Wednesday, 4. November 2009, 15:45:23
Music, Astronomy, The Four Seasons
I’m not normally given to writing song lyrics, but back in
the 80s I came up with the words for a punk rock song. Here’s
the song:
“Write One Song”
by
Edward Piercy
Write one song and play it to death
Write one song and play it to death
Write one song and play it to death
Write one song and play it to death
Write one song
Play it to death
Write one song
Play it to death
Write one song and play it to death
Write one song and play it to death
Write one song and play it to death
Write one song and play it to death
Write one song
Play it to death
Write one song
Play it to death
Following upon the success (in my own mind) of that song,
I wrote another one:
“Write Two Songs”
by
Edward Piercy
Write two songs and play ’em to death
Write two songs and play ’em to death
Write two songs and play ’em to death
Write two songs and play ’em to death
Write two songs
Play ’em to death
Write two songs
Play ’em to death
Etc. etc etc. I think you get the idea.
I never did write a third punk song for some reason. Though
I’m pretty sure that I could.
Also back in the 80s I wrote a song called “Heart Parasol.”
I wrote it while visiting my sister and brother-in-law at
their house near Grissom AFB in Indiana. My brother-in-law,
John, ended up setting the words to music. And eventually,
recently, he recorded it. You can listen to the song on
John’s MySpace page if you care to.
I don’t remember the lyrics to that one. So I can’t put them
down here. I do remember vaguely what my life was like back
then, what I was thinking and feeling. Lots of ancient Roman
history. Lots of beer. Xanax. Echo and the Bunnymen. And of
course the seemingly ever-present depression over some girl
or another.
It seems like so long ago. But of course it wasn’t. It always
gets me when people meet and one will say “Gee, it’s been a
long time.” And the other person will respond “Yes, it has
been. Too long” or something to that effect.
But it hasn’t been a long time. A billion years, now that’s a
long time. All our time is but the blink of a star’s eye.
The Corona Borealis super cluster of galaxies, located
approximately 1 billion light years away from us.
Thursday, 30. April 2009, 21:18:08
Telescopes, Astronomy
Well tomorrow is payday and I imagine I'll be doing at
least a bit of misbehaving. But for today it is time to
let my ka go floating (even temporarily ) amidst the
Creator's creation.
Colliding Galaxies
"NGC 2207 and IC 2163 met and began a sort of gravitational
tango about 40 million years ago. The two galaxies are tugging
at each other, stimulating new stars to form. Eventually, this
cosmic ball will come to an end, when the galaxies meld into
one. The dancing duo is located 140 million light-years away
in the Canis Major constellation." [Photo and Text from NASA.]
Cassiopeia-A Supernova Remnant
"Located 10,000 light-years away in the northern constellation
Cassiopeia, Cassiopeia A is the remnant of a once massive star
that died in a violent supernova explosion 325 years ago. It
consists of a dead star, called a neutron star, and a surrounding
shell of material that was blasted off as the star died. This
remnant marks the most recent supernova in our Milky Way galaxy,
and is one of the most studied objects in the sky." [Photo and
Text from NASA.]
New Abel Galaxy
Abell 1689 is a galactic cluster in the constellation Virgo.
At a distance of 12.8 billion years from us it is one of the
oldest astronomical features currently known to us. This photo
was taken using the μ-lensing technique (aka gravitational
lensing) using a cluster 2.2 billion years distant. [Photo
from NASA.]
Life Formation in Hot and Cool Stars
And finally a little something closer to home (at least
figuratively speaking). Astronomers have determined that
protoplanets around stars like our own sun (yellow) have
a significantly higher presence of the potentially life-
forming molecule hydrogen cyanide (HCN) than protoplanets
around cooler suns (orange), which are heavier in acetylene
(C2H2). HCN molecules can combine to form adenine, one of
the vital amino acids in DNA. [Graph from Spitzer/Cal Tech)
Friday, 13. March 2009, 20:58:11
The Four Seasons, Astronomy, Khephera
A reflection off my watch.
I was in the bathroom yesterday fooling around
with removing some old window blind brackets
from the window, when I looked over and saw a
bright, shiny form on the wall. It seemed to
move around and change shape a bit, like some
sort of poltergeist. It took me a minute, but
I finally realized that it was the reflection
of the sun outside the window onto my watch face.
Looking at it a minute, I was struck by the
similarity to something else I had seen.
The Ring Nebulae, M57.
It takes the light from the Ring Nebulae about
2300 years to reach the Earth.
The reflection of my watch wouldn't last nearly
as long. The earth moves, the sun moves, the clouds
flow hither and thither. And in fact a few minutes
later, after having grabbed my camera to take a
picture of it, the image on my wall had all but
disappeared and was impossible at most angles to
get back in any way.
But even in the universe things are always changing,
evolving, though we do not in most cases observe that
because we don't live long enough.
Perhaps it could be said that the Ring Nebulae is a
reflection also; a temporary, localized reflection
of something that exists eternally only in the
mind of the Creator.
Star trails, Gemini North Observatory,
Mauna Kea, Hawaii.
Wednesday, 24. December 2008, 22:44:04
Observatories, Telescopes, Astronomy
Computer graphic of the new Thirty Meter Telescope.
There is a new Big Eye coming to the planet.
The largest optical telescope on earth right now is the Keck complex on
Mauna Kea in Hawaii, which consists of two telescopes each with a 10
meter mirror. But there is a new telescope in the works, one dubbed for
right now at least the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), which will have a
mirror measuring 30 meters and an aperture of f/1. From what I can
determine the TMT won't be a dual telescope like the Keck (which functions
like a whoppingly big pair of binoculars) but will be a single telescope.
Evidently the TMT is planned as a "big punch" telescope to be used as a
supplement to and work in conjunction with other telescopes such as the
Keck.
The planned location of the TMT has now been reduced to two possible
sites -- Cerro Armazones in Chile's Atacama Desert and and Mauna Kea in
Hawaii.
It's my guess -- just speculation -- that it will be in Hawaii. The
committee that will build the TMT is a joint American/Canadian effort
and it makes sense, all things being equal, to keep the telescope close
to home.
If all goes well, the TMT will be up and looking out at the stars by
2018. In the meantime, the Keck will remain lord of its domain --
which given the size of the universe is really just a tiny speck.
Wednesday, 24. December 2008, 01:25:59
Observatories, Astronomy, Telescopes
A web-cam photo of the Keck Observatory
complex taken on December 23, 2008.
The photo is a reminder that, Hawaii or not,
Mauna Kea rises 13,803 feet (4,207 m)
above sea level.
Thursday, 9. October 2008, 15:20:15
Telescopes, Astronomy
Image of Mercury taken by the Messenger Spacecraft.
The bright white dots are recent impact craters.
For those who might find the recently discovered Abell 1835 IR1916
object that is 13.2 billion light years away a little bit remote, perhaps
you would be more interested in something much closer to home. On October
6th the Messenger Spacecraft made the second of three flybys of Mercury,
taking pictures and using its instrument payload to make measurements.
Messenger is scheduled to go into orbit around Mercury on March 18,
2011.
And I don't know why, but I thought I would throw in a little space
traveling music into this one.
Have a good trip.
Wednesday, 8. October 2008, 18:29:11
Telescopes, Astronomy
Abell 1835 IR1916.
The other day I got to wondering how big the universe is. Or, more
specifically, what the farthest galaxies are at the "edge" of it, what
its limits are. In astronomy this is known as astrocartography and its
subject is the large-scale structure of the universe.
Astrophysicists know that our universe is about 13.7 billion years old.
At that beginning, the universe exploded outward in a singular event
known as the Big Bang or the Big Bounce. It has been estimated that the
universe is now 156 billion light-years in size. Which might seem strange:
If the beginning of the universe, and thus of time, occurred 13.7 billion
years ago, then one would expect the maximum size of the universe to be
2 X 13.7 billion or 27.4 billion light years. The reason that is not the
case is that space-time has not been constant since the Big Bang.
But that's not the only strange thing about our universe. The contents
of the universe are in the main not evenly distributed. The universe
known today is a heterogeneous mixture of superclusters, bubble-like
voids, filaments (sheets of galaxies like the Great Wall), as well as an
odd region of rather homogeneous and evenly distributed galaxies 300
million light years from us called the End of Greatness.
Astronomers calculate distance from our little arm of the Milky Way by
observing red shift. Recently, an object was observed using X-Ray and
Infrared telescopes indicating a galaxy that is 13.2 billion light years
away from us. Astronomers then turned the Big Eyes of the Keck telescope
in Hawaii and the Hubble Space Telescope on the object. Using a technique
called gravitational lensing, they managed to take photos of the object
(kinda-sorta, it is rather dim) that they labeled Abell 1835 IR1916. For
astronomers and astrophysicists this was an exciting discovery. Prior to
Abell 1835 the oldest (and most distant) galaxy was 10 billion light years
away. But Abell 1835 is very close to being as old as the universe itself.
Astrophysicists predicted that star and galaxy formation in the early
universe would look much different than it normally does today. And that
is in fact what was observed with Abell 1835. It is a very unusual galaxy,
smaller and less evolved than most galaxies.
Infrared image showing Abell 1835 IR1916.
Immanuel Kant once wrote of the difference between limits (Schranken) and
bounds (Grenzen). As Janik and Toulmin state it:
"Mathematics and physics will go on describing appearances for all time.
The number of phenomenon they may discover is unbounded. Nevertheless,
their discoveries are limited to appearances. They are, by their nature,
unequipped to discover the nature of things in themselves. These branches
of knowledge are restricted to what can be known about objects of sense-
experience. They can never explain anything in such a way as to transcend
that experience. A science of metaphysics (if there could be such a thing)
would lead, not to the limits of speculative reason, but to its bounds;
in that case, one would reach the bounds of the conceivable, as opposed to
the limits of the actual." [Wittgenstein's Vienna (1973)]
We can map the heavens and observe the oldest galaxies in the universe.
But nothing can ever tell us simply why it is here.
It is possible to look at the universe from an existentialist viewpoint as
being an unexplainable and always mysterious place. Myself, I prefer to
look at it similar to how Albert Einstein looked at it, as a place where things
are knowable and where there is a reason for things. We may not know
the reason, but that doesn't mean that there isn't one.
The universe within 100 million light years
of our own galazy, the Milky Way.
Sunday, 28. September 2008, 15:45:19
Beautiful World, Telescopes, Astronomy, Science
This big girl is on our tail and closing fast.
There's a black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy that is our
home. A really big one.
In fact, there are black holes all over the universe, and astronomers
think it likely that at the center of most galaxies is a black hole. Not
only that, but these galactic black holes seem to play a major role in
the evolution of galaxies.
This was some of the information I picked up on a recent episode of
Nova called "Monster of the Milky Way."
I had heard about the black hole in the center of the galaxy thing a
number of years back. But I suppose that what interested me the most
about this episode of the PBS series was information they presented on
the evolution of galaxies. The evolution of stars and planetary systems
I was familiar with. But looking at the cycle of the galaxies all across
our space-time universe -- and there are literally billions of them --
was truly a mind blowing experience.
It's a huge universe. But sometimes even for all of its hugeness it gets
a bit crowded. Occasionally, galaxies will run into each other. This is
a part of the evolution of galaxies also -- that sometimes two will merge
to form a new supergalaxy. In fact our own Milky Way and the Andromeda
galaxy, one of our universal neighbors, will probably collide with each
other in about 3 billion years. Let's hope they both have a hell of a lot
of insurance.
All I can say is -- God is the greatest creative artist I've ever known.
The product of what he set in motion just floors me.
"There's no better hole that you could
possibly imagine than a black hole."
-- Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist
(And no, as incredibly tempting as it is,
I'm not going a make a joke about that one.)
NGC 6050/IC 1179 (Arp 272) is a remarkable collision between two
spiral galaxies, NGC 6050 and IC 1179, and is part of the Hercules
Galaxy Cluster, located in the constellation of Hercules. The galaxy
cluster is part of the Great Wall of clusters and superclusters, the
largest known structure in the universe. The two spiral galaxies are
linked by their swirling arms. Arp 272 is located some 450 million
light-years away from Earth. (Photo and caption courtesy of NASA.)
Arp 148 is the staggering aftermath of an encounter between two
galaxies, resulting in a ring-shaped galaxy and a long-tailed companion.
The collision between the two parent galaxies produced a shockwave
effect that first drew matter into the center and then caused it to
propagate outwards in a ring. The elongated companion perpendicular
to the ring suggests that Arp 148 is a unique snapshot of an ongoing
collision. Arp 148 is nicknamed Mayall's Object and is located in the
constellation of Ursa Major, the Great Bear, approximately 500 million
light-years away. (Photo and caption courtesy of NASA.)
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