I once described the four Celtic cross-quarter days in an earlier posting—those times of year when the Celts saw measurable seasonal change and held festivals and appealed to their gods to watch over them. These four events meant more to those ancient people than our modern calendrical milestones, because they lived so close to the land and the cross-quarter days more closely related to events on the ground.
One cross-quarter day that we heartily greet is Imbolc—which falls half way between winter solstice and spring equinox—during the first week of February. Imbolc brings the true passing of winter, as the dark season begins to yield to increasing sunlight. For the month or so before Imbolc the day length increases a miserly minute each day—a difference that anyone is unlikely to notice. Winter seems to have settled in and is disinclined to move on. But right after Imbolc the day length grows by about three minutes each day. That becomes noticeable!
Animals and plants notice too. They may not be able to peer into the future or read a calendar and anticipate the arrival of spring as we do, but evolution has taught them to prepare for change. Tree buds swell, underground seeds begin to sprout, and mammals begin to lactate (Imbolc means “in milk). Our Celtic ancestors were attuned to the signs as well. They celebrated the goddess Brighde (pronounced “Breed”) at this time—a lady who reigned over birth, healing, inspiration, nature, and their precious livestock. They even cleaned the winter’s accumulation of trash from their dwellings in honor of Brighde. Is this the origins of our spring-cleaning?
It’s around Imbolc time that we hear the year’s first real bird calls in our neighborhood—not the brief, almost accidental bursts of sound that an isolated bird will emit on a cold winter day, but a true song to spring. Just as we know that the swelling buds will bring leaves and blossoms before long, we know that more bird songs will soon fill the air.
We know Imbolc is here and have learned what to expect in the quickening of nature at this time of year, but what’s stimulating the birds? Is it the increasing light that cues them? It can’t be a warming of the air—it’s still as cold as it was a few weeks ago. They can’t read a calendar (at least not the human kind). What might be stirring inside their wee breasts? A little testosterone? The sheer joy of spring that instinct somehow brings?
They’re not as yet ready to divulge their secret—or maybe they are, but we just don’t understand their language. Maybe I’m once again looking too hard for reasons. Regardless of what’s going on, we love to hear these early bursts of song. For us it’s a better sign that winter is coming to a conclusion, than trying to catch a groundhog being startled by his shadow.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Goldilocks Globe—Part 2
[News flash! It was just announced by NASA on 2 February that the Kepler Space Telescope has discovered 1235 candidate exo-planets as of that date! Of those, some 68 are Earth size! NASA will be further examining these candidates over the next few months, to see which may really be planets. How timely! On to Goldilocks.]
A few months ago a so-called “Goldilocks” planet was found. It got tagged with the name Goldilocks, because its star had two previously-discovered planets that were either too hot or too cold to support life. But a little more analysis of the data revealed a smaller in-between planet, dubbed Goldilocks, and officially given the moniker “Gliese 581 g.” It’s far enough away from its star to be able to have water, rather than either ice (it’s too cold) or steam (it’s too hot). Furthermore, it’s not much larger than Earth, so even its gravity and atmosphere could be like ours. Gliese 581 g is the first planet that we have located that just might support life as we know it! It’s caused quite a buzz in the astronomical community.
Planet Gliese 581 g is orbiting a star some 20 light years (that’s about 120 trillion miles) away. The star itself is named Gliese 581 a—which is a naming system that gives stars and their planets a numerical moniker. This star is quite different from our sun—it’s a red dwarf, it’s about one-third the size of the sun, it’s much older, and it’s a little over half the temperature. That may seem to describe an unusual star, but red dwarfs (which are too dim to see with the human naked eye) constitute as many as 90% of all the many billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy. So they’re very common, and if life really does exist out there (astronomers get more confident every day that we’re not alone), it likely is orbiting a red dwarf star.
So what more do we know about this Goldilocks Gliese 581 g? It’s probably a rocky planet (like Earth) with enough mass to hold onto an atmosphere, if it has one. It is about 1.5-2 times the size of Earth, so its gravity wouldn’t be so large as to crush life forms similar to Earth’s. Its orbital period (its year) is very short—only about 37 Earth days—because it’s very close to its little, cool star. That brings about the fascinating result that the planet would be tidally locked to its star (like our Moon is to Earth), so it presents just one face to the star. That means that its perpetually daylight face stays boiling hot, while its permanent night face is freezing cold.
So how could it foster life or have liquid water? Because the zone between night and day (Goldilocks’s “twilight zone”) could be just the right temperature for life. In fact, if the planet has an atmosphere, that twilight zone could be quite wide, due to winds blowing around and spreading out the habitable zone.
It would be a wild experience to stand on Gliese 581 g and gaze at its sun. Rather than appear yellow-white, it’d be orange-red. It would appear about twice the size of our sun (since it’s closer), but it would never roam across the sky. Just as if you were to stand on the Moon and watch Earth constantly hovering in the same spot, day after day, year after year, the star Gliese 581 a would be stuck in the same place, and it would remain near the horizon.
Goldilocks has astronomers pretty excited, but mostly its discovery is leading them to expect to locate more habitable planets soon. The race is on! Kepler is continuing to find more planets around neighboring stars (1235 and counting!). We are beginning to document the fact that planetary systems are quite common in our galaxy. Couple this fact with the robustness of life that we’re also discovering right here on Earth, and the probability of life existing on planets other than Earth grows ever higher. Just a couple of decades ago the question “Are we alone?” had to be answered with a high degree of speculation and doubt. It’s beginning to appear, however, that the answer might well be “Not at all.”
A few months ago a so-called “Goldilocks” planet was found. It got tagged with the name Goldilocks, because its star had two previously-discovered planets that were either too hot or too cold to support life. But a little more analysis of the data revealed a smaller in-between planet, dubbed Goldilocks, and officially given the moniker “Gliese 581 g.” It’s far enough away from its star to be able to have water, rather than either ice (it’s too cold) or steam (it’s too hot). Furthermore, it’s not much larger than Earth, so even its gravity and atmosphere could be like ours. Gliese 581 g is the first planet that we have located that just might support life as we know it! It’s caused quite a buzz in the astronomical community.
Planet Gliese 581 g is orbiting a star some 20 light years (that’s about 120 trillion miles) away. The star itself is named Gliese 581 a—which is a naming system that gives stars and their planets a numerical moniker. This star is quite different from our sun—it’s a red dwarf, it’s about one-third the size of the sun, it’s much older, and it’s a little over half the temperature. That may seem to describe an unusual star, but red dwarfs (which are too dim to see with the human naked eye) constitute as many as 90% of all the many billions of stars in our Milky Way galaxy. So they’re very common, and if life really does exist out there (astronomers get more confident every day that we’re not alone), it likely is orbiting a red dwarf star.
So what more do we know about this Goldilocks Gliese 581 g? It’s probably a rocky planet (like Earth) with enough mass to hold onto an atmosphere, if it has one. It is about 1.5-2 times the size of Earth, so its gravity wouldn’t be so large as to crush life forms similar to Earth’s. Its orbital period (its year) is very short—only about 37 Earth days—because it’s very close to its little, cool star. That brings about the fascinating result that the planet would be tidally locked to its star (like our Moon is to Earth), so it presents just one face to the star. That means that its perpetually daylight face stays boiling hot, while its permanent night face is freezing cold.
So how could it foster life or have liquid water? Because the zone between night and day (Goldilocks’s “twilight zone”) could be just the right temperature for life. In fact, if the planet has an atmosphere, that twilight zone could be quite wide, due to winds blowing around and spreading out the habitable zone.
It would be a wild experience to stand on Gliese 581 g and gaze at its sun. Rather than appear yellow-white, it’d be orange-red. It would appear about twice the size of our sun (since it’s closer), but it would never roam across the sky. Just as if you were to stand on the Moon and watch Earth constantly hovering in the same spot, day after day, year after year, the star Gliese 581 a would be stuck in the same place, and it would remain near the horizon.
Goldilocks has astronomers pretty excited, but mostly its discovery is leading them to expect to locate more habitable planets soon. The race is on! Kepler is continuing to find more planets around neighboring stars (1235 and counting!). We are beginning to document the fact that planetary systems are quite common in our galaxy. Couple this fact with the robustness of life that we’re also discovering right here on Earth, and the probability of life existing on planets other than Earth grows ever higher. Just a couple of decades ago the question “Are we alone?” had to be answered with a high degree of speculation and doubt. It’s beginning to appear, however, that the answer might well be “Not at all.”
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Goldilocks Globe—Part 1
The search is on for planets around nearby stars. In only the last decade or so have astronomers begun to find so-called extra-solar planets around other stars. Prior to that, they felt pretty confident that planets must be out there, but the difficulties of verifying their presence were beyond the tools at hand. More powerful telescopes and more powerful computers are now allowing these discoveries to be made.
How do astronomers detect planets circling other stars? There is as yet no telescope capable of adequately zeroing in on a planet in another solar system—a star is just too bright and the planets too small and dim to see them. But if the planets are there, they will exert the tiniest gravitational pull on their star, causing it to wobble a minute amount, as they circle. Today’s big telescopes, backed up by super computers, have the sensitivity to discern this miniscule quavering of a star and even infer what kinds of planets are causing the tremble. In fact, the planetary motion laws that Newton gave us can be used to determine how many planets are there, their masses, and the size of their orbits. It’s amazing what the laws of physics will allow us to discover indirectly!
So the search for extra-solar planets has kicked into high gear in the last several years. Different teams of astronomers using different facilities feed off of and compete with each other and keep the enthusiastic juices flowing. New telescopes and techniques are coming on line all the time and are racking up impressive findings.
Until a few years ago astronomers strongly suspected, but had no direct evidence of, planets beyond our solar system. The discoveries are now piling up quickly—on the order of 400 hundred planets or more have been found to date. (I give a rough number, because the tally mounts almost daily.) Last year NASA sent up the Kepler Space Telescope—especially designed to ferret out extra-solar planets. The Kepler team has already announced locating several more worlds out there. A formal NASA report is imminently due, that will likely add dramatically to the total.
So what has been found so far? The vast majority of recently discovered planets are huge—the size of Jupiter and more. The tools available thus far are not yet sensitive enough to find smaller worlds, like Earth, but Kepler will undoubtedly change that. Super Jupiters are nice to find, but they hold little chance of harboring life of a type anything like us—their gravity is too great, their atmosphere is too thick, and their temperatures are usually too high.
On to the Goldilocks planet next time…
How do astronomers detect planets circling other stars? There is as yet no telescope capable of adequately zeroing in on a planet in another solar system—a star is just too bright and the planets too small and dim to see them. But if the planets are there, they will exert the tiniest gravitational pull on their star, causing it to wobble a minute amount, as they circle. Today’s big telescopes, backed up by super computers, have the sensitivity to discern this miniscule quavering of a star and even infer what kinds of planets are causing the tremble. In fact, the planetary motion laws that Newton gave us can be used to determine how many planets are there, their masses, and the size of their orbits. It’s amazing what the laws of physics will allow us to discover indirectly!
So the search for extra-solar planets has kicked into high gear in the last several years. Different teams of astronomers using different facilities feed off of and compete with each other and keep the enthusiastic juices flowing. New telescopes and techniques are coming on line all the time and are racking up impressive findings.
Until a few years ago astronomers strongly suspected, but had no direct evidence of, planets beyond our solar system. The discoveries are now piling up quickly—on the order of 400 hundred planets or more have been found to date. (I give a rough number, because the tally mounts almost daily.) Last year NASA sent up the Kepler Space Telescope—especially designed to ferret out extra-solar planets. The Kepler team has already announced locating several more worlds out there. A formal NASA report is imminently due, that will likely add dramatically to the total.
So what has been found so far? The vast majority of recently discovered planets are huge—the size of Jupiter and more. The tools available thus far are not yet sensitive enough to find smaller worlds, like Earth, but Kepler will undoubtedly change that. Super Jupiters are nice to find, but they hold little chance of harboring life of a type anything like us—their gravity is too great, their atmosphere is too thick, and their temperatures are usually too high.
On to the Goldilocks planet next time…
Friday, January 28, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Meek Heirs
The Beatitudes are one of the more enigmatic passages of the Bible. In fact, they sometimes seem downright oxymoronic. For example, the verse: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” It’s probably one of the more puzzling of the Beatitudes, and certainly goes against the popular thinking of today. “Nice guys finish last” is the trendier perception. Virtually nothing one sees in either the entertainment or political world suggests that anyone but the tough guys will triumph in the end.
Given that this Beatitude is such a riddle, it has spawned endless interpretations and explanations. I have no intention here of entering either the philosophical or theological arenas and getting mired down in speculation, or even try to guess what Jesus meant by this statement. Many of his biblical quotes pose paradoxes for us, and the true meaning of these statements probably has many layers and varying interpretations—depending on our particular circumstances. One of the beautiful attributes of Semitic languages—such as Aramaic and Arabic—is that they can have multiple meanings, depending on a given situation. Their relevance continues to speak to us, even as times change.
A similar paradoxical statement is found in the Tao Te Ching, the scripture of Taoism. Two example partial verses are:
“The hard and stiff will be broken. / The soft and supple will prevail.”
“The soft overcomes the hard, / The gentle overcomes the rigid.”
In contrast to popular interpretation, the dictionary definition of meek is to be quiet, gentle, and soft—not weak and frightened. Thus the Tao suggests—as does Jesus—that it is the gentle and soft people who will eventually triumph, that they will ultimately “inherit the earth.”
What started me thinking along this line recently was pondering the fact that mammals—once the meek critters skittering among the feet of the huge dinosaurs—eventually came to inherit their earth. For nearly 200 million years the dinosaurs ruled the planet. Think of that: 200,000,000 years! That’s a thousand times longer than we humans have been a separate species! During the dinosaurs’ realm the mammals were relegated to the shadows—meekly scurrying about the edges. The dinosaurs were big and powerful. Mammals were small (more diminutive than a kitty cat) and indeed quite weak.
In time, however (and aided by a crashing meteorite), mammals came to take control. Why did they (the “soft and supple”) prevail, while the dinosaurs (the “hard and stiff”) disappeared? How is it that the mighty dinosaurs, who were superbly fit at the time, did not survive this celestial catastrophe? The main reason is that the dinosaurs had evolved to a very static state of equilibrium, wherein they were no longer being tested and didn’t need to struggle to survive. They were boss! They could afford to become set in their ways, fat and happy, and not worry about any challenges that they could see on the horizon. Those puny little mammals were effectively sidelined and forced to scramble for the scraps. No competition.
Things worked fine (for 200 million years!) for the big guys, until the game suddenly changed. When times got tough in the wake of the meteorite crash (the planet went into a deep freeze and food nearly vanished), the entrenched, overconfident creatures couldn’t cope, while the humble and flexible (the meek) little mammals who were used to tough times, persevered. Mammals could roll with the climatic punches and better deal with adversity. They came to inherit the earth and Homo sapiens came to be the main heirs.
What might this meek inheritance issue mean to us today—other than maybe being an interesting puzzle? It seems quite possible to me that one of the key advantages the meek have is their patience—their ability to withstand and accept suffering. They have no choice, if they want to survive. The powerful hold the trump cards—no need for them to suffer. Those who are patient also tend to be gentle and humble—no sense in acting belligerent if you hold the short straw. Sooner or later, however, conditions always change. The current balance will be upset and the meek just might then be favored—especially if they have learned how to be flexible and nimble.
We are in a situation today wherein the meek are once again being ruled by the powerful—the masses of people who are being controlled by the very rich. Our culture tends to look upon the meek as weak and cowardly, and that is why they are easily manipulated by the powerful, and even thought to deserve their plight. But what if, instead, they are really gentle, soft, supple, and humbly patient? Might their time be coming, to inherit the earth? Even more interesting, that same reasoning might also apply to all of the human species—currently the dominant player on the planet. We humans tend to shove around many meek species—insects, birds, frogs, etc.—who may simply be waiting for their inheritance, while we are busy upsetting the environmental applecart and just possibly our earthly dominance with it.
Given that this Beatitude is such a riddle, it has spawned endless interpretations and explanations. I have no intention here of entering either the philosophical or theological arenas and getting mired down in speculation, or even try to guess what Jesus meant by this statement. Many of his biblical quotes pose paradoxes for us, and the true meaning of these statements probably has many layers and varying interpretations—depending on our particular circumstances. One of the beautiful attributes of Semitic languages—such as Aramaic and Arabic—is that they can have multiple meanings, depending on a given situation. Their relevance continues to speak to us, even as times change.
A similar paradoxical statement is found in the Tao Te Ching, the scripture of Taoism. Two example partial verses are:
“The hard and stiff will be broken. / The soft and supple will prevail.”
“The soft overcomes the hard, / The gentle overcomes the rigid.”
In contrast to popular interpretation, the dictionary definition of meek is to be quiet, gentle, and soft—not weak and frightened. Thus the Tao suggests—as does Jesus—that it is the gentle and soft people who will eventually triumph, that they will ultimately “inherit the earth.”
What started me thinking along this line recently was pondering the fact that mammals—once the meek critters skittering among the feet of the huge dinosaurs—eventually came to inherit their earth. For nearly 200 million years the dinosaurs ruled the planet. Think of that: 200,000,000 years! That’s a thousand times longer than we humans have been a separate species! During the dinosaurs’ realm the mammals were relegated to the shadows—meekly scurrying about the edges. The dinosaurs were big and powerful. Mammals were small (more diminutive than a kitty cat) and indeed quite weak.
In time, however (and aided by a crashing meteorite), mammals came to take control. Why did they (the “soft and supple”) prevail, while the dinosaurs (the “hard and stiff”) disappeared? How is it that the mighty dinosaurs, who were superbly fit at the time, did not survive this celestial catastrophe? The main reason is that the dinosaurs had evolved to a very static state of equilibrium, wherein they were no longer being tested and didn’t need to struggle to survive. They were boss! They could afford to become set in their ways, fat and happy, and not worry about any challenges that they could see on the horizon. Those puny little mammals were effectively sidelined and forced to scramble for the scraps. No competition.
Things worked fine (for 200 million years!) for the big guys, until the game suddenly changed. When times got tough in the wake of the meteorite crash (the planet went into a deep freeze and food nearly vanished), the entrenched, overconfident creatures couldn’t cope, while the humble and flexible (the meek) little mammals who were used to tough times, persevered. Mammals could roll with the climatic punches and better deal with adversity. They came to inherit the earth and Homo sapiens came to be the main heirs.
What might this meek inheritance issue mean to us today—other than maybe being an interesting puzzle? It seems quite possible to me that one of the key advantages the meek have is their patience—their ability to withstand and accept suffering. They have no choice, if they want to survive. The powerful hold the trump cards—no need for them to suffer. Those who are patient also tend to be gentle and humble—no sense in acting belligerent if you hold the short straw. Sooner or later, however, conditions always change. The current balance will be upset and the meek just might then be favored—especially if they have learned how to be flexible and nimble.
We are in a situation today wherein the meek are once again being ruled by the powerful—the masses of people who are being controlled by the very rich. Our culture tends to look upon the meek as weak and cowardly, and that is why they are easily manipulated by the powerful, and even thought to deserve their plight. But what if, instead, they are really gentle, soft, supple, and humbly patient? Might their time be coming, to inherit the earth? Even more interesting, that same reasoning might also apply to all of the human species—currently the dominant player on the planet. We humans tend to shove around many meek species—insects, birds, frogs, etc.—who may simply be waiting for their inheritance, while we are busy upsetting the environmental applecart and just possibly our earthly dominance with it.
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