A Comet – Maybe

It is my habit to go outside in the night. I enjoy the night. It is generally cooler. It is quieter as the sounds of the day are gone. But the sounds of the night can be magnified so that the rustle of leaves being blown by the wind can sound like a distant charge of cavalry.

And at night the stars are out.

I remember when my father would take me outside and show me the Milky Way. He taught me to recognize the Great Bear and Orion. He introduced me to the stars of the night; Polaris, Vega, Deneb, Betelgeuse. That was seventy years ago. There were fewer people living in the rural areas. There were fewer lights, and the clarity of the night sky was such that can hardly be imagined now. But Orion and the Great Bear and others – Scorpio, Pegasus, and Cygnus – were as friends who returned with the passing years. I would go outside on a Summer night or in the cold of Winter to look up. I have had a series of small telescopes, but I prefer just to gaze and to recognize and to remember the stories my father told me while these stars shown overhead. I would stay outside and watch for shooting stars and satellites. I would seek dark places to watch meteor showers. I built simple mechanisms that allowed me to track stars for night photography.

And I would seek out comets. I camped out on islands that I had to reach in my kayak to see Halley’s Comet. I even took a reasonably good picture of Halley’s using my homemade tracker with a medium lens mounted on my camera. I went to the mountains to look for some of the comets of the last half century. I would marvel at the photographs others had taken.

But what I enjoy is to sit outside late at night and look up. I am easily thrilled by a passing satellite –  or the International Space Station. I have seen numerous meteors spark into life and disappear. But in the back of my mind I always wondered if I would be the first to see a new comet. Why not? Many new comets are found by amateur astronomers. I just need to look in the right place at the right time.

And maybe I have!

Three nights ago I was out sitting in my “gazing” chair and using my binoculars to pick out some of my favorite stars. I was also looking for a particular Messier object that seemed to allude me. So I decided to look at some of the double stars that are often part of the constellations. Then I saw a fuzzy object and wondered what it was. When I went inside I looked for it on a star chart and could not find it. I decided to look for it again the following night. On the second night the object was still in the general area where I had seen it the night before – but perhaps slightly beyond where I thought it was.  Today I looked for it in my detailed star charts and saw no object in that place. I went on-line and asked if a comet had been reported in that area. No comet had been reported.

So I reported it.

The Sky and Telescope site gave me direction on how to determine if there is a possibility that it is a comet. The site also gave information on reporting it to the Harvard Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (CBAT). I estimated the right ascension and the declination from my star charts. I described it – and I think “fuzzy” is the universal term for describing a comet. I translated the viewing time into Universal Time (UT). And I sent in my report.

Now I will wait, and I will go outside later tonight to see if I can find it again.

Haying Season

It’s haying time. But I am only an observer. Others work hard in the field to harvest the sweet grasses and the late summer flowers into large, round bales for winter livestock.

All summer I have walked the paths in the fields. The grass has grown up alongside and flowers have blossomed and faded. The meadow larks rise and fall into the depths of the grass as they lure me away from their nest. The red-winged black birds hold onto the tall, stiff reeds of grasses and bob with the wind, watching me as I pass through their domain.

But now the grass is ready to be cut. The bugs will fly up, and the birds will fly down to catch them. The young birds have fledged and are able to take part in the feast. But they will return to a strange earth cut from a sea of waving stems to a crackling stubble.

This is not a bleak picture but a picture of a cycle that has interwoven the grass, the farmer, and the meadow lark and the other birds that live in the grassy fields. It’s late summer, and it’s time to cut the grass.

Last winter I was flying into Dulles airport returning from a job in California. I looked out onto the rolling hills of piedmont Virginia where the fields rise slowly up to meet the Blue Ridge Mountains. There was a dusting of snow over the landscape. Something caught my eye which I had not seen before. In several places dotted on the landscape below were large brown stars on the fields. There was a mixture of designs. Some stars had six arms radiating from a central point. Others had four or five arms. They were all somewhat symmetrical. But what were they? I could see that each star radiated from the crest of a small hill with the arms of the stars reaching out and down the hill. From my perspective of several thousand feet in the air each arm may have been up to 100 feet long.  The arms were brown and textured and in some places the snow showed through.

“There’s another one,” I said to myself. Looking further out I could see others as they came into the view of the descending plane.  Soon though, the open fields and winter wood lots gave way to suburbs with their tangle of roads and snow dusted roofs.

What I was seeing was the result of haying. The large round hay bales had been taken to the top of small hills and rolled outward to form the stars. The hay was now available to the livestock. Perhaps it was hay cut the year before from the fields I was gazing at now.

The grasses in these fields are harvested under a hay lease from the National Park of which the fields I walk in are a part. The farmer pays the Park Service for the right to harvest the hay which they then use or sell. The funds help support this park and other parks in the national system. And the haying keeps the historic vistas open. It is also part of the centuries old cycle of the ground and the grass and the bird and the farmer. I am a witness to the covenant between man and nature. We care for the Earth and nature, and it supports us in its growth and regrowth.

Robert Frost in his poem Mowing speaks for the scythe whispering to the grass. What secret do they share? It is the secret of the covenant. It is the tale of the blade returning to the grass each year and the rejuvenation of the grass to receive it. It is a promise to return year after year to the haying. And to whisper.

This excellent video tells of the hard work of the haying covenant between the farmer and the Earth.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwl-YLvru1s

The art work is based on a screen shot from the referenced video.

Robert Frost’s poem Mowing may be found at the Poetry Foundation site at – https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53001/mowing-56d231eca88cd

An Acorn in my Hand

When I walked outside this morning it was warm and humid but there was promise of change in the air. It is August, and we are well into summer so the temperature and the humidity were not a surprise. But I realized in my first few steps into the day that a change was coming. It was not as bright. The sun had not yet come up. The days are growing shorter. Soon we will have darker mornings and cooler nights. Then the moisture will slip away and we will enter Fall and Winter. There will be no more long, balmy days. But it will be a great time to go outside into the dark and to marvel at creation.

Any day or any hour we can look around and see creation all about us. Yet for me to look up at the clear night sky and see the stars and distant galaxies is always the most fantastic of moments. In the current summer nights Arcturus and Vega rule the night sky. The Summer Triangle of Vega together with the bright stars Altair and Deneb is clearly visible even on less than pristine nights. As we approach Fall, Orion with its brilliant display will rise in the night sky.

Each of these stars and the hundreds of billions of stars in each of the visible galaxies are part of the vastness of creation. Each of them – which we see as points of light of varying brightness – was born out of a cataclysmic explosion and a whirling vortex of hot gasses which coalesced to form stars, galaxies, and for us, our planet, Earth. This is not to imply that ours is the only planet. We know we reside in our star’s system with eight other planets (I am including Pluto) and a myriad of asteroids and comets and minor planets. And beyond the Solar system we have discovered there are a multitude of other stars with planets circling them. All of these are part of the vastness of creation. But we are on this one, and that makes it the most important planet in the universe for us. We are part of it. It is our home. It coalesced from the cosmic dust, and so did we.

When I lie down on the grass under a night sky full of stars I can marvel at creation. I look up and let my mind be swept away to amazing and far distant places. I wonder how we will get to there. Will we be able to wander across other worlds? I know that we will someday make that journey, and I am a little sad that I will not be on that ship. I am sure we will find unknown marvels in the vastness of creation.

I stand up from gazing at the stars and look around me. I see the forms of grass waving around my legs and the outline of trees in the darkness. I walk over to an oak tree, and I bend down and pick up a fallen acorn. I hold it up and study it and realize that inside this acorn are packed all the marvels of the universe, the galaxies, our solar system, and this Earth, our home.

8 BILLION !! What are YOU doing?

By the time we reach the next quarter century World Population will reach 8 BILLION people.

This is a troubling number as each one of us will need food and shelter and health care and should have the opportunity to lead a productive and happy life.

But will we all have that opportunity?

It’s up to YOU!

What are you doing to prepare the world for 8 BILLION? What are you doing to help each man, woman, and child to be fed and sheltered and cared for? What are you doing to help each individual have a life in which they have the opportunity to help their community and to feel the joy of knowing they are contributing to the benefit of others.

During the Renaissance, during the Age of Discovery, during the Reformation, when the French Revolution was taking place, there were less than 1 Billion people on Earth.

But with the industrial revolution and the concurrent increases in the knowledge of science and healthy living conditions more people were being born – and living to be older than in the generations before them. 200 years ago the world population was only 1 Billion. The world passed the 2 Billion mark only about 100 years ago. But by the turn of the century in the year 2000 we nearly TRIPLED that number and we soon passed the 6 Billion mark. Population growth has slowed. But we are still increasing, and by the year 2025 we will reach a world population of 8 BILLION people! And the population will continue to grow from there. Projections of population growth are that by mid-century, in the year 2050, world population will increase by another Billion and we will surpass 9 Billion people on our world.

The increase from 1 Billion to 2 Billion, a doubling, took 100 years. To get from 2 Billion to 9 Billion, more than four times the number, will take less than 200 years. The projections for population increase over the 25 years between 2025 and 2050 are that we will add more than 1 Billion people by mid-century. The 1 Billion increase that took over 100 years to achieve after 1800 will take less than 25 years.

Ask the internet. Ask your neighbors. Ask people where you work. Ask your Government. Ask your church. What can we do – what can I do – so we will be ready?

This is a question for all of us – for you and for me. How am I preparing to help the world at 8 BILLION? And then 9 Billion!

Each of us should rejoice in the Earth. Each of us should go out and experience the world, nature, wild life, birds, crawling things, all of it, including our fellow human-beings.

When we stand in a park or in the woods or next to a flowing stream or pause beside a field of wheat or a bed of sun flowers, we should marvel at it and we should also ask ourselves, “What can I do to preserve and prepare the Earth for all my new neighbors?”

And then act!

 

The picture of the child is based on a photograph at wallpaperbetter.com.

Quail and Sparrow

I submitted my siting to the online bird database. The first thing they told me – and I expected them to tell me this – was that I likely did not see what I told them I saw.  But that’s ok, the data managers’ responsibility is to ensure the data submitted makes sense.

What I had seen was a black bellied whistling duck (BBWD). But I knew the bird was way out of its normal neighborhood. The BBWD is a bird of Florida and southeast Texas and up the Mississippi River as far as Tennessee. The map of its range can be seen on the black bellied whistling duck page of the terrific, on-line Cornell guide to birds. But it is not seen in a creek in the hills of Virginia. But that’s where I saw him, or rather them. Three BBWD standing in a creek on those long, very unduck-like legs with their long necks held high.

They looked quite at home in this lowland stream. And I was very much at home in the outdoors walking these woodland paths. I had not seen one of these long-legged ducks before, but I knew them from pictures. I was certain they were not geese. But I was surprised to see them there minding their business while I minded mine. As I watched them they flew off to some other more private stream. I imagine that they were heading back to a location that they are more use to. I watched them until they disappeared through the trees. I stood and continued to watch and listen in case they circled back. They did not.

What is it about birds that has the capability to enrapture us?

I think it’s because they make themselves available to us. They fly overhead. They will sit in a bush – perhaps hidden – and sing to us and to all of creation. They have the capability to remind us of the life and the beauty that is abundant in this world. And knowing this, they also remind us of our responsibility to enjoy and protect them, and to protect areas in which they can live so that they come back year in and year out to nest and sing and give new life and joy. The appearance of a certain bird may be a harbinger of spring. Or it may be an indication of a change in the weather, as gulls flocking inland may be warning of a storm. Their morning songs bring up the sun. And their last flights of evening bring the return to the nest and the calm of the night.

There are two birds in which I am currently interested as a volunteer citizen-scientist for a national park. I help with the park’s bird observation and management programs. It’s great. I have a reason to be out in the woods and the open fields. And it takes me out for the sunrise and into the new day that follows. I often hike to my listening stations in the pre-dawn darkness. It takes me out in the Spring and in the Fall and my task is – to listen to the birds sing.

I listen for the gentle call of the Northern Bobwhite Quail and the often hidden and reclusive Henslow’s Sparrow, a little bird of the open fields. The surveys each bird are repeated in selected areas along specific transects with established stations. It requires standing still and listening; it requires patience. Often I do not hear the quail whether it be the well-know “bob-white” call or the more muted nesting calls that might be heard. Nor do I often hear the Henslow’s Sparrow the thin, reedy notes that might rise and fall in the tall grass. But that’s all part of being outside. The birds are allowing me to share their home. I come with respect and quietness.  And I am rewarded, if not by the song of my subject bird, by the call of all their feathered partners of the woods and fields.

Listening and surveying for these birds is part of an overall program to determine the health of the local environment and its ability to support these birds and birds similar to them. If the birds are present it means that they have an adequate food supply and have a place to perch, or hide, or loaf. I love that term and often picture the quail loafing around their nesting area. However, absence of these birds indicates that they and other birds may not find the food or cover or level of calmness that they like in order to take up and maintain residence in the area. As noted above we have a responsibility to ensure that we maintain and conserve areas where wildlife may thrive and we can go and loaf ourselves.

And the Whistling Ducks, they are welcome to come back anytime, but I agree with the purveyors of protocol on the bird site. This is not a normal occurrence, but it is the normal and the not-normal that continue to draw me outside to enjoy the birds, and the woods, streams and open fields.

Halcyon!

Picture is taken from Jules Breton’s painting “The Song of the Lark” from the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Where AI ?

“The Mars Curiosity rover is equipped with “AI” technology that selects research targets.” This statement introduces Elizabeth Howell’s article in Seeker (published 08/22/2017). The article presents NASA’s current and planned future use of robots with “AI” on Mars and potentially for missions beyond the solar system.  But how else will we use Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Where can AI take us? Where are we allowing AI in our lives? Is it taking us into the realm of science fiction and a world apocalypse as pictured in the Terminator movies? Or is it taking us into a highly promising realm in which information can be gathered, and decisions can be made rapidly resulting in an improved life for humanity?

For the Mars rover – or any other expensive and far-off piece of rolling stock, we do not want it to have to query us – its operators/mission-controllers – whenever it perceives an issue with its surroundings. We do not want it to have to ask us whether it should stop or turn around or go straight whenever it reaches an obstacle. Especially if it takes 30 minutes (Mars approximate query and response time) or 2 hours (Jupiter approximate query and response time).  We can all understand that a piece of equipment or a scientific instrument which can operate independently may be a greater benefit to us and perhaps to the device itself.

Now consider something closer, the common household thermostat. Thermostats operate on their own once they are programmed to do so. If your thermostat had to ask you if the house was too hot at 82 degree (F), and you as the mission-controller had to get up and touch it or yell across the room to tell it what to do – you would not be satisfied. The system would not be efficient. There would only be the perception of the surroundings by the thermostat but no helpful outcome. The type of independence found in the common thermostat requires that the robot – or independent operational equipment (InEqu) – must progress beyond a perception of its surroundings and take an action.

The type of independence needed in the Mars rover is of a higher level. The rover needs to be able to operate with a high level of independence in order to fulfill its mission. It must be able to perceive its surroundings, determine possible alternative courses of action, analyze the potential outcome of an action, then make a decision, and act along the chosen course of action.

This decision-making has long engrossed science fiction fans and generated countless arguments concerning the application of Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics. These laws establish a progression of decision-making to protect humans as well as the robot itself. These ideas intrigue us even though we are barely on the threshold of AI. How can we be certain that a robot on Mars will follow a given process of decision making that will enable it to protect itself and thereby protect its mission?

Also, what are these robots that can take independent action? Please do not picture a bipedal, smiling ape visage. Yet that is what we most often think of when we hear the term “robot.” I would venture to say that the vast majority of robots around us today look nothing like a human or a rabbit or any creature that we may try to envision. A welding robot which looks like a disembodied ant eater is probably one of the more common robots. It has no need for legs or for a face or for friendly features. It has a task to do and a place to fit. I will certainly agree that when we humans have to deal directly with a robot it is nice to have a familiar appearance or a cute face so we are at ease in our dealings with them. I raise my hat to the robots in the Henn-na hotel in Nagasaki as reported by Monisha Rajesh in The Guardian (08/14/2015). A smiling lady – a velociraptor, both of which we all know and love. These androids (from the Greek as in human-like) are willing to interact with us due to their programming. We might be willing to interact with them as they do not appear any more dangerous that a kitten. Japan will likely continue to lead in AI/InEqu. Their preparations for the 2020 Olympics include AI in transportation, security, and in traveler’s assistance such as language translation and general information.

But back to the question – where are we taking – or being taken – by AI in our lives? The initial answer is we, the builders of the InEqu (pronounced as ‘any-que’), will allow AI to take us as far as we program it. But then there is the case of Facebook’s robots as presented in Forbes.com by Tony Bradley, 07/31/2017. These devices remarkably went beyond their programming. Here was a system created to support a Facebook process, but then the AI devices developed their own language to speed/enhance their ability to communicate with itself/each other. Isn’t enhancing speed and operability what we want? To be able to sort information quickly? To be able to improve processes quickly? In this case, it might not have been a total surprise to Facebook’s “people”, but to the rest of us it was a “Wow” moment. Hopefully one in which we said, “Wow – isn’t that cool,” rather than “Wow – shut it off and don’t do that anymore.”

Only two decades ago many of us thought that a vacuum cleaner that operated by itself and could scare the pants of a cat was pretty sharp. We have moved beyond that quickly and will continue to do so. This, like the thermostat, may be considered “little AI”. Yet – again – where will we end up? I believe we will not end – but will continue to progress and to harness the ability of an InEqu to analyze (think?) and act independently for our benefit. In other words, to help us pursue and uphold our inalienable rights.

My first interaction with “big AI” will likely be the self-driving car. No kitten this, and hopefully my first interaction will not involve insurance companies. But these large, metal moving machines are just the InEqu’s that we are driving towards (pun intended).

I love to drive; in an active sense. I get into my car, and hands on the wheel I drive to work. I may listen to music on the radio. I watch the other drivers and pay attention to the road. I see a driver over there paying attention to their text message. I see another in animated conversation with a person that may be on the other side of the planet. For those people (assuming they are not androids) self-driving cars cannot come soon enough. But for me I will stay in my big old Detroit steel shell and enjoy the road. It is my cocoon against the assault of AI. It’s coming sure enough. I’m just not ready to participate. This then is my declaration of being independent.

Wired magazine in their August 2017 issue asks if we fear the future. I say, No. I look forward to the future. I just hope that when the texting population gets to their destination that the AI in their Detroit steel is programmed to wake them up and ask them if they want to take their coffee with them. Wired magazine enjoys writing about AI. And we should be glad that they do. It keeps alive the idea of machines/robots/InEqu that can do their jobs/processes quickly and efficiently and allow their human counterparts time to improve the overall process. This is not an us versus them; it is just an us – InEqu and people. In the meantime, enjoy the science fiction and stay in touch with will be appearing at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Keep on Trucking

It happened long before the real “Mr. Natural” stepped into our lives in the 1960s.

A no-name star, perhaps now disappeared over some cosmic horizon, passed through the solar neighborhood and shook things up.

Maybe.

A Space.com article by Meghan Bartels reports on a recent paper published on arXiv.org in which a team of astronomers writes on the possibility of this now long gone star pulling on the early outer solar system and shifting orbits so they are way out of the solar ecliptic plane. The team of astronomers used computer models to study the possibility of the extra-solar visitor – which I am calling Mr. Natural – and the possible results of its passing. Such a pass could have pulled the trans-Neptunian objects (NTO) of the solar system into the eccentric orbits that we can observe today.

Being outside and enjoying what our world offers includes looking up at the night sky. If while looking up at the night sky, we could see the solar system objects that reside beyond Neptune we would see that their orbits are wildly eccentric when compared to the orbits of planets like Earth and Mars. In contrast to our earthly, tight, elliptical orbit of the sun, the orbits for those NTOs are long, stretched-out ellipses. For example, Sedna, which is mentioned in the Space.com article, is a dwarf planet beyond what we would generally consider the edge of our solar system. Its orbit of the sun takes 10,000 years. The closest it gets to the sun is further than 7 billion miles away from the sun. That’s more than 75 times greater than the Earth’s average closest approach to the sun of 93 million miles. Something likely gave Sedna and the other outer solar system objects quite a tug of gravity a long time ago. According to the arXiv.org paper this might have happened as early as 10 million years after the formation of the solar system – which is presumed to be 5 billion years old. So that passing star came and went a long time before the creation of life and a long, long time before even the oldest dinosaur.

The creation of the universe – and of the Earth – and all the life that teems on this Earth is worth considering. When I look at the blossom of a tiny wildflower I can think of its place and my own place in the universe. The flower and I are small parts of the greater cosmos. And we can benefit each other, each giving according to its ability. The flower gives beauty. It accents an open meadow or a shaded woodland glen. It may give nectar to a bird or bee, or be food for the rabbit or the browsing deer. I can see and understand this flower’s part in the greater scheme of life. And for my part, I can be a steward of the flower, and of the meadow, and of the woodland glen. I can respond with joy to the beauty and worth of the flower as well as that of all creation, from this tiny blossom, to the solar system, and to the vast cosmos beyond.

And to Mr. Natural – the presumed passing star of millennia ago – I say “Keep on trucking!”

associated picture is from “Outer solar system possibly shaped by a stellar fly-by”, arXiv.org, S. Pfalzner, et.al., posted July 9, 2018.

Source: https://www.space.com/41212-wandering-star-disturbed-outer-solar-system.html