THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
207-780-4249       www.usm.maine.edu/planet
70 Falmouth Street  Portland, Maine 04103
43.6667° N,                    70.2667° W
Founded January 1970
           "Look at the bright side: we might have a white Memorial Day."





THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Falling Down


Two minutes after the winter solstice, in a vast remote forest
disturbed only by the excited whispers of the unearthly things, a
profane bellow erupted from the night and was followed by a tectonic
thud that likely rippled the linoleum on Mount Olympus.     These
atmosphere-igniting yawps quickly subsided into a despairing moan so
protracted that the lurid satyrs, believing it to have been an ardent
summons issued by the translucent maiden, hastened forward eagerly.
When they instead beheld an unsightly mass of clumsy human nursing his
back and wining, they retreated rapidly into the deeper forest,
cursing richly at their profound disappointment.

Five minutes after the winter solstice, the remains of the human laid
back to recover.  Through the pine tree spires silhouetted by the
gibbous moon he saw the giant Orion, as vigorous and youthful as it
had been when the druids replicated it in a configuration of stones
thousands of years before.  Unlike humans, immortal constellations
live untroubled by deteriorations of flesh, blood and bone.
Realizing that he couldn't just lie there all night, the man attempted
to rise.    And, had he not slipped again on the very same ice patch
on which he fell the first time -and, curiously, had already forgotten
about-he might have managed to stand upright again.     Instead, he
collapsed back into a heap on the forest floor, looking even more
absurd and helpless than he appeared the first time, his anguish
compounded by the ignominy of not one, but two tumbles.  The first
could be dismissed as a simple accident borne of strolling through a
dark forest without, dingbat, a flashlight that he had forgotten.
The second tumble was just applied stupidity.

"There's astronomy in this," he finally said after recovering his
breath.  "The ice; the dark; Orion; the onset of winter; the thirty or
so compound fractures.."   During such trying moments, such
ruminations worked like an elixir.   He raised himself up to a
recumbent position, careful to place his elbow on rough topsoil.
"Everything in the Universe is ultimately interconnected."

Yes, we know you preferred it when he was falling.

"Take the simplest thing in the forest," he said, addressing the many
pairs of blinking luminescent yellow eyes regarding him from a oak
tree hollow.  "such as this ice patch on which I fell."  He pounded
the ice ten times hard for emphasis.  "Two months ago it was a small
pool of water or, perhaps, wasn't here at all, but exists now, albeit
it cracked and in shards.    But, it is here now because of that."  He
pointed to the star adorned sky.   "The cosmos made this ice patch
and, of course, brought me down here to languish in the midnight dark
of the deep forest."

If it makes you feel better, we preferred it when he was falling.

He pressed his finger into the ground.  "This very Earth just a few
minutes ago passed the point of the winter solstice.  The north pole,
which you can eventually reach if you continue to walk behind me for a
few thousand miles, was directed as far from the Sun as possible
because our entire planet is tilted in the deepest voids of space.
Our furiously hot, tirelessly energetic Sun passes low in the sky and
even at its apex barely ascends more than 23 degrees above the
horizon.     Throughout winter, its altitude increases slowly, but the
atmospheric absorption robs us of much of its heat until it reaches a
much higher angle in the spring and summer.   Our land, so lush and
luxuriant in May, grows iron-hard and barren.   Is that any less
fantastic a notion than that of Demeter, so distraught at her
daughter's abduction, she permitted ice to cover the world and starve
its people?"

Invigorated by these meditations, he pushed himself up his feet and,
after gasping at a sudden sharp pain, began to slowly walk.    "Our
top half of Earth turns away from the Sun because it is moving around
it.  Were it to remain stationary, but at the same distance from the
Sun, which is physically impossible, it would maintain a constant
orientation and the Sun's altitude wouldn't change.      Were that to
occur now, we'd be trapped in perpetual winter; let it happen six
months from now,  we'd then know an unending summer."

He wasn't talking to anybody in particular.  He had walked away from
the tree stump and proceeded deeper into the forest core. At his
approach, the whispers had gone silent and even the creatures in
flight had settled onto high, wind-perturbed branches out of anxiety
at the sight of this interloper.    "Earth moves because of the Sun;
or, more correctly, because that strange, mystical force of gravity
propels it along its 600 million mile long circuit at more than a
thousand miles a minute.  It looks so static up there amongst the
stars, but this mammoth planet is streaming along like a bullet.
The gravity, itself, is the indentation the Sun induces in its local
space-time geometry.  Earth, like the other planets, reacts to that
distortion by moving along it.   Matter distorts space-time; the
tilted planet moves; the Sun's angle changes; the world grows colder;
the water loses heat energy to its surroundings; it freezes; the
kinetic friction coefficient between a rubber sole and ice is low and
as a walker pushes onto the ground, Earth pushes back according to
Newton's action-reaction law.    The walker pushes on the ice and his
foot moves forward farther than it would have done had it been on the
rough soil and he loses his balance.  Earth's space time distortion
causes him to crash with great dignity onto the ground and he is left
in a heap to admire the rising Orion."

Through the moonlight, he spied a moss softened tree stump next to a
large maple that still held onto a few desiccated leaves.  One of
these late season leaves glided to the ground as he maneuvered
gingerly around another ice patch in front of the stump and sat down.
 At that moment, he spoke to the moon hovering high over in the west.
It silvered the ground, casting the sylvan grove in a grid work
interplay of light and shadow.  "We're now about 7,000 miles closer to
summer than we were a few minutes ago.   Yet, we'll still pass through
moments when you, Moon, will cast a crystalline luster onto a snow
burdened forest where we frail humans cannot tread.  Space-time will
render the world dormant first before awakening it to its vernal
rejuvenation."

At that moment, he fell silent and focused on the vapor clouds forming
from his breath.   His physical pain and abject humiliation forgotten,
he rose from the tree stump and inhaled as deeply as he could, drawing
the elemental energies from the chilled air.  And, he felt it then,
the fleeting exhilaration that everyone experiences all too
infrequently.  When one feels as though one could just step out of the
bodily constraints as though it were a uniform rapidly removed; as
though the spirit has shrugged away all its burdens and, like chaste
Diana who sought only the raptures of unfettered winds and mountain
summits,  could push itself effortlessly off Earth and resist its
imprisoning pull.   Under the influence of this most ancient magic, he
bolted rapidly forward, onto the ice patch he had so quickly
forgotten....

and you know what then happened.