Some folks have all the luck. America’s Orange Jesus has been (or will be) offered a Boeing 747 to use in place of the two presidential B747s which had developed an annoying rattle and had to be taken out of service. They are presently parked at Oskar’s Jet Shop and Grill somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. In sympathy to this niggling inconvenience to #47, an old man, the royal family of Qatar has generously stepped forward and offered a super luxury B747 for the Great One for his weekly trips to his many resorts. The B747 will transfer to #47’s Presidential Library foundation where it will remain. Some are saying that it will cost a gigabuck to upgrade it as necessary.
Keeping a third B747 ready to fly at any given moment will be expensive as are the 2 presidential jets now in the shop. In the new B747, the lavatories will have to be reduced in size for the media’s discomfort. Vending machines will be added for feeding the media but will be limited to exact change only. The machines will also offer #47’s trading cards which will include a 5 % discount coupon for his golden sneakers. As always, payment can be made with #47’s cryptocurrency plus a $50 service charge.
As the authoritarian regime of #47 continues to take hold, an increasing number of governments will express fealty and line up to offer something special, which #47 will gladly take and keep, the emoluments clause notwithstanding, found in Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution. It has already begun to turn stomachs worldwide but others will be attracted to the new ‘democratic dictatorship’ ramrodded by the GOP and led by the Orange Jesus himself. Many people around the world tolerate authoritarian leaders or see them as admirable strongmen. Kick ass and take names, some say. But too often the names aren’t taken or made available to anyone. There is just the ass kicking and transfer to a holding facility. Habeas Corpus? Gone! Evidence of a crime? Nah. Filing an appeal? What, are you being serious?
To the many readers outside the USA, know that a very large number of US citizens are horrified and in serious opposition to #47 and his MAGA movement. However, it seems that the Founders of this country failed to anticipate a situation where a single party rules both houses of Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court, and the governors and legislative bodies of many states. The Founders assumed that the checks and balances between the three co-equal branches of government and built into the government they designed would protect the democratic republic and keep essential government services working. They could not anticipate a simmering populist movement amplified by instantaneous social media. Whereas in times before the internet and smart phones, a large number of disaffected and under-educated citizens in America now have access to media of all kinds and can gravitate towards whatever populism that appeals to them. There seems to be little in the way of concern about truthfulness.
The single party dominance of MAGA in US government means that enforcement of federal laws or procedure will be ignored. The Department of Justice has been slow to enforce checks and balances or just ignore it altogether. MAGA GOP politicians know that endorsement by #47 ensures that they will get votes from MAGA block and assure their political careers.
Roughly 30 % of the voting population will support #47 until their dying day, regardless of his behavior. Resistant to the lessons of history and logic, they are essentially lost to modern times. They are angry from seeing and hearing the hype surrounding modernity and the corrosive conspiracy theories involved. Not having a college education, they missed out on opportunities that open up by living in a college environment. All of the job descriptions and opportunities requiring college education aren’t necessarily posted off-campus and are therefore missed.
Until I entered the university, I was completely unaware of a host of career choices available. I grew up in a rural midwestern blue collar environment and was completely unaware of the various futures available. Many have glorified our rural culture, but I found it quite boring in my years from birth to 14 years. Sure, there are wide open spaces and nature. But the fifth time you wander out into a large pasture you begin to realize that solitude is nice but quite boring.
I was introduced to science and technology by watching the progress of the Apollo moon mission in the 1960s. It was thrilling but there was no one around who could hold a decent conversation about it with me. Basically, if you were a kid into science at that time in my state, you were alone. Just knowing about sciency topics wasn’t enough. It is nice and necessary to have discussions to explore ideas and ask better questions. To share in the wonder and majesty of the universe. That’s not too much to ask, isn’t it?
Sabine Hossenfelder has become a bit of a star. She has been producing a regular YouTube video called “Science without the gobbledygook.” She is presently a researcher at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy. She is a quantum physicist and mathematician with 1 million YouTube subscribers. Her videos are about topical quantum and particle physics with some cosmology thrown in. She brings up issues under debate in the physics community. It is very interesting and thought provoking.
It turns out that she has a very dry wit which I for one appreciate. Every episode she’ll get a phone call from a red desk phone with a mock voice on the other side talking about some off the wall subject. Sometimes it is Elon Musk griping about something. The production value of her programming is quite good because she has people helping with that. It all adds up to something interesting and amusing for we sciency people.
Jupiter is quite old like the rest of the solar system. But even this far down the timeline, it is still a banded, multicolored gas giant. The same goes for Saturn. How is it that these planets are not some shade of brown or grey? The planet has an active atmosphere with complex circulation patterns. After a few billion years of atmospheric mixing, how is it that Jupiter still has a banded and bespotted atmosphere?
Ever wonder what substances are responsible for the colored features on Jupiter? Molecular hydrogen and helium make up the vast majority of atmospheric components but these gases are not colored in the visible spectrum. Other gases found in the atmosphere include the noble gases argon, krypton, and xenon; ammonia (NH3); methane (CH4); hydrogen sulfide (H2S); water (H2O); phosphine (PH3) are all colorless as well. Ammonium sulfide ((NH4)2S, CAS# 12135-76-1) and ammonium hydrosulfide (NH4SH, CAS# 12124-99-1) are thought to exist there. These last two could arise from a simple acid/base reaction between hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. A more comprehensive view can be had here. From the looks of it, Jupiter is a very stinky place.
The gaseous substances above are certainly colorless when free of suspended particles. Their respective pure condensates while colorless would be expected to produce whitish vapors or liquid/solid condensates. According to one source, ammonium hydrosulfide is a yellow fuming liquid with a boiling point of 51.6 oC at one atmosphere and forms white rhombic crystals under anhydrous conditions. Ammonium hydrosulfide is at equilibrium with its components ammonia and hydrogen sulfide.
Ammonium sulfide is a yellow crystalline solid that decomposes at ambient temperature (and presumably at 1 atmosphere on earth).
Organic compounds like methane, ethane, acetylene, and diacetylene found in trace amounts in the Jovian atmosphere could be activated by UV sunlight in the upper atmosphere into higher molecular weight unsaturated substances that could have visible chromophores present. This would be an ongoing process as circulation moves the substances around so there should be accumulation.
Given the optical opacity of the visible clouds on Jupiter, whatever colors are there must be due to suspended liquid aerosols and solid particulates. The colorful photo below, glorious though it may be, is an enhanced image in the optical wavelengths and possibly suggests there may be a higher concentration of colored substances than really exist.
In fairness, with all imagery, be it chemical photography or digital photography, decisions have to be made about color balance, saturation and contrast. In both cases, be it dyes or silver halide or semiconductor chips, these photosensitive materials won’t be sensitive across the color spectrum in the same way that our eyes are. It is hard to say by just looking at the photos how much image enhancement has been done to them. In particular, how is the color balance established? Well, NASA has made the Juno raw images available to the public so a lot of image enhancement by various people has been done based on aesthetics without regard to visual accuracy.
NASA has a piece of software used for color correction at the link here.
Even more fundamental than the limitations of the sensor chip on board Juno is the matter of “what is color anyway?” In this universe, the color of the spectrum as humans perceive it exists only in the convoluted neural pathways of our brains. In reality, the visible color spectrum is comprised of a band of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) ranging from 380 to 700 nanometers. Every other range of EMR like gamma rays, x-rays, ultraviolet, infrared, microwave and longwave “radio” light could be thought of as having their own “color” spectrum, albeit invisible to our eyes.
A Bit O’Chemistry
Color is a sensation that comes to our consciousness as a result of (bio)chemical mechanisms. Chemistry is generally about what can happen with the outer valence level electrons that buzz around atoms and molecules. We Earthlings are composed of chemicals and because EMR (photons) can interact with substances in ways that depend on the wavelength of the EMR. Our light perception begins with the ability of our chemical building blocks to absorb a certain band of wavelengths. Light can do two things in an encounter with matter- it can undergo absorption/emission or scattering with matter.
Graphics courtesy of me.
Absorption of a photon of visible or ultraviolet light by an organic molecule happens because there is something that can be acted upon to absorb the energy. Absorption of a photon of visible light by a molecule is limited to its valence electrons. In particular, a valence electron can be stimulated to jump to a higher energy level orbital around the organic molecule. This can result in a chemical change in the receiving molecule.
Absorption of infrared light causes vibration in the structure of the molecule. X-rays can cause ejection of inner electrons. Gamma rays can be absorbed or scatter off the nucleus. Microwave photons induce rotational motion or torsion in a polar molecule. Cosmic radiation is often so energetic that molecules are indiscriminately broken at the chemical bond level into neutral or charged pieces, leaving an ion channel along the path of the particle. However, new molecules may form when the reactive fragments recombine. Cosmic ray collisions with atomic nuclei form narrow sprays or showers of nuclear particles as is what happens in earth’s atmosphere. This is called secondary cosmic radiation and is comprised of x-rays, protons, alpha particles, pions, muons, neutrons, neutrinos and electrons.
Note the carbon bonds above with two lines between carbon atoms. They are called “double bonds” and they can absorb visible and ultraviolet EMR. When several of them are alternating as in Retinal, they are capable of visible light absorption. Roughly speaking, the longer the chain the longer the wavelength that can be absorbed, not unlike an antenna. Absorption of a photon can cause one of the two bonds to break and allow the remaining carbon chain to rotate about the remaining single bond. In this case the cis form rotates into the trans form which is a bit more stable due to reduced strain energy. The double bond can reestablish in the trans form and lock into place.
In changing from cis to trans, the elemental composition has not changed but the shape and certain chemical and physical properties have. When the shape of a molecule is changed, the manner in which the molecule interacts by contact with other molecules changes, particularly with proteins. This triggers the chain of biochemical events that follow, leading to light perception in our consciousness.
In living systems, some biomolecules have features that lend them the ability to absorb photons, sometimes to a useful end and sometimes to a destructive end (i.e., as with UV light and x-rays). Here, a chemical change would be the rearrangement of an electron around the molecule or a change in molecular shape or both. Receptor molecules in the retina are a particularly good example of a useful result of light absorption.
The result of this change from cis to trans is ultimately communicated from the retina to the brain via depolarization waves moving along nerve fibers and releasing neurotransmitters across synaptic gaps. Importantly, the change that caused the polarization wave is not permanent.
The visible spectrum of light waves, a bit under 1 octave wide, just so happens to be the band of light that can interact with valence electrons absent the destructive excitation that UV and x-rays cause. Infrared light causes vibration of chemical bonds and microwaves cause rotation of polar molecules. Longer radio waves pass right through us.
Rather than go into the biochemistry of this I will invite the reader to surf the interwebs for more. When you examine the chemical mechanism of light perception, think about what it took to figure this out.
Back to Jupiter.
Well, something opaque and colored is swirling around Jupiter persistently- just what the heck is it? The above example of Retinal was of a carbon-based, organic substance. The way carbon-based molecules interact with light is somewhat different than inorganic complexes. Whereas organic molecules can have double bonds and lone electron pairs that can interact with EMR, inorganic substances are largely absent this bonding feature. Instead, absorption and excitation of valence electrons and the net charge of a metal ion are involved. Inorganic substances as a group have a very broad range of colors.
What is of interest here is why the atmosphere hasn’t mixed into a single color over cosmic time. By visual inspection of the Juno images, Jupiter’s atmosphere is covered with abundant turbulent flows in the atmosphere.
The answer must relate to the unseen vertical flows. A colorless gas that condenses into clouds transitions from colorless to opaque as it rises, cools and condenses just like on Earth. Jupiter is famous for its colored stripes and the persistent Great Red Spot. These stripes render visual certain flows around the planetary axis. Due to the spherical shape of the rotating planet and heating from the sun, there will be a temperature gradient with altitude, a gradient pole to equator and Coriolis effect. All of this with varying amounts of vertical mixing as well.
There must be the possibility of non-gaseous material being lofted into the atmosphere from some liquid or solid surface below into a stable but complex system of circulation patterns. The process would self-select the finer particulates that are small enough to remain suspended in the atmosphere. But this in itself does not explain the presence of the colored bands or swirls.
Perhaps the colored bands and swirls infer a solid or liquid surface below that is inhomogeneous, that is, there are localized enriched “deposits” of particular substances. These surface deposits may or may not be “locked” into the latitude by the prevailing winds according to the physical properties of the material.
The apparent longevity of the multicolored atmosphere could be because the striped, large-scale circulation features are of sufficient strength that their inertia carries them around the planetary axis and directs them away from latitudinal flow. This would not prevent vortex formation at the interface or even within the band.
Enough. This is where I get off the hamster wheel of wild scientific speculation.
The above image is spectacular but is not what the human eye would perceive. Below is a comparison of a simulated human eye view vs a processed image with increased color saturation and contrast.
This was first posted 1/3/2010 and is herein posted once again. My big question is, what the hell is with the saucer design for interstellar travel? Saucers have a large surface to volume ratio which inherently restricts the size of everything they would have to bring along. Don’t they have food and luggage to pack? The same argument holds even if they are tiny buggers. This line of investigation will have to wait for another post.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Imagine that you and a companion are out for an evening stroll after a big dinner, say in a park somewhere. You hear a curious whining sound and look up to see an alien spaceship on a landing approach to the park. The craft lands and the crew scuttles off to perform some tedious abduction or organ harvest in the neighborhood.
Your companion exclaims “Golly! There is something you don’t see every day!”. But you’re unmoved by your companions incisive commentary. Because you see this as a long sought opportunity to examine an alien craft up close.
What would you look at? The propulsion system? Or perhaps the weapons array or guidance system? Pffft.
I would look at something much more mundane. I think it would be very enlightening to see what kind of fasteners they use. That’s right. Fasteners. Nuts, bolts, latches, bungees, straps, nails, hinges, hooks & loops, and rivets. How do these confounded exo-buggers hold things together? What’s the deal?
Fasteners are mechanical contrivances used to restrain objects into a desired configuration, often by the application and fixing of tension or compression through some structural element. Think of all of the fasteners we encounter before we set foot out the door every morning.
Elastic articles of clothing perform a fastening function through the application of tension about numerous body parts through the miracle of Spandex/Lycra. Shoe laces are fastening devices that apply and hold tension on opposing shoe upper elements wrapped over the arch of the foot.
Moving upwards, the zipper is a fastener that works in concert with a trouser/skirt button or snap fastener. The belt and buckle are a fastener ensemble that together apply and hold tension about the circumference of the waist to keep ones trousers from succumbing to the pull of gravity.
Other fasteners include shirt buttons, brassiere connectors (damn those things!), earring wires, eyeglass frames (they connect to your face), cell phone belt attachments, the deadbolt on the front door, all manner of electrical connectors, and the list goes on and on. Electrical connectors are especially interesting because they combine the functions of electrical continuity and fastener. All are a compromise between the competing interests of biomechanics, convenience, safety, regulatory standards, and custom.
So, back to the space ship. How would space faring beings approach the problem of fastening materials and components. Would they use individual components fastened together or would they use integrated component assemblies that support multiple functions? Perhaps the mechanical fastener question is moot because components would be cast, glued, or welded.
Integrated components have a certain appeal, but, by their integrated nature could serve as a node from which to initiate failure propagation to multiple systems. For instance, if a battery was built to serve as a structural element for the craft, could a battery failure of some sort serve to initiate a structural failure mode? At what point is it foolish to integrate systems rather than leave them distributed? As always, it depends.
I think an alien spacecraft would have at least a few kinds of obvious fasteners. Surely alien technologies are subject to component failures and would require occasional repair. Of interest would be the concessions to alien biomechanics.
Humans occasionally use wingnuts to fasten objects that need not be permanently affixed. The wingnut is simply a style of threaded nut that has two modest protuberances that allow for torsion and compression to be applied by the fingers and wrist. The wingnut is not functional for beings who lack the sort of articulated digits that we have. Perhaps an alien being would have a latch or other contrivance to accommodate its appendages.
Of course, all of this alien talk is just a device with which to cast the matter of fasteners into a more interesting light. Fasteners are part of our collective technological heritage and are rather under-appreciated. But, if you are unfortunate enough to be abducted by aliens, I suspect that the matter of alien fasteners might be of immediate interest.
A paper is out comparing the resources needed to send women vs men on a trip to Mars. The paper, appearing in Nature publication Scientific Reports is: Scott, J.P.R., Green, D.A., Weerts, G. et al. Effects of body size and countermeasure exercise on estimates of life support resources during all-female crewed exploration missions. Sci Rep13, 5950 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-31713-6.
The paper is worth a look, but I’ve cut and pasted the conclusions below-
When compared at the 50th percentile for stature for US females and males, these differences increased to − 11% to − 41% and translated to larger reductions in TEE, O2 and water requirements, and less CO2 and Hprod during 1080-day missions using CM exercise. Differences between female and male theoretical astronauts result from lower resting and exercising O2 requirements (based on available astronaut data) of female astronauts, who are lighter than male astronauts at equivalent statures and have lower relative VO2max values. These data, combined with the current move towards smaller diameter space habitat modules, point to a number of potential advantages of all-female crews during future human space exploration missions.
A female crew would require less energy and less weight in provisions than men just from the benefits of smaller scale metabolism alone. Looks like hurtling women to Mars is an all-around winning idea.
This Earth Day of April 22, 2022, is a good time to stop and reflect a moment on our home in the universe. We live on a gleaming blue and white wet rock hurtling around a yellow star in a cosmos so vast that it is well beyond our ability to comprehend. On February 14, 1990, a photo looking back at Earth was taken from a distance of 4 billion miles by the space probe Voyager 1 on its way out of the solar system. This photo features a tiny, pixel-sized, blue dot. Our lonely home world.
So far, this decade of the 2020’s has begun with global contagion and a growing standoff by nuclear powers over culture and real estate. Many are saying that the conflict will lead to famine in Africa and economic chaos elsewhere. How it unfolds is the question on everyone’s mind. If there was ever a time for us to take a pause to look at the big picture, that time is now. We could all use a bit of humility from time to time.
Someone once joked that the international unit of humility should be called the “Sagan.” Carl Sagan the astronomer was a gifted and popular spokesman for astronomy and space science in a time of great discovery and space exploration in the latter 1900’s. Carl Sagan the writer is said to have published more than 600 scientific papers and 20 books for lay audiences. What’s more, in addition to co-writing and narrating a popular TV series, he wrote a piece of science fiction, Contact, that was turned into a popular movie.
Sagan wrote the following-
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
A minor snit has broken out between outspoken physicist Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University and, well, the philosophers of the world. Krauss has become a darling of the cable TV world of NatGeo and the Science Channel. It seems that you can’t swing a dead cat without knocking over the same dozen television astronomer/cosmologists and quantum physicists. This rotating crew of scientists are filmed on various locations straining to explain the universe in terms of string theory, dark matter, and quantum wierdness using language with a Fog Index of 8 or less.
I’m not slighting these folks in the least. Using the English language to convey the essence of these concepts is difficult, as is preventing the reflexive use of the remote control by viewers with the attention span of a house cat.
Anyway, Krauss has managed to inflame those philosophers who pay attention to popular science. His latest book, A Universe from Nothing: Why there is Something Rather than Nothing, has precipitated this argument. I don’t care about the merits of his argument here. The reader is invited to dive in.
What I am writing about is the social and intellectual mistake Krauss made. Like all physical scientists, he is a reductionist. The drive for a ToE, Theory of Everything, is the ultimate act of reductionism. His assertion that philosophy is obsolete in the face of discoveries in physics and the emergence of big subassemblies of a ToE has been received with dismay by philosophers. A large fraction of people (adults, anyway) are hardwired to be receptive to mysticism and no amount of handwaving, no matter how logical and crisp, is going to cause the bell curve to skew substantially away from cherished mystical beliefs.
Krauss has fallen into the same trap as those in the 19th century who may have declared that physics was pretty much complete with Newtonian mechanics. While quantum mechanics provides a template for the description of how particles behave constrained to a region of space, it fails as a replacement for philosophy. That is, quantum mechanics and cosmology do not provide any concise analysis on how people should treat each other, how to conduct a worthwhile life, or how to interpret what the meaning of quantum mechanics is in your life.
This is the realm of philosophy and religion and these kinds of questions must be freshly examined by each generation born into this strange universe. The meaning of existence is not yet settled science.
Today I found myself peering at the lovely lavender glow of opaque argon plasma through the viewing screen of a gleaming new instrument. The light-emitting 8000 K plasma sits apparently still alongside the conical metal skimmer. Somewhere a Dewar was quietly releasing a stream of argon into a steel tube that was bent in crisp military angles into and through walls and across the busy spaces above the suspended ceiling. Another cylinder quietly blows a faint draught of helium into the collision cell. A chiller courses cooled water through the zones heated by the quiet but savage plasma. Inside a turbo pump labors to rush the sparse gases out of the mass analyzer and into the inlet of the rough pump and up the exhaust stack.
Up on the roof, the heavy and invisible argon spills along the cobbles of roofing stones until it rolls off the roof onto the ground where the rabbits scamper and prairie dogs yap. The helium atoms begin their random walk into space. The argon shuffles anonymously into the breeze and becomes part of the weather.
All of the delicate arrangements; all of the contrivances and computer controls in place to tune and play this 21st century marvel. And a wonderment it is. The ICPMS obliterates solutes into a plasma state and then taps a miniscule stream of the heavy incandescent argon breath that trickles into the vacuous electronic salsa dance hall of the quadrapole. All the heat and rhythm for the sake of screening and counting atomic ions. What a exotic artifact of anthropology it is. And it all began in a rift zone in Africa millions of years ago.
So it turns out that I am the family atheist and liberal. The social awkwardness and philosophical incompatibility of this condition was evident the other day in a discussion with a family member that diverged into a shouting match. In fact the immiscibilityof my liberal atheist proclivity with my family’s generally Christian conservative foundation has severed ties with a few family members outright and distanced others. My father, deceased nearly a decade ago, never reconciled with his son’s atheism. In his view, it was a choice inevitably resulting in existential tragedy and damnation into the darkest recesses of infinity.
My wife is a Methodist and our kid is being raised under that umbrella. I have taken the position that I will not indoctrinate my child in the analytical consequences of atheism. Rather, the adoption of a philosophical position on existence is a self-guided adventure everyone is entitled to. Whether one is lead deep into the doctrines of the Abrahamic religions, eastern philosophy, or the uncertain swamp of agnosticism, it is the right of all people to come to their own conclusion on the matter of ones place in the cosmos.
I claim that this is a right. But many otherwise liberty-loving people disagree. They view indoctrination into the religious fold as a kind of rescue. It is a dash across the finish line that must to happen well before death to ensure that the soul is channeled into the chute leading to paradise. Once in this enviable condition, the ethereal community of souls can eternally heap praise upon the diety directly rather than across that impenetrable supernatural discontinuity that is resistant to all but the force of prayer. Or so goes the core theory of the Abrahamic religions as I understand them.
To many religious followers, the very fact that their religion is ancient seems to validate the accuracy and veracity of their ideas. The mere continuity of these doctines seems to confer some hopeful message about the vital truth of the doctine.
But I would counter that what continues over time is not the cosmic accuracy of the idea, but rather the psychological consequences of brain physiology. Architectural features of the brain and the behavior of neurons therein have produced self-awareness. The self-aware brain enables much possibility for an organism. An effect of our self-awareness is that we come to experience time.
But the very familiarity of self-awareness of the human brain might lead it to assume or calculate that self-awareness is a common condition in the external world. It seems to easily conclude that the apparent organization of the world was conducted by a central organizing influence- a diety. Moreover, it is not unreasonable for the self-aware brain to assume that it’s own self-awareness is part of a continuum of awareness or consciousness. The notion that self-awareness might extinguish would be inconceivable.
I think what the ancient religious texts and doctrines convey is a kind of familiarity. It is a shared experience of mystery, uncertainty, and fear through the common experience of consciousness. The brains of our ancestors communicated through the agency of language their chronicles of hope and fear to our brains which share the the same strengths and weaknesses. It is this commonality that rings the bell of truth in our self-awareness. It reinforces the mystical experience as a physiological experience because it is fundamentally that.
What is inevitable about our self-awareness is extrapolation. Religion soon mutates from a personal mystical experience to a theory of physics and politics. This is what I cannot accept- Religion as a political template or as a ToE (Theory of Everything).
Many people come to value alignment to doctrine as a higher calling than the application of love and charity to their fellows who have lost their way or have experienced bad luck or tragedy. I would offer to the reader that what makes a person liberal is the priority choice of people over the politcal doctrine of social Darwinism.
We in the USA have confused economic theory with reality. Economics and business are a subset of sociology. The alleged congruence of economics to morality or metaphysics is a political theory some people have asserted because it serves their purpose in the allocation of wealth. It’s a part of their ToE. And I’m here to say that some of us can see what they’re doing.
My day job requires that I can practice the art of calorimetry with some reasonable extent of expertise, so in that vein I have been cracking open some of my dusty p-chem texts and revisiting basic thermo.
The other day while on an excursion to a bricks and mortar bookstore to pick up some of my favorite periodicals (Kitplanes and Vanity Fair), I happened upon a copy Elements of Chemical Thermodynamics by Leonard K. Nash (1970, Dover, $12.95). Feeling bad for Borders and their current run of poor luck, I bought the book as though it would make some difference.
Figure 2 on p 5 (below) shows a schematic of a ice calorimeter. An ice calorimeter uses a thermally isolated enclosed space M completely filled with liquid and solid water immersed in an insulated tank of ice and water B. The internal, thermally isolated, working volume of water has two important features- it has a small volume sample container R protruding into it and it has a calibrated small inside-diameter expansion capillary C.Â
A sample in container R is in thermal contact with reservoir M. Heat absorbed in M melts some ice and results in the loss of low density ice and the formation of higher density liquid water. The net volume of the contents then decreases and is registered as a column height change in capillary C.
Given the volume change and knowing the density and heat of fusion of water at 0 C, one can calculate the heat absorbed by the reservoir.
So, what about Saturn’s moon Enceladus? The moon is thought to be covered by water ice with liquid water underneath. It’s reasonable to assume that if some volume of water below the ice transitions to the solid phase then the collective volume for liquid water is decreased resulting in an uptick in pressure.
If this happens, it could provide a mechanism for the geyser phenomenon witnessed by the Cassini probe. The geyers could simply be a result of PV work energized by gravity and radiative cooling of the surface and subsequent thickening of the surface ice into the underlying liquid phase.
I’m sure the boys and girls at Cassini have thought of this, but since I’m not tied into the literature I have not heard anybody express it.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
