The Observatory

Below is a picture I took yesterday. The International Space Station, with the docked Space Shuttle, north of Alymer. Here, the ISS travels into the Earth’s shadow. I found out about the perfect conditions after I left home, so I did not have a tripod. This was taken with the camera sitting on a camera bag, sitting on a big rock: 27-second bulb exposure, f/8, 17mm, ISO800.

40 years and 6 minutes ago, the human race lifted off for the first mission to land men on the moon and return them safely to the earth. The live (tape delayed by exactly 40 years) audit feed is available at We Choose the Moon.

Have we lost the ability to wonder at the world and the possibilities? Is there anything as exciting anymore? I’m feeling a little depressed that I missed the original moon landings (I was 3 years old when the last mission completed); that so much could be accomplished by the team with so little [technology]. The International Space Station is amazing, but it has been in operation for 11 years now (and may be planned to be de-orbited in 2016, which is even more depressing). Are there any missions to push the human envelope, to push the human race forward, anymore?

For me, the internet is about the instant access to information through Google or Wikipedia. I love having a constant stream of new information to feed my addiction to knowledge.

For example, the other day I was thinking about the core of the Sun and how much energy it takes to balance the extraordinary mass of the Sun.

According to Wikipedia, the core of the Sun converts about 3.4×10³⁸ free protons (hydrogen nuclei) into helium nuclei every second.  I looked up the mass of the proton (1.672×10^-27 kg), multiplied the two numbers to get 568,691,140 metric tons. Each second, 568 million tons of free protons are converted to helium (two protons). But how big is that really? The article did not give the context. It would require more digging.

I thought perhaps I could compare that mass with, say, a mountain. Searching in Google, I found that the estimated mass of Mount Everest from the base camp (17,500 feet) to the peak (29,035 feet) is 357 trillion pounds or 161 billion tons. So the Sun converts about 0.35% of the mass of Mount Everest from hydrogen to helium.

In the thermonuclear reaction, a fraction of that mass is lost. About 4.26 million metric tons of mass is lost each second, converted to energy following the famous mass-energy equivalence equation (E=mc²). Which is less than 1% of the amount converted from hydrogen to helium, but the speed of light (squared) is so large the actual energy output is staggering - 383 yottawatts (3.83 × 10²⁶W).

But just how large is that lost mass? What is 4.26 million metric tons equivalent to in a form I can understand? Back to Google, and I find that the mass of Hoover Dam is 6.6 million US tons or 5.99 million metric tons of concrete.

So, now I can compare the two. Each second, the Sun converts about 71% of the mass of the Hoover Dam into all of the energy that holds up the outer layers of the Sun, and produces all of the heat and light (which are really the same thing – photons) that bathes our planet. That energy produces enough photons that 149.6 million kilometers away over half of our planet is lit so that I can read, take pictures and get a sunburn.

It’s amazing that all of that power comes from something as small. The Hoover Dam and Mount Everest are infinitesimally small compared with the total mass of the Sun.

But it’s more than enough to satisfy my thirst for knowledge for one evening.

I thought of one more case I wanted to cover in the essay Why I am An Atheist. The case is a corollary of Clark’s Third Law - a sufficiently advanced being having local control over the evolution of humanity.

The case does not change the thesis, as the lack of free will comes from this, and without free will, I can declare myself an atheist because it’s all I could possibly be.

The essay has now been updated and re-published.

I’ve been an atheist for as long as I can remember. Over all these years, I have spent a lot of time thinking about this subject. My reasons are mostly gut-feeling – I just don’t believe in God. I never have.

Bethlehem

I’ve spent weeks on finally putting down my thoughts on this subject. The desire to write this essay was one of the driving forces for creating this web site – so that I could have an opportunity to put down on the page all these ideas I’ve had in my head for years.

I don’t intend that this will change anyone’s personal belief. It is only my thoughts, and there are no other expectations. I feel strongly that everyone is entitled to their own opinions, just as I reasonably expect that others will allow me to have mine.

The essay is called Why I am An Atheist.

If the Earth has been slowly cooling over its history, presumably this means that the crust must be getting thicker too, right? How would that effect plate tectonics? Would the continental plates be thinner in the past than they are today? What about mountain building (from plates colliding) – if the plates are thinner in the past would mountains be smaller (because there is less material) or taller (because the plates move faster and there is less material to lift at the collision point)? Would the plates move faster in the past, since they were thinner (and lighter)? Would the thinner crust allow more volcanic activity to reach the surface, adding more material and slowly thickening the plates until they reach a thickness that would be constant between different geological times?

Or has internal radioactivity in deep in the Earth allowed the surface of the planet to be roughly constant over geological time? Over time, the amount of radioactive materials in the Earth (keeping it warmer) should decrease, which should lead to the same cooling effects, although over a longer period of time than if there were no radioactive materials in the Earth.