The Carbondale Enigma

I just discovered that a rare celestial confluence of events is about to happen at a spot on the earth not too far from me. I've dubbed this event The Carbondale Enigma.

To be technically correct, I guess I should call it The Cedar Lake Enigma, but Cedar Lake isn't a huge landmark. In fact, I had never heard of it until tonight, as I was clicking around on Google Earth.

(Honestly, I'm not even sure this discovery qualifies as an enigma, but if not, the word has an awfully high bar.)

A caveat, I am not sure I discovered this phenomenon, but as of now, I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else. I often google my ideas and thoughts, to see if anyone else is thinking them, too. On this night, I found nothing.

I'll start my explanation by giving you an interesting fact: If you're sitting at any given spot on the globe - for instance, your house - and a total solar eclipse happens, the average wait time for the next one to cross your house is around 400 years. That's a brief tick of the Great Celestial Clock but it's a fairly long time in human terms. 

In fact, let's map it onto a human lifetime. You'd be born, complete school, get a job, get married, raise 2.1 kids, survive 1.5 divorces, max out the mileage on 12 vehicles, retire, reluctantly take up pottery and bingo (because of course you will), and die at around age 80. Repeat that five times, and that's about how long before the next total solar eclipse would happen at your house.

I'm a data fiend so I love that statistic, but I also love to play the spoiler, so of course I immediately set out to find the exception. That's how I stumbled across The Carbondale Enigma.

If you pan way out, the cosmos and everything in it can seem very well-ordered. Planets form and revolve around stars, those stars interact with other stars in galaxies, those galaxies rotate with surprising regularity, and are bound gravitationally to other galaxies in clusters. It all feels like a well-oiled machine.

But if you zoom in and give things a little scrutiny, you will notice imperfections. For instance, the moon revolves around the earth in an irregular ellipse, not a perfect circle. Its orbit deviates 5 degrees from the solar plane, so it looks a bit crooked. Earth's axis is slanted, not straight, and features something called the Chandler Wobble. Our planet's rotation is gradually slowing. And, with each revolution, the moon is slowly slipping away from the earth at a rate of a little over an inch a year.*

These imperfections, deviations from 'the norm,' don't seem like a big deal, but through the amplification of time and distance, things start looking way less ordered, and far more chaotic.

Due to these imperfections, it's likely there are places on Earth that have never experienced a perfect dead-on total eclipse. Conversely, there are other places that have probably gotten way more than their share. Pondering the second category is what sent me down the rabbit hole.

Just a few miles southwest of Carbondale, Illinois there's an unassuming, wooded spot on the bank of a body of water called Cedar Lake. If you're bold, the spot can be reached via a short hike from S. Poplar Camp Road. The less intrepid among us may prefer to rent a boat at the marina and reach it by water. However you get there, the crosshairs at 37°38'30"N 89°16'16"W are in the exact center of the path of the August 21, 2017 North American solar eclipse.

Not such a big deal - it's a bi-coastal eclipse with literally countless similar spots along its path. But as I was scouring maps of future eclipses, it occurred to me that same lakeside spot is also in the exact center of the path of another eclipse, set to occur on April 8, 2024. Only seven years later.

That may not seem like a big deal to you, but it's the equivalent of an acid trip for geeks like me. Seven years, not four hundred. Coincidence? Of course. It's a random artifact of a non-symmetrical universe. However, I'm the kind of person who appreciates such things. Maybe you are, too.

The majority of all humans who have lived on this planet have never witnessed a solar eclipse in person. I've heard it's a life-changing experience. The winds go calm, the temperature drops, shadows sharpen, and then, suddenly, the sky goes dark and the stars come out. Crickets start singing, and birds roost. In every direction, low along the horizon, a 'sunset' appears. Above, as the moon blocks a raging inferno, the wispy, feathery ring of our local star's corona dances silently.

Everything feels calm and peaceful.

Moments later, the moon continues along its path and a crescent of sunshine appears. The crickets go quiet, birds again take flight, and the world slowly returns to normal, as if nothing ever happened.

Except, as I understand, those who witness it are changed somehow.

On August 21, 2017, my family will travel to Jefferson City, Missouri, which is also in the center of the path of totality. There, we will experience this incredible event together with friends, minus our toddler son, who is too young to appreciate it.

But after discovering the Carbondale Enigma, part of me wants to change our plans and go to that spot along the bank of Cedar Lake. To take it all in from that unique place. Maybe to stack some stones as a sort of makeshift monument to the rarity of the experience and the special perspective.

And then, seven years later, on April 8, 2024, to return to watch it all happen again, and stack a few more stones, hoping that sometime in the distant future, someone will find my monument and understand.

*Fun fact: At some point, the earth will experience her final total eclipse. As the moon slips further away from the earth, it will eventually be too small in the sky to completely cover the sun. Beyond that time, all eclipses will be 'annular,' or 'ring of fire.' You still have time to plan, NASA estimates our final total eclipse to be around 600-million years in the future.

Carl

I'm not sure how I missed his birthday this year, but November 9 came and went unnoticed, until tonight.

As the preeminent scientist, astronomer and philosopher of our time, Carl Sagan has written many thought provoking pieces, none more so than this, The Pale Blue Dot.  It was his idea to turn the Voyager cameras around one last time and capture a parting glimpse of her home, Earth.  This brilliantly produced video includes the piece he wrote, and the photo.

Happy birthday Carl.



Video produced by The Thinking Atheist.

The blink of an eye

Sir Richard Dawkins is my kind of thinker.  Not that I am capable of carrying on more than a glancing, half-assed conversation with such a person, but I know enough to understand that he is hyper-aware.

Deep thinkers always conjure deep thoughts in my mind.  One of the oldest philosophical questions we've asked as a species is, are we alone?

The easy answer is, of course not, I don't know of a scientist of any repute who believes we are.  Then why do we feel so alone?  Maybe the answer lies in a theory or concept we haven't yet considered.  And it's not a comfortable one, so maybe you should sit down.

I share Dawkins' theory about the evolution of intelligence.  It goes something like this: Given the limitless nature of time, the vastness of this (and perhaps more than just this one) universe, and the relative short scale upon which evolution works, there have been ample opportunities throughout history for intelligent beings to evolve to a point where they would be capable of tackling the challenges of time travel, or distance travel, or simply devising a method of communication that even the youngest fledgling civilizations (such as us) could perceive.

After all, our own high technology era is hardly more than a century old, yet already we know that in the universe, particles can be 'connected' over limitless distances. In fact, we are learning things that may render distance irrelevant to exploration. (Distance and time only really matter to us as a point of reference - but that's a subject for another discussion.) Given more time, say thousands or millions of years, intelligent, self-aware beings would surely find ways to communicate, and would likely do so in a way that we, even with our comparatively rudimentary technology, could see, hear, or sense.

So where are they?  Why haven't we heard from these neighbors?  Considering the known age of the universe, they've presumably had billions of years, and in that time, tens of trillions of opportunities to appear and develop.  What's the deal?

Perhaps, Dawkins says, the reason we haven't heard from another intelligent civilization in the universe is that there is a very limited time that a being can be self-aware, and possess intelligence, before it inevitably extinguishes itself.  Either by accident, or on purpose.  We have only been aware of our surroundings, our own intelligence, and had the ability to really do something with it, for the blink of an eye.  Of the approximately 4.6 billion years the earth has existed, only for the last fraction of a fraction of a fraction of that time have we even known what an 'earth' really is.  Yet already, we possess the technology to eliminate ourselves from existence.

Think of it.  It has been predicted by British Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Rees that humans have only a 50/50 chance of surviving the 21st century.  Common sense dictates that if we are capable of doing something, given time, we will eventually do it.

We will inevitably kill ourselves.

Perhaps that is part of the nature of being self-aware.  Intelligence may be a fleeting and deadly thing.  And perhaps that is a universal truth.

Maybe that's why our 'neighbors' haven't dropped by with cookies.

Helium's illegitimate little brother

From the "I didn't know that" file:



I need to buy cans of both and keep them in my studio.

Other such fun videos courtesy of Wired.com here.

I feel the earth move under my feet

This morning at 4:37 central, St. Louis shook.

An exerpt from the Post-Dispatch message board:

"My bird started flipping out a few minutes before it happened and woke me up. I walked out into the living room and heard all the birds in the neighborhood all going nuts, I knew something was gonna happen. Then stuff started shaking."

Strange how animals know it's coming before it arrives. 5.2 on the scale. Nothing near what we experienced in 1971 in Los Angeles, (which is the only quake I can remember) but it's a little scary for the "inlanders" around here.

We've been up every two or three hours all night, and wouldn't you know it... the quake happened between feedings, when we were asleep. We've been so sleep deprived lately, when we're out, we're OUT. We never felt a thing.

Breakfast strands

Em and I went to breakfast at Mimi's this morning so I could nurture my brain back to life after a night of scotch and cigars with the boys. (possibly the last opportunity of its kind for a few months) As the spicy Bloody Mary went about its assignment, I was considering DNA.

Our son will be thrust into the human race at any moment, and his genetic make-up was on my mind. An odd possibility occurred to me - what if the trillions of strands of DNA each of our cells contains were more than just a genetic roadmap for our bodies, but also an encoded "plan?" It's a compelling concept, the thought that DNA isn't just who we are, but what we'll do. More than just our predispositions, but also our accomplishments.

I'll bet someday we will discover that DNA is even more important than we know, and that a lot of the "junk" information in the strands actually means something. Perhaps it's a map to the location of our alien makers, or a good recipe for Ratatouille.

There is a movie plot there, somewhere. Now all that is left is to flesh it out, write a screenplay, do a storyboard, pitch it to a studio, hire actors, film it, produce it, market the film and get it into the theaters.

Or... just let it die here in my lonely little corner of the worldwide web.

I need to lay off the scotch.

BOOM!

In a far flung area of the universe, a star exploded with such force, you could see it with the naked eye. We witnessed the explosion last Friday (3.21.08) but it actually happened 7.5 billion years ago... when the Earth didn't even exist.

Under normal circumstances, the most distant object (a spiral galaxy called M33) that can be seen with the naked eye is about a thousand times closer - 2.9 million light years away. To be able to see such an event without a telescope is just amazing.

Oddly enough, it occurred at close to the same moment (at least in celestial terms) science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey) died.

Clarke was a colorful guy - my favorite quote of his was about extraterrestrial life: “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

I only hope that, as his gamma ray burst occurred and he passed into the great unknown, Hal remembered to open the pod bay door...

Slippin', slippin', slippin'...

My son is getting so big! Our recent ultrasound gave us a pretty good view of him, although not much in the way of 3D stuff, yet. The video below may not work on a dial-up connection, but if you're on broadband, it should stream smoothly.



Once in a while the picture gets really shaky... that's when Emily is laughing. It was a funny, tearful experience - one we can't wait to do again in a couple of weeks. Isn't it cool that technology allows you to "visit" your baby before he's even born?

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My blogiversary just passed, and I didn't even realize it! (ain't it just like a man?)

Three days ago, my blog turned THREE years old. I don't post as often as I used to, but it works for me. Free time is a rare commodity... especially now, when we're preparing for April and the new baby.

As of today this mundane, dusty little corner of the universe is closing in on 200,000 hits, which never ceases to amaze me. WTF?

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We went to an exhibition called Body Worlds 3 last night. It's a display of actual, dead human bodies that have been preserved and posed using a process called plastination. You are literally looking at real human flesh, bones, tendons, and other body parts. The photo to the left is an example, and eerily, the cadaver is holding up the skins of several actual people.

First, I should say it's very inspiring and educational, but I must admit to feeling a little uneasy. These are real people, dissected in various ways to show how the human body works. Here are a few pictures of the cadavers on exhibition. (click the links, they are really fascinating)

It's difficult to describe my feelings as I wandered through this exhibition, but I'd say fascination, sadness, elation, a little irreverence, some fear, and a deep realization of my own mortality. It was extremely impactful. I'm a pretty emotional person anyway, but this experience is one I will never forget.