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 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 it's 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 it's 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 posted SOHO and STEREO solar missions, and neither of them found anything planetoid-ish inside Mercury 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) are 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, 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 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 in point L1 would be able to revolve 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 on the image as well with red and blue arrows. L4 and L5, on the other hand, are completely different stories, 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 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 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 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 it's gravitational influence. However, if some aliens exist on the mission of monitoring humankind, they would pretty much choose this place to hide their mother ship.

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. Same goes for the Lagrangian system of Earth-Moon with their L4/5 points, for example, suffering additional complications due to 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 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, and the absolute winner in the weirdness competition of the solar system related to Lagrange points is Jupiter and it's 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 the home for 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-meter-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 moon's. 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, was very popular so-called Bode's law, stating that each planet in any star system would be approximately twice as far from 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 belt'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 sub-systems, 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 from methane, ammonia, and water ice. 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. Kuiper Belt was discovered only recently, in the late 20th century, and its discovery needs to thank big time to conspiracy theorists and scifi writers. Actually, after the last gas giant Neptune is found by following the lead of the deviations in Uranus 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 pseudo-science, but eventually, and most thankfully to astronomer and unofficial father of 'Kuiper Belt', Mike Brown, who discovered lots of small trans-Neptunian objects beyond Pluto, we today know a great deal about 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, 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 Solar system and it earned new name. This time it is called Tyche and it's location might be somewhere in Oort cloud. But before we encounter this final system's weirdness, let's first see what happens just after Kuiper belt in the very region where 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. It's 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 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 is observed in the motion of a star system called Mira, 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. Oort cloud, even 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 would need another 30000 years to pass it through entirely. Unfortunately, V'Ger will not be operational by then (unless something happens to it's power source, like in the first Star Trek movie from 1979). The Oort cloud is so big that it's 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 by 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 them 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 originated in galaxy tidal forces, might be fully clustered and notably inclined to orbital panes 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 are the most common systems in the galaxy. However, this theory, even though the most plausible of them 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 the distance. And continue to dream about 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

What's Wrong with Society?

It's simple, really. Nothing is wrong with it. Society, like anything else created by our social behavior, has been following human evolution ever since we started living together within small and functionally organized communities. In the beginning there was a simple need for this—it was impossible for just one man to hunt down one, for example, mammoth or to defend a family from the herd of prehistoric saber-tooth tigers, and the only solution was to get together and organize a little for the mutual benefit. Not to mention the everlasting need for prolonging the species, which also required, sort of, well, socializing with a member of the opposite gender.

Mammoth hunt and prehistoric society*

We can only wish that things were as simple as they were millennia ago. If we disregard the fact that socializing in order to save the species didn't change much from the times where humans shared the habitat with mammoths, all other aspects of one human society, due to the thousands of years of human evolution, changed a lot. We multiplied to enormous numbers, spread to the farthest corner of the Earth, used many different languages, started worshiping the divine and prominent members among us, created a money-based system of rewards, kept original differences between us and created new ones, built villages, cities, and countries to live inside, and ultimately developed a society as it is today with all it's flaws and bright sides.

The question is "Did we do it wrong?".

Could we do it better, or was this the best we could do? Did we make wrong foundations in the first place, and what we have now is just a consequence of our ancestor's decisions and their poor vision of humanity as it is today? Or whatever they did, we would eventually evolve into this by it's nature?

Let's not buzz our brains with "what if" questions too much. We can't change the past and explore different paths in human social evolution. Instead, what I want to write a little in this post is just to "examine" some of the foundations we live in or use on a daily basis and take them for granted as they were always there. But before I just want to state something obvious—in this little mind experiment I am not trying to change something that needed thousands of years to emerge. That would be mission impossible. For example, we can try to advocate that living in big cities or dividing ourselves with borders and countries is not wise for many reasons, but in reality, efficient "canceling" of this way of life over night is not possible. If we use the political metaphor, that would be similar to the revolution of some kind in order to change, for instance, an already established political system. We know from our history that all the revolutions didn't end without violent conflicts with lots of casualties and spilled blood. The less "bloody" disappointment, this time in the realm of information technologies, felt the mighty Google a couple of years ago when they tried to speed up the evolution of e-mail and tried to replace it with "Google Wave", an ambitious project with the power to bury email service forever with its sophisticated layers and new technology. I remember they advertised "The Wave" service as "of how the E-Mail would look like if it were invented yesterday instead of twenty years ago". Like in the political arena, in a way, Wave was trying to revolutionize an already recognized system and expectedly failed big time.

Money, Money, Money**

No, social evolution is a very slow process, and just like evolution of species, it is based on many tries and errors. Very few revolutionary methods succeeded in affecting it on a large scale, and I can't recall anything in the past that did it without turbulence.

But that doesn't stop us from using our imagination and trying to see one hypothetical future if we change some ground foundations a little. Just for fun.

So, for a very first ground property of our lives, let's think how to improve the system behind the "money". Probably rudimentary trade in the form of simple barter was born with very first societies long ago, but over time, when the amount of goods and services has arisen to the point that simple exchange couldn't work anymore, it was natural that using a medium of exchange is something that was inevitably invented very soon. The history of the "medium of exchange" is very interesting, from the very beginning, when people in early civilized societies used barley grains to exchange things throughout the times when different commodities were used as money, like shells, alcohol, cigarettes, and even cannabis. Today, after a long period of using gold, silver, and copper coins, we successfully created a system of banknotes that, by the beginning of the 20th century, all modern and industrialized countries accepted as the only means of use for all kinds of trades. However, even though intermedium in the form of money was inevitable, it added other dimensions to the people's daily lives. I am sure greed existed long before money was invented in its rudimentary form, but in modern societies it received its pure meaning or simple desire to acquire or possess more than one needs. Perhaps the only way to fix the basic problem with money, in which many people started to adore shiny banknotes more than the goods you can buy with, is to remove one of its properties out of the equation. Cash. We need to ultimately stop using cash and replace it with a full electronic system. This way, "home money collectors" will be eliminated, and the system of individual wealth will become more transparent in many ways. I am sure "individual greed for money" would be significantly reduced, even though, as a psychological concept hidden deeply into our emotional brains, greed is simply impossible to remove.

Politics and Power***

On the other side, hypothetically speaking, removing worldwide banknotes and replacing them all with several or just one planetary electronic monetary value (let's call it credit or bitcoin?) could be possible, and that would efficiently remove so-called "corporate greed for money" and force worldwide stock markets to deal more with goods and services instead of dealing with money alone and their exchange rates. Not to mention the medical benefits of not using papers and coins that travel from one hand to another all the time. Payments in the future must be done completely without touching of any kind, preferably by wirelessly reading of fingerprint-protected ID cards. Of course, there will still be people who will start worshiping 'credits' now instead of green banknotes, but hopefully their number will be significantly reduced due to a lack of physical connection in the hypothetical new system.

Ok, now that we fixed the money problem ;-), what else are we enjoying every day for granted? What is that thing that average human being worships the same along with wealth and collecting treasures of any kind? Yes. The power. There is no society in nowadays planetary kingdoms, republics, states, provinces, or even the smallest municipalities with no rulers recognized and worshiped by the majority. No matter if they use simple dictatorship, communism, still live in African tribes, or within highly evolved democracies, everything is organized within one or a couple "alfa" leader(s) on power, followed by the people designated in lower ranks ("betas" and "omegas" if we use the wolf herd analogy). These behaviors also came from our emotional inner beings, which we inherited from our animal origins. Fixing this problem is easy, and within current societies (evolutionary speaking), I can't see a better system than democracy. People are different in many aspects, and it is necessary that the majority select the rulers, and the only thing we need to do is improve democracy as it is in the current stage. In simple words, instead of voting for political parties that, if elected, govern the society for several years until the next elections, it became necessary to find a way to involve people and the voting system more frequently and for each and every agenda that requires important decisions to be made. Instead of voting for politicians, elections should be organized for each chairman, so to speak. Electronic voting is now possible, and counting the results can be done almost instantly, so we need a way to vote for the prime minister alone as well as for each member of the government. Also, voting should be selective, and it should not allow all members of the community to vote every time. For example, hypothetically speaking, why would I be involved in the election of the ministry of health when I committed and educated myself within the food and agriculture industry? I don't even know anybody from the medical institutions, so how would my vote be relevant? The same would be for the election of the ministry of agriculture, and only relevant people within this realm should participate in this election, and there is no need for doctors and nurses to bother voting for something that has so little in common. Anyway, a real democratic system requires many changes, and nowadays technologies allow the transformation. The only problem is that politicians would suffer the most and almost become extinct in the process, making this change as hard as the exchange of CRT television sets with flat screens. But it is inevitable, and in one way or another it will happen. Like in the case of "Cathode Ray Tube" TV sets, no matter how old technology spreads its roots, it is destined to die eventually.

Five Myths About Education****

So far we encountered financial and political systems that actually create the rules responsible for one society's health. But what is even more important than these? Who is actually behind these systems? Yes. People. Individuals. But how did they come to be in the first place? Where did they learn all that they know? Yes. This is the final social link we need to improve. The Education. We all once were kids. No matter how talented we were, we needed to go through the educational system to become what we are today. This is where everything started and therefore the system that is the most responsible for the outcome of one society. What we have now in our societies, basically everything bad and good in our human existence, more or less, has to thank the education. If one man or woman became a successful scientist responsible for some kind of breakthrough discovery that would change the world, the big portion of gratitude would go to the education institutions where he/she spent early days learning and acquiring knowledge and skills. The same amount of credit goes to the education institutions that actually provided installation of a mass murderer, serial killer, or lunatic war general, or at least didn't do enough to prevent their misfortune. The bottom line here is that the educational part of any society is something that must be the most important of them all. Sadly, there is no country in the world that prioritizes this part over anything else. Not even the highly evolved democracies and technocracies recognized the full potential and danger of one educational system. We now have mediocre politicians and bank employees that enjoy a wealthier life than highly educated teachers and university professors. Not to mention that military budgets in ALL countries are way bigger than their counterparts in educational and scientific systems, directly or indirectly funded by tax money taken from people. When I think of nowadays societies all over the world in relation to education and science, the title question "What's Wrong with Society?" might not be accurate. Maybe the better question would be "Why is Society Turned Upside Down?".

Yes, education in private schools and universities is way better by the quality of given knowledge compared to tax funding and state institutions, but looking at it from the global scale, there are only a few of them, not to mention that the price of scholarships is way above the average income of the society they are located in, automatically excluding potentially extraordinary students from participating in the first place. The solution I have in mind is based on further fragmentation of class groups. Schools, especially elementary schools, are gathering kids away from their families every day, and it would be only fair to provide a family-like atmosphere inside the classroom. If we consider this, it seems reasonable that the number of students should not be bigger than 5 per group. These small selected groups would be enjoying classes in a more relaxing environment and over time get better results than a group of 15-30 pupils like today simply because each member of the smaller group would be more active on a daily basis. A family-like atmosphere would allow active tutoring of poor or lazy students as well as better acceptance of those who came from dysfunctional families. Furthermore, bright students and their interests would be spotted much earlier and therefore provided with more time in targeted education following their recognized talents and interests. The goal is also to get much better insight into the development of young people during their childhood and adolescent periods, where they are the most vulnerable and easy targets for various influences.

I will stop now and probably leave some more foundations and brainstorming about their improvements for some future posts (for example, dealing with social security with respect to medical and elderly insurance or demographic separations of different societies). The base line here is that nothing is written in stone, and there is nothing wrong with thinking of how to change some social foundation, even though it has been in use for centuries. Times are passing fast, and sometimes we might be unaware that some technology already developed can help us live much better if we only try and dare to use it.

Without revolutionizing anything, of course.

Grisly find suggests humans inhabited Arctic 45,000 years ago*
http://www.sciencemag.org/grisly-find-suggests-humans-inhabited-arctic

Money, Money, Money**
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/holy-wow-you-can-actually-swim-like-scrooge-mcduck-in-1481547007

Politics and Power***
https://www.masonreport.com/donald-trumps-campaign-rhetoric

Five Myths About Education****
http://www.thepolisblog.org/2012/11/education.html

The Sixth Great Dying

Just like a single ant who's lost in the large expanse of Brazilian Casino Beach (Praia do Cassino, 250km in length, considered to be the largest beach on Earth), and felt as small as possible in surrounding space, we humans are experiencing 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 ant's shoes, we would find clues and evidence all around us and, metaphorically speaking, no matter of large quantities of sand grains, we would know that we were on the beach.

And with time, when it comes to 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 needed millions of years for reef systems to recover fully and these five periods in time are now called "Reef gaps". With simple words, five major events attacked life on Earth in previous 500 million years and corals successfully recorded them all. We now recognized 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 consider themselves alive today are just descendants of those 0,01% that survived five great cataclysms. Here's a short glimpse to 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 were exterminated. 2. 360+ million years ago in the Late Devonian period second armageddon is probably sum of several extinctions over a short period rather than just one massive one. 70 percent of marine species died but due to long lasting of the multiple events, terrestrial plants and animals were largely unaffected. 3. Third extinction happened 250+ million 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 exist today is remnant of those 4% who survived it. 4. The end Triassic mass extinction, happened 200+ million of years ago, was the Pangea splitting event due to large amount of volcanic eruptions and lava floods. Around 80% of all land quadrupeds also went extinct in the process of forming Atlantic ocean. 5. The end 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, couple of other studies help and give us more clear picture of what really happened and how exactly all those armageddons came to place at all. The major one is astronomical study of Earth's complex motion over time. The theory is known as Milankovitch Cycles I wrote about before in post "Ice Age vs Global Warming". In short it summarized several planetary motion that leads in periodical dramatic changes of the climate. The main period is identified as 100.000 years cycle that force our planet to go into glacial periods or what we are familiar with "The Ice Ages". As it seems, reef gaps don't correspond to this cycle at all. They don't even match to the recognized 400.000 years cycle we today know as carbon dioxide variations in oceans but first thing we notice in below chart is the period of more or less 100 million of years between two extinctions. Does there really exist some kind of cycle or it was just a cosmic coincidence, we don't know, but it seems that planetary cycles are not enough to trigger such big event. I am guessing that several conditions should meet in order to make it happen. In addition to regular cycle, the smoking gun could also be massive supervolcanic event or extra-terrestrial collision with large comet or mountain sized rock from space.

Recently, and what triggers me to write this post, I read couple of articles that are claiming we are dangerously close 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 a fact that many species already vanished due to human activities (like some bird species caused by deforestation or 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 I glimpsed last year in post "Speed of Demographics", nature already started to reduce human population and its peak is supposed to be within next decades from now, considering observed fertility rates so far. After that, human population might start degrading in numbers and be more or less regulated by nature. 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 became considerably and astronomically speaking the most dangerous player for our own home. We saw that smoking gun in couple of previous mass extinctions were large and massive volcano eruptions and/or solar system collisions, but in potential upcoming sixth event, as it seems we would not need any inner or extra terrestrial excuses. CO2 and other greenhouse gases we are keep producing and letting out in the air could be enough. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations that I check two years ago is slightly bigger today and the curve is going up ever since measurement has 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 that is direct consequence of the risen gases in the atmosphere are the least of our worries. Further problem with CO2 is that the entire water in planetary oceans are 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. Substantial increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, over short amount of time, that we are facing right now is dramatically reducing 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 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 "civilization killer" nickname written all over it.

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

Science of Life in Solar System

There will come one day in the future. Relatively and astronomically speaking, it might come sooner than we think. It could happen way before we realize that there is no turning back. The day when mother Earth will simply say - sorry guys, I have no more energy to sustain this kind of life anymore and when most of biodiversity cocoons on Earth will reach the ultimate hazard and start imploding back into themselves. Air and water pollution will help a lot and not even planet's regular motions will be able to take us into another interglacial cycle. It is as much inevitable as what we are going to do next. We will take a long look toward the stars and say: "Well, we have to do this sooner or later. It's time to leave the Earth. Time to jump into Christopher Columbus's shoes again. And find the new home."

But we will not get far. There will be no warp drives, "phasers on stun", robots, AIs or artificial gravity like in Sci-Fi blockbusters and there will be no scientific breakthroughs that will bring Moon or Mars gravity to the comfortable number of 1. No, we will be completely helpless in all our efforts to terraform other planets and gas giants' moons. Not at first. Or fast. Or to make large asteroids to rotate. Or to initiate Mars' core to fire it's lost gone magnet. Or to make Venus to act little less than hell.

Artificial biodomes of Eden in Cornwall, England ^*

Do You Live to Work, Or Work to Live?

Do you ever wonder why we work like we work? Why working time lasts those eight hours and why takes the best part of the day? Who made it this way? And why? It all started with industrial revolution in early 19th century which culminated into real nightmare for most of workers, especially in large factories, where long working hours were mandatory and kept people outside their homes all day long. The working day was 10 to 16 hours, six days a week and not only for adults. Use of children was cheap and preferable. Deaths and illnesses from exhaustion were common and it was cruel and inhuman. Eventually, the nightmare spread from workers toward capitalists as well, in form of rise of social movement with Robert Owen's famous slogan "Eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest".

Well, today, almost two centuries later, we now live, more or less, in Owen's vision, work around eight hours per day and enjoy our lives during the work or after. Or both. Nobody today dies from the job. Well, not due to poor working conditions, anyways. Perhaps some of us are in danger from the death by boredom in some rainy days in the office, but, and again more or less, today we are in control of our professional careers. On the other end, if you ask me, even this eight hours are sometimes too long. Many times. They say that with age comes the wisdom, but also comes a certain dosage of laziness, especially in second part of the working hours. After 20 years of continuous work in my professional career, eight hours now seem too long. I passed that period in my life with idealistic thoughts and glimpses to the world as it is waiting for me to make the difference. If you are in your forties, there are other variables that must be included in private and professional life. Middle age crisis for example. Not enough challenges like before. Too much routine in both lives. Too competitive environment, to say the least, wherever you look. Generation gaps. Following faster ways of living. And you don't have to be in forties anymore to feel the difference or experience injustice.

Perhaps it is time again for another Robert Owen to appear and try to get shorten this eight hours to six or less. Or to try and modify the working habits and move everything possible to freelancing and outsourcing. To ban offices in those businesses that still insist on using them in old fashion ways, although the entire job can be done today from kitchen table and home wifi. Before, when I was teenager and later when I was trying to make first step in my professional career, they used to say that major changes will come in 21st century. New millennium will change everything. Well, the 14th year now in new spectacular century is about to expire in few months and I can't notice anything majorly different. More or less. But still, the major question from the old times is still there. Do you live to work or you work to live?

It would be unfair if I continue with this story without answering it first. And to be honest, from the beginning and my first employment, I always worked to live. For me, family and home was, is and it will always be the number one. No exceptions. No matter how important was the project I was involved in. But to be completely honest, if I used a scale from minus ten to ten, where -10 means full commitment to the job, while +10 is the finest family time, I would not score the biggest number too often. I don't think I score it easily even today. It is impossible. Sometimes, if comes into my life challenged and pure, the job can suck me in for days. Months even. But always let me go. So my number is within wide scale from -5 to the very high of 9 with more positive then negative values. Ten only sometimes. And I want to keep it that way. If I looked to all my half-a-dozen companies I were working with in my former professional life, the cruel truth is, with couple of exceptions, that I didn't stay in touch with my former co-workers. We all moved along. Simply put, while our intelligence and educations defies us completely, our curriculum vitae is nothing more than a document only worthwhile during searching for a new job. Nobody cares what is written inside while you are having steady job. Only in between two of them.

But enough with work, let's see the other side of the medal. The story I wanted to tell in the first place and maybe unconsciously, I started with too long introduction. What actually inspired me for today's story is Tony Parsons - British journalist and novel author. About month ago, after I read three Harlan Coben's thrillers in a row and two of James Patterson's Alex Cross series during the summer, I felt that I needed a break from tension and crime stories. But I can't really swallow those light readings with love stories in foreground so I went into search for something different - hoping to find a story based on ordinary life, family affairs or one of those with "true story" written on main covers. Tony Parsons, with his "Man and Boy" trilogy, gave me exactly what I wanted. And more.

If you didn't read it already, I recommend it warmly. It is about typical family of the early 21st century, filled with both, pain and love, surrounded by tough life in one large city in which work and mortgage can destroy your life in a split of a second. Harry Silver, in main role, shows us everything what might strike one modern family in one fast-forward world and where, no matter how he tries to maintain normal family life, this proves to be not entirely possible with all the mistakes and distractions from the job. It is also about conflicts between generations and what connects them. About shallowness of business life. Friendships. This is the story that will force your eyes to let go a tear of two too often but also it will put a smile on your face every now and again as well.

I stumbled to the "Man and Boy" within Serbian Laguna - my favorite online bookshop, in their editor selection called "Laguna gems" or something like that, and after I reached second cover I felt hunger for more stories like this one. So I browsed bookshop's online store again, secretly hoping for a sequel, and searched the author's page. To my surprise I found two more novels in the trilogy and also short news about author visiting our town in the tour of promoting his latest book. To cut the story short, I ordered remaining novels, read them in record time and yesterday Viktor and I grabbed the first book and went to the signing event to meet Tony in person. I knew that a person who was able to write Harry's adventures, couldn't be much different than his main character, especially after I read somewhere that his personal life story has many connecting points with the novel itself. As it turned out, Tony Parsons was one great guy with nothing but the smile on his face despite the endless line of people waiting for the autographs. He was especially nice with Viktor and shared the fact that his middle name is also Victor, named after his father, so I can't resist not to share the photo of two Viktors below. After the event, my son and I went to McDonald's for a happy meal and to sort out our impressions and later first thing he said to his mother when we came home was: "It was the best day!". I couldn't agree more.

Tony Victor Parsons & Viktor

Anyway, to resume the main story and in conclusion, my life outside work, in its current stage, is one huge place and full of wonders and challenges. No matter if I just read a book, watch a movie, do dishes, participate social occasion, play a game, travel or enjoy precious family time, it is always far ahead of the most enjoyable project at work for which I, in the end, receive a paycheck. This always makes me feel that "work has this strange effect of zooming things larger than they really are".** Money is one great thing we can't live without, but sometimes, if not always, it manages to spoil the very essence for the work it is paid for. In the latest years when I ask myself why I worked so hard on a project that gave me pleasurable time while it lasted, I always answer with "Oh yes, for the money'. And it wasn't my first thought when I asked myself the same question twenty years ago...

Image refs:
http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/5-things-every-son-needs-to-hear-from-his-dad.html
https://vomitingdiamonds.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/boredom-at-the-office/

Refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
* http://connections.msn.com/articles/detail/256476535
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/05/typical-work-day-length/
** http://www.thehighcalling.org/work/work-life-balance
http://financecareers.about.com/od/careermanagement/a/LiveToWork.htm

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/