Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice, a poem and the science . . .

First the poetry

Christmas is a few days off. Nostalgia and expectations are high. Neighborhood houses, trees, and bushes twinkle with lights and glowing Santas and cartoon characters wobble in the dark. Other than time with family, I do my best to avoid the whole thing. Instead I quietly observe the winter solstice. It is my Sanctum Sanitarium so, as on other years, I am re-posting a poem I wrote to celebrate it. It's my candle in the window during this longest, darkest of nights.




The image came later. It's based on a photo I took of the full moon rising over a ravine in the Nevada outback. It was a ridiculously difficult place to get to. We walked the road first just to see if the jeep could make it down. Now, after some unusually wet springs and increased flash flooding, I doubt road to this incredible place still exists.

Now the science

Sunlight on Earth, at the December solstice.
North Pole in 24-hour darkness; South Pole in 24-hour daylight.

www.earthsky.org

I started this post in the morning and now, hours after dark, I'm finally getting around to finishing it. Tonight is the solstice so I must. I wish you a serene end to the old cycle and at least one moment of deep peace sometime during this longest night.

Tonight

A flame is quietly wavering above the clear pool of melted wax cupped in the top of the stubby green candle on my desk. A new nova was discovered only a few days ago in the constellation Scorpius. It will be visible to the naked eye tomorrow morning just before dawn.

Something to tide you over

I'll be in Reno most of the day tomorrow and when I do have any time, I'll be working on my podcast so here's a rain check and a few photos to amuse you until I have a little time to do more.

The good news is that the lovely Delicata seems to be doing better. She came out and gobbled up a bunch of the honey smeared orange. That must have been quite a treat.

Okay, on with the show, up close and personal I give you, compliments of the Eye of Science ....

Lavender

Marigold

and...TA-DA...


Velcro

Thermodynamics, winners and losers

1877

As Albert put it, "Thermodynamics is the only physical theory of universal content which, within the framework of the applicability of its basic concepts, I am convinced will never be overthrown." Albert Einstein

In case you're wondering, here's the simple version of the three laws of thermodynamics:

• You can't win.
• You can't break even.
• You can't get out of the game.

I'm still thinking about karma and the laws of thermodynamics. They are both forms of applied science, just expressed by different cultures in different millennium. We may be a bit less subtle these days but we produce a lot of cool stuff. Anyway, my point is neither depends on faith. If I hold my hand in fire, I will get burned. It's a reaction to an action. Yes. There are fire walkers who, well, walk on fire, but I'm making a simple point. The three laws also apply to behavior. Even the Christian bible talks about karma. "As you sow, so shall you reap".

Then there are religious leaders, like Pat Robertson and all the warlord Ayatollahs, who tell their fanatic followers that all you have to do is "do it for god" and you're spared the reaction. They call it "salvation" and "forgiveness". Great for gamblers, thugs and desperate people.

Terrorists love the idea of salvation. Take Bush & Co. for example. So far they have gotten away with murder, mayhem and fabulous riches so... why stop now? The Muslim extremists are no different. Get them at any cost before they get us. Except Bush doesn't really care about getting them as much as getting their oil. In the meantime, the whole bunch has created the very situation they are fighting against. Together they have spun a collapsing maze and dragged the rest of us into it with them.

But the house always wins, and contrary to popular opinion, is not run by anyone's personal savior. I only hope it plays its trump sooner than later. For that to happen I believe we, the civilians in all this, must speak up. Simple. Just not easy.



"...if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation." Sir Arthur Eddington

Impeachment ticket source

Polar Astronomy

Tony Travouillon is a scientist who works in some very exotic places. He also posts wonderful photos from his travels. His field? Polar astronomy. My god! I get instantly dizzy thinking about what the stars must look like from the South Pole. At least check out Dome C. There are some amazing pictures of walls of translucent blue ice, and fun ones of baby penguins and snoozing seals.

Science Update

I got this email from my brother today. It's a correction for the Mt. Saint Helen Math equation he did for me yesterday.

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Mad Scientist Convention

"Oops! I added a few extra zeros. There its 5E+9 = 5,000,000,000 not 5,000,000,000,000, that number is 5 trillion. Better make changes on your blog or some scientist will roast us. You see why we use short hand notation."   J.

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So, now that we've got that straightened out, we can all go back to enjoying our infinitesimal fraction *(in geologic time) of this human day.


Logic vs. Superstition Debate


* added 2017.02.17

Mt. Saint Helen Math

Mt. Saint Helen Web Cam
Someone at Bluesky was wondering about how Mt. Saint Helen's latest eruption fits into the passage of geologic time. So I asked my brother. I always ask my brother when I need an equation. Several years ago I asked him what my total life earnings as a poet figured out to be as an hourly wage. The answer was 8 cents an hour. Yes. Anyway, on to Mt. Saint Helen.


Mt. Saint Helen and Mt. Rainier

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"Here are my calculations:

We actually don’t need to bring humans into the process, unless one thinks that our evil ways with the body politic have upset the mountain again.


Mt. Saint Helen's new dome peeking up over crater edge

Contrary to the early century Christian scholars who thought the earth was 144,000 years old, the scientist think its more like 5 billion years old. Putting in the zeros the number looks like this 5,000,000,000,000. Of course we scientist don’t like to waste things much even if they are zeros, either do Norwegians, so we use a short notation and write 5E+9, which means a five followed by nine zeros after it. The E stands for exponent, what ever that is. So if there is a 70% change of Mt. Saint Helens getting pissed off this year and we assume that she only get pissed on very occasionally, for you see she is a cool mountain, lots of snow, and so the chance of it getting pissed off over the age of the earth is this…

Let’s just first figure out what percent one year is compared to the age of the earth. That is easy..

1 year/ age of earth = 1/5,000,000,000,000

Now we are wasting zeros again, so we write this the stingy Norwegian math way 1/5E+9 was is approximately 0.5E-9. We use the minus sign after the E to denote how many zeros in front of the nine. So one year equals 50E-9 % of the earth life. Notice we moved the zeros around converting from fraction of 0.5 to percent 50%.

So then multiple that by 70%, which reduces it to a chance of say about 35E-9% which is a very small number by our normal measures


Satellite image of Mt. Saint Helen crater and new dome

But this calculation has a flaw because the mountain has not been around since the beginning of the earth. Mt. Saint Helens is more like a zit on the nose of the earth. When it gets squeezed, out comes earth blood and puss, which for the earth is red lave and white ash.

So what do humans have to do with all this? Humans have been waking around the zit for about 5E+3 years which is about 30 seconds of the history of the entire earth.

On a related subject I thought I might write a book for kids. Here is the title:

"Mathematical Ecology For 9 Year Olds or How I Learned To Get Even With My Big Sister"

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Little brothers! They never really do grow up. I can count change.