THE SOUTHWORTH PLANETARIUM
70 Falmouth Street Portland, Maine 04103
(207) 780-4249 usm.maine.edu/planet
43.6667° N 70.2667° W
Founded January 1970
2022-2023: III
Sunrise: 6:04 a.m.
Sunset: 7:18 p.m.
Civil twilight ends: 7:48 p.m.
Sun's host constellation: Leo the Lion
Moon phase: Waxing crescent (20% illuminated)
Julian date: 2459821.16
"LIFE: Find a passion. Fall in love. Eat great food and spend quality time with good friends. Laugh everyday. Believe in magic. Tell stories. Reminisce about the good old days but look with optimism to the future. Travel often. Learn more. Be creative. Spend time with people you admire. Seize opportunities when they reveal themselves. Love with all your heart. Never give up. Do what you love. Be true to who you are. Make time to enjoy the simple things in life. Spend time with family. Forgive even when it's hard. Smile often. Be grateful. Be the change you wish to see in the world. Follow your dreams. Try new things. Work hard. Don't count the minutes, count the laughs. Embrace change. Trust in yourself. Be thankful. Be nice to everyone. Be happy. Live for today. And most of all, make every moment count."
-Printed on a sign that someone left in the building's loading dock.
THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Wednesday, August 30, 2022
Egg to Apple: a Guide to Big History.
I: Preface
PREFACE
Today we're beginning a brand new course here at the DA: a series pertaining to Big History. We'll post different chapters at various times throughout the school year, which will end on July 21, 2023.
Big History?
What on Earth is that, one might ask?
At the risk of sounding insufferably grandiose, it is, as mentioned above, the Study of Existence, itself. From the very moment of inception (the Big Bang) to this very moment, which is always changing, Buddha, to the vast array of hypothetical futures that lie well beyond the bounds of perception, let alone attainment. An impertinent endeavor incorporating everything and anything within the unbounded realm of the physical Universe.
Consider this:
About 13.8 billion years ago, give or take a bit of time, the cosmos was an inconceivably hot, miniscule capsule of radiant energy. How it came to be, what event precipitated its birth or why it exists in the first place are questions that are, respectively, unknown, unaskable and unknowable. Consequently, we won't jab any of them with a 10-light year lever. What transpired after this mother of all seminal events, is, however, well within our purview. And that brings us neatly to the next two minutes of your life right now1
That's right. Let's examine what will happen within the next two minutes. However, before we do so, please do us a favor and remove your shoes and socks. Yes, this is something of an unorthodox request, but please indulge us. We'll explain in a few moments.
During the next two minutes..
516 babies will be born
600 airplanes will launch....adding to the thousands currently darting around the globe like a hyperactive bee swarm
Earth will be struck by lightning 3,000 times
9,670 blog posts will be published.
576.000 new stars will ignite their core thermonuclear reactions somewhere throughout this 125-billion galaxy-strong Universe
406,000,000 e-mails will be sent
2.8 billion miles will be driven by all the cars currently on the road during the next two minutes
4.6 billion gigawatts of solar energy will strike Earth's surface
77.6 billion tons of hydrogen will be fused to produce helium and energy within the Sun's core.
As for your body -don't put those shoes back on yet!-
The brain will consume 2,400 Joules of energy
600,000,000 cells will die
In the next two minutes, 3.5 billion neurons will fire
280,000,000 red blood cells will be produced
1.3 billion mutations of DNA will occur
This list, far from comprehensive, offers just a fleeting glimpse into all that will occur in our bodies, on Earth and in the Universe in just the space of two meager minutes.
All that complexity: that bewildering, incomprehensible complexity. The staggeringly intricate interplay of forces necessary to sustain life, drive our global economy and evolve our ever-expanding Universe. How did the cosmos become transformed from a simple vessel of radiant energy to this modern-day Universe capable of producing complex worlds like Earth and, most likely, the billions of other life-bearing planets scattered throughout the Universe? Moreover, as far as the world is concerned, where do we humans fit in? How important are we?
Now, please look at your feet!
Aren't they lovely?
Yes, even with the protruding veins, unclipped nails, dried skin, and whatever blemish, stain or imperfection that you strive to keep concealed from prying eyes. With all that, they're breathtakingly beautiful. Don't worry. We don't have a fixation. What we humans do have is a slight understanding: an understanding of the evolutionary processes that shaped, molded and perfected those feet throughout the countless millennia. The protracted epochs of our long dead forbearers who foraged, burrowed, hunted and migrated across continents rife with perils and predators. The painfully gradual procession from early primate to homo sapien: living, breathing beings of ever-increasing cranial capacity, striding along the world's variegated landscapes, from scorching deserts to ice-coated tundra to tangled under growths of the tropical rainforests. Every day their feet pressed onto the unquiet Earth thousands upon thousands of times: applying Newton's action-reaction law as they strove in earnest to survive and thrive. We have those feet today. We cover them, ignore them -hence the unclipped nails- and forget about them. Today, however, we see them fully. Feet that have taken humans around the world, across its vast expanses and driven us to what we've become today.
So, where do we humans fit in?
In the Big History realm, we humans occupy a special niche, for our development represents one of the many thresholds of complexity, a term coined by Big History's co-founder David Christian. (More about him and much more about these thresholds later in the course.) This important place should serve as a balm to us humans, who have suffered a series of humbling status declines since the Copernican revolution that wrested us away from the Universal center and, a few centuries later, the Darwinian revolution that informed us that instead of being masterworks of G-dcraft, we actually share an ancestor with the skunk cabbage.
Humans are vital in the understanding of our modern world. No species has ever affected the planet so profoundly. In fact, our impact has been so dramatic that we're now living in the Anthropocene, a geological epoch named for us. We have altered our climate and the world around us in ways we are now only beginning to truly fathom. To comprehend our role on Earth and our effect on it, we need Big History, the study of existence. Where we've been; where we are and where we're going. Hence, this series, which aims to introduce the fundamental concepts and the "thresholds" of increasing complexity that led to today's world.
Why Egg to Apple?
It is a mythological allusion referring to the entire time period encompassing the events of the Trojan War. Remember that Helen, married to the Spartan king Agamemnon, was abducted by Paris, a Trojan prince. Her abduction precipitated the Trojan War, in which an armada of Greek vessels laid siege to Troy. After a ten-year conflict, the Greeks prevailed. Troy was destroyed, Helen was returned to Sparta and Odysseus, the clever fellow responsible for the Trojan Horse trick that finally gave the Greeks their victory, managed to return home only after a ten-year odyssey during which he encountered Sirens, a Cyclops, and all manner of fearsome creature. He, alone, of all his crew survived the voyage back to Ithaca. Once there, he was reunited with his faithful wife Penelope and, with the aid of his grown son Telemachus, slew the many suitors who were vying for Penelope's hand in marriage. Those ill-fated suitors had all assumed -hoped- that Odysseus had been killed during his return voyage. No such luck. Odysseus celebrated his return and his victory over the suitors with a grand banquet, at the end of which he served apples as a dessert. Helen and her brother Polyduces, we should mention, were born out of an egg hatched by Leda, who had become impregnated by Zeus who assumed the form of a swan. Helen's birth out of the egg to the apples consumed by Odysseus and his guests after his turn mark both ends of the Trojan War epoch: egg to apple.
This course will go from the "egg" of the Big Bang to the "apple" of the end of times, if, in fact, there is an end. During this journey we'll discover the extraordinariness of everything in existence. Yes, including you, what with your 37 trillion cells, hundreds of billions of firing neurons, and all your thoughts and perceptions about an ever-changing universe.
To subscribe or unsubscribe from the Daily Astronomer: