Moon and Venus: Photo

A beautiful night…enjoy!   RT

Moon and Venus: Photo.

Amundsen, Scott, and KSR: How We Get to Mars

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The concept of terraforming Mars has pursued me, in a leisurely kind of way, ever since I read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy back in the mid-1990s. I’ve already recommended this excellent near-future science fiction novel set during the settlement and terraforming of the Red Planet. But, as I noted in my last post, getting there is not going to be so easy.

So what do we do? Turn to history, of course! Specifically, I’m thinking of the race to reach the South Pole, which Roald Amundsen won, planting Norway’s flag on the spot on December 14, 1911. Happy 100th Anniversary, Mr. Amundsen and his team!

Let’s not kid ourselves: anyone trying to reach the South Pole in 1911 was taking his chances, pushing the envelop of that era’s technology really hard, and totally committed to the idea of exploration for exploration’s sake. Just to get an idea of how dangerous the enterprise was, let’s consider Amundsen’s competition, the team of Robert Falcon Scott, which reached the South Pole only 34 days after Amundsen. Slightly over a month may not seem like a huge margin in terms of safety, but then we’re talking about the Antarctic. Scott was handicapped by faulty equipment, an unwise choice of ponies over sled dogs, and the encroaching winter. On March 29, 1912, he perished with his men on the Ross Ice Shelf. They were 11 miles from a supply depot. Be that as it may, RT salutes their courage and spirit of adventure!

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I cannot continue without mentioning Ernest Shackleton’s mind-boggling escape from the jaws of death (1914-1917); his ship, the Endurance, trapped and then crushed by pack ice, Shackleton led his men across the ice, then across the ocean in open boats to land on Elephant Island, and finally captained one of the boats in a journey to South Georgia Island, where the local whaling colony was able to mount a  successful rescue of the remaining men on Elephant Island. Not a single life was lost during the voyage. Wow! WOW! This is the stuff of epic!

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So why did Amundsen survive, where Scott failed to return? Careful planning and knowledge of arctic conditions lay at the root of Amundsen’s successful (and at moments, ridiculously easy–they enjoyed a jury-rigged sauna on the way back!) expedition.

Which leads to RT’s suggestion for reaching Mars: place supply depots and at least a couple of rest stations (with saunas, of course!) along the way. Assembling the expedition spacecraft in orbit or at a moon base would also lighten the load.

Yes, with full attention to detail & logistics, the trip to Mars is doable. And here’s to the spirit of discovery!

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Photos: Top: Roald Amundsen; Bottom: Robert Falcon Scott. WikiCmns. Public Domain.

Mars & More (or, Why the Jetsons Got it Right)

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More than any other single image returned by the Mars Rovers (Opportunity and Spirit), this view of Victoria Crater brought home to me the reality of the Red Planet. Though we have learned that the surface of Mars is a frigid desert and its atmosphere thin and poisonous, there is something absolutely terrestrial about the photograph. It could have been taken in any desert on Earth–a crater under a sky dark with dust. All that is missing is a human figure, dressed in burnoose, cowboy hat, or loincloth, it doesn’t matter. In our guts, we know this landscape.

Over the last two decades, America’s robotic exploration of Mars has returned a massive amount of information concerning the atmosphere, climate, and surface of the planet most likely to become New Earth. We know that water once flowed on the surface, that there is an ocean of water lying frozen in subterreanean glaciers, and that some of this water may still escape above ground, where it soon evaporates in the minimal carbon-dioxide atmosphere. And our last planned rover, Curiosity, will arrive at Gale Crater in August of this year with the task of finding signs of life in an area that satellite photography has indicated may well have supported at least primitive lifeforms. Curiosity, by the way, is about five times larger than either of the current rovers.

But that’s it. NASA plans no further landers, only a single orbiter to continue investigating the atmosphere.

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So, you might be wondering, why the sudden lack of enthusiasm? The answer is: the scale of the project. We’ve sent orbiters and rovers to Mars for a few pennies a mile; putting a man on Mars will undoubtedly cost much more than has ever been spent on a manned space mission: Mars is (at closest approach) 36 million miles from Earth; it takes spacecraft 9 months to get there (and, of course, another 9 to return); and the intense solar radiation experienced during transit (and on the surface) might give anyone second thoughts about going.

So, we have to wonder: wouldn’t the money be better spent someplace else (like putting people in houses)?

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Nothing is impossible if you want it badly enough. The question is, how badly do we want Mars? Pretty badly, if we look at the global population explosion. And while there are still large, mostly unpopulated tracts in various places, other locales, say Japan, China, and India, are dealing with population densities that challenge their ability to survive.

Not so incidentally, it is precisely these countries that are entering the Space Club with ambitious unmanned–and manned–missions. India has said it will put a man on the moon by 2020; China plans to follow suit by 2030.

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& it’s not like a country gets nothing from its investments in space; just think of the computer revolution. Why is that the United States seems to be willing to fall behind in applications of technology like high-speed trains; high-density, low-energy housing developments; and space colonization? Are we really going to let someone else build the first space elevator? Whatever happened to American ingenuity and initiative?

RT may be a poet, but he can see that science creates real improvements in quality of life. So what are we going to do?

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Photo: Victoria Crater Seen From its Edge; Opportunity Rover; WikiCmns; NASA-JPL; Public Domain w/ attribution.

West Virginia–How Poor?

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West Virginia has long been one of those states synonymous with poverty. Word of mouth supplies horror stories aplenty to people like myself who live on the edge of the state (in Berkeley County, part of the Eastern Panhandle): people living in abandoned buses, counties that are burdened by annual average incomes under $7,000, and on and on. So RT has been checking into the statistics recently. And, as it turns out, the picture is more mixed than one might have thought. Bright spots include Monongalia County (home to the University of West Virginia’s main campus); the state’s Eastern Panhandle; and Putnam County.

But, as the map above (compiled by the Appalachian Regional Commission) shows, there are also definite trouble spots, and in particular, the center and south of the state. Here things are troubling, indeed, especially at the state’s southern end, which includes McDowell County–by ARC’s reckoning, the county in Appalachia with the third highest poverty rate. In 2003, 37.7% of the county’s residents were living below the poverty line (as compared to Putnam, where 9.3% of residents lived below the poverty line). Median household income was $21,574.

How does this compare to counties nationwide? The median household income for Douglas County, Colorado, was $82,929 (2010 federal census), with 2.1% of the population living below the poverty line. To be fair, Douglas County is one of the 10 richest counties in the country.

On the other end of the spectrum, we might consider the eastern counties of Kentucky, which has 16 of the poorest counties in the country. To take one of  these counties, Wolfe County, which is not the poorest: the median family income was $19,310, with 35.90% of residents living below the poverty line.

And for the record, according to the Wikipedia Page I’m using, Kalawao County, Hawaii, is the poorest county in the nation, ranked by median household income.

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The causes of poverty are complex, and it should always be borne in mind that quality of life can be extremely difficult to measure. By way of giving us some idea of where West Virginia stands, RT has linked to a chart listing West Virginia at number 38 (tied with Georgia) in a quality-of-life ranking by state.

Is there room for real improvement? While RT applauds the many organizations working to eradicate poverty and improve quality of life in the United States, he has wondered for some time now why we don’t have a national Poorest Counties Initiative, aimed at ensuring the basics: access to a nutrious diet, protection from the elements (be they hot or cold), and access to medical care. Such an initiative might help West Virginia (not to mention Kentucky) close the gap with richer states.

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Map: Counties of West Virginia by Economic Category; WikiCmns; Public Domain; Source: Appalachian Regional Council.

A Door Into Ocean

Oceans have always mesmerized and terrified people–their beauty, their power, their capriciousness are hard to deny. They are alien, other, a place we didn’t adapt to during our species’ infancy or imprint on our evolving minds.

Or maybe not. In the amniotic fluid we recapitulate those first watery ages, acquire memories of gills and tails, memories that give us a sense of the ocean as mother–memories that help explain the appeal of Joan Slonczewski’s remarkable debut novel, A Door Into Ocean (1986).

I might as well admit up front that this novel has influenced my thinking deeply. Door is a science fiction novel–one of the best–and as such delves into the nitty-gritty of world making and the sciences; but it does not stop with introducing us to a consistent and plausible future. Slonczewski takes us much farther, creating believable and sympathetic characters and a nimble plot set against a difficult but all-too-familiar political and cultural situation. And beyond that, she offers insights on, and even solutions to, some of humankind’s most intractible problems.

The story is set some thousands of years in the future and concerns the fate of Shora, an ocean moon orbiting a “normal” water/earth world. Normal in every way, I should note: male-dominated, money-driven, technology-based, power-worshipping. In pointed contrast, Shora is home to a woman-only society that has been intentionally shaped to live in harmony with the rich ecosystem the moon’s ocean supports. But take note, all men who value their gender and who also are alert to the struggle for women’s recognition, respect, and self-expression–this is not a male-bashing novel. There are positive (and charming) male characters (such as Spinel, the teenage boy who must take a “stone-sign”–that is, find a profession); female characters who need some serious therapy (witness Jade, an interrogator); and an admission that even Shora’s admirable ecology at times depends on predation and suffering. And then there is Berenice, the liaison between Shora and the outside political system–who becomes Nisi on the ocean world and takes the self-name, “the deceiver.”

I don’t want to reveal too much of the plot, so I will only say that Spinel’s decision regarding his stone-sign helped me make peace with my own calling as a poet and that I would be thrilled if people on our planet would adopt the custom of self-naming. Slonczewski offers many more suggestions concerning humanity’s struggle to create a truly peaceful and prosperous society.

And did I mention that the author’s prose is a delight? Sorry, I can’t think of any more reasons to not recommend this book. Take the plunge and read A Door Into Ocean, a novel utterly dedicated to the ideal of peace and happiness in our lives.    –RT

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Photo: Rogue Wave in the Bay of Biscay, 1940; NOAA; WikiCmns; Public Domain.

Animals–the Roots of Language

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Searching for the origins of human language has taken RT to some amazing places recently.

For instance, what about animal intelligence? Reading around has left me with the impression that animals are smarter than I had suspected.

Here is a list of the cognitive abilities that animals have demonstrated:

1) object recognition (the ability to pick out an object in an animal’s field of vision)

2) problem solving (the ability to use cause-and-effect reasoning to achieve goals);

3) tool-use; 

4) language (the ability to communicate discrete concepts, instructions, and observations to other members of the same species);

5) cultural adaptation (the ability to create behaviors unique to a group of animals);

6) political bargaining (the ability to create alliances between certain members of a species to gain control over other members of the species) ;

7) an ability to count;

8) self-recognition; and even

9) ethical behavior.

Golly, gosh, and gee! That’s a lot of thinking going on. And many species have demonstrated at least some of these abilities, including: mammals (especially primates), birds, ants, and bees are among the animals that have shown remarkable abilities to learn, communicate, and cooperate.

And in case any of the cognitive abilities listed above seem too basic to be taken as signs of intelligence, the struggles that computer specialists have had in creating robots that mimic even the most widespread mental functions, such as touch and object recognition, tell a different story. None of these skills emerged overnight.

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But, truth be told, not many species demonstrate mental capacities that truly resemble our own. The short list: cetaceans, the great apes (chimpanzee, gorilla, orangutan, and bonobo); and perhaps, the elephants.

Some of these animals have mastered vocabularies that include hundreds of words. And I make no extraordinary claims here–after all, a human language contains about a million words. The question then becomes: what are the differences between our conversations and talking with, say, a chimpanzee?

RT says: stay tuned for the next installment on this.

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Photo: Bottlenose Dolphin; NASA; WikiCmns; Public Domain.

Titan–Home, Cold Home!

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Imagine this: a moon covered with frozen gasoline. The surface is certainly diverse: it includes volanoes that spew ammonia, mountains more than a kilometer tall, impact craters more than 440 km wide, and lakes of liquid ethane scattered around the north and south poles-one of which is bigger than Lake Superior. And did I mention the temperature? -290 degrees Farenheit.

That’s Titan, Saturn’s largest moon and the second largest moon in the solar system.

What we are talking about here is a doppleganger of earth–a moon where it rains (methane drizzle); that probably sports rainbows (visible in the infrared); and that offers sand-dunes more than 300 meters high (the sand might be composed of organic materials).

Titan is the only moon enveloped by a significant atmosphere–half again as thick as Earth’s–composed mainly of nitrogen, methane, and ethane, with traces of other hydrocarbons. It also the only terrestrial object in the solar system, other than Earth, that features a complete hydrological cycle–liquid raining onto the surface, flowing in rivers into large lakes, and then evaporating back up into the atmosphere.

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Is the doppleganger alive? Maybe. This moon looks more like Earth than any other candidate in the Solar System. Life forms could feed off acetylene and hydrogen–or exist in the hydrocarbon lakes or underneath the surface.

But then, I still think that Europa is our best bet for finding extraterrestrial life in the solar system.

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& for those who are wondering: we owe the beautiful topographical map & just about everything else we know concerning Titan to the Cassini space probe.  RT

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Map: Titan’s Surface; NASA-JPL; WikiCmns; PD w/ attribution.

Hangul, Literacy, and Culture–What an Alphabet Can Do For You

King Sejong the Great

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I might be skipping ahead a bit folks, but I think it’s time to introduce you to what many people consider to be the world’s most effective alphabet: Hangul.

But before I launch into a description of this alphabet’s extraordinary history and many virtues, a word of warning is in order for English speakers. Hangul was designed for speakers of Korean, a tonal language situated pretty much at the opposite end of the language spectrum from English. What makes Hangul important for the English-speaking world is 1) the story of its creation; 2) its approach to representing the sounds of language; and 3) the hope that its logical design and gradual success might serve as a model in creating an alphabet that can be used to write the major world languages, in particular, English, Chinese, Spanish, French, and Russian.

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1) History. Let’s start with the story of Hangul’s creation. King Sejong (r. 1418-1450) faced a not-unfamiliar situation in East Asia: an extremely low literacy rate resulting from the use of the Hanja, the Chinese character set, which arrived with Buddhism in Korea in the 7th century A.D. Sejong decided to create an alphabet for writing Korean that anyone could learn, with the goals of making literacy universal and strengthening Korea’s cultural identity. Overcoming opposition from court officials who did not want to lose the power their literacy gave them, the king summoned his Hall of Worthies–the eminent scholars of his time–and together the king and Hall devised the twenty-eight letters of the new alphabet, publishing the definitive text on Hangul in 1446.

The alphabet was an immediate success, allowing the poorly educated and women to read and write for the first time. But, needless to say, this social revolution prompted a backlash after Sejong’s death in 1450. Confucian scholars fought fiercely to retain the privileges their monopoly on writing had given them, and in 1504, the use of Hangul was forbidden by royal decree. The Hanja were reinstated as the sole legitimate writing system.

But at this point something remarkable happened: in defiance of the official ban, the use of Hangul among the educated class flourished. Starting in the late 1500′s, two entirely new genres of poetry, gasa and sijo, developed, and the novel written in Hangul became a major literary form. Although the use of Hangul among ordinary people disappeared, the literacy rate may nonetheless have increased, since Hangul is extremely easy to learn.

Finally, in the late 19th century, Hangul was reinstated for official use, and during the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945), the use of Hangul was encouraged as a means of separating Korea from Chinese influence. Although Japanese became the official language, a mixed Hangul-Hanja script was taught in the colonial school system; education, moreover, was mandatory, and for the first time the use of Hangul letters became universal in Korea.

Soon after independence in 1945, an official Hangul orthography was adopted, and today in both Koreas Hangul has replaced the Hanja as the common writing system.

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2) The Hangul Alphabet. Hold onto your hats, folks: the alphabet that King Sejong and his Hall of Worthies created is remarkable by any standard. In its current form, Hangul has 24 letters, of which 14 are consonants and 10 vowels.

a) Hangul is a partially featural alphabet; that is, the shapes of its letters (or letterforms) reflect the sounds they represent. It is the only featural script in widespread use.

b) Consonants are classified by the vocal organ that produces them: molar (velar), tongue (coronal), lip (bilabial), incisor (sibilant), throat (guttural), and light lip (labiodental). The letterform of each of these classes is based on a shape that is meant to resemble the vocal organ involved, with additional strokes being added to indicate the particular letter’s modification(s) from the model/basic shape.

Other consonant’ featural characteristics include a vertical top stroke over a letter to indicate a plain stop; the nonstops lack the stroke.

c) Sejong and his scholars designed the letterforms of Hangul vowels themselves; they are based on just three symbols: a dot (representing the sun), a horizontal stroke (representing the earth), and a vertical stroke (representing man). Vowel harmony was an important consideration in the design of the vowels, though VH is not as important in spoken Korean as it was during Sejong’s period.

d) Letters in Hangul that are pronounced as a syllable are not written consecutively, but are rather grouped together in blocks. The syllable blocks have three advantages: the letters within them are arranged in the block in an order reflecting the sequence of sounds in the syllable;  the blocks save space in writing and printing; and the blocks are beautiful.

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Of course, there’s more to the alphabet than the brief description above covers; to get an better idea of the script, study this chart of jamo, or Hangul letters:

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3) Modeling a Future Universal Alphabet on Hangul. A writing reform based on the development of Hangul would go far towards  increasing literacy and bringing cultures across the globe closer together. Here are some of the Hangul principles that one might use to create this alphabet:

a) A strict adherence to phonetic letters;

b) A letterform design that reflects that vocal organs used in producing the sound;

c) A uniform method of marking the same kind of modification to a class’s basic letterform;

d) A logical arrangement of the letters by class; and

e) The continued use of current alphabets until their use become burdensome.

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Photos: Top: Public Statue of King Sejong in Seoul, Korea. Author: David Hepworth. WikiCmns. CC 2.0 Generic. Bottom: Papers printed with Hangul letters. Author: jared. WikiCmns. CC 2.0 Generic.

Music of the Spheres

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It’s been a while since I’ve been on NASA’s Cassini webpage…Cassini, the NASA/ESA spacecraft that hove into orbit around Saturn in 2005 and started sending back mind-blowing images of the planet and its moons. First, it launched the Huygens space-probe, which successfully landed on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, sending back amazing images along the way and from the surface (postcards from a billion miles away), then it started photographing the planet and its other moons, discovering four new moons, Methone, Pallene, Polydeuces, and  Daphnis, as it went about its work. Cassini has also mapped the surface of Titan–the second largest moon in the solar system–with cameras designed to penetrate Titan’s thick, smoggy atmosphere.

And then it discovered the ice geysers on the moon Enceladus.

Whoa! Let’s give the probe an A+ for achievement. So, at some point, I figured the fireworks were over, Cassini had sent back all the amazing data it could.

Wrong! The photo above, taken in May 2011, is as fine as any image the spacecraft has sent us so far. Who knows what else we may discover before the batteries run out on this mission. I’ll do my best to keep you posted.       RT

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Photograph: Saturn’s Moons Titan and Dione Seen Against the Planet’s Rings. NASA website. NASA-JPL. Public Domain w/ attribution.

A Bird Came Down the Walk

There is something haunting about this poem by Emily Dickinson. It isn’t just the subject’s transformation from a mere “commuter” bird to an emblem of the sublime; the poem’s modern tone suggests that transcendence is possible even for the most ordinary of creatures. Nature offers us hope of the eternal, an escape effected by beauty.    RT

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A Bird Came Down the Walk

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A bird came down the walk:

He did not know I saw;

He bit an angle-worm in halves

And ate the fellow, raw.

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And then he drank a dew

From a convenient grass,

And then hopped sidewise to the wall

To let a beetle pass.

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He glanced with rapid eyes

That hurried all abroad,–

They looked like frightened beads, I thought;

He stirred his velvet head

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Like one in danger; cautious,

I offered him a crumb,

And he unrolled his feathers

And rowed him softer home

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Than oars divide the ocean,

Too silver for a seam,

Or butterflies, off banks of noon,

Leap, splashless, as they swim.

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Image: Comparison of the Feathers of Six Moderns Birds with the Feathers of Archeoptyrix; Author, Conty; Source:  Licence: CC 3.0 Unported.