October 2018 – Stone Fig

Virginia Pine

In the late Fall before Winter sets in, I go out to the hills of Manassas to help with a Fall quail count. I arrive before dawn breaks, while the stars are still out. I like moonless nights or when the moon has already set so I can see plenty of stars. I walk up the hills in the dark, picking my way carefully. I have my binoculars and a thermos of coffee. Its rather cold on these frosty mornings, but I can watch the stars pass overhead while I enjoy an early morning cup of coffee.

There is a tree at the top of the hill close to the listening station. It is an old Virginia Pine, Pinus virginiana. I walk to this tree almost every time that I am in the Brawer Farm area of Manassas. It is at the junction of trails on the hill where the Wisconsin men, later known as the Iron Brigade, stood and held their line on August 28, 1862. These are special places, and these are special trees. This particular tree was not growing at the time of the battle; those trees are known as Witness Trees. The Witness Trees are scattered throughout the park, mainly deep in the woods where young men of the blue and the grey moved to battle.

In summer I would often stop at this Virginia Pine and rest in its shade. I was generally a mile or so into my walk and had another mile or more to go, depending on the path I chose to take. In the Winter the frosted grass would crunch under my feet as I walked up the hill to this tree. This Fall as I walked up to the top of the rise in the dark morning, the moon is still up and gives light to the path and the fields around me. But I am surprised that I cannot see the tree’s profile against the sky.

It is gone.

The roots are torn from the crest of the hill. The tree is reduced to a stump. The trunk is sawed apart. The pieces lay where they had fallen. It is clear that the tree had been blown over in an early Fall storm and reduced to this state by the rangers. The bench where I sat and listened for quail coveys had been taken away.

Standing in the area that used to be shaded by the tree I completed the morning’s listening survey. As the sun came up I looked closely at the stump and counted the tree rings. The tree was mature but not old. According to the rings the tree had passed through about 50 years of varying conditions. Some years were good for growth and the rings were wide. Narrow rings showed stressful years in which there might have been a drought.

There have been a lot of trees in my life. Trees that I climbed. Trees that I rested under. Trees that I hung food satchels from to keep the food from bears. Many of these trees are still deeply rooted in the earth and in my time outside.

For each tree that was, I know that there is a tree that is – or will be. A tree that gives hard, sweet pears in Fall or dark china berries in the Summer. A tree that may now only be a sapling that will give shade and a place to sit and look out over the hills. A spreading tree to clamber on, a tall tree to marvel at, each tree has its own uniqueness.

This Virginia Pine may be down, but I will remember it every time I walk up to the crest of the hill where the trails meet. The bench is now across the trail under a stand of cedar. I will sit there and listen to waking coveys of quail in the cold Virginia mornings.

Butterfly Toss

In August I wrote about the launch of a micro satellite from the orbiting International Space Station (ISS), (The Big Toss, August 23, 2018). An astronaut launched the small satellite by throwing it into space, to be accepted by Earth’s gravity, and to orbit the planet until its orbit decays and the tiny satellite plunges to its fiery end. Now there is another toss to discuss. This toss is a thought experiment. The actual toss is not something that an astronaut can participate in now or ever. This “other toss” is a hypothetical toss of a tiny particle into a black hole. Yes, a black hole! One of those “ginormous” (as described by Douglas Stanford of Stanford University who is the subject of this post), swirling, end-of-all events that spurs our imaginations and haunts our dreams as they churn at the center of their galaxies.

These events consume all that comes within their reach. And that is where Douglas Stanford’s and Stephen Shenker’s hypothesis rests. However, “rest” might be an inappropriate description as the particle that is tossed, as pictured above, from Stanford’s sailboat does not rest as it plummets into the never-return zone of the black hole.

The picture is taken from the cover of the October 13, 2018 edition of Science News Magazine (SN). The issue profiles ten scientists to watch. These scientists include those working in planetary science, biology, chemistry, sustainable energy and other fields. I was drawn to the description of Stanford’s and Shenker’s work, and intrigued by the picture on the cover of SN of a young Stanford standing in a sailboat and tossing a particle into the imagined immensity of a black hole. According to SN, Stanford spent his younger years on a sailboat with his parents and siblings. The picture on the cover brings the young-Stanford together with the now-Stanford picturing the toss of a tiny particle into the black hole.

In my previous post, the acceleration of the tiny satellite from the ISS was described as being “flung” out into space. There seemed to have no aiming in that fling but a general understanding that whatever was tossed from the ISS would assume an orbit around the Earth. When we consider a black hole and a sailboat sitting near the edge of the black hole we must suspend reality and allow the sailboat to be a stable platform, unaffected by the pull of the black hole and always at a distance from the black hole’s event horizon that allows continuous observation of the passing stream of particles into the black hole. The event horizon defines the limit of correspondence or awareness of a physical item as it passes from the space around the black hole to being absorbed into the mass of the black hole and becoming part of it. On this side of the event horizon the particle can be observed. On the far side of the event horizon, inside the black hole, the particle can no longer be observed.

So we suspend reality and assume that the sailboat is not affected by the tidal pulls of the black hole or the material that is flowing in an endless stream into its unseen maw.

I can only imagine that the scientist standing in the stable sailboat preparing to toss the particle into the black hole, unlike the astronaut preparing to fling a micro satellite, has some aiming in mind. Of course, the intent is different. The astronaut wants the tiny satellite that is being flung to establish an orbit around the Earth. On the other hand, Stanford as he stands in his sailboat, is aiming at the black hole. Of course anything that is tossed outwards from this stable platform will be pulled into the black hole. But I can imagine if it were me looking into that which cannot be seen, I would say to myself, “I think I will aim at the middle (wherever that is)”. Further, I might wonder if I could skip the particle along the surface of the black hole like a stone on a lake? This last is of course beyond reason as once the particle has touched the event horizon the particle is consumed and cannot come back out – even in a skip. But when the particle hits the surface of the black hole will it make ripples?

But this isn’t the point of the SN article. Stanford and Shenker have hypothesized that a tiny particle, when it is consumed by the black hole, will cause a chaotic reaction in the black hole. The black hole will increase in size and there will be a change in the Hawking Radiation. If I eat too much pie, I feel full. When a black hole consumes a particle, the black hole expands. It’s event horizon moves outward. Maybe it expands only by the tiniest degree, but it is hypothesized to expand. In addition, when the tiny particle is consumed there is an alteration of the Hawking Radiation emitted by the black hole.

What then of another particle that is sitting outside the event horizon of the black hole and has not yet been consumed? And what if this other particle – we are again suspending reality – is as stable as the sailboat and is not caught in the flow of material that is rushing into the black hole, although this particle is bathed in the Hawking Radiation emitted from the black hole. Now that the first particle that was tossed into the black hole has been consumed, and as a result the black hole has expanded, it may expand to the point that its event horizon now encompasses the second particle. The second particle is now consumed.

The SN article states, “A seemingly insignificant alteration has ballooning effects – the definition of chaos.” The outcome for a system (the black hole) has become highly sensitive to potential massive change generated from an initial, minute change. A tiny initial condition may result in – who knows what? The black hole is ballooned outward, and it consumes more. The ballooning affects the amount of Hawking Radiation. The tiny particle has multiple effects on the black hole. It was swallowed into an imperceptible hard but tarry pool that will not release what has fallen in. The Hawking Radiation might tell a tale, but what comes out is not what went in.

The SN Magazine may be found at https://www.sciencenews.org/article/sn-10-scientists-to-watch-2018?tgt=nr

The Last Light Bulb

It was time to relamp my basement rooms because I felt that the level of the lighting seemed too yellow. I decided that some of the older florescent bulbs had worn out and needed to be replaced. As my eyes appreciate brighter light these days, I bought “daylight” bulbs to brighten the spaces; especially the darker corners. When I took the cover off the ceiling light in the furthest back and darkest room, I was surprised to see it contained an incandescent bulb. The bulb had survived the several purges in which I replaced my old incandescent bulbs with new energy saving fluorescents. But here was one that had not only escaped the successive replacements; it looked like it had been in the fixture since the house was built in the early 1980’s.

I’m not saying this bulb was a “long-lasting” bulb. This bulb had likely been in place for a measly 30-some years – mostly in an “off” position. This is nothing when compared to the famous Livermore light in Livermore, California which has been burning nearly continuously since it was installed in Fire Station #6 in 1901 (117 years !!). Now, that’s a reason to visit California!

But this is the last of my incandescent bulbs. It shows its age. There are carbon deposits inside the bulb and the screw base is brass. It has been a long time since I have seen any bulbs like this one. This type of bulb has gone the way of the dinosaur. They burned bright, and they burned hot. When I was young I lost a favorite plastic toy. It was small; small enough to fit down the chimney of a desk lamp and sit on top of the bulb. I was looking around the house for my toy when my mother asked if I knew what was creating a smell of roasting plastic. It turned out to be the lost toy, now an expired blob of plastic on top of the now ruined light bulb. Thankfully there was no fire.

It was the waste heat of the old incandescents that led to their demise. So much of the energy they consumed just generated heat when the light was on. They were not nearly as efficient as today’s newer bulb technologies. The incandescents were replaced by fluorescents and then by LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs whose energy consumption is much less and whose life is much longer. A 60-watt incandescent bulb may last 1,000 hours, but a fluorescent bulb (a Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL)) of comparable light generation may last 10,000 hours. A comparable LED light can last up to 25,000 hours. The comparable function of the different bulbs is the lumens of light that they provide. A Department of Energy site, from which the numbers given above are taken, defines a lumen as the measure of light produced by a light bulb. To get the same 800 lumens produced by the old 60-watt (60w) incandescent bulb we could use a CFL that consumes only 15 watts of electricity or use a 12 watt LED bulb. The energy savings are significant, and the lighting is just as good. But the initial cost of the CFL or the LED bulb is higher than the old incandescent bulbs. However, the cost savings can be more than $3.50 per year, PER LIGHT BULB. If your house has 30 light bulbs that’s a nice annual savings of $105.00 dollars. And better yet, the energy company does not have to generate all that energy you and all your neighbors used in the past. This not only saves energy resources like coal or natural gas, but it also results in less pollution. These are all good things.

But this is my last incandescent bulb. It’s like the dinosaur in more than one way. Its time has passed, but I remember it fondly. I remember the search for my plastic toy. I remember trying to stare at the glowing wire filament inside the naked bulb hanging on the side porch. I remember helping my grandfather change the bulbs around the house and him telling me of gaslights and coal oil lamps.

And now all my light bulbs are changed to the new technologies. Some are CFL; some are LED, depending on the size and use. And I fully intend to make that trip to Livermore, California. Hopefully I will be able to stare up at the bright and hot filament of the Livermore Centennial Light.

More informatization on the Livermore light can be found in the Guinness Book of World Records, http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/ .

More information on lighting and energy savings can be found at, https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/save-electricity-and-fuel/lighting-choices-save-you-money/how-energy-efficient-light

Screen Porch in the Morning

This morning I am starting my day on our screen porch. I came out to enjoy the first cool morning of the Fall. I am glad that the mornings are no longer hot and humid. This time of year the mornings can be fantastic. I sit at the family table with the lights out and wait in the silence that is only broken by the water from last night’s rain dripping from the trees.

It’s good to start my days out in the woods when I can. But when I am pressed for time or have appointments to keep – or as Robert Frost put it, “miles to go before I sleep” – going out on my screen porch in the early morning is fine.

I sit quietly in one of the chairs around the table and wait for the morning to surprise me. I hear an owl deep in the woods calling. And I hear an answering call. There’s a strange comfort in their calls. From down the road I hear the barking call of a fox. It is prowling the pre-dawn neighborhood looking for careless rodents. Then I hear it closer, and I stand up slowly and see not one but three foxes, a vixen and two near-grown pups, standing at the edge of the street. They are lit by the distant street lamp. Their silvery red coats, wet by the rain, glisten. One of the pups sees me stand up and turns and looks in my direction. Even though I am in deep shadow I know he can see me – sense me – as an unwelcome presence on their morning hunt. Then all three turn and dash down the street towards the woods to the east. I imagine I will see them again on some other morning as I am sure they have a den nearby.

There is a little light in the sky now and the crows in the woods have begun their morning caw. Their brazen call reverberates through the woods behind the house. They are alarmed. They probably see the owl or the fox, both enemies of the crows. Their calls move from the woods and over the house as the gang lifts out of the trees and is now circling the houses in the neighborhood cawing and cawing to bother and chase off the intruder. They fly off to the west, perhaps in search of another enemy.

Now with more light, and the wake-up call from the crows, other birds are singing out. The cardinals with their varied calls surround the house. They call from the holly trees where they eat from the now red-berried branches that have fruited for the Fall. I cannot see the cardinals in the still dim light. But I can picture the male’s crimson feathers and the crest that they each carry and their distinctive orange beaks. They have become year-round guests for us, always somewhere on the edge of the property singing their songs.

Soon the day will be into the near-full light of the time just before the sun breaks through the woods across the street. And it’s time to get to work on the efforts and rewards that are calling me from my reprieve on the porch. And I know that on some another morning, when I am pressed, I can come out and embrace the day.

A Prescription

My friends realize that I am about to give them advice when I start a conversation with, “I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV, but …” And the advice, often unsolicited, follows. Generally, my advice takes the form of saying get away from the routine. Get outside. Do something else for a little while.

This being my favorite prescription I had to chuckle when I saw a similar statement from a real doctor. When I looked up the quote attributed to her before writing this Post, I realized that I was on a well worn path. But words of wisdom have no expiration date, and they cannot be passed on too often. It’s a form of distributed intelligence (more on that in a coming post). When several doctors were asked about heart healthy habits they use themselves, Dr. Monya De was quoted as responding, “’Recently I realized I had been indoors too long so I ‘prescribed’ myself a hike!”

I am following that path just as have other writers who have echoed those words and added their own thoughts. And I say, YES! Get up. Get away from your desk. Get outside. Get Away!

When Herman Melville was writing Moby Dick, he would often walk the paths of the Berkshire Mountains near his farm in Pittsfield, MA. These escapes are reflected in his opening paragraph of Moby Dick; “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; … then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

Even in modern music (yes, the 1960s are still modern) The Drifters, in their hit song Up on the Roof, speak to escape from the world and to find the re-creation of the soul.

“When this old world starts getting me down
And people are just too much for me to face,
I climb way up to the top of the stairs
And all my cares just drift right into space.
On the roof, it’s peaceful as can be,
And there the world below can’t bother me.”

Whether it’s a forest path, or the sea, or a roof deep in the heart of a bustling city, we are sometimes called to go there. Whatever the place may be the call is a clear, clarion call, to shift your body, to shift your eyes, to shift your mind, and to go to a place that affords you peace. And when you are there, to reflect and to prepare yourself for your return to your work, or to your relationship, or to your home in a better state of mind.

In his essay True Nature, Gary Snyder reminds us of the journey out – and the return.

“The wilderness pilgrim’s step-by-step breath-by-breath walk up a trail, into those snowfields, carrying all on the back, is so ancient a set of gestures as to bring a profound sense of body-mind joy. … The same happens to those who sail in the ocean, kayak fjords or rivers, tend a garden, peel garlic, even sit on a meditation cushion. The point is to make intimate contact with the real world, real self. … The best purpose of such studies and hikes is to be able to come back to the lowlands and see all the land about us, agricultural, suburban, urban, as part of the same territory — never totally ruined, never completely unnatural. It can be restored, and humans could live in considerable numbers on much of it. Great Brown Bear is walking with us, Salmon swimming upstream with us, as we stroll a city street.” (Snyder, G. (1990). The Practice of the Wild. Berkeley, CA: North Point Press.) (The underlining for emphasis is mine.)

None of these are to imply the best place for you to go. They all imply the relocation of body and soul to a place of re-creation – and a return, renewed, to your life. Your renewal can help you improve your life, your work, your home, and the lives of those around you. The strength of the bear is with you. The courage of the salmon is yours.

Cylindrical Sails

Modern ocean-going vessels are mostly propelled by diesel or diesel-electric engines with mechanical connection to the propeller shaft. Now these engines can get an assist from sails installed on the ship’s decks. These are not fabric sails with rigging. The sails being installed are rotor sails. To an observer the sail looks like a large, vertical pipe. When in operation these vertical pipes are spun using power from the mechanical plant in the ship. The spinning cylindrical sail works together with the wind in utilizing Magnus effect to push the ship forward.

These sails work in a manner similar to the wing of an airplane. An airplane’s wing is shaped so that the air passing over the top of the wing exerts less downward pressure on the wing than the upward pressure from the air that is passing under the wing. This creates an upward lift applied to the wing and to the aircraft.

To show this take a narrow strip of paper about 1 inches wide, and using both hands hold it by the near corners with the thumb and fore-finger of each hand. Blow across the top of the paper. Even a gentle blow causes the piece of paper to rise. The air pressure over the top of the paper is less than the air pressure below the piece of paper, so the paper rises up. This also applied to the spinning rotor sails. The rotor sails are smooth vertical cylinders. They do not “catch” the wind; rather, they work by air pressure.

If you were a sea gull flying above the ship and looking down you would see the vertical cylinder as a spinning circle. Let’s say that the ship is sailing North, or towards the top of your screen. For this example, the wind is blowing from the West; from your left to your right. The cylinder is spinning in a clockwise direction so that the North edge of the spinning circle, as you look down on the spinning cylinder (remember you are a gull above the ship), is rotating to the East and so is moving in the same direction as the wind. The South edge of the spinning cylinder is rotating towards the West, in the direction that the wind is coming from, and so is spinning against the wind. This creates a higher pressure on the South side of the spinning cylinder which exerts a pressure in the northerly, or forward, direction. This is the wind assist for the ship heading North.

The rotor sails can be spun in either direction, clock-wise or counter clock-wise to take advantage of favorable winds. The winds do not have to be 90-degrees to the course of the ship as the wind and the Magnus effect can be used even with the wind off the forward or after quarters of the ship. Unfavorable winds that cannot be utilized are those that are blow from approximately twenty degrees on either side of the bow or stern of the vessel.

The pressure difference between the high-pressure side and the low-pressure side of the spinning, cylindrical rotor sail is magnified by the Magnus effect. Based on the influence of this force, studied and described by Heinrich Magnus, a spinning object causes the air on one side to exert a force on the object so that it moves in a direction perpendicular to the axis of the spin. The use of the Magnus effect in rotating sails was first demonstrated in the 1920s. At that time it was not found to be more efficient than the normal means of the ship’s motive power.

An article in The Guardian in 2016 describes the installation and efficiency of rotor sails developed and installed by NorsePower on the MS Estraden. Using these rotor sails as a wind assist on its routes across the North Sea resulted in a reduction of 6% in fuel costs.

In 2018, an article on the Maritime Executive website described a more recent installation of rotor sails on the Maersk Line tanker, Maersk Pelican. The installation was further reported in 2018 in the World Maritime News, which stated that Maersk sees a potential fuel savings of up to 10% in using the rotor sails for wind assist. When wind conditions are favorable the rotor sails can provide sufficient forward thrust which allows the ship’s primary engines to be throttled back. This results in less fuel burned resulting in less combustion exhaust from the engines.

The electrical power that is used to spin the rotor sail is less than the energy required by the ship’s normal propulsion to generate the forward thrust generated by the rotor sail. When the savings in fuel and the reduced emissions is multiplied across many ships and many thousands of miles of ocean transport, the reduction of fuel burned and the reduction of the resultant pollution is significant.

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/aug/16/shipping-emissions-low-carbon-wind-power-climate-change

https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/two-wind-power-rotor-sails-installed-on-lr2-tanker

https://worldmaritimenews.com/archives/259777/rotor-sails-fitted-on-board-maersks-tanker-in-a-worlds-1st/