There are a number of news stories about this extra-special full moon but I’ve chosen to republish some of what appeared on the Mother Nature Network website.
In terms of the timing of this full moon, rather than give you times for various places around the world, as this website does, I will simply offer the UTC/GMT time:
Sunday 6th May 2012 at 03:35:06 am
If you want to covert that to your local time wherever you are on this beautiful planet The World Time Server is as good a website as any.
BIGGER THAN YOUR AVERAGE MOON: Skywatcher Tim McCord of Entiat, Washington caught this amazing view of the March 19, 2011 supermoon. (Photo: Tim McCord)
Skywatchers take note: The biggest full moon of the year is due to arrive this weekend. And because this month’s full moon coincides with the moon’s perigee — its closest approach to Earth — it will also be the year’s biggest.
The moon will swing in 221,802 miles (356,955 kilometers) from our planet, offering skywatchers a spectacular view of an extra-big, extra-bright moon, nicknamed a supermoon.
And not only does the moon’s perigee coincide with full moon this month, but this perigee will be the nearest to Earth of any this year, as the distance of the moon’s close approach varies by about 3 percent, according to meteorologist Joe Rao, SPACE.com’s skywatching columnist. This happens because the moon’s orbit is not perfectly circular.
The full Moon will be up to 14% larger and 30% brighter than others during the year. The reason for this phenomenon is that the Moon becomes full on its closest approach to Earth on May 5, 2012, also known as the perigee full Moon.
So enjoy this most beautiful sight if you are somewhere on this planet where the moon will be visible at night. And double-check the time and the day so you don’t miss it! Finally, let me close by ‘spoiling’ my many readers in Arizona, and to serve as a good reminder for yours truly by saying that anyone on US Mountain Standard Time will see this moon at:
Saturday, 5th May 2012 at 20:35:06
“Aim for the moon. If you miss, you may hit a star.” W. Clement Stone.
“Exact knowledge is the enemy of vitalism.” Francis Crick.
On the face of it, I’m going to write about two totally disparate aspects of the brain. Or are they?
I subscribe to Naked Capitalism and one of my favourite aspects of Yves’s daily email presentation are the Links. They cover an incredibly broad range of news items.
So it was perhaps a week ago or thereabouts that one of those links was to an item in the British newspaper, The Daily Mail. Here’s how the article started,
Power really does corrupt as scientists claim it’s as addictive as cocaine
More than a hundred years after noted historian Baron John Acton coined the phrase ‘power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ scientists claim the saying is biologically true.
The feeling of power has been found to have a similar effect on the brain to cocaine by increasing the levels of testosterone and its by-product 3-androstanediol in both men and women.
This in turn leads to raised levels of dopamine, the brain’s reward system called the nucleus accumbens, which can be very addictive.
Across in the English paper The Daily Telegraph, Dr Ian Robertson writes on this subject and says,
Unfettered power has almost identical effects, but in the light of yesterday’s Leveson Inquiry interchanges in London, there seems to be less chance of British government ministers becoming addicted to power. Why? Because, as it appears from the emails released by James Murdoch yesterday, they appeared to be submissive to the all-powerful Murdoch empire, hugely dependent on the support of this organization for their jobs and status, who could swing hundreds of thousands of votes for or against them.
Submissiveness and dominance have their effects on the same reward circuits of the brain as power and cocaine. Baboons low down in the dominance hierarchy have lower levels of dopamine in key brain areas, but if they get ‘promoted’ to a higher position, then dopamine rises accordingly. This makes them more aggressive and sexually active, and in humans similar changes happen when people are given power. What’s more, power also makes people smarter, because dopamine improves the functioning of the brain’s frontal lobes. Conversely, demotion in a hierarchy decreases dopamine levels, increases stress and reduces cognitive function.
OK, moving on. On April 29th., there was an article on the Big Think website with the intriguing title of You Are Not Your Brain!
What’s the Big Idea?
“Contemporary research on consciousness in neuroscience rests on unquestioned but highly questionable foundations. Human nature is no less mysterious now than it was a hundred years ago,” writes philosopher Alva Noë in his book Out of Our Heads.
It’s a bold assertion in an age when fMRI has enabled us to see images of the brain functioning in real time, and when many prominent public intellectuals (Stephen Hawking, Eric Kandel) have argued, either implicitly or vociferously, in favor of reductionism. The “brain-as-calculating machine” analogy assumes that human thought, personality, memory, and emotion are located somewhere in the gray matter protected by the skull. In other words, you — at least, the waking you who gets out of bed in the morning — are your brain.
But you’re not, says Noë. Just as love does not live inside the heart, consciousness is not contained in a finite space — it’s something that arises, something that occurs: a verb rather than a noun. And since the publication of Francis Crick’s influential The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, scientists have been looking for it in all the wrong places.
That’s enough of me republishing the article – if it grabs your interest, do go and read it in full here.
And here’s Francis Crick with an extract from his DVD on the Scientific Search for the Soul
A noted scientist discusses free will, consciousness, attention and memory and their relationship to the human nervous system. In a wide ranging discussion, Crick points out that the hypothesis that the brain is the seat of consciousness has not yet been proven.
Francis Crick, Ph.D., received the Nobel Prize in 1962 for the discovery of DNA’s central role in the process of genetic reproduction. He is author of Life Itself, What Mad Pursuit and The Astonishing Hypothesis.
“Chance is the only source of true novelty.” Francis Crick
Sometimes one wonders what happened to common sense!
Today’s Post is motivated by a number of items that have crossed my screen over the last few days which when looked at collectively might remind one of the old saw, “You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it does help!”
Sit with me, metaphorically, and allow me to muse.
First was a recent Post on 350 or bust that included the March 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach, California where NASA climate scientist Dr. James Hansen explains why he must speak out about climate change. (See the video later on.) That Post refers to an item on Martin Lack’s Blog, Lack of Environment, where Martin as well as including the video below also lists the challenges that we on this single, finite planet face. Here is that list,
The Earth’s current energy imbalance is 0.6 Watts per sq.m.; a rate of energy input 20 times greater than the energy output of all human activity; and equivalent to the detonation of 400,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs every day.
Since measurements began in 2003, there has been a noticeable acceleration in the annual rate of mass loss from both the Greenland and Antarctica ice caps.
The last time atmospheric CO2 was 390 ppm, sea levels were 15 m higher than they are today, which implies even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels tomorrow, this is where they would end up several centuries from now because the warming “is already in the pipeline” (i.e. because the Earth must warm-up in order to restore its energy balance).
Unless we stop burning fossil fuels soon, sea level rise will continue to accelerate, which is likely to cause between 1 and 5 metre rise by 2100AD (depending on how quickly we now decide to stop burning them).
Palaeoclimatology tells us that 350 ppm is the safe limit for avoiding significant disruption to the planet’s ecological carrying capacity (i.e. in terms of both populations of individual species and overall biodivesity); and it now seems likely that between 20%-50% of all species will be “ticketed for extinction” by the end of the century.
If we had started to get off fossil fuels in 2005, it would have required 3% reduction per year in order to restore energy imbalance by 2100AD. If we start next year, it will require 6% p.a. If we wait 10 years it will require 15% p.a.
Recent droughts in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico were 3 Standard Deviations outside the norm. Events such as these cannot therefore be ascribed to natural variability; anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) is happening just as Hansen said it would 24 years ago (if we did not change course – which we haven’t).
Pursuing emissions limits (i.e. Cap and Trade) will not work because there is no actual incentive to reduce emissions without any self-imposed restraint being to the advantage of others who do not do the same (i.e. the Tragedy of the Commons problem).
Hansen uses the analogy of an approaching asteroid – the longer we wait to prevent it hitting us the harder it becomes to do so.
Do watch that Hansen video,
Second is that yesterday Martin Lack published an item that really does seem to endorse the view that there is no sign of intelligent life living on Planet Earth (not counting dogs!).
Think about it. The planet is warming up. The use of carbon-based fuels is a strong suspect, putting it mildly, of the rising levels of CO2 in our atmosphere, 394.45 on April 5th, so rather than change the incentives for using such fuels, we are taking advantage of this warming planet causing the melt of the Arctic ice cap by allowing Shell to drill for oil in the Arctic. But even crazier than that, Shell have contracted for a Finnish icebreaker to assist them in breaking up the ice! (I really do feel a headache coming on!)
The pristine and beautiful Arctic: Shell wants to exploit it for oil. We want it protected.
Dozens of Greenpeace Nordic activists have boarded and occupied a Shell-contracted icebreaker in Helsinki harbour as it prepares to leave for the Alaskan Arctic.
Drilling in this fragile ecosystem – home to the polar bear, narwhal, Arctic fox and other iconic species – is unacceptable. A spill or accident in these waters would be disastrous and the harsh conditions would make responding to such a disaster almost impossible.
Demand Shell stop their plans to put the fragile Arctic and its biodiversity at risk. We’ll keep you updated on our campaigns.
Write to Mr. Peter Voser.
Mr Peter Voser, Shell
The Arctic isn’t a place you can exploit, it’s a place we have to protect. Time and time again, experts have expressed serious doubts about the possibility of cleaning up an oil spill in the Arctic. The technical challenges posed by drilling there are obvious and no matter how much you try to convince people that your company can operate safely in such a harsh environment, we know the truth.
Because of this, I demand that you scrap your Arctic plans immediately.
Yours sincerely,
————–
By the end of this week we want 500,000 people shouting at Shell that it must end its campaign of Arctic destruction. Click here now. [N.B. This is a time-sensitive campaign response – please visit Greenpeace website and enter your name and email address and they will email Shell on your behalf.]
We can change things! Together we can stop Shell and other oil companies from destroying the Arctic. Not everyone can board a ship to demand that change. But today, you can email Shell and ask them to stop drilling for oil and ask 10 of your friends to do the same. Together, we can save the Arctic!
Rosa Gierens
Greenpeace Nordic activist from Finland.
In closing, luckily there are many voices being raised about putting an end to this madness; see the recent item from Patrice Ayme. Hopefully, all these voices will bring about the changes to the way so many of us are governed. As Patrice commented recently on Learning from Dogs, “Hope is the breathing of the planet“. Maybe, just maybe, hope will win through. No better put than by James Hansen,
Most impressive is the work of the Citizens Climate Lobby, a relatively new, fastgrowing, nonpartisan, nonprofit group with 46 chapters across the United States and Canada. If you want to join the fight to save the planet, to save creation for your grandchildren, there is no more effective step you could take than becoming an active member of this group.”
– Dr. James Hansen, head of Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA
Oh, and before I forget, a tornado touched down in Southern France! Not common and not making sense!
Reflecting more than a casual interest in this fascinating topic.
Yesterday, I referred to a recent visit to my doctor and the ‘system’ not being able to address two aspects at the same time, Vestibular Migraine and possible memory issues. Then later on, in response to a comment from Michelle of Dogkisses Blog, I owned up to having been advised that I may have early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease.
But very quickly friends responded to that ‘news’ by asking me if I had come across the information about coconut oil. So here are my findings about the possible curative effects of coconut oil and, clearly, I wanted to draw this to the attention of as many people as I can. Please feel free to republish this information; all I would ask is that you link back to the URL for this Post – thank you.
Let me take you to a website called Coconut Ketones and to a page on that website where there are a number of articles on the possible major healing effect of coconut oil. The primary article, written in 2008, starts thus,
WHAT IF THERE WAS A CURE FOR ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE AND NO ONE KNEW?
A Case Study by Dr. Mary Newport
July 22, 2008
There is a growing epidemic of obesity, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and predictions that 15,000,000 people in the United States alone will have Alzheimer’s Disease by the year 2050.
In 2001, Dr. Richard L. Veech of the NIH, and others, published an article entitled, “Ketone bodies, potential therapeutic uses.”1 In 2003, George F. Cahill, Jr. and Richard Veech authored, “Ketoacids? Good Medicine?”2 and in 2004, Richard Veech published a review of the therapeutic implications of ketone bodies.3 These articles are not found in journals that the average physician would read, much less the lay public. Unless you are researching the topic, it is unlikely that you would ever randomly come across this information.
My husband Steve, age 58, has had progressive dementia for at least five years. He had an MRI in May 2008 showing a diffuse involutional change of the frontal and parietal lobes and moderate left-sided and severe right-sided amygdala and hippocampal atrophy with no ischemic change, which would support a clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease. For non-medical people, this means that he has shrunken areas of the brain. Many days, often for several days in a row, he was in a fog; couldn’t find a spoon or remember how to get water out of the refrigerator. Some days were not so bad; he almost seemed like his former self, happy, with his unique sense of humor, creative, full of ideas. One day I would ask if a certain call came that I was expecting and he would say, “No.” Two days later he would remember the message from so-and-so from a couple of days earlier and what they said. Strange to have no short-term memory and yet the information was filed somewhere in his brain. My gut feeling is that diet has something to do with the fluctuation, but what. I knew that he was locked up in there somewhere, if only there was a key to open up the areas of his brain that he didn’t have access to.
The article goes on to show the amazing and positive differences that came about for Steve as a result of incorporating coconut oil and other dietary aspects. Please go here to view and download a pdf of the full article. But I will give you the closing paragraphs.
If you are using any type of hydrogenated vegetable oil or any oil with transfat, do not use any more and get rid of it! Extra virgin olive oil, butter and other natural, non-hydrogenated oils are okay to use along with the coconut oil. It is possible to use coconut oil in place of all other oils, however, since it contains no omega-3 fatty acids, it is very important to eat salmon twice a week or get enough omega-3 fatty acid from other rich sources such as fish oil capsules, flax meal, flax oil (not for cooking) or walnuts.
It is inconceivable that a potential dietary prevention and cure for Alzheimer’s disease, and other neurodegenerative diseases, has been out there for so many years, and yet has gone unnoticed. It is very likely that these diseases are becoming more prevalent due our current diet. The American diet has changed drastically from what it was before the 1950’s, when our parents and grandparents used lard and coconut oil to cook. Cardiovascular disease was rare at the beginning of the 20th century, and has skyrocketed, along with other devastating diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes type II, obesity, since mass produced hydrogenated vegetable oils containing trans fats were introduced into our diets and replaced these other natural fats. Sadly, the incidences of cardiovascular and other serious diseases are becoming more and more common among people in other areas of the world who have changed over from their indigenous foods to the “western” diet.
I plan to tell everyone I can and get this information to persons in positions to investigate this with the hope that Dr. Veech and other MCT oil and ketone body researchers get the funding they need. Feel free to make copies and pass this write-up on. If you have a loved one or a patient with Alzheimer’s or one of these other degenerative neurologic diseases, consider trying coconut oil. Dr. Veech suggests that, if possible, a videotape of the person before starting and at various points after starting the coconut oil would be very useful to document change. He suggests including segments of the persons face, speech and gait (walking). He also advises to have ketone bodies measured. What have you got to lose?
So in between eating spoonfulls of cold-compressed coconut oil, let me also give you some more information.
Here’s a video of Dr. Newport on CBN,
And here’s Part One of a video series all about Dr. Newport’s effective work on memory loss and Alzheimer’s with coconut oil.
Then I came across a paper delivered by Mary G. Enig, PhD on the Weston A. Price Foundation website. Here’s a flavour, pardon the pun, of this paper,
A New Look at Coconut Oil
Written by Mary G. Enig, PhD
January 1, 2000
Health and Nutritional Benefits from Coconut Oil: An Important Functional Food for the 21st Century
Presented at the AVOC Lauric Oils Symposium, Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam, 25 April 1996
Abstract
Coconut oil has a unique role in the diet as an important physiologically functional food. The health and nutritional benefits that can be derived from consuming coconut oil have been recognized in many parts of the world for centuries. Although the advantage of regular consumption of coconut oil has been underappreciated by the consumer and producer alike for the recent two or three decades, its unique benefits should be compelling for the health minded consumer of today. A review of the diet/heart disease literature relevant to coconut oil clearly indicates that coconut oil is at worst neutral with respect to atherogenicity of fats and oils and, in fact, is likely to be a beneficial oil for prevention and treatment of some heart disease. Additionally, coconut oil provides a source of antimicrobial lipid for individuals with compromised immune systems and is a nonpromoting fat with respect to chemical carcinogenesis.
The long and detailed document ends, thus,
Among the critical foods and nutrition “buzz words” for the 21st Century is the term “functional foods.” Clearly coconut oil fits the designation of a very important functional food.
Dr. Newport has a Blog which, despite not being added to since December 28th last, still has much interesting information.
Finally, I came across an Organic Coconut Oil Information website that opens up with,
Organic Coconut Oil is rich in vitamins and minerals and especially rich (60%+) in important fatty acids, the medium chain triglycerides (MCTs). It has been used by Asian and Pacific populations both as a source of dietary oil and in their traditional medical practices. Praised for its many and various healing properties, to a Pacific Islander, Coconut Oil is believed to be the cure of all illnesses and is so highly valued they refer to the coconut palm as “The Tree of Life.” Western modern science has only recently begun to uncover and understand the miracle healing value of the coconut.
Indeed, the website provides links to the health benefits of coconut oil for more than 17 other issues and, without lowering the tone too far, reminds me of an old joke.
Doctor, I’ve come to you about a bladder problem.
Sit down, Mr. Smith and tell me the details.
Well it’s just that I’m passing urine regularly every morning at 7am.
Mr. Smith, at your age that’s commendable having such a regular control, why would you regard that as a problem?
Modern medical practices raise questions about healing.
I am motivated to write today’s Post because a week ago, last Tuesday 24th April, I went to see my local doctor here in Payson. I don’t want to rabbit on too much about that doctor’s appointment because that isn’t the thrust of this ‘essay’. But let me just say this about that experience on the 24th, because it’s relevant to what I’m trying to convey.
A few years back, I was diagnosed with vestibular migraine but the reason for going to see the doctor was motivated by the realisation that over the last few months my memory was getting a little sporadic, for want of a more technical description! But I felt that the vestibular migraine, that I still suffer from, was relevant to my assessment. I should further add that the health clinic where this doctor is based have only seen me once before, for something minor. In other words, they do not have a good understanding of me from a medical perspective.
So I enter the doctor’s room and in comes the medical assistant with her wireless-connected laptop. Her fingers are poised to enter details.
I said, “Before we get going on my memory, can I talk about my vestibular migraine?”
The assistant replied, “Well I’m on the memory page, not the migraine page. Which do you want to talk about?”
I sighed and indicated that she should ask me questions about my memory!
Ergo, this human that wanted to be seen as a human had to conform to the relevant medical label!
So with this still reverberating inside me, I was positively tuned to something recently published by Michele of Dogkisses Blog. It was a very recent post called Green Healing – Horticultural Notes. Let me ‘borrow’ a few words from that Post.
We always begin Horticulture Therapy by gathering in a circle to share plant news. This time together is good, interesting and takes us in many directions. We often visit our past of garden or plant memories and look to the future with hopeful or creative garden dreams and ideas.
Last week I arrived just in time to hear another participant sharing his idea for a creative planting container. The young man was more engaged than usual and when he smiled and became excited about what plants to choose and where he would put his new container, I felt like I saw the heart of horticulture therapy.
I like to call these times Healing Happenings, which are moments in time when hope or happiness fills my heart and mind. I’m not talking about everything being right or all problems being fixed. I’m talking about a little piece of time when worry and stress take a back seat and the beauty of life emerges.
This got me thinking. Is there a schism these days in modern medicine between curing and healing? Have we created a situation where we rely on chemical and pharmaceutical technology to find a whole range of cures but, in parallel, is medicine losing sight of the need for healing? Maybe some would argue that such a distinction is irrelevant; if one is sick then one is very needy for a cure. But, overall, perhaps the evidence of better and better healing in our societies is pretty hard to find. Take this that I read recently,
There is a growing epidemic of obesity, type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and predictions that 15,000,000 people in the United States alone will have Alzheimer’s Disease by the year 2050.
Back to Dogkisses blog,
Personally, ‘healing happenings’ include moments when I enjoy what I imagine most Mothers do, which is seeing our children, no matter what age they are, smile and be happy. They’re also moments when I feel that my family will be okay.
There is always hope in a garden. We hope it grows. We hope it rains. We hope to have a good harvest of food or lively blooming flowers that paint our world pretty. I’m sure hope is part of why it feels good to work in a garden, whether you have a large field or a modest arrangement of containers on your porch. Each day you have hope.
“When I’m in my garden, life’s troubles crumble away with the rich black soil between my fingers. I’m fully in my body, out of my head, my worries banished. My garden is my church, my time there sacred.” (Garden your troubles away, by Amy Karon, PsycheScoop).
Here’s what I wrote as a comment to DK’s Post,
You using the phrase ‘green healing’ touches on the essence on what we all need to do to ‘survive’ in this crazy world. And, of course, I’m using the word ‘survive’ in a mental rather than physical sense.
It reminds me of the odd moments during the day when I hug one of the dogs and really give in to the feeling; almost as though the dog and I recognise it could be the very last hug in our lives. The emotional intimacy that flows from that private bonding across the two different (very different!) species is truly breath-taking!
So forgive my meanderings today but you may share my fear that by losing touch of the very powerful curative aspects of communing with nature, whether it be a garden, a walk in the woods, a swim in the sea or the warmth of an animal body, we may be missing real healing. As Michele wrote, “Each day you have hope.” Without hope there is nothing left.
Forgive me, dear readers, but something light and simple for today. I don’t mean in the sense of the content, far from it, just easy for me to put the post together as it is from a presentation that I gave a year ago.
Here’s a picture of our solar system.
Most of us are reasonably familiar with this visual concept of our solar system, but what of it’s age? That’s much more difficult to embrace in a way that we can relate to.
So let’s use something to represent the age of our solar system, the distance from Phoenix to Payson.
In round terms, Payson is 80 miles North-East from Phoenix. Put another way, that’s 422,400 feet!
So if those 80 miles represented the age of our solar system, what would be the significant milestones on this metaphorical journey?
Phoenix represents the start, the ‘start’ of our solar system some 4.54 billion years ago
It was 1,075,000,000 years before Blue-green algae appeared. That is the equivalent of travelling 18.94 miles from Phoenix North-East along Highway 87. Or looking back, those algae appeared some 3.465 billion years ago.
But on we travel, metaphorically an unimaginable 3,459,800,000 years after the arrival of Blue-green algae until the next milestone; the earliest hominids. In terms of our Highway that’s a further 60.97 miles. Again, looking back that was 5,200,000 years ago.
The sharp-eyed among you will see that 18.94 miles added to 60.97 miles is 79.91 miles. Goodness that’s awfully close to the total distance of 80 miles between Phoenix and Payson! In fact, the 0.09 miles to run is the equivalent of 484 feet!
So let’s look at those last 484 feet.
The first 465.20 feet represents the approximately 5 million years after the earliest hominids appeared before H. sapiens arrived, some 200,000 years ago.
The appearance of Homo sapiens brings us to just 18.6 feet from Payson.
But first, we travel 9.3 feet and see the arrival of dogs, generally regarded to have separated, in DNA terms, from the Grey Wolf 100,000 years ago.
And are you 60 years old? You were born just 0.0669 inches or 7/100ths of an inch from Payson! If my maths is correct (someone please check!) 0.0669 inches is about 34 times the thickness of the human hair! That’s very close to Payson!
Don’t know about you but it puts the age of our solar system into a perspective one might be able to get one’s arms around.
On the scale used above, one inch represents 895.68 years, one foot the equivalent of 10,748.11 years and a mile represents 56,750,000 years.
Anybody want to hazard a guess as to the state of our planet in one further inch?
The difference an inch makes! 895.68 years!
OK, let me stay more or less on topic and just round things off.
EarthSky website seems to have some great items, including this one.
Ten things you may not know about the solar system
9 ) Pluto is smaller than the USA
The greatest distance across the contiguous United States is nearly 2,900 miles (from Northern California to Maine). By the best current estimates, Pluto is just over 1400 miles across, less than half the width of the U.S. Certainly in size it is much smaller than any major planet, perhaps making it a bit easier to understand why a few years ago it was “demoted” from full planet status. It is now known as a “dwarf planet.”
How far do the stars stretch out into space? And what’s beyond them? In modern times, we built giant telescopes that have allowed us to cast our gaze deep into the universe. Astronomers have been able to look back to near the time of its birth. They’ve reconstructed the course of cosmic history in astonishing detail.
From intensive computer modeling, and myriad close observations, they’ve uncovered important clues to its ongoing evolution. Many now conclude that what we can see, the stars and galaxies that stretch out to the limits of our vision, represent only a small fraction of all there is.
Does the universe go on forever? Where do we fit within it? And how would the great thinkers have wrapped their brains around the far-out ideas on today’s cutting edge?
For those who find infinity hard to grasp, even troubling, you’re not alone. It’s a concept that has long tormented even the best minds.
Over two thousand years ago, the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers saw numerical relationships as the key to understanding the world around them.
But in their investigation of geometric shapes, they discovered that some important ratios could not be expressed in simple numbers.
Take the circumference of a circle to its diameter, called Pi.
Computer scientists recently calculated Pi to 5 trillion digits, confirming what the Greeks learned: there are no repeating patterns and no ending in sight.
The discovery of the so-called irrational numbers like Pi was so disturbing, legend has it, that one member of the Pythagorian cult, Hippassus, was drowned at sea for divulging their existence.
A century later, the philosopher Zeno brought infinity into the open with a series of paradoxes: situations that are true, but strongly counter-intuitive.
In this modern update of one of Zeno’s paradoxes, say you have arrived at an intersection. But you are only allowed to cross the street in increments of half the distance to the other side. So to cross this finite distance, you must take an infinite number of steps.
In math today, it’s a given that you can subdivide any length an infinite number of times, or find an infinity of points along a line.
What made the idea of infinity so troubling to the Greeks is that it clashed with their goal of using numbers to explain the workings of the real world.
To the philosopher Aristotle, a century after Zeno, infinity evoked the formless chaos from which the world was thought to have emerged: a primordial state with no natural laws or limits, devoid of all form and content.
But if the universe is finite, what would happen if a warrior traveled to the edge and tossed a spear? Where would it go?
It would not fly off on an infinite journey, Aristotle said. Rather, it would join the motion of the stars in a crystalline sphere that encircled the Earth. To preserve the idea of a limited universe, Aristotle would craft an historic distinction.
On the one hand, Aristotle pointed to the irrational numbers such as Pi. Each new calculation results in an additional digit, but the final, final number in the string can never be specified. So Aristotle called it “potentially” infinite.
Then there’s the “actually infinite,” like the total number of points or subdivisions along a line. It’s literally uncountable. Aristotle reserved the status of “actually infinite” for the so-called “prime mover” that created the world and is beyond our capacity to understand. This became the basis for what’s called the Cosmological, or First Cause, argument for the existence of God.
Last November, I published a Post on Learning from Dogs under the title of This is rocket science! It included the film Walking on Air shot from the International Space Station.
Anyway, a few days ago, Ginger I. here in Payson, sent me an email with the YouTube version of the film and I decided to include it as the only item in today’s post.
Enjoy.
Time lapse sequences of photographs taken with a 4K-camera by Ron Garan fragileoasis.org/bloggernauts/Astro_Ron and the crew of expedition 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011. All credit goes to them, who to my knowledge shot these pictures at an altitude of around 350 km. I intend to upload a FullHD-version presently.
HD, refurbished, smoothed, retimed, denoised, deflickered, cut, etc. All in all I tried to keep the looks of the material as original as possible, avoided adjusting the colors and the like, since in my opinion the original footage itself already has an almost surreal and aestethical visual nature.
Music: Jan Jelinek | Do Dekor, faitiche back2001 w+p by Jan Jelinek, published by Betke Edition janjelinek.com | faitiche.de
Image Courtesy of the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center, The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth eol.jsc.nasa.gov
1. Aurora Borealis Pass over the United States at Night
2. Aurora Borealis and eastern United States at Night
3. Aurora Australis from Madagascar to southwest of Australia
4. Aurora Australis south of Australia
5. Northwest coast of United States to Central South America at Night
6. Aurora Australis from the Southern to the Northern Pacific Ocean
7. Halfway around the World
8. Night Pass over Central Africa and the Middle East
9. Evening Pass over the Sahara Desert and the Middle East
10. Pass over Canada and Central United States at Night
11. Pass over Southern California to Hudson Bay
12. Islands in the Philippine Sea at Night
13. Pass over Eastern Asia to Philippine Sea and Guam
14. Views of the Mideast at Night
15. Night Pass over Mediterranean Sea
16. Aurora Borealis and the United States at Night
17. Aurora Australis over Indian Ocean
18. Eastern Europe to Southeastern Asia at Night
Amazing to find that the saying was recorded as far back as 1546 when it is first recorded in John Heywood’s A dialogue conteinyng the nomber in effect of all the prouerbes in the Englishe tongue: “An yll wynde that blowth no man to good, men say.”
The reason this comes to mind is that good friend, John H. from here in Payson, recently sent me a piece under the title of Spider’s Web. This is how it started,
An unexpected side-effect of the flooding in parts of Pakistan has been
that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising flood
waters.
An unexpected side effect of the 2010 flooding in parts of Sindh, Pakistan, was that millions of spiders climbed up into the trees to escape the rising flood waters; because of the scale of the flooding and the fact that the water took so long to recede, many trees became cocooned in spiderwebs. People in the area had never seen this phenomenon before, but they also reported that there were fewer mosquitoes than they would have expected, given the amount of standing water that was left. Not being bitten by mosquitoes was one small blessing for people that had lost everything in the floods.
(This photo and caption were submitted to the 2011 National Geographic Photo Contest.)
John’s email also included more images, that are reproduced below.
So it looks as though we have much to learn from spiders as well as from dogs!
Or maybe, it’s just another example of the beauty, magic and mystery of nature!
Some people seem to have a knack for saying it how it should be!
My sub-heading, above, applies to many people right across the world. But the reason that this was triggered in my mind for today’s post, was a recent item on Christine’s excellent Blog, 350 or bust. Read more about that Blog here. I subscribe to that Blog.
Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the amazingly popular Star Trek series, was a man ahead of his time. Here is one of the things he had to say about humanity and our problems (with one editorial comment from me!):
“I believe in humanity. We are an incredible species. We’re still just a child creature, and we’re still being nasty to each other [Stephen Harper: are you listening?]. And all children go through those phases. We’re moving into adolescence now. When we grow up, man, we’re going to be something!”
But what caught my eye were these comments to the Post.
The first one from a Mickey Haist that read,
It’s a nice goal, but would clenching our teeth and willing progress be of any effect? After all, children don’t spontaneously mature – they’re raised.
Have to say that I was left unsure by what Mr. Haist was trying to convey. But not so Christine! This was the first of her two replies,
No teeth clenching allowed! Robert Kennedy once said “Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he or she sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
It’s not about everyone doing everything, it’s about each of us doing what we can. Not taking action because the problem is too big is not the answer.
And her second reply,
And Mickey – if the challenge of climate change/ocean acidification/biodiversity loss that we are facing as a species (taking the rest of the natural world with us) doesn’t make us mature, then nothing will. But I believe it will – as Paul Gilding says, humans are slow but not stupid!
Paul Gilding’s excellent website is always a great read, by the way.
But do reread those words of Robert Kennedy, they are powerfully inspiring.
Robert Kennedy
Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he or she sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. And crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Despite the fact that these words were said in response when South Africans suffered the tyranny of apartheid, the words are, perhaps, even more relevant today. Mankind has to combine the many ‘ripples of hope’ and build that current that will sweep away the crazy selfishness that is preventing us from living in harmony with this beautiful planet for hundreds of years ahead.
Now 19 days since our young German Shepherd puppy joined us.
On the 9th April, I wrote a Post about the arrival of young Cleo who became part of our family on the 8th. Here’s a couple of photographs from that Post.
Little bit of bonding going on!Welcome, young lady. I'm the boss around here!
So here are a couple more taken yesterday afternoon, the 25th. Cleo was weighed last Monday and was 28 lbs, some 6 lbs gain since the 8th.
Two very loving ladies!Pharaoh and Cleo already inseparable.
Must say that Cleo has settled in very well with her other four pack mates. Indeed, Cleo, like Sweeny, mixes easily with all the other dogs, not just Pharaoh’s group.
Learning from Dogs 