My ramblings and my works
Science
Facebook: The Black Hole of the Internet
Sep 1st
Ok, yes, I’m back. Why in the name of all that is digital am I back?
In short: I want to keep posting my awesome science links. I know a few people read them or watch the vids. I think that’s worth it altogether. I have some good friends online. Despite have 130ish ‘friends’ whom I barely speak with, the small few that I do speak with make it worth it.
So, I am going to keep burning the fires for science. I think it’s critical for the future of mankind. I’m not kidding! The day we regress is the day we start burning people as witches and cowering everytime a comet graces the sky.
I will say this though, if the comet is headed towards Earth, feel free to panic, get naked, drink lots, have LOTS of sex, do LOTS of drugs and otherwise be completely irrational. Why? If a comet has our name on it, at this point, we are S O L. So, may as well have a good time before it all ends, right? 
Week Two: Sans Facebook
Aug 5th
It’s been a couple of weeks, well almost, since we both killed our Facebook accounts. Mind you, they are deactivated, not deleted.
So, thoughts so far? I really don’t miss it nor do I think about it much. The only time I think about it is when I see a great science article online. If I could somehow just get that stuff out to people without the massive influx of drama. I do have twitter but it’s not as powerful in that regard. I can pretty things up and have more room to write in Facebook.
Oh well. If I did go back I’d reboot my account as a channel of pure science.
I do not miss the social interactions because they were next to non-existent. I do miss a handful of friends but I know they’re still around if I should choose to go back. There are other avenues of contacting friends as well. Also, as time goes by and scenery changes, so too do the people around you. You can’t be total bud-buds with 100% of everyone you were ever friends with. You’d go insane. I have highschool friends I haven’t talked to in a long time. I can’t stop my life to stalk them. They have lives too. Usually it’s just a word in passing and that’s enough for a good long while.
Facebook was a bit too narcissistic for me anyway. I am proud of what talents I have but I have a rule of thumb: No matter how good you are at something, someone is always better. I choose the route of being humble. Sort of like Atticus Finch after he is revealed to be an excellent marksman. By the way, I’m not telling whether or not I’m an excellent marksman. 
For now, Facebook will rest. I still have a cooking achievement to get in WoW. It only takes 15 minutes of my day though.
My newest endeavor is getting back into writing music. I’ve tried a few times in years past with mixed results and good times. I already put a serious investment into this go round. I bought myself an Alesis Micron keyboard/synth. It’ll double as a MIDI controller also. That will go hand in hand with Pro Tools LE 8 that I got with my Digidesign interface. These are tools I’ve never used before. I’ve gotten a small taste of Pro Tools and it’s just insane how powerful even the LE version is. Next few items will be a bass (short scale perhaps) and a new guitar multi-effects processor. I need a MIDI interface as well.
It’s nice to have the free time that would have been otherwise wasted on Facebook. Writing music and showing my kids the joy and work that goes into that is much more constructive.
Week Two: Sans Facebook
Aug 5th
It’s been a couple of weeks, well almost, since we both killed our Facebook accounts. Mind you, they are deactivated, not deleted.
So, thoughts so far? I really don’t miss it nor do I think about it much. The only time I think about it is when I see a great science article online. If I could somehow just get that stuff out to people without the massive influx of drama. I do have twitter but it’s not as powerful in that regard. I can pretty things up and have more room to write in Facebook.
Oh well. If I did go back I’d reboot my account as a channel of pure science.
I do not miss the social interactions because they were next to non-existent. I do miss a handful of friends but I know they’re still around if I should choose to go back. There are other avenues of contacting friends as well. Also, as time goes by and scenery changes, so too do the people around you. You can’t be total bud-buds with 100% of everyone you were ever friends with. You’d go insane. I have highschool friends I haven’t talked to in a long time. I can’t stop my life to stalk them. They have lives too. Usually it’s just a word in passing and that’s enough for a good long while.
Facebook was a bit too narcissistic for me anyway. I am proud of what talents I have but I have a rule of thumb: No matter how good you are at something, someone is always better. I choose the route of being humble. Sort of like Atticus Finch after he is revealed to be an excellent marksman. By the way, I’m not telling whether or not I’m an excellent marksman.
For now, Facebook will rest. I still have a cooking achievement to get in WoW. It only takes 15 minutes of my day though.
My newest endeavor is getting back into writing music. I’ve tried a few times in years past with mixed results and good times. I already put a serious investment into this go round. I bought myself an Alesis Micron keyboard/synth. It’ll double as a MIDI controller also. That will go hand in hand with Pro Tools LE 8 that I got with my Digidesign interface. These are tools I’ve never used before. I’ve gotten a small taste of Pro Tools and it’s just insane how powerful even the LE version is. Next few items will be a bass (short scale perhaps) and a new guitar multi-effects processor. I need a MIDI interface as well.
It’s nice to have the free time that would have been otherwise wasted on Facebook. Writing music and showing my kids the joy and work that goes into that is much more constructive.
Scienthusiast
Jul 18th
What is that word? I made it up. It’s a mix of science + enthusiast. I have to be careful though. I’m NOT a scientist. I’m enthusiastic about science. So it’s what I’m going to start calling myself.
Yes, I’m a scienthusiast.
I guess it could be hyphenated sci-enthusiast? Maybe scien-thusiast? Either way, I looked around Google briefly and it’s possible I thought of this before billions of other people? Maybe it’s some horrible word that I shouldn’t use? Nah, it’s great! It describes me quite fittingly, I think.
So there, it’s my word. It’s OK, you can borrow it. I expect royalties though!
What to do with it? Well, I think the world needs more enthusiasm for science. Not to solve every lurking problem in our lives but to better understand how the world around us works. Some mysteries shall remain so. There are some exceedingly complex things in the Universe that aren’t really practical for everyone to know. Unless it’s your job to know them, that is.
So, perhaps one of my goals in life is to help spread the word of science; Turn people on to how it all works, at a fundamental level. It always goes back to a quote from Carl Sagan. Roughly, we live in a world filled with technology. So few people understand how it all works. You don’t have to be a scientist to understand. You simply have to open your mind to it. When people learn how things actually work, it’s usually one of those “wow…” moments.
In saying that, remember, we can’t let go of reason for madness. There was a time when people who studied the heavens feared retribution. Good people were arrested, exiled or even killed for observing something knowable versus believing in something we couldn’t know. It might seem insane to think that could happen again, but remember as a species, we’re very young. There are a lot of good and honest people out there that speak for science.
Science is interesting because it changes based on observation. In that sense, our view of the world has evolved, as our methods and tools have evolved. The next few decades should prove to be very exciting in the realm of understanding. How the forefathers of great thinkers should like to be alive today to have a glimpse at what we know. How the great thinkers of our future might look back and realize how primitive our thinking was. Each new generation stands on the shoulders of giants from the previous.
Life; space; time; the Cosmos; all encompassing and all waiting to be discovered and understood. We are, in a way, how the Universe understands itself.
We, as the human race, must keep it going. If we’re not to be scientists, we should at least be enthusiastic about science.
Enter: The Scienthusiast.
We Are Here: The Pale Blue Dot
Jun 23rd
This all revolves around a photograph taken by a small spacecraft a little over 20 years ago. Carl Sagan thought for a while it’d be a good idea to have the spacecraft turn around and snap a photo of the Earth. Fearing damage to the spacecraft the controllers were reluctant. It was February 14, 1990 and Voyager I had completed all of its primary mission objectives. Now was the time to have Voyager turn around and snap a photo. If they had waited much longer the Earth would be too distant to even register.
So here we are. We are given this photo.
The Pale Blue Dot. As taken by Voyager I some 4 billion miles from Earth. February 14, 1990.
It sure doesn’t look like much. To us, it is everything. Now, I could go on about this and that regarding the photo. The thing is, it’s already been done. In fact, so well done, that to redo or try and out do it would be folly. Now to read what is said about the photograph is one thing but hearing the voice of Carl Sagan means a little more. It was his idea, so his words and voice are fitting.
The original audio was from an audio-book I do believe. Some crafty people have done things with it in videos. This one is probably the best I’ve found. It really is moving. (Yes, yes, I posted this video on Facebook a while back, I know.) So have a look now.
We are here: The Pale Blue Dot
Here is the text:
Consider again, that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
A picture is worth a thousand words, they say; That one is worth everything we’ve ever known.
Space: The Final Frontier
Jun 21st
No truer words can ever be spoken. The depths of the mind are indeed complex but not tangible. Our oceans floors hold many secrets about life and the history of our planet. Space is, for all intensive purposes, infinite. This isn’t technically true, to our knowledge. We estimate the true size of the Universe to be 93 Billion Light Years. So vast, in fact, that light from one side will never reach the other. This is why it is the pinnacle of exploration.
Eventually, one day, our destiny will lie somewhere in space. Perhaps another planetary body in this solar system or even another star system. That is, if we don’t blow ourselves up or suffer a cataclysmic set back.
The recent White House budget leaves me both concerned and yet I see an opportunity to be optimistic. I’ve been reading forums to get people’s takes on this. Mind you this is coming from people who work in the industry to plain people like myself. It is inevitable that politics gets head-firsted into the mix. I made that slang up. Nice eh? I guess there is no way around it but the degree of “This was Bush’s fault!”; “This was Griffin’s fault”; “Obama sux!” is just a little much.
I try my damnedest to take a middle road approach. I want science. I want exploration. I want a manned flight program (also termed HSF for Human Space Flight). At the moment we have it with Shuttle. In a few short months, it will be done and gone. What happens after that? We’re grounded, at least humans are.
Private companies are really getting into the mix of things which does excite me. Thing is, they’re a ways off from manned flight. It will happen, just not quite soon as we’d like.
Constellation is dead. I’m sad and yet I can understand this move. Some claim to have had the insight or ESP enough to know it was doomed from day one. I think having a pessimistic attitude isn’t very healthy. I don’t work in the industry, I follow it from a few rows back. I can say that my interest is important, not as a single entity but gathered with the combined interest of persons just like myself. Lack of public interest will kill a program deader than dead. Apollo anyone?
So, I thought about the cancellation of that program and realized, ok, maybe this isn’t as bad as it seems. I’m still icky feeling about not having the ability to put humans up but lets think this out. The downfall of Constellation was reaching back to the past to sort of re-use older technologies or at least model from them. What we need are newer technologies that are laced with our learnings of the past.
I think the biggest technological advance we need is in propulsion. Chemical rockets are dandy at getting heavy vehicles off the ground and into space but once in space you need something else. Something that’s less cumbersome, less prone to failure and has some oomph! These technologies should be researched to make Moon and Mars missions faster. Transit time to Mars is MONTHS. With new propulsion you could get it down to weeks; or so I’ve heard.
So, new technologies and private companies. I think I actually like the sound of that. Will they deliver? The talk is there, the walk is yet to come.
More notes on the budget are promised robotics and planetary missions. This is very exciting to me. Rovers are great tools for science! Just look at Spirit and Opportunity; they vastly outlived their planned mission time. If we had a mission going up every other month, I’d be stoked.
A final note about canceling the Moon program. Listen, we’ve been there before. Yes, actual people walked on the actual Moon. That program was initially a race; a race we would win. After that, you had a group of giddy scientists drooling over the prospect of getting some precious samples back. That came later and Apollo XVII was the final Moon-shot. We never spent more than a couple of days there. When we go back, we need to plan on STAYING for a length of time. Weeks, not days.
China wants to go there. Let them go, plant their flag and then come back. It’s a great thing for a country. I’d applaud them for it. As the saying goes “been there, done that”. It’s time we went a step ahead. That way when countries are landing and planting their flags, we can wave at them from our cozy Moon habitats. From that point we can build on and then eyeball Mars or even asteroids.
So, finally, it’s bittersweet for me. I wanted to see Constellation work but ultimately I want to see anything work. I’ll hold on the promise of some serious R&D and science missions. I’ll hold on to private companies keeping us in orbit too. It’s a big time shake up of things. Perhaps it was needed.
Obama says we need to get young people into science and math. I couldn’t agree more. If he truly means this then he needs to deliver on this budget. NASA has inspired generations of people. Let’s keep it that way.
If this flops as a dud and our space program is left floundering for years, I’ll be one mad space cadet. >:o
The Scale of the Universe
Jun 21st
This is a very clever little bit of flash put together by someone whom I have no idea who they are. All I know is that the site was blocked at work. I went in and nabbed the SWF file and I’m going to place it on my blog. You still have to endure the Newgrounds logo to see the animation.
Use the keyboard to move left or right for a smoother experience. The largest things in the Universe are mind boggling. The really fascinating stuff is all of the tiny things that go into making the world around us. You can see how small a neutrino is for instance; and why it passes unhindered through just about everything (including entire planets!).
The music is very pleasant too. 
A new type of supernova?
Jun 18th
This one exploding star outshines an entire galaxy! The NGC 1260 core is the dimmer object.
Ok, I thought I was all on the up and up with these things and how they worked. Ok, that is, as much as a layman can be on the up and up. I am not an astrophysicist (yet)!
So get this: a few years ago we witnessed a strange supernova. Actually, a little back story first. The general idea I always had was that stars with several solar masses went supernova. Reason being, they burned through their fuel at a greater rate. Once the fuel at the core was gone or fusion wasn’t adequate enough to resist the inward pressure (gravity) the whole thing collapsed. This releases a tremendous amount of energy and essentially the star explodes. You get left with a huge amount of ‘stuff’ being blown out into space and you’re left with either a neutron star or black hole at what used to be the core of the star.
That was a super basic overview and back story. So what is this new supernova? It is being called a Pair-instability Supernova. What the what?! If the name sounds bizarre then wait until you hear about how it works.
So here is how it goes. First, you need a supermassive star. A star of 130-250 solar masses seems to be the “zone”. Instinctively, one thinks “the more massive the star, the more massive the black hole it leaves behind”. Well, not really. At least, not in the case of this kind of star. See, these supermassive stars have low metallicity. I believe that means they’re almost entirely Hydrogen and Helium with very little other elements present…
…and well, I’m going to just post what Wiki says because I’m feeling lazy:
A pair instability supernova occurs when pair production, the production of free electrons and positrons in the collision between atomic nuclei and energetic gamma rays, reduces thermal pressure inside a supermassive star‘s core. This pressure drop leads to a partial collapse, then greatly accelerated burning in a runaway thermonuclear explosion which blows the star completely apart without leaving a black hole remnant behind.[1][2] Pair instability supernovae can only happen in stars with a mass range from around 130 to 250 solar masses and low to moderate metallicity (low abundance of elements other than hydrogen and helium, a situation common in Population III stars). The recently observed objects SN 2006gy and SN 2007bi[3] are hypothesized to have been pair instability supernovae.
So there, you have it. The star goes kablooey and leaves nothing but the fresh scent of brute. Ok maybe not. Incredible though, that a star can completely obliterate itself and leave nothing behind.
With that said, the star SN 2006gy is in a galaxy some 240 million light years away (ie the light we saw originated 240 million years ago). There is a star nearer to us, Eta Carinae that might go supernova much in the same way. If it does, it will likely be brilliantly bright. Visible during the day and able to be read by at night.
Fact is stranger than fiction, once again.
And here (this site has multiple links at the bottom)
Facebook is going away
Jun 9th
Yes, it is. No no no, it’s not shutting down. I mean it’s going away – from me!
This is my typical Facebook regimen:
- Open browser
- Click to refresh latest updates
- Scroll down the updates
- Look at pictures of people I could mostly care less about (unless it’s a hot chick! bazinga!)
- Look for any cool links which are seldom found
- Open any cool links if any are available
- See who is online
- Check again to see who is online because FB chat is slow
- Stare at screen waiting for something clever to say
- Think hard about a link I could post but realize that no one gives a damn about it anyway so why bother
- Despite the fact that no one gives a damn about discoveries pertaining to our Universe I post a link anyway waiting in vain for a response of “wow that’s cool!”
- Instead I notice that the person who posted the status of “Premier of XYZ show tonight” gets 15 comments
- I am filled with sadness over how a TV show is more important and conversation worthy than understanding the workings of our Universe
- I close the browser
- Rinse.
- Repeat.
Yeah, that’s about how it goes.
Now, if I were a scientist, I’d probably have followers that were also interested in science. I’d get positive feedback that way I suppose. I’m not a scientist though, so establishing a base there isn’t happening anytime soon. Instead most of my friends just aren’t interested in the things that I find stimulating. I can count about three exceptions and they know who they are.
Or DO they?! Bwa ha ha, they may never know!
On the whole, it’s just time to give it up for a good while. I’m working hard on simplifying my life. Irony! It’s true though. It takes some work to get things back to a simpler state. I have to tie up loose ends here and there with people I know or maybe someone I was doing work for.
By the way, I do not do sidework anymore for anyone. It sucks the absolute life out of me. After a long day at work, the last thing I want is a long night of work at home. That’s for another post maybe. It’s ok, nothing to vent about. It’s just something I had to get rid of.
How does one get rid of Facebook? Turn it off. WHOA! That was insane. I better tone it down.
No, really, you just stop. It’s not like a cigarette where you’d get physical withdrawal symptoms. You might crave it in a sense though. What is it though? You constantly want to see what other people are doing? That’s kind of sick I think. I’ve done it too. I’ve ‘stalked’ people. Ok, not really but isn’t that what it is? You go on their page and look at all their pics, their updates, links, vids, etc.
I know people normally don’t post what they don’t want seen, but that isn’t always the case. I’ve found things on people’s pages that made me blush or go “hmm….alrighty then!” It should just be called Stalkbook. Not to mention that once you put something on the internet, it is there indefinitely. That drunk photo? It’s somewhere, even if you deleted it. I’ve never had a drunk photo of me on the internet… I don’t think. 
This world we live in is completely saturated with technology. We can know anything and everything that happens anywhere in the world at the speed of light (almost). Sadly, in this world there are many who don’t even understand how any of it works. That was noted by the late Dr. Sagan. He also said it was a disaster waiting to happen. I’m not talking about Teh Internwebz. I mean science and technology as a whole. Refer to my sadness from the top.
While social networking is a product of science and technology, as with everything else, moderation is the key.
I do have some genuinely good friends on Facebook. I have some family on Facebook as well. Though, if I want to talk to my mom, I will pick up the phone. If I want to talk to my wife, I’ll walk away from my computer. Yes, walk away.
For now, the focus is on enjoying simple things in life. I’ll still bury my head in books regarding the wonders of our Universe but strangely, I find a lot of peace in that. Doesn’t that sound nice?
P.S. Should I post my Top Ten Most Annoying things people post as status updates?
Things you probably don’t think about: Why can’t we see Venus overhead at night?
May 6th
We all know the planets are out there, orbiting tirelessly around the Sun. How do we know? Well, we can see them, and most with the naked eye! Something you might not have thought about is why we can see all the planets overhead at night except Venus and Mercury.
Why is that?
Here is the simple answer: Our orbit is outside of Venus and Mercury’s orbit. Therefore when they are directly overhead it is daytime to some degree. Have no fear, I’m a fan of using imagery. Take a look below.
Note: light travels out in all directions obviously and this is not to scale either
So you can see there, when the Sun is overhead, the orbits of Venus and Mercury are also overhead. Since they never travel outside of the Earth’s orbit, we never see them overhead at night. Mars on the other hand is commonly visible at night (as is Jupiter and Saturn). We also go around the Sun faster than Mars so we actually lap it (it goes around every 1.8 Earth years). Neat huh?
Venus is often called the Morning or Evening Star. That’s because we see it either before the Sun rises or after the Sun sets, depending on where all the planets are at the time. After it rises far enough in the morning sky, the sky itself becomes too bright to be able to easily see it. Though it is possible. As for setting, it just dips below the horizon.
Just recently we were also able to see Mercury in the evening sky. The window to capture that rare moment was small; just a couple of weeks I believe. I snapped a photo which you can see in an earlier post.
So there you have it of something you probably never wondered about in the first place.
