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The Daily Dose/November 14, 2008
By Gaylon Kent
The Writer's Shack
Notes from around the Human Experience...Pics will return!
TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO CAMERA HAS GONE BEFORE: Astronomers with both UCLA and UC Berkley, working independently, have become the first people to photograph planets outside our solar system orbiting other stars.
Starting Right In With The Dry Technical Matter: Other planets, or exoplanets as astronomers call them, have been theorized, but not actually seen, for the past 13 years. Scientists have postulated their existence based on such things as how their gravity tugged on their parent star or its gravity bending the light of a star passing behind it or, our fave, a planet blocking starlight by passing in front of it.
Dry, Technical Matter: The first team used the Hubble Space Telescope to take a picture of what appears to be a giant planet orbiting a star 25-light years from Earth. This planet is roughly 11 billion miles from its star, about three times the distance Pluto is from the Sun, and while the star is about 16 times as bright as our Sun, it is not expected this planet could host any life that we are familiar with.
We Hope They Used The Telephoto Lens: The second used two telescopes in Hawaii to photograph three planets orbiting a young star over 700 trillion miles away.
Dry, Technical Matter: Both teams overcame problems associated with trying to find the rather weak light refracted from planets that is overwhelmed by the light from the star they are orbiting. Key to finding the second group of planets is that they are relatively young - about 65 million years old - and still radiate heat from their formation.
Oh, Thank God: A more technical discussion of this achievement, which is really deserving of more attention than this entertainment-centered culture is prepared to give it, is beyond the scope of this column, so we are going to refer you to the journal Science, or an article in a good newspaper.
Dry, Philosophical Matter: You can't help thinking that in the grand scheme of things we really aren't as advanced as we think. I mean, sure, we all have phones in our pockets, but as a civilization we're fragmented into over 200 different political units, with those subdivided even more, and we haven't even visited our nearest neighboring planet yet, though we have visited our moon. We fight wars that someone watching our entire planet from space would probably find silly.
Dry, Historical Context: With these photographs, we are just now taking the first baby steps towards answering one of the profound questions of our existence: are we alone out there? Where we are right now is analogous to where the Wright Brothers were when they started playing with kites. We are just scratching the surface of where we are going to go.
Quote That Sucker: Noted writer Arthur C. Clarke said:
"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering."
On The Nose: He's right! Either way, it's a hell of a concept. Go out on a starry night and gaze up consider both scenarios: we are alone and we are not alone. Good luck not finding both thoughts profound.
Dry, Technical Conclusion: So maybe its best we don't know. Consider that for a second. Good Lord, definite knowledge of whether we are or are not alone in this universe? And if we are favored with positive knowledge one way or another (forgetting, for a second, the imperative about not being able to prove a negative) we better be all alone, because if we're not, complete panic - or hilarity, depending on your outlook - would ensue quicker than you could say "one small step". We humans can't even get along with each other, do you really think we would be able to present a united front to anyone from another planet? There's no way. Thanks to religion, we have gone on the assumption that God created the heavens and the Earth and nothing else since time immemorial so that - as a planet - we are completely unreceptive to anything else.
And since we can see pretty far out in the universe and have yet to discover anyone else, it is a pretty reasonable bet that anyone else out there who could visit us is probably more technologically advanced than we are. I mean, we haven't sent man much more than 250,000 miles away. Anyone from the planet Zortron who could send living beings millions of light years, even if they dropped by for a friendly chat, would find us wetting our pants and running around like idiots.
UP, UP AND AWAY: Inspired by the Jules Verne novel, American reporter Nelly Bly set out from Hoboken, New Jersey on this date in 1889 to see if the world could, indeed, be traversed in 80 days. It could, and 72 days later, she would arrive in New York City.
No, Really, Officer, I Was Lost: On this date, in 1957, a major meeting of Mafia leaders is broken up in Apalachin, New York. Local and state police became suspicious when lots of expensive, out of state cars belonging to known gangsters began showing up at a local residence. Despite the fact no one had committed a crime, police set up a road block, and, despite the fact no one had committed a crime, a lot of gangsters fled, running through the woods. Several dozen gangsters were arrested, but, since they had not committed a crime, they were eventually released.
3…2…1…Blastoff! On this date, in 1969, Apollo 12 lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Four days later Apollo 12 would become the second mission to land on the Moon and astronauts Charles Conrad and Richard Gordon would become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.
We May Be There Again Before You Know It: On this date, in 1972, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 1,000 for the first time, at 1003.16, up 6.09. IBM was up 11.25, closing at 388. Thursday, IBM was up 4.47, closing at 84.21, while the Dow itself was up 552.59, closing at 8835.25.
Thought For The Day: Any society, if it is to flourish instead of merely survive, must strive to transcend its own limits. - Andrew Chaikin.
The Trivia Question is taking some time off.
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