Tuesday News Blip: Phoenix Lander!

Astronomy: The Phoenix craft of the "Mars Scout Program" to mars is a $475 million mission to launch and land the Phoenix spacecraft on the surface of Mars and explore it. When you consider the massive undertaking of such a project, NASA's slim budget of $475 million is extremely frugal, pennies really, but despite it's relatively slim budget, it's been an incredible success. The Phoenix lander was set to explore Mars for 90 "sols" (Martian days, or about 92 earth days). But instead of lasting a mere 3 months, it lasted almost 5, and only lost transmission to the approaching harsh Martian winter. Phoenix broke the barrier setting a lot of discoveries in previously uncharted territory.
The Phoenix included a set of ovens to heat minerals and materials it picked up as well as an electronic "wet chemistry lab" to run various experiments on the substances it sampled. Phoenix was the first spacecraft to ever "break the surface" (pun somewhat intended) and dig beneath the ice of another planet. This technological advancement revealed that the northern plains of Mars are more habitable for life than expected. Instead discovering inhospibility soil acids, Phoenix discovered alkaline soils, which could be actually conducive to potential plant life!!! It may not be green aliens with three heads and phasers, and rather possible microbes, but the Phoenix has come the closest mankind ever has to discovering life on another planet!

The Future of the Mars Scout Program will include an exciting "SUV-sized" Mars Science Lab (MSL -- and yes, and actual "laboratory") hehe. Like its predecessors Spirit  (January 4, 2004 landing) and Opportunity, (January 25, 2004 landing)  the MSL will have vehicular mobility.

Science: The journal of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion

Science: The journal of Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion just announced a possible breakthrough for astronauts enduring long-distance space travel. The earth is protected from meteorites, high velocity cosmic rays, and other space debris from its surrounding "magnetosphere". Cutting edge physicists aim to simulate this magnetosphere around a space craft. Scientists intelligiently merely mimicked the sophisticated protection mechanism already surrounding the earth and voila, a new breakthrough that could extend space travel incredibly.

Bottom-Line: Magnetic Force field aims to protect astronauts from space harshness.

Future astronauts could benefit from a magnetic "umbrella" that deflects harmful space radiation around their crew capsule, scientists say.
The super-fast charged particles that stream away from the Sun pose a significant threat to any long-duration mission, such as to the Moon or Mars.
But the research team says a spaceship equipped with a magnetic field generator could protect its occupants.
Lab tests are reported in the journal Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion.
The approach mimics the protective field that envelops the Earth, known as the magnetosphere.
Astronauts' risk
Our star is a constant source of charged particles, and storms that arise on the Sun's surface result in huge numbers of these particles spilling into space.
As well as this plasma, or "solar wind", high velocity particles known as cosmic rays also flood through our galaxy.
The Earth's magnetosphere deflects many of these particles that rain down on the planet, and our atmosphere absorbs most of the rest.

The first time we switched it on, it worked
Ruth Bamford
International space agencies acknowledge that astronauts face a significant risk of ill health and even death if they experience major exposure to this harsh environment.
And even the spacecraft themselves are not immune to the effects. A solar flare crippled the electronics on Japan's mission to Mars, Nozomi, in 2002, for example.
But researchers from the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), the Universities of York and Strathclyde, and IST Lisbon have shown how it might be possible to create a portable mini-magnetosphere for spaceships.
People scale
In its experimental set-up, the team simulated the solar wind in the laboratory and used magnetic fields to isolate an area inside the plasma, deflecting particles around the "hole".
It was not initially clear the idea would work, said Ruth Bamford, who led the research.
"There was a belief that you couldn't make a little hole in the solar wind small enough to do this at all," Dr Bamford, from RAL, told BBC News.
"It was believed that you had to have something very large, approaching planetary scale, to work in this way."
The team has had to take into account the physics of plasmas at the comparatively tiny human scale. To create its metre-sized trial, the team used a plasma jet and a simple $20 magnet.
"The first time we switched it on, it worked," said Dr Bamford.
What is more, the trial field seems to adjust itself automatically. "It does have the capacity to be somewhat self-regulating, just like the Earth's magnetosphere is," Dr Bamford explained.
"When it gets a strong push from the solar wind, the bubble gets smaller. The video shows us increasing the pressure of the solar wind, and the shield gets smaller but brighter."
Power issues
Many more experiments are needed, Dr Bamford admits, to understand how best to harness the effect; and a practical implementation is probably 15 to 20 years away.

The approach mimics how the Earth's magnetic field deflects cosmic rays
To protect a spaceship and its crew, she said, the craft itself might carry the magnetic field generator. Alternatively, it was possible to envisage a constellation of accompanying ships dedicated to the purpose of providing the umbrella where it was needed most.
The approach will probably also work with a field that is not on constantly, but cycles on and off - conserving the power that is precious on long-term missions. The details of how to cycle the field and control its shape must be hammered out, however.
"There're a lot of things to work out, like control, reliability, weight to launch, and so on," said Dr Bamford.
"I don't think it'll come down to as little as sticking fridge magnets on the outside of the spacecraft."

Recent Celeb Scene and Global Positioning

Heath Ledger might win the oscar for his maniacal Joker character, making this the second posthumous "Best Actor" award in over 30 years, the most recent (hardly not recent) went to Peter Finch in Network in 1977.

Also, I noticed the ever-growing "I hate Paris club" has continued to spawn. Disdain for that woman -- who, imho, is not really that bad, and in some areas, quite likeable, like her ability to handle media and magnetize press to her image (that also, of course, is the same reason why so many loathe her) -- has become a "fad" a trendy thing to do. Even actresses I admire, like incredibly talented Tina Fey appear to loathe her: "She's so unbelievably dumb and so proud of how dumb she is. She looks like a tranny up close. Her hair looks like fraggle." What really stumps me is how she so effectively gets under the skin of so many successful people. Does she threaten? Are they confused by her success? If she was a nobody they wouldn't bother commenting about her. Anyways, that ridicule, no doubt, satisfies Ms. Hilton's image agenda rendering her more successful. Bad flack or Good flack still registers as some kind of attention, so if you objectively seek attention, she's got it!

In other news, Matt LeBlanc's former "Friends" agent, Camille Cerio (not to be confused with pregnant Camilla Alves, McConaughey's girlfriend, of no relation) is trying to sue him for $1 million in unpaid commissions. He actually EARNED $1 million per show, though! And considering that the Friends' series tallied NUMBER episodes, he should have no problem covering that, but gotta pay those dues!

That about raps it up for celebrity gossip, other than the usual -- a lot of babies, a lot of pregnancies, a lot of marriages, and a lot of trips to the beach! One question, do they "time" these things. It just seems like babies are popping out all over the place in the summer with Pitt-Jolie's twins and McConaughey-Alves's expecting and more, it seems that way.

I also just noticed Gyllenhal's been practicing swordsmanship for "Prince of Persia". I've played almsot every video game in that series, so that video-game-to-movie conversation definitely pops onto the "Must-see" list.

I don't like to focus to much on these people because they already get so much flak, but oh, one more thing I noticed is Jolie has some longitude and latitude coordinates tatooed on her left shoulder.



Navigation (along with precision and freedom) stands as one of my three core values, so anything with coordinates and nautical precision gets an A+ for cool in my book, but as a tattoo? That's a pretty intellectual ink-skin maneuveur, especially when compared to a lot of the 2am drunken-stupor tattoos people get permanently emblazened onto their epidermal layer. 4 sets of nautical global coordinates -- you can tell a lot of thought went into that -- very cool. It turns out the represent the long. and lat. of the birthplace of her kids.

Cambodia (N11 33' 0" E104 51' 00")


Addis Abeba, Ethiopia (N09 02' 00" E038 45' 00")


Swakopmund, Namibia (S22 40' 26" E014 31' 40")


Vietnam (N10 40' 00" E106 41' 40").



This dude wrote an entry on finding these out.

Very impressed, Angelina. Awesome work with the nautical alignment. Sure, the ink might have been a bit much, but solid precision.

On the note of awesome navigational nerdiness, is this amazing hack for google maps. Maps doesn't allow you to see Longitude and Latitude, but if you copy this bit of text into the URL field an instant detailed longitude and latitude will pop up detailing the corresponding longitude and latitude of the center of the map! Here's the hack code:

javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));

Try that hack out! And if you want to brush up in meridians and parrallels, I think if you understand everything in this page, you've got a great foundation of the fundamentals.

Along the lines of global positioning, here's an awesome nifty site, too, that calibrates using Geotagged points any spot on the our Earth that you click with corresponding longitude and latitude I calibrated the link to a "starting base of sorts". Greenwich is 51° 28' 38". With that sequence of getgags. Negative (-) = S latitudes or W longitudes, respectively and positive (+) = N latitudes or E longitudes, so for examplle, Los Angeles is lat:34, long:-118. It's awesome to flip the symbols. Turns out the west coast of Australia is exactly on the complete flipside of the globe at lat:-34, long:118. Sure, you could go crazy with Google Earth, but I found the above tricks, the nifty-geotagged site and the google maps .getCenter() hack very fast and accessible.

After some tweaking, I discovered some cool navigational facts.

The closest spot to Greenwich's 51° N latitude from Los Angeles's -118W latitude is close to Calgary, Canada, so Greenwich (and London) is a bit further north than frequently, thought. I've been into Jules Verne, recently, so to have contingency with said author's pin-point pecision-wisdom, here's some other "longitudinal and latitudinal matchups):

Exactly one half-globe's worth of latitude (-34 or 34°S) still at -118 (or 118W) longitude is smack dab in the center of the South Pacific, about half way between New Zealand and the South American coast of Chile.

The southern tip of Algeria is located along the same parrallel as Los Angeles, but at the Prime Meridian. That sparked fascination.

And, finally, as a tribute to Philleas Fogg, it's interesting to note that the furthest south he went (which holds quite a distance) ended up at at Singapore after passing by Malaysia and before curling up the east coast of Malaysia and Vietnam before Reaching Hong Kong (22,114). His latitude at Singapore was about 1°N or slightly above the equator, a huge variation from London's coordinates at (51°N) nearly 50 degrees difference in latitude, so maybe he did travel a bit further than simply "around the world", well he stayed close enough to the equator in any case.

Just to provide some scope of how far Hawaii is from the US's west coast, it's coordinates are 20, -158, making it, 14 degrees of longitude and 30 degrees of latitude away, and slightly south from southwest US coast. New Guinea is 9,-82, or only 11° latitude and 70° of longitude away, which means that although Hawaii is part of the 50 states, in terms of latitude and longitude, it's closer to New Guinea's parrallel and if you add up the differences it's 44° versus 81° from New Guinea. Just interesting views of proximity.


Head west (or east, you'll end up in the same spot each way) one half globe from Los Angeles along the same 34°N line and you'll find yourself in Nanjing, China, which is slightly Northeast of Shanghai. I can instantly see

If I commented on the number of births, marriages, and baby-gossip, this post would be about 20 times as long, so that's it for now!

Dusk till Dawn, Sunset to Sunrise

Okay, I thought this would be a great post because there's a TON of ambiguity about dusk, dawn, sunset, sunrise....How long is a "sunset"? When exactly is dusk? Can there be a set time for dawn and dusk or is always "when things get darker or brighter outside"? And what about twilight, how does that fit into all of this?

Crepusclar celestial events refer to everything when the sun is "close" to the horizon. This is the time when you get the most beautiful colors in the sky as the sun's rays become filtered in through the atmosphere. So why not learn about those actual phases so you can know more precisely what's going on when you see that magical palette of rich oranges and reds off your favorite beach at sunset?!

First off, sunrises and sunsets.

This one is simple. Sunset is the exact moment trailing edge, which would be the "upper edge" of the sun sphere disappears below the horizon. The moment you can no longer see the "orb of the sun" is the last second of a sunset and "sunset phase" is over. Therefore, a sunset lasts exactly how long it takes for the trailing edge of the sun to disappear from the horizon after the leading edge of the sun first hits the horizon. Sunrise, the exact opposite, is the exact moment the trailing edge of the sun full emerges from the horizon. A sunrise "commences" when the leading edge first appears on the horizon, but the sphere is not yet visible, and a sunset "commences" when the leading edge first touches the horizon, but the full sphere is totally visible. Technically sunrise and sunset is when the geometric zenith distance of center of the Sun is 90.8333 degrees, but that's "hyper technical".

The reason why I mentioned sunrises and sunsets were so simple is because there's only one definition of them. Whether your into civil, nautical or astronomical "sky stuff", a sunset and sunrise has a universal definition.

Things get a little more complicated with twilight, dusk, and dawn. Those special times of day are when cats totally freakout because they'e crepuscular! Okay, huge non-sequitor, but I love cats and you'll have to read my post on Cat Vocalizations to learn more about cat sleep patterns. Back to the complications with twilight, dusk, and dawn. There are three types of "getting dark" or "getting light" phases. All measurements agree that day is when the sun is in the sky, night is when their's no light from the sun visible, and sunrise and sunset when the visible sun orb is appearing or disappearing off the horizon. But when the sun disapears off the horizon, after sunset, for example, there's still light! The sun's illumination is not an on-off light switch! Light fades. It dims or slowly illuminates! So, let's start with the categorizations of light. But before we do let's just define the three terms of twilight, dusk, and dawn.

The Sequence of "low horizon" patters of the sun are:

1. Dawn
2. Twilight
3. Sunrise
4. Sunset
5. Twilight
6. Dusk

I'll flesh those out in greater detail, but just know that each sun emergence in the morning has three phases and each sun submergence in the evening has three phases as well.

Now there exist three key types of measurement and each of these have their own unique definition of daytime twilight, nighttime twilight, dusk, and dawn. Fortunately, the only difference is the angle measurement of the sun's position off the horizon. In other words, the different between civil, nautical, and astronomical solar "in between light" hour measurements is purely mathematical!! Phew! I bet you thought we'd have to go through ridiculous parables like "When the sun's bun can no longer be won, then do not fright without light" or some idiotic imprecise, fable. Nope, don't need to worry about that. These solar measurements are precise! So let's get started on those!

Twilight -- The "in between time" when there's scattered sunlight in the sky off the horizon, but the actual sun orb technically just set or has not yet risen. Therefore, twilight kicks in immediately after sunset and ends immediately at dusk, while daytime twilight kicks in immediately after dawn and ends immediately at sunrise.

Civil -- I don't really care about civil twilight because of it's inaccuracy and misleading measurements. Technically, its "dusk" isn't really dusk and it's "dawn" isn't really dawn because there's still light. Nevertheless, civil dusk is when the sun is 6° below the horizon in the evening, while dawn is obviously 6° below the horizon in the morning. Because of its misleading measurements, that's all we'll discuss regarding civil measurments.

Nautical -- Nautical crepuscular measurements are more precise. They reflect "real darkness" and "real morning". Simply, or should I say mathematically, put , nautical twilight is the time period when the sun is between 6° and 12° below the horizon. If the center of the sun is between 6° and 12° below the horizon and it's night, that's nighttime nautical twilight; if it's morning, that's daytime nautical twilight.

Astronomical -- This is the measurement I like the most because it represents "real" light. Civil is purely misleading and Nautical is great because it represents visible objects. The nautical dusk, for example, is when you can't see anything well enough to navigate! Pretty useful. But for those of your who just are appreciating solar light, you've gotta use astronomical! It's the real times of day and night that reflects exact amounts of solar light! So astronomical twilight is when the sun is between 12° and 18° below the horizon; in the morning that's daytime twilight, in the night, that's nocturnal twilight.

Dusk and Dawn -- contrary to popular belief dusk and dawn only occur for a few seconds!! It's morning twilight and nighttime twilight that actual last for as a half hour each depending on which measurement you use. Again, there are three definitions of dusk and dawn: civil, nautical, and astronomical. But again, fortunately, it's all mathemtical clear and clean-cut.

Civil Dusk and Dawn -- Dawn is the exact moment when the sun's ascending center hit's 6° below the horizon, while dusk is the exact moment when the sun's descending center hits 6° below the horizon.

Nautical Dusk and Dawn -- Dawn is the exact moment when the sun's ascending center hit's 12° below the horizon, while dusk is the exact moment when the sun's descending center hits 12° below the horizon.

Astronomical -- Dawn is the exact moment when the sun's ascending center hit's 18° below the horizon, while dusk is the exact moment when the sun's descending center hits 18° below the horizon.

So to our same skeleton framework from before we can add:

1. Dawn -- Astronomical
2. Twilight -- Astronomical
3. Dawn -- Nautical
4. Twilight Nautical
   
5. Dawn -- Civil
6. Dawn -- Civil
   
7. Sunrise
8. Sunset
   
9. Twilight -- Civil
   
10. Dusk -- Civil
11. Twilight -- Nautrical
12. Dusk -- Nautical
13. Twilight -- Astronomical
14. Dusk -- Astronomical
    

So there are 14 distinct key exact, defined phases of what you may have previously caused "sunrise-and -unset"! So when someone says "check out the sunrise" they could be referring to 1 of 7 phases of that sunrise, from astronomical dawn to the actual sunrise!

So now let's put all of this together to visualize it starting with the first peep of light to the last.

1. It's Night. The Sun is > 18° below the horizon.
   
2. As the ascending sun hits 18° below the horizon, Astronomical Dawn Occurs.
3. Astronomical Twilight Starts.
   
4. As the sun hits 12° below the horizon, Astronomical Twilight Ends & Nautical Dawn Occurs.
   
5. Nautical Twilight Starts.
6. As the sun hits 6° below the horizon, Nautical Twilight Ends & Civil Dawn Occurs.
7. Civil Twilight Starts.
   
8. Civil Twilight Ends & Sunrise Starts as the suns upper limb first appears on the horizon.
9. Sunrise ends as the sun's lower limb ascends off the horizon & Daytime starts.
10. As the Sun hits the zenith, it is temporally furthest and equally away from sunrise and sunset. The daily zenith is analogous to the annual equinox! This means that the time after the daily sunrise and before the daily sunset are equal at the zenith, just as the time from sunrise to sunset is equal to the time after sunset to sunrise, which is the definition of an equinox. Far out! Symmetry between daily zenith and annual equinoxes! See my note on "Zenith and Nadir".
    
11. Sunset starts as the lower limb of the sun is tangent with the horizon
12. Sunset end as the suns upper limb is tangent with the horizon.
13. Civil twilight starts.
14. As the sun hits 6° below the horizon Civil twilight Ends and Nautical Dusk Occurs.
15. Nautical Twilight Starts.
16. As the sun hits 12° below the horizon, Nautical Twilight Ends and Astronomical Dusk occurs.
17. Astronomical Twilight Starts.
18. As the sun hits 18° below the horizon, Astronomical Twilight Ends and zero light is visible in the sky.

It's kind of poetic isn't it? I mean in that highly mathematically astronomically precise way! So isn't that shocking? There are 18 key phases to the sunrise and sunset process! You can't really say, "Wow, check out the sunset!" anymore because you've got to ask yourself "which part?!". Is it nautical twilight? Is it actual sunset? Are you referring to astronomical twilight when the sun orb has disappeared, but there's still light in the sky? Now you have answers to all these questions and can appreciate our the beauty and precision of our astronomical celestial rotations, or in layman's terms "sunrises and sunsets", more completely!

Note: Zenith and Nadir. While on the topic of zenith's and nadirs, it's important to note that regardless of civil, nautical, or astronical measurements, daytime length will always be the same for those three measurements because the cut-off point is the sunrise and sunset. In other words, if you're using civil (god forbid!), nautical, or astronomical measurements, the time from sunrise to zenith and from zenith to sunset will be identical. However, flip over the sphere and focus on the nadir. Now, it changes. The time from dusk to nadir and nadir to dawn will always be equal, but those arcs, although identical in length, will be shortest for astronomical and longest for civil. This is just a geometrically precise (which I feel is just more lucid) method of saying that civil night is longer than astronomical night.

Here's a very VERY informal diagram I made of the 14 key phases of crescular solar activity:

Let's talk about Dawn and Dusk. If you switch to astronomical dawn and dusk, something I highly recommend, you have "real light" time measurements to work with. It's true that you can be out "doing stuff" outside without flashlights before sunrise and after sunset! Astronomical dawn and dusk gives you more of a safe estimate of how much light you still have to work with. In other words, civil dawn and dusk is so pointless because it's still light out at civil dawn and dusk! Nautical dawn and dusk is a most practical for knowing exactly when you can see well enough to navigate without man-made light, but it's still the best to know when the first peep of light is illuminated and when it's "extinguished" and astronomical celestial measurements is the only way to do that! Generally -- and mind you this is severely grotesque generalizations -- astronomical dawn gives you VERY roughly 1.5 hours of light before sunrise and after sunset, nautical gives you about 50 minutes of of light before sunrise and after sunset; and civil gives you a mere 30 minutes of light at best, which is just highly false, before sunrise and after sunset. Try it out. Get your local sunrise times, subtract 1.5 hours and you'll see astronomical dawn around that time! Subtract 50 minutes and nautical dawn will kick in abou then! Don't even bother with civil, though, nautical and astronomical are precise measurements and all you need to be concerned about!

I just needed to revise something here, people. I heralded astronomical dusk and dawn measurements because, after all, those truly are the MOST accurate absolute measurements of knowing precisely when the first sun ray of light illuminates the dawn or when the last inkling of light is "extringuished" at dusk. However, let me say, Nautical dusk is DARK!! I was just out hiking on a trail in Santa Barbara, CA called Cold Springs Trail. I watched the sunset at 5:34pm and then around 6pm it was DARK! Like I could barely see the rocks and trail infront of me in highly-tree-covered areas. Blotches of moonlight shone through on the trail, but by 6:15 I was fortunate to have reached a better known part of the trail. I finally found the main road at around 6:25pm, Nautical dusk was at 6:29, so 4 minutes before Nautical dusk. Let me tell you, Nautical dusk is IT! If you're out manuevering around -- surfing, walking, hiking, jogging, any of those activities -- without a man-made light source PAST Nautical dusk, you're screwed for visibility! So I just wanted to revise my previous statements that Nautical dusk and dawn is the measurements we should be using all the time. Feel free to use civil dusk and dawn, but don't plan on being MY friend! haha! Civil dusk and dawn is just ridiculous because you can still see and navigate well past, often up to half an hour at least, past civil dusk and dawn, but if you're out past nautical dusk in astronomical twilight, without a manmade light source, you'll be visibly blind! Astronomical solar low-horizon measurements should only be considered for observing actual celestial bodies and needing the night sky. If you're using stars to navigate or looking at constellations, Astronomical dusk and dawn is all that matters, but most of the time we're navigating so Nautical low-horizon solar measurements are the most practical and the most necessary. That said, I still LOVE the precision of knowing the EXACT moment light emerges or submerges off the horizon via astronomical measurements, but nautical low-horizon measurements should be the defeault. Civil measurements are absurdly stupid because of their misleading inaccuracy (why label something as "dusk" when there's still a lot of light around? It's not cool and dumb); nautical should be the default; and then if you go into "star-gazing" mode, then check out the astronomical measurements.


So Bottom-Line: Although Astronomical Measurements are the coolest because of their precision. There exist a thousand and more reasons why astronomy is awesome. Books have been devoted to that discussion. The top reason, though, is astronomy is INVARIATES! There are few things in life that are constant! Moon phases, star constellations, and celestial-astronomical events are alive, real-time, but consistent and reliable! However, Nautical low-horizon solar measurements should be our default for living on planet earth. Use Nautical Measurements!! Vine Vidi Vici!

Technically, you could turn to your best friend and say "let's watch the astronomical twilight" even though you can't see any orb in the sky. That's pretty cool! Additionally, "astronomical celestial measurers" start their day the earliest and end the latest. They have the longest days. They soak up the marrow out the light they experience because their "day" reflects the total amount of light down to the last drop. There's no cutting corners with astronomical measurements. It's quite cool to base sunrise and sunset on such precise measurements! Additionally, use this example. We just had a Winter Solstice a few months ago in December. It's february now. I'm in the Northerne Hemisphere in California. Tonight, on February 11, 2008 sunset occurred at 5:33 pm and then civil dawn kicked in 25 minutes later at 5:58. If you were on a civil solar clock, you're "day" would be over at 5:58 before 6pm. Flat done, no more light for you. You only get 25 minutes of twilight, if you use civil measurements today! However, if you were using astronomical solar measurements, dusk is 6:57pm! That means that instead of a 25 minute twilight period, you get a a 1 hour and 24 minute twilight period! Your "day" is 59 minutes longer, too! So astronomical "night" therefore is always much shorter than civil night! Day is technically immediately after dawn and immediately before dusk. Night is immediately after dusk and immediately up until dawn. Astronomical "night" therefore, today, is only 10 hours, 20 minutes, but civil "night" is 12 hours, 18 minutes; nearly a 2 hour difference! The astronomical "day" therefore is 13:40 and the civil "day" is a mere 11:42! So with astronomical celestial measurements you get real-time solar light calculations, instead of just when it "seems" to start to get dark or light. Let's remove "seems" from these calculations. Astronomical dusk, dawn, and twilight is exact!! So you get increases measurement accuracy, real-time solar light calculations, longer days, shorter nights, and, personally, I think the coolest thing is to be able to look out over the horizon after soaking up and witnessing an amazing sunset and to have the knowledge to turn to your friend and say "Ahhh! Isn't that astronomical nocturnal twilight that just followed the nautical and civil twilight, all of which was preceded by that amazing array of solar rays through the atmospheric prism....beautiful?!!!" :)

Chinese New Year Means Good Tidings for all New Resolutioners Catching up to '08

All this information IS going somewhere after all! Wondering why I wrote such a detailed and thorough article on Solstices and Equinoxes? Well -- in addition to my car being an Equinox, having written a screenplay called "The Solstice" about a ship, and my love for nautical science and understanding how our celestial place in the universe creates Natural calendar and seasonal occurrences -- the Chinese New Year is BASED ON Solstices and Equinoxes! So you'll need to read that article I wrote to get the most out of this.

For all those people who've slacked a bit on New Years resolutions, do not fret! On the Chinese Calendar, you still have a almost a month until New Years! New Years, you see, falls on the day after the 2nd new man after the winter solstice. Remember, the winter solstice is when our planet Earth is tilted furthest away from the sun in its elliptical orbit around our Sun star. In 2007 that winter solstice occurred occurred on Dec. 22. Yep, (by definition of a winter solstice) the shortest day and the longest night of 2007 was Dec. 22. Then just whip out your trusty lunar calendar (I know all you have one of those! haha. And if you're a nautical-celestial navigation freak like me, or some astrologer/astronomer, you probably already do have a lunar calendar) and you'll see that the 2nd lunar (after Jan. 8) new moon is February 6, 2008. So February 7th, Chinese New Years, here we come!!

Equinoxes and Solstices

Earth's Inclination
Everyday would be an equinox (Latin's equinoxium, meaning "equality night and day") if it weren't for the earth's subtle inclination. An equinox, the moment when the sun is at it's zenith directly above (perpendicular to) the equator at noon is the opposite of a solstice (Latin's solstitium, meaning "the point where the sun stands still"), the moment when a sun is lowest in the sky (the most inclination north or south away from perpendicular) at noon. Obviously, each solstice occurs in a different hemisphere. In short, yes, the sun move's east to west daily, but it cycles north and south on an annual basis, with the winter solstice marking it's nadir - most southern location (commencing northern movement), and summer stolstic marking the zenith -most northern location. This diagram

is false, because it doesn't show the earth's inclination. The above diagram shows an earth with no solstices, all equinoxes. However, because of the earth's tilt and elliptical pattern (faster movement closest to the sun), the annual sun inclinations do occur, resulting in solstices, resulting in seasons.




Occurrence
Equinoxes and solstices each occur twice per year, so there are four equinox-or-solistice events per year, occurring roughly every three months (every season. Equinoxes occur spring and autumn (March and September), while solstices occur winter and summer (December and June).

Calendar Dates and Length of Days

• December 22 -- Winter Solstice, Sun Heads North. (Longest Night)
• March 22 -- Spring Equinox, Sun Heading North, Long days in North Pole, Equal night and day lengths at equator. (Length of Day = Length of Night)
• June 22 -- Summer Solstice, Sun Heads South (Longest Day)
• September 22 -- Autumnal Equinox, Sun heading South, Dark days (long nights) in North Pole, Equal night and day lengths at equator; Days start to get shorter. (Length of Day = Length of Night)

The earth rotates West to East, making the sun (and most all prograde planetary objects) "rise" East and set west.

Seasons
Seasons usually directly follow an equinox or solstice because that marks the point when the sun is furthest or closest to the earth, resulting in a respective heat shift. A spring (or "vernal") equinox marks the point halfway between the sun's journey northward (the end of this journey, when the sun starts to head southward is the summer solstice, June 22) with longer days of sunlight at the north pole. The autumnal equinox marks long days of darkness at the north pole as the sun moves southward (after the summer solstice turning point). It's so interesting how linguistic ties in with science. If you understand latin roots, all these seemingly complex terms (vernal, equinox, solstice) all are very simple.

The Neutral Equinoxes and Extreme Solstices
The winter solstice occurs in the southern hemisphere, the summer solstice, in the northern. And the only difference between the two equinoxes (spring and autumn) is the direction the sun heads at each (northward at spring, and southward at autumn); both biannual equinoxes occur over the equator. Even though they occur on opposite ends of the calender (March and September), six months apart, Equinoxes (unlike Solstices) mark moments of identical equivalence in the sun's position, length of day and night, and temperature. In other words, while spring marks an increasing temperature, increase day length, and northward sun inclination increase (and fall marks a moment halfway through the decrease in those three variables), spring and autumnal equinox temperature (temperate, day length (12 hours), and inclination (0 degrees over equator) are the same! I, therefore, call equinoxes neutral zeniths, and solstices extreme events. So the day length equals the night length, the sun's location is the same (over the equator), Interestingly, you can look at any southward sun-movement as getting colder, while northward sun-movement as getting warmer in seasons. Thus, the months after winter, spring, and early summer are all northward-moving sun months, while, you guessed it, fall and winter months (July to December) are southward-moving sun months. This can be easily plugged into the Dalai Lama's ever-increasing path of happiness with neutrality, pain, and pleasure-inducers. The solstices mark apex or nadirs (immense pleasure or immense pain) of this ever-increasing path, while the equinoxes mark the line exactly at the x-axis, with y=0, or the neutral state.

The Significance of the Correlation between the Dalai Lama's Ever-Increasing Path and Equinox-Solstice Astronomical Events
There exist many interpretations. The most obvious (and boring) is that spring and autumn mark points of neutral mood, but getting, respectively, more joyful or more cranky and dismal. And winter and summer mark, respectively the extremes of immense pain and immense pleasure. But that's highly interpretative. If you're a skier, winter could be joyful, but the sunbather finds the summer solstice most enjoyable. Or the farmer could dread the autumnal equinox time causing the farmer to feel great pain, while everyone else experiences great neutrality. But, in the graph of (on the y axis) temperature, length of day, and Northward inclination of the sun over the equator, the equinox would most certainly mark the mid-way points, and the solstices would be the highs and lows of the oscillating graph. It's important to not that a graph of equinox and solstice activity with time plotted on the x would oscillate like a cosine function.

Proximity to Equator Increases, Rainfall Increases and Temperature Range Decreases
Another interesting, and obviously inverse, relationship is between distance from equator and the temperature-range v. annual total rainfall. Everyone knows that the close to the equator you get, the small the temperature range. On the equator (Mexico, Yucatan, Amazon) the annual temperature range fluctuates only a few degrees from 75 in the "winter" and 80 degrees in the "summer", while further away from the equator the temperature range increase, producing much more extreme temperature shifts. In Midwest USA, for example, the range is about 43 degrees, 30 in the winter and less than 80s in the summer, but the inverse is rainfall. Closer to the equator you get, small the temperature range, but larger than annual rainfall. With a 4 degree temperature range, average rainfall is like 103 inches. But with a location far away from the equator and a large temperature range (43 degrees, for example) annual rainfall is small (like 12 inches). Another example, in the arctic Circle (say near scandanavia), temperature range is about 74 deggres (-40-65)! However, personally, I like rain and I like minimum range annual temperature fluctuations set a a warm temperature, so there's no trade off at the tropics. Living at or near the equator is best for me because of huge personal taste for rain and consistent warmth!

Personal Relationship
I remember solstice being the ship, and I haven't pinpointed what an equinox is (car, obviously) but how that differs from the ship, I don't know. Equinox could be an apex of control and my thing, and solstice could be the opposite, a passenger, possibly. But I love the ocean. Helpful enough almost all the equinoxes and solstices occur around the 20th of their respective months (March, September or June or December). We're about a month away from the winter solstice on December 22, 2007.

Wave Dynamics -- Surfer's Almanac: Swell and Wave Formation

Swell – Swells is long, oceanic surface waves, consistently formed by tropical storms and wind systems. A few fractions of a second difference in a wave, on the other side of the ocean, creates a totally different set of waves. Swell waves are often mixed with local chop “noise” waves.

Swell Size -- Swell waves are measured in “swell size” which is 33% of the largest wave in a set (trough to crest).

Fetch – The fetch is just the “un-wave” part of water. The larger the flat water (fetch) and the stronger the wind, the larger the wave will be. Shores that have inslands in front of them have a very short fetch (blocked), so smaller waves. The swell is generated by wind blowing consistently over a fetch.

Local Wind – too intense of a local wind will make the swell waves too choppy and unsurfable. Ideal is a slight offshore wind, that blows into the face of the wave, scooping them out even more!

Wave Formation – Imagine a pond and throw in a rock; ripples form with measurable size, distance, and speed. Now substitude ocean for pond and huge tropical storm for rock; that’s how waves are made.

Wind to Wave: Waves on a pond create little ripple indentations. Additionally, on the open ocean, small (or large) hurricanes create small wave indentations that form with other waves to form chop, then the chop forms with more chop to form, again, more wind waves, produce a full wave!

We want Swell Waves – Wind waves dissipate the farther away from their souce. Yes, they do! They will eventually peter out to water surface tension….unless they generated enough energy from the center of the storm or wind zone to create a swell. The swell’s energy can then carry that wind wave the entire circumference of the globe without energy or wave-size loss! Good deal!

Three Swell Factors:Okay, so Swell waves form with the combination of

1. large fetch (pointing towards your beach

2. Wind velocity (strong)

3. Duration (long time of wind blowing on the fetch

Ground Swell -- Considering those factors, basically storms create a lot of chop and swell. Eventually the swell “clears the chop” and becomes smoothed chop-free waves. NZ storms great swell that can travel 6000 miles, such magnificent swell is dubbed, “Ground Swell”.

Waves have longest periods first, then waves from the same swell days later will have shorter periods. For example, ground swell starts off Sydney’s coast and builds to hit SoCal. The swell has 24sec periods the first day with huge waves. Next day the waves are smaller, but closer together with a 20sec period; third day has 16sec periods, etc. The waves break closer and closer together! Remember a tropical storm is simply an awesome boulder chucked in a pond (the ocean) that creates gnarly sets!

Wave Sets – A wave set is simply a wave group (that deep water traveling wave train of 3-15 waves) that has hit shallow water.

Number of Waves in a set = 3-15 (for long distance fetches)

Number of waves in set from a local (1000- miiles) source = 1-3 (less organized because less time for the wave groups to form)

If there’s a large distant storm and a local one, you could get intermittent 1-3 wave sets every 5-10 minutes and then a huge 3-15 wave set every 40-minutes, for example. There’s LOTs of stuff always going on in the ocean.

A “shallow-water wave group” IS a wave set! They appear as often as every few minutes to every half hour depending how long the waves traveled to reach the shore. The longer the waves travel, the better the organization, and greater consistency. So, if a storm caused a deep water wave group to travel 5000 miles to hit your california shore, the wave sets would be incredibly organized and reliable because of the distance they covered (that “refining time”). Obviously in shallow water, individual waves of wave groups don’t phase out/phase in, so you can actually surf them and they won’t dissappear (sometimes they do) but a true wave set are waves that all break, if they don’t it’s just chop, likely.

Wave Groups – As waves span out from the fetch that created them, the large waves move in the direction of the wind (the wind helps them, instead of goes against those “with the wind” waves). Then after awhile, the waves that are moving in the same pace in the same direction, form groups of about (3-15+ waves). The further away from the original fetch and deep water source (like thousands of miles away), the more defined the wave group gets.

Set Frequency.

Okay, so a huge storm breaks out in New Zealand. It takes a wave group to travel 6000 miles from that souther hemisphere to California and approx imately 200-300 hours depending on the wave period. But the interesting part is exponential growth of time. For example, say an 18sec and 17.95sec period wave group starts at that souther hem. Site (6000 miles away). Therefore, the further away the deep water source (storm for example) the more temporally spread out the sets will be. If the source is from a fetch only 1000 miles away, the .05 second difference only pans out to being a few minutes, instead of 40 with the 6000 mile distance covered.

Individual wave size in the wave group.

What’s VERY cool is in the physics of deep water wave propogation, in a wave group (say of 10 waves), all the waves change places, move forward, etc, but the middle waves are always the largest and the end and front waves always the smallest! Any wave that moves to the middle of the wave group gets big!. Another theory behind this is multiple wave trains overlap and it appears like some waves grow but it’s just mingling with the other wave train, a less eloquent theory than the physics, assembly-line middle waves always biggest ideology.

Individual wave movement and Speed in a group. Individual waves (within the group) move twice as fast as the group! However, when those 2x-faster moving individual waves reach the front of the wave group, they get pulled back, so it’s 2 steps forward, 1 step back with the wave group and individual wave dynamic. Determing the speed of an individual wave is simple (3 x (period))

3 x Period = Indiiviual wave speed

So if a period is 20 seconds, the individual wave is moving 60 knots/hr!

However when the wave group becomes a wave set (and hits shallow water) the wave set moves at the speed of the group (half that of the 2x as fast individual waves) so that wave set would be 30 knots per hour.

Traveling Fetch – Sometimes the storm can be moving in the direction of the chop so the waves for, say, 2000 miles beome well-formed sets, but they’re constantly being overtaken and regenerated by waves from the storm immediately behind it, making big waves that accumulate onto each other. There are only a few places open to thousands of open ocean positioned near the tracks of winter storms: NW USA, Chile/Peru, W Australia, and S.Europe. A “traveling fetch” phenomenon to some degree occurs with every fetch, but the waves in front are always bigger than the waves after the storm because of the traveling fetch “wave booster” phenomenon. The “virtual fetch” is just sets with 12 hour intervals, a “pseudo fetch”, but the traveling fetch produces massive waves. Now when you look at the totally gnarly conditions for any Maverick's surf contest, a director of the contest (Spansler, apparently, uses government satellites -- a good use of those orbitting bits of technology -- to predict these wave condtions) says, “We search for a big storm way off in the North Pacific, out past the international date line" (NYT). “That’s the best cradle for a Mavericks swell. Waves start their lives as wind. The longer and stronger gales blow in the same direction, the larger and more powerful the seas that result” (NYT). The technology used to wire into surf conditions to make Mavericks great is so high-tech. Mavericks competition coordinators use those government satellites as well as a Quickstat and Jason-1 satellite matrix to get water undalations, and surface data up to 3.3 cm over the ocean! It's like a lot of high-tech advancements in science and technology are plugged-in and utlized for this surf contest! So pre-condition for any Maverick's surf contest is that the wave's origin must be a storm PAST the international date line. Can you imagine that fetch! To put this in perspective, Hawaii is BEFORE the international date line. So the CLOSEST source of a storm to meet the Maverick's surf contest preconditions would be New Zealand. Even if it's that "close", you're still looking at a killer 5000-6000 mile fetch (NZ is 6000 miles from the US, but it's slightly south of due west of the International date line along the same latitudes as the U.S.). Can you imagine that! This surf contest is ENGINEERED to produce EPIC surf! Sweet!

Measuring Waves: Height and Period – A typical report is 6 ft @ 17 seconds, which means the wave heigh (trough to crest) is 6 ft for 33% of the largest waves and they occur every 17 seconds.

Height – trough (front wave barrel bottom) to crest (top of unbroken wave. This is for the largest 1/3 (33%) of all waves.

Period – he amount of time it takes for two wave crests to past a specific point. There are two forms of measuring data presented as “Significant Seas” and “Swell data. For surfing, Swell data is the most reliable because, “significant seas” don’t even exist from a surfing (shore only perspective), it’s for boats, we want surf, so “Swell data” it is.

Significant Seas – The Square root of the sum of the squares of all wave energy. A 5 ft swell from S and a 3 ft swell is 6 ft sees, but this isn’t practical for surfing. And will always be an overstatement of wavesize. Surfers ride one wave and if two swells of 3 ft each approach that’s the wave height. Sig. Seas would overstate wave height as 4 or 5 ft. But at sea in a boat, Sig. Seas are, obviously, very important. The largest wave in any given day will likely be the Sig. Sea height. In other words, if Sig. Seas says height is 8 ft. and swell data says 5 ft. you won’t see a 9 ft. wave and if you see an 8 ft wave, catch it! That’s the wave of the day!

Swell Window -- This is just the range a beach has for receiving waves. If a land mass is immediately north and directly south, it would have a swell window of 90 degres to 180 degrees or only 90 degrees. CA has a swell window (where islands don’t block the surf) of about 180 degrees sometimes.

Great Circles – bSwells travel away from their source on Great Cicle pathes or routes. If wind is blowing parrallel to your Great Circle path (connecting to your beach), then you could have a swell because that means no chop would break up swells traveling along the fetch of your Great Circle path. In short, Wind bloing parallel to a Great Circle path parrallel to your beach is a GOOD thing for good swell size. Additionally, remember that great circle paths curv and are not always perpendicular to the beach. For example, believe it or not. Southern Australian is on the great circle path for south california even though their in opposite Northern and Southern Hemispheres! Theoretically a storm near India could follow the great circle path to southern california if wind kept blowing parallel to the path, but this is very unlikely (because it’s probably 8000 miles), but totally possible.

Directional Spectrum – In ocean reality, swell waves may come from a variety of different directions. There may be 5ft @20 secs from the south and 2 ft @10 seconds from the north ,for exampl.e A directional spectrum depicts the period, direction, and density of all waves present at a fixed space and set period of time. IT’s produced by buoys with height, period, and direction sensors installed. In short, if you want to know the heigh, direction, and period of all waves at a point from all direction (from all swells), the directional spectrum does that. Sweet!

Spectral density just shows the relative wave energy present at all frequency periods for a fixed space and fixed time interval.

Storm and Fetch – Most storms (other than hurricanes) follow the jet stream west to east at about 20-30 knots.

Period Length effects Wave Depth and Strength

A wave train that has significant period (like 15 seconds or more) has enough momentum that it will lose little or zero energy, size, or speed, while traveling thousands of miles until reaching land and breaking! The reason for this is a wave with a period (wavelength) of 15+ seconds means that all fo the energy is travelling DEEP under the ocean surface (the wave crest is literally the tip of the iceberg of the entire wave. The actual wave you see on the surface is about 5% of the massive deep water wave! Example: A 14 second period reaches down into the ocean 516 ft. and a 20-second period reaches down 1053ft! Opposing wind or other things (other than shallow water) would have a VERY little impact on a 1053ft underwater wave! Even an opposing wind wave wit ha 7-second period (reaching down 129 ft) wouldn’t even effect a 20-second period 1053ft wave! Actually even different period (or same period) lenghted wave trains don’t effect each other and neither can wind. The only thing that impacts wave trains other than shallow water, where they break, is surface tension (the stuff bugs use to float on water). But still it’s tonly the short-period wave trains that are susceptible to surface tension decaying the wave.

Funky Weather: Squalls, Virga, and Microbursts

Virga -- Whenever any form of precipitation (rain, sleet, snow, hail) forms, but then evaporates before reaching the earth, it is called virga. Virga is a common characteristic of microbursts.

Microbursts -- A microburst is the complete opposite of a tornado. A tornado consists of convergent upward funnelling winds, while a microburst consists of divergent downward-motion winds. While the wind direction and flow is the complete opposite of a tornado, from afar, the two look quite similar. Microbursts is a type of downburst, but more localized than large-coverage wind shear.

Squall -- A squall is simply a drastic, abrupt increase in wind velocity in the midst of a storm; it's a non-sustained surge in wind speed. They primarily occur away from strong mid-level height falls or mid-level tropospheric cooling because those regions frequently have strong upward wind motions, minimizing the potential for a squalls abrupt downward wind burst.

White Squall -- Combine a microburst with squall phenomenon, while at sea, and you get a white squall. A white squall is a violent windstorm that emerges out of nowhere, providing no "black cloud" warning. The white-capped waves and broken water, are the key characteristics of a white squall. They're mainly considered to be myth, but many sea tragedies have been attributed to these intense nautical microbursts.

The Ultimate Star Trek Nerd Post

Star Trek, Astronomical, Cosmological, Planetary Physics terms you have got to know.

1. Parsec Contraction of “parallax second”; Distance – “parallax – apparent motion -- of one arc second”; astronomical unit of length where the earth’s orbit extends an angle of one arcsecond; 19 trillion miles, 3.26 ly
2. Pulsar - A neutron star that puts out pulses of radio energy. A pulsar is a neutron star that is emitting a beam of radio waves, and spinning, and so the effect is like that of a lighthouse. Pulsars keep exceptionally good time. Most of them ‘pulse’ at a rate between ten times a second and once every three seconds; some spin around hundreds of times a second.
3. FUA
4. The Vicinity of Our Universe

The Vicinity of Our Universe

Earth (and our sun and solar system) is located on the inner arc of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way galaxy, not unlike our own Earth, revolves and rotates. For the Milky Way galaxy to complete one full rotation (pivot) -- our for our solar system to complete one full orbit -- it takes roughly 250 million years! So our solar system has completed about 23 orbits (or 0.0008 orbits since humans) so far. The Milky Way galaxy and the nearby Andromeda galaxy together form a binary system.

• 10 ly -- Neighborhood Stars -- Our nearest star (to our sun) is 7000 times further away than the edge or our solar system. Examples of some stars within 10 lightyears from our sun include, Alpha Centauri, Proxima (a red dwarf), Wolf, and Sirius Nearly 80% of universal stars are red dwarfs (smaller than our sun, 1/10 the size, and 1/100 the luminosity).

• 250 ly -- 1/3 Visible Stars -- This tiny section of the Milky Way galaxy (relative to its enormous size) marks most stars that can be seen with the naked eye. About 1/3 of the visible stars from earth fall into this 250 ly range. We can view about 1500 luminous stars in this range, and some stars near the end of this distance range are N. Vel. and C Pup.

• 5000 ly -- Orion Arm -- -- At 5000 light-years away we zoom out to our location in the Milky Way Galaxy, Orion's Arm. Compared to the large Sagitarius Arm (located near the galactic center), the Orion arm (our sun's location) looks like a fairly minor arm The bright giant and supergiant stars (1000x more luminious than our sun) composing the Orion constellation, make up the most visible stars from this distance. At 100,000x the luminosity of our sun, and 4000 ly away,many consider Rho Cassiopeia (Cas) to be the largest star in our Orion Arm vicinity.

• 50,0000 ly -- Our Entire Milky Way Galaxy -- From here, we can see all arms of our galaxy (Orion, Perseus, Cygnus, and Sagitarius, to name a few) visible as a compact disc, hosting 200 billion stars! You find our sun, buried deep within the Orion arm, 26,000 ly away from the (now visible) galactic center. You can spot the two extremes from this distance -- the super dense clustering of stars near the galactic center ("urban stars":) and then the (rural stars) located in things called galactic clusters that pepper the outlying bit of space of our Milky Way galaxy. In addition to the galactic clusters and extra dense stars (near galactic core), is the dwarf galaxy -- Sagitarius dwarf -- that slowly drifts closer to our galaxy.

• 500,000 ly -- Satellite Galaxies of Milky Way -- Our galaxy has mini galaxies orbitting around (just like Earth has satellite's that orbit around it, including the moon), which can be seen from this distance. Within this distance we can find 225 billion stars, 12 orbitting dwarf galaxies (Draco Dwarf, Sagitarius Dwarf, Ursa Minor Dwarf, for example), and 1 large galaxy.

• 5 mly -- Local Group galaxy cluster -- At 5 million light years, we can see the Local Group, the clustering of dwarf galaxies (Phoenix, Tucana, and Aquarius Dwarf, for example) other spiral disc galaxies, and larger galaxies (Andromeda, Triangulum) to which our Milky Way gravitationally binds.

• 100 mly -- Virgo SuperCluster -- From 100 million light years we can see the neighboring clusters like our Local Group, such as The Virgo, Eridanus, and Fornax Clusters (along with the Local Group cluster), that compose the huge Virgo SuperCluster. The Virgo Supercluster (from 100 mly) encompasses 200 trillion stars,50,000 dwarf galaxies, 2,500 large galaxies, and 200 galaxy groups (Local, Virgo, Fornax, etc).

• 1 bly -- Neighboring Superclusters -- From this distance we can see the neighboring superclusters (Leo, Sextans, Shapley superclusters) to the Virgo Supercluster, randomly clumped together. At 1 bly, there exist 250 quadrillion stars, 60 million dwarf galaxies, 3 million large galaxies, 240,000 galaxy groups, and 100 superclusters. The neighboring superclusters at 1 bly shows only about 7% of the entire universe.

• 14 bly -- Most of Visible Universe -- Here we can see most of the visible universe, beholding in regards to stars, dwarf galaxies, large galaxies, galaxy groups, and supercusters: 3x10^22, 7 trillion, 350 billion, 25 billion, and 10 million

FUA -- Full Universal Address

I've come to realize how truly insignificant -- because of their instability, tendency to produce conflict, and mercurial nature -- most of the religious, political, and social ballyhoo is, compared to the science of our planet, solar system, and galaxy. Squabbling over borders and domains truly is rubbish, when we glance at our global "home". And considering what "Wired" concluded, only about 24 humans have actually seen the entire earth from space with their own eyes, we could grow a lot by attuning ourselves to our spatial placement.

It's especially easy to be keen on global awareness on "earth day", but we should develop not just a year-long reverence for our planet, but a perpetual fascination with our entire placement in galactic space.

Let's examine our FUA.

If, say, you want to give the "Full Universal Address" (the FUA ;) of yourself and you, for example, are located in Santa Monica, you really shouldn't stop after the "Country". After all, what if there's another Santa Monica, CA, United States located on some other planet in a totally different and distinct solar system, in a completely different galaxy, and galaxy cluster! So, really, you should say this:

City -- Santa Monica
State -- CA
Zip - 90401
Country - United States
Hemisphere - Western Hemisphere, Northern Hemisphere
Planet - Earth
Solar System - 'Our Solar System'
Galactic Vicinity Within Our Galaxy -- Orion's Arm
Galaxy -Milky Way (Nearest neighboring galaxy = Messier 31, Andromeda)
Mini (dozens) Galaxy Cluster -- Local Group
Larger (thousands) Galaxy Cluster -- Virgo Supercluster
The Universe

Questions.
1. Does "our solar system" have any more of a scientific name than "our solar sytem"?

It really sounds lame, but "no".

2. What is the name (if any ) of our globular cluster and distance from galactic center within the Milky Way?

We are located not in a surrounding satellite globular cluster but actual within the MilkWay disk, 28,000 light years away from the galactic center. Considering that we are located 2.3 ly away from Andromeda galaxy, the nearest galaxy hovers 27,997.7 ly closer (or 12,173.9 times closer) than our own MilkayWay galactic center!

Here's a great site on galactic centers, nearby galaxies and the like.

3. Finally, I've been doing research to make this more complete and ran into Messier objects (to advanced astronomers I'm sure they're familiar, but they were fairly new to me). Does the Local Group and/or Virgo Cluster have some more scientific-sounding Messier Group name? "local group" and "virgo cluser" (not unlike "our solar system")?

Again, it sounds incredibly lame and informal, but our galaxy cluster is the Local Group and the super galaxy cluster is the Virgo Supercluster.

4. Finally, can this be expanded out any more? Are their "quadrants" of the universe or something in which the Virgo Cluster would be located?

It seems like there should be universal quadrants but superclusters is about all we have now. See an awesome image of the spatial rending of the entire visible universe at THE site for spatial universe zooming (at increments of x10), Atlas-of-the-Universe.

Validating Earth Science

I've come to realize how truly insignificant -- because of their instability, tendency to produce conflict, and mercurial nature -- most of the religious, political, and social ballyhoo is, compared to the science of our planet, solar system, and galaxy. Squabbling over borders and domains truly is rubbish, when we glance at our global "home". And considering what "Wired" concluded, only about 24 humans have actually seen the entire earth from space with their own eyes, we could grow a lot by attuning ourselves to our spatial placement.

It's especially easy to be keen on global awareness on "earth day", but we should develop not just a year-long reverence for our planet, but a perpetual fascination with our entire placement in galactic space.

Expanding our conscious scope to understanding spiral galaxies, Alpha Centari, dark matter, and neutron stars is just so much more meaningful and enduring. That said, let's delve into a quick synopsis of our closest star cluster.

Although triple-star system Alpha Centari, aka Rigel (1) , at 4.4 light-years, is the closest star system (smaller than a star cluster galaxy, but still a fairly decent sized arrangement of stars) to our own solar system, it is actually bigger and brighter than our own sun. To get technical, only Alpha Centari A, the largest star of the triple-star Alpha Centari system, is brighter than our sun. Actually, to get hyper-technical at 4.2 light years away, Proxima Centari, the mini red dwarf (2) star of Alpha Centari is the closest star (3) (other than our sun) to earth. However, because of its proximity, almost all interstellar science fiction mentions the Centari star system as a travel waypoint of sorts. Furthermore, in actual space travel, the first inter-galactic checkpoint for robotic probes will most likely be Alpha Centari. Although this is just a single minute, iota of spatial knowledge, learning about Centari is most certaintly a vital point to validating the significance of our planet.


1. Breaking down the etymology, Alpha, in Alpha Centari is simply indicating it as the brightest star system in the southern-located Centarus constellation, while Rigel Kentarus, in Arabic refers to "foot of the centaur"

2. Regarding Proxima Centari's red dwarf size, a red dwarf fuses hydrogen to helium at a very slow rate, emitting very little light (about 1 ten thousandth of the sun). Being fully connective, red dwarfs make up for their size with longevity, and can burn trillions of years if their mass is small. The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram classifies stars based on luminosity, color, and temperature. At the top of the charts are Supergiants, followed by Bright Giants, Giants, Main Sequenc (in which our sun is classified), White Dwarfs, and then red dwarfs.

3. In regards to proximity to earth, after the three Alpha Centari star, there is Barnard's Star, Wolf 359, Lalande 21185, and then the A and B stars from the Sirius cluster.

Juggling Expansion and Foundation: The Pace of Cosmological Growth

Everything in the universe was essentially created by "cooking". Carbon, iron, and all the other elements were forged in extremely hot -- hotter than the middle of the hottest stars -- "furnaces". These "grills" were the supernova explosions that occur when a massive star (10x-20x the size of our sun) collapses in on itself so that the electrons enter the nucleus, essentially becoming neutrons, and create density so high that one spoonful of the collapses star would way 200 billion pounds. The side effect is an enormous amount of energy, and it is this blast, equivalent to a trillion hydrogen bombs exploding, that occurs during a supernova, which heated and forged the matter and elements of the universe.

Then on earth, the pattern continued, when there needed to be a greenhouse effect (created by CO2) to cook the nitrogen, sulfur, methane, and CO2 into biological life. The earth's "stove" -- CO2 greenhouse -- prevented the earth from freezing and created biological life from gases and elements, and the universe's "stove" -- supernovae -- created matter and the elements.

So our planet only began forming 4.6 billion years ago and was in its basic full form 4.4 billion years ago (after the 200 million years it took to create the earth through collisions and aggregation) making earth only 4.4 billion years old (or 4.6 if you include the birth-like aggregation process) In the middle of this point, Mars crashed into earth breaking of fragments of the earth's crust, which in about to weeks, formed the moon. Because it is composed of earth crust fragments, the moon doesn't have an iron core, like the earth.

This is all fascinating, but what is truly interesting is that our pace of discovery seems to be generally, in balance with our base for understanding, but sometimes this gets out of whack.

We, as humans, are almost thinking "too" expansively in our quest to investigate the origins and answer questions about the universe. For example, the Big Bang theory was facetiously coined by Hoyle during a 1937 radio talk show. This was only 7 years after Pluto was discovered by Tombough and Lowell and 41 years before we discovered Pluto even had a moon, in 1978. Isn't this like trying to worry about where to put our millions of dollars when we've only received a minimum wage pay check, or planning how to clone humans once we duplicate an amoeba gene, or asking how can we create a human bio-robot without knowing that all of our phalanges have finger or toenails on them?

It is terrific and essential to think expansively so science and our understanding constantly grows and our research never stagnates, but expansiveness is a balance because if you are too expansive too quickly, then you often and easily fly over fundamental steps or considerations -- like considering about the origin of the universe without knowing Pluto has a moon. Obviously both considerations are vital, the universal probably more so than details about Pluto, but research needs a base, a fundamental groundwork, layout, and foundation to support its findings. Let's make sure we are working with solid basics before expecting massively tremendous growth in the universe questions. However, it is vital to balance both -- work on the base simultaneously while asking questions that require a base.

This is like the starting of a company -- you ask for money from venture capitalists and investors and take out loans to expand the company. Almost never does someone have 2 million dollars in cash and use it to build a company right off; no it is an improvising, dance of debts, credits -- questions and answers -- stretching the limits of the base money -- or basic understandings of our solar system and universe -- to build a company -- or understand the bigger picture. The trick and the gift is to recognize the simultaneous juggling act of expanding without a base, while building the base that supports the expansion, equivocally. The base doesn't need to become more complete if it doesn't have "expansive big question answers" to support, just like you can't go finding out about the details of the universe's origins (big expansive questions), if you don't create awareness of how the universe forms without knowing basics about earth (fortunately we definitely know about the and have balanced the growth of expansive thinking and fundamental answers with equilibrium).

Similarly, if your expansive thinking causes you to hire employees, by expensive technology, and splurge on advertising for the company, but you don't have a steady income stream or that much starting cash, you run the problem of going bankrupt without the base. But, on the other hand, if you have a huge base but don't invest or get clients (expansive thinking), its just as bad as going bankrupt because you won't doing anything. Simultaneously juggling the internalizing, centering (centripetal), basework with the externalizing, expansive, seeking, abandonment of centeredness (centrifugal) force is the key to balanced, strong, and secure growth in business, cosmology, or anything else.