, like some spin-top toy, wobbles. This "feature" is positioning Earth's axis today almost directly toward Polaris, commonly known as the "North Star", and in half a period of time it will be pointing directly to Vega. This is caused by the planet not being a perfect round ball and also by the close vicinity of the Sun and the Moon with their strong gravitational forces. This cycle is the shortest, and it occurs every 26,000 years.


Doctor Who in one of the episodes said that he was capable of feeling all these motions as they happen, but hopefully and thankfully, in the real world, we humans are too small in both size and time frame of our individual existence; otherwise, I am not sure what the exact consequence would be if we could really sense planetary motions. Sci-fi aside, all these three motion cycles can cause changes in the quantity of sunlight hitting the Earth's surface, and insolation theory in a nutshell is basically one mathematical model capable of calculating solar forcing (yellow line in the above graph) for any chosen latitude at any point in time, considering the orbital position of the Earth and the condition of the planetary axis. Of course, even though this theory has overwhelming support in mainstream science, it's still far from being perfect. There are problems and concerns posted in previous years and decades, and the main one is that it doesn't include the inclination of the earth's orbit to the ecliptic, which is another 100,000-year cycle, more or less. Also, in observed glacial data, even though the 100ky cycle is recognized, the temperature records do not correlate perfectly with insolation theory. There are more suggestions, like including the longest eccentricity cycle or 400,000 years of carbon dioxide variations in oceans and even including consequences of "artificial" production of greenhouse gases since the early 19th century and the birth of the industrial revolution. In other words, the theory has plenty of room for improvement, and its perfection is expected.

One thing is for sure: this research is one of the most complex sciences out there. There are simply too many inputs and variables. One historical data point I read in Wikipedia was that Milankovitch needed 100+ days to manually calculate cycles for the past 650,000 years and only for three latitudes.

Leonardo DiCaprio's Before the flood

Ok, now that we know how Earth "works" in relation to its own climate, I think it is the perfect time in this post to ask the obvious question(s). As we know for sure that we have been living for some time now in the peak of an interglacial period, is it possible to use the theory and glacial data to predict the next ice age? More importantly, are humans capable enough to postpone the next ice age with emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases? In the Nature Geoscience paper named "Determining the natural length of the current interglacial" they concluded that, according to all we know about insolation and CO2 forcing, the next ice age is very close, and it should start happening within the next 1500 years. The only condition is for atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to be lower than 240±5 ppmv.

Guess what? On this very day it is 400 ppmv (May, 2013).

Well, now is the time for an even more obvious question. Did we cross the point of no return? Did we manage to cheat natural astronomical cycles and actually head toward global warming instead of an ice age? Or the oceans will prevail one more time and over the next millenniums will manage to absorb a record amount of carbon dioxide in the previous million years and introduce the next ice age with little delay this time? Again, some facts are pointing toward two cruel possible scenarios. If the next ice age eventually comes, it will ultimately pose a significant threat to mankind in the form of a lack of energy, food, and enough landmasses to sustain a large human population, not to mention all other species. On the other hand, if CO₂ levels uncontrollably continue to rise, the resulting global warming is equally or even more dangerous. Melted ice will raise ocean levels and sink large coastal cities all over the world. About 10% of people live in low-elevation coastal zones. Just imagine the migration of 600 million people in the potential scenario of global warming.

The Expanse—Flood blockage in futuristic NYC

This is the lottery we cannot win. It seems that time is running out, and within the next decade, we need to find a solution for ultimate control of greenhouse gases. Additionally, with all potential hazards on the way, it seems that we can't allow nature to take us in some dramatic ice age or global warming.

It's a simple matter of pure survival.

No pressure.

Original post date: June 2013, Updates: November 2016, December 2017

Image ref:
https://www.beforetheflood.com/
https://sites.google.com/a/isd47.org/rogersesci2015third/home/20-the-weirdest-tilt
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3230854/

Story refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436992/

More references:
http://www.universetoday.com/19305/seasons-on-uranus/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16439807
http://co2now.org/
http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/milankovitch-cycles
http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/IceAgeTheories.html
http://www.eoearth.org/view/article/154612/
http://frank-davis.livejournal.com/39586.html
 

Earthlings

A couple of months ago, in the middle of December last year, just before "Mayan doomsday" on the 21st, my favorite text editor asked me to approve its regular update. I clicked the link to see what's in the new package, and it immediately redirected me to the page describing new features and fixes. My fellow software developer of great Notepad++, Don Ho*, conveniently named the update "New release (v6.2.3)—End of the World Edition". It brought a series of chuckles to my face that simultaneously morphed into a big smile when I read the description below the title. Referring to the Mayan prophecy, he wrote exactly this: "Even though I don't believe this bullshit, I'm not against resetting our shitty world". Well, I don't know what exactly he meant with the word "reset", but certainly there are days when I can completely agree with him and describe our world exactly the same way.

Viktor and his 6th Earth Day

Anyway, today is another edition of "Earth Day", and at least today we should try and put away all the pessimism (or realism, if you will) and remember those other days capable of filling our lives with at least a small amount of happiness and try to find all the optimistic thoughts we can pack into a message for the future world that will have no need of rebooting itself every now and again. Those who follow my blog probably know that my son was born on Earth Day, so I have another reason to celebrate today. He is turning 6 years old, and recently his childhood has been successfully extended with his first year of school, lots of new friends, and his first new obligations. I can see he is exiting with all the changes, and I truly envy him. Childhood is something special. Every day is bringing something new, and the empty bucket in his head is permanently filling slowly and inevitably. Also, a child's mind is pure and not burdened with adult stuff. I can't remember exactly in which episode, but I think Yoda once said, "Truly wonderful the mind of a child is", when he was trying to explain how children perceive reality very differently and sometimes much better than adults. We simply tend to complicate the world around us without any possible need.

Just to prove my point, let me add a small glimpse ofone of our annual things we do. My wife is a schoolteacher, and with other teachers, every year she is taking her class to the nature resorts, usually mountains, for one week. Viktor and I hook along every year and spend wonderful time with hundreds of other children. Believe me or not, these weeks recharge my batteries better than any vacations at the seaside or any holiday days off. During these weeks, the adults are severely outnumbered, and you can feel it. The air is always full of joy, optimism, happiness, and pure enlightenment. This week is one of those weeks. I took days off and drove six hours to this distant mountain in western Serbia to join the class, and the feeling is again there. Even at this very moment while I am writing this sitting alone in our hotel room, children are loudly singing in the discotheque situated a floor above, and I don't mind at all. Just the opposite. Silence would be disturbing.

Neil deGrasse Tyson**

Sometimes I truly wonder what goes wrong with people when they grow up. Why do they change that much over time? I don't know. Is it in our genes, written somewhere, how to spoil all the magic happening in the first decade or two of our lives, or is the society we live in the one to blame? I don't think anybody has a valid answer, so I will just quote my favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, who once said, "Children do not read horoscopes. Children are perfectly happy counting through the number 13. Children aren't afraid to walk under ladders. They see a black cat cross their path, and they say, 'Look! Kitty, kitty,' and want to pet it, not run in the other direction. Children are not the problem here. You say you’re worried about children? I’m not worried about children; I’m worried about 'grown-ups'. Kids are born curious. They are always exploring. We spend the first year of their life teaching them to walk and talk, and the rest of their life telling them to shut up and sit down." Keeping all those optimistic words like this one in mind and also all those pessimistic tales like the one from the beginning of this post, I decided to use suitable wallpaper I found online and put it as the background of the montaged image honoring this year's Earth Day and, of course, Viktor's 6th birthday. The image represents two very distant parts of humanity, or, metaphorically speaking, the dark and Jedi parts of the world as we know it. Of course, in the middle is one of Viktor's most cheerful recent photos with a clear message representing the innocent childhood of all Earthlings out there.

This year Earth Day 2013 is themed as "The Face of Climate Change". I am sure our planet, looking at her as a living organism, has her own cycles and climate changes that are sometimes simply unavoidable events, but humans over the years have grown up to the point of being a big player, fully capable of selfishly contributing and producing climate changes of their own. Following the motto where one picture is worth a thousand words, please see the official video:


"Climate change has many faces. A man in the Maldives worried about relocating his family as sea levels rise, a farmer in Kansas struggling to make ends meet as prolonged drought ravages the crops, a fisherman on the Niger River whose nets often come up empty, a child in New Jersey who lost her home to a super-storm, a woman in Bangladesh who can’t get fresh water due to more frequent flooding and cyclones… And they’re not only human faces. They’re the polar bear in the melting arctic, the tiger in India’s threatened mangrove forests, the right whale in plankton-poor parts of the warming North Atlantic, the orangutan in Indonesian forests segmented by more frequent bushfires and droughts"

I've already posted about this topic, and if you are eager to learn more about Earth Day and Biodiversity, please follow the blue links. The problem is not only complex, but also, even though awareness is there, the solution seems to be as far as the distance from here to the horizon itself.

Divčibare, Crni Vrh, 1098m

Are we too late to act and already stepped over the edge? I don't know, but like today when I am in the company of one hundred and thirty children visiting the highest peak of the mountain 'Maljen' near to the small ski settlement called 'Divčibare' and looking at the world with children's eyes, I have little faith.

*Don Ho
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/contributors/author.html

**Neil deGrasse Tyson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDFgLS3sdpU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_deGrasse_Tyson

Earth Day 2013: The Face of Climate Change
http://www.earthday.org/2013/about.html

Divčibare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divcibare
 

Earth Day

I didn't really plan to write about biodiversity in my last post a couple of days ago, but it conveniently happened just one week before official Earth Day, established by the United Nations back in the 70s. I was planning to write a post about April 22 from the moment I started blogging, but now I feel that I said almost everything about our planet related to species populating it in previous posts. However, here is my chance to expand the topic with more thoughts and reference more quotes and articles. I think it is important and appropriate. Out there in a vast ocean of space, many more planets surely exist, even though still waiting for us to develop more advanced technology to detect them, and among them, probably a vast number are uninhabited and lonely. All of them have their own story to tell, but what differentiates all of them from those filled with life is truly comparable to an abandoned house vs. a kindergarten full of children. It really is; the Earth wouldn't be very exciting without all the species it hosted. Because of us, the Earth is not just a house - we made it home. And by us I mean all species within, and like any home, we have to take good care of it.

Viktor 2010/11/12

But before Earth Day references, I'd like to share some personal touches regarding the date and what it means to me. Back in 2007, my wife was pregnant with our son Viktor, and on April 22, she went to the maternity hospital for a regular checkup, the last one before the actual birth. It was a Sunday afternoon, the hospital was pretty empty, and the reason we went on that particular day was the doctor following my wife's pregnancy was on duty that weekend. I was not aware of Earth Day, really; who would blame me? I was pretty nervous about the upcoming birth, and I suggested induced birth to my wife since it was Sunday and her doctor was there to do the labor herself since she was at the end of her pregnancy period. She was a little scared because of her first childbirth, but later the doctor suggested the same thing, so we decided to go for it. A couple of hours later, Viktor was born and brought a new, bright dimension to our lives. It was days and probably months after when I realized that it all happened on Earth Day, and somehow I felt extremely good about it. In a way, indirectly we chose his birthday, and it couldn't be a better date.

One day, when he gets older and understands the meaning of the day, I will order a birthday cake for him in the shape of an Earth globe. Until then, this year he will get two cakes: a "Spider-Man" cake specially ordered for his friends in kindergarten and an "Angry Birds-shaped" cake his grandmother promised to make.


Ok now, let's get back from the diversion to the Earth Day itself. It started as an anti-war protest back in the 60s, but later in the year of 1970, it capitalized on the emerging consciousness, channeling the energy of the anti-war protest movement and putting environmental concerns front and center. The leading role was pioneered by John McConnell and Gaylord Nelson. Here is the quote from the "Earth Day: The History of A Movement" article within the Earth Day Network movement:

"The idea came to Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Inspired by the student anti-war movement, he realized that if he could infuse that energy with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution, it would force environmental protection onto the national political agenda. Senator Nelson announced the idea for a “national teach-in on the environment” to the national media; persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman, to serve as his co-chair; and recruited Denis Hayes as national coordinator. Hayes built a national staff of 85 to promote events across the land. As a result, on the 22nd of April, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values." - The History of Earth Day


I was wondering which video would represent Earth Day the best, and finally I chose two, both probably not created for Earth Day itself, but surely the most memorable and actual today. The first one is no doubt one of those music songs that stay forever. You can say about Michael Jackson whatever you want, but because of this song and accompanying video, he will remain one of my favorite artists.

The second video is the Earth Hour event. Earth Hour is a worldwide event organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and held on the last Saturday of March annually, encouraging households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights for one hour to raise awareness about the need to take action on climate change. Like Viktor, it was born in 2007, and this year is the 5th time it took place. This year, like 2007, the Earth Day main event will also be on Sunday with the slogan "Mobilize the Earth". Following are the 2012 official video and introducing appeal from the official website.


"On April 22, more than one billion people around the globe will participate in Earth Day 2012 and help Mobilize the Earth™. People of all nationalities and backgrounds will voice their appreciation for the planet and demand its protection. Together we will stand united for a sustainable future and call upon individuals, organizations, and governments to do their part. Attend a local Earth Day event and join one of our Earth Day campaigns as we collect A Billion Acts of Green® and elevate the importance of environmental issues around the world." - http://www.earthday.org/2012

Please read more about Earth Day:
http://www.earthday.org/programs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Day
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McConnell_(peace_activist)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaylord_Nelson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Hour
http://www.earthhour.org/