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: XI
Sunrise: 6:18 a.m.
Sunset: 6:55 p.m.
Civil twilight ends: 7:24 p.m.
Sun's host constellation: Leo the Lion
Moon phase: Waning gibbous (88% illuminated)
Moonrise: 8:38 p.m.
Moonset: 11:00 a.m. (9/14/2022)
Julian date: 2459836.16
“Words and magic were in the beginning one and the same thing, and even today words retain much of their magical power."
-Sigmund Freud
THE DAILY ASTRONOMER
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
Egg to Apple - A Guide to Big History II:
Two Balloons - A Defense of Big History
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EGG TO APPLE: Historical and Mythological
During the pandemic lockdown, the Daily Astronomer posted a series of
astronomy lectures entitled '"The Remote Planetarium." Each installment
included a mythological section which highlighted a different character or set
of characters. This Big History course shall adopt the same format. Unlike the Remote Planetarium,however, these mythological stories will all be related to a specific time sequence starting at the birth of the baby who would mature to become Helen of Troy. The aim is to proceed, albeit in a cursory fashion, through the Trojan War and then through the Odyssey to the celebratory feast following Odysseus' long-awaited return to Ithaca. We'll see how far we'll proceed. The mythological segments will be placed at the end of each Big History "chapter."
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We begin today with two balloons. Blink once and you'll see them both before you: floating above the podium to which they have been firmly tethered. As much as we love to see balloons flying freely, the one thing we don't want is to have two balloons pressed up against the dome, where they would likely remain forever. As we've infiltrated your mind, you are free to make them any shape and color you'd like. However, one of them must contain hydrogen and the other helium. They will serve an essential role in our defense of Big History.
Perhaps more than any other field, Big History has weathered an unremitting volley of broadside assaults. The principal attack is based on the broadness of its scope. To craft a discipline which incorporates a multitude of elements as disparate as cosmology, cell biology and human migration patterns is perceived as not only irrationally audacious, but theoretically impossible. Ours is the age of over-specialization, in which even an expert within a given field often lacks a comprehensive view of it. The enlightenment's gradual knowledge acquisition that expanded geometrically throughout the Victorian era has now exploded exponentially. The adage that "astronomers find out less and less about more and more" could be equally applied to almost every branch of scientific inquiry that arose out of what was once termed "natural philosophy."
All very true. Moreover, we concede that in terms of knowledge, the cost of an increase in breadth is a deficiency in depth: a complimentary principle of which every planetarium astronomer is frustratingly aware. Such are the limitations of the mortal mind. However, Big History's aim is not to compile every iota of information into a single resource akin to Asmiov's Encyclopedia Galactica.
Explaining its aim, or at least one of them, necessitates the presence of these balloons.
Regard them for a moment. The gases pressing furiously against the membranes are composed of the two simplest elements: Squares 1 and 2 along the extensive Periodic Table. Approximately 380,000 years after the Big Bang event (13.8 billion years ago), the Universe had cooled sufficiently so as to allow the first material to "condense" out of the pervasive cosmic radiance. This material consisted almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. Little else besides.
Now, turn away from the balloons and regard your surroundings for just a moment. What do you observe? Chairs, clothes, people, walls, electronics, keyboards, feet (well, we'll ignore those today), rugs, cups, books, windows, trees, Sun, clouds, sky, automobiles, streets, buildings, houses, and so forth and so on. A variegated assortment of objects assuming myriad forms and performing all manner of functions. The one object you can't see, because it rests above your eyes, is your brain: the 3 lb conglomeration of neurons capable of seeing, remembering, naming and understanding all those objects with a given environment.
Please turn to the balloons again. Were I two slice them both with a dagger, these light gases would escape with a bang and dissipate rapidly in all directions. Invisible. Insubstantial. And, yet, when the cosmos was in its infancy, hydrogen and helium comprised the vast majority of the material Universe (And, in fact, still does.)
How did the cosmos progress from this initial simplicity to the deep complexity that defines both the present day world and the modern human that is such an integral part of it? What, in effect, is the origin of today? What transpired before you sat here engaged in the intricate process of converting shapes on a page into coherent thoughts and ideas? How did the stuff of floating balloons transmute into the human brain? That answer is the real province of Big History.
To cite the Big Bang alone is insufficient for that merely explains the inception of physical existence. Beyond this the first moments in which the fundamental physical forces fractured and became distinct. Then, the inflation, expansion, thermal cooling, the appearance of the lightest elements preceding the development of the first galaxies and stars. The earliest stars that through sequences of thermonuclear fusion reactions transformed these light elements into more massive and complex nuclei. Only when these massive stars exploded as supernovae did the true alchemy begin: the creation of the trans-iron elements such as silver, gold, mercury and uranium. Eventually the disgorged metal-rich contents of a distant supernovae collided broadside with a cold dark nebulae. This encounter precipitated a slow but inexorable collapse which, over ten million years, gave form to a rich galactic cluster. Around one of its members, now known as the Sun, a disc coalesced into planets.
Soon after the third world's thin crust weathered the unrelenting assaults of the asteroidal bombardments did it become conducive to the development of rudimentary life. Only after a protracted period did these simple prokaryotic cells develop into the nucleated eukaryotes. Eventually the multi-cellulars arose which led naturally to even greater stages of complexity leading up to the Cambrian explosion and subsequent series of extinctions and . All the while, the turbulent geological upheavals of our unquiet Earth folded landforms up into sky-puncturing summits only to have them gradually eroded by the unremitting winds and all too frequent rains. Islands were detached, geological barriers erected, the climate heated and cooled and heated again. The myriad life forms reacted to these changes, altering their forms and even evolving into new species.
The near annihilation of the Clade Dinosauria precipitated the mammalian ascendency leading ultimately to the order of primates. Within this order the species Homo Sapiens evolved that, for the greater part of its quarter million year history, consisted of hunters and foragers migrating across the ever-altering landscapes. During the final five percent of this history this species became proficient at plant cultivation leading to the rise in agriculture, the first permanent settlements along with rudimentary writing. The increased food availability afforded some individuals the opportunity for more cerebral, and in some cases abstract, pursuits. Then came the advent of city-states, more complex systems of writing and mathematics. Art, the practice of which even predates the first established communities, found expression in a growing array of media: from sculpture to tapestries, mosaics to drama. Every aspect of civilization evolved into greater forms.
In time did these audacious and advanced primates construct continent-spanning empires often through the tireless prosecution of devastating wars. These empires generated wealth that allowed for the exploration of distant realms, most of which had by that time had already been populated by other restless humans. Increased travel, trade, explosions in commerce yet again transfigured the world.
Running concurrent with all these alterations was the rise of natural philosophy: inquiries into nature's intricate and often hidden mechanisms. These investigations would force humans to confront the fallacy of their own conceits and replace the Earth-centered cosmos with an ever-expanding Universe in which not only our planet, but its parent star and even the vast galaxy containing it would all seem negligible in relation to the broader cosmos.
In this way did the stuff of these two balloons, through the contrivance of physical processes, transform into today's megacities, satellites, and minds capable of producing that most intangible of all miracles: unceasing thought.
Albert Einstein once said, "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
Big History, for all its "mad ambitions" and "over broad scopes," serves as the best conduit into a Universe of miracles that lamentably is all too often ignored.
Next time, we start in earnest by the introduction of the thresholds.
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EGG TO APPLE: Two Eggs
The mythological series of sagas entitled "Egg to Apple" must begin with the sight of Spartan King Tyndareus lying contentedly next to his beautiful Queen Leda. For the benefit of delicately constituted readers, we'll first look upon them after the completion of their coital act, performed passionately and exuberantly next to a lake. Such was the intensity of their exertions that Leda soon fell asleep while Tyndareus, whose elation precluded sleep, stood up and decided to wander for a bit through the forests that fringed the lakeside. The moment he disappeared into the forest grove, a swan that had been floating gracefully along the lake surface wandered onto the shore and drew up next to the dozing Leda. As soon as the swan drew its wings along her naked form, she awakened. At the first sight of the giant creature, she was curiously unafraid. Though obviously powerful, the wing feathers were softer than anything she had ever felt, almost as cool and gentle as an autumn breeze.
She was, however, startled when the swan climbed on top of her and enveloped her in a powerful embrace. Leda soon relaxed, however, despite the swan's highly unusual and impertinently intimate behaviour. She caressed its neck and, to her own surprise, found herself gently kissing its face and drawing it down toward her. Prodigiously strong, yet tender; forceful, but not threatening. Though Leda's love for her dear Tyndareus was undiminished and her devotion to him unwavering, she yielded fully to the swan and coupled with it*, while not quite sure why.
Leda and the Swan
Artist: Coraggio Oil on canvas
1531-32
By the time Tyndareus returned, the Swan had already returned to the lake and, in a flash, had vanished. The King was curious to find his wife still fast asleep but covered with swan feathers. She awakened with a start when she felt her husband brushing a few of the feathers away. "Tyndareus," she murmured frightfully while looking up at him and tracing her finger tip along his cheek. "It's all right," he replied quietly. Though he harbored suspicions about what had transpired in his absence, Tyndareus was not roused to a jealous wrath, but was instead subdued and circumspect in his words. "Are you well?" Leda smiled. "I shall be provided you remain here."
Neither of them spoke again of that incident as they both knew that that had obviously been no ordinary swan. In fact, it was Zeus, himself, who had assumed the form of a swan when, after having seen the naked Leda by the lake, had become deeply aroused. Once his lust was satisfied, Zeus floated away across the lake and then rapidly ascended to Olympus, hopeful that his disguise had deceived his long-suffering wife, Hera.
Soon thereafter, Leda produced two eggs, each of which contained a pair of fraternal twins, a boy and girl in each. One egg harbored the twins sired by Tyndareus, the other a pair sired by Zeus. A perfect example of what is known as hyperpaternal superfecundation. Despite its Disneyesque sound, hyperpaternal superfecundation is a real condition referring to a single pregnancy that produces twins, each of which has a different father. In this case, a different father produced a pair of twins.
The eggs expanded to accommodate the growing babies until one day they both cracked simultaneously. One egg brought forth Castor and Clytemestra; the other produced Polyduces and Helen. Also known as the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux would mature to become the Gemini twins, symbols of brotherly love and devotion. Clytemestra would eventually grow to become the wife and eventual murderer of Agamennon, a name the reader is encouraged to remember. The other lovely child, Helen, was fated to become Helen of Troy, the most prepossessing woman in the world: a woman who -perhaps by no fault of her own- would become the cause of the greatest war ever waged between mortals and gods.
Leda and Tyndareus joyfully drew all the children into their arms When the King's eye first fell on Helen, he knew that her surpassing beauty, already evident, was indicative of divine parentage. That realization only made him resolve to love her all the more.
*So much for the delicately constituted.
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