Changes

Because I'm not very consistent writing here I have decided to simplify things. With that in mind I have removed the details and bibliography pages, including anything from them in this post. The gallery page remains, who knows I may put some new stuff on it?

Are we Unique?

It is believed there are a few hundred sextillion stars (about 1023) in the observable Universe. Now if you assume only 1 percent of these have small rocky planets and 1 percent of those are habitable, and of those 1 percent evolve multi-cellular life, it would mean 100 quadrillion (1017) instances of complex, potentially intelligent life in the universe.

While this seems a high number of potential instances of life, it would mean that on average if these were spread across the cosmos they would be separated by almost one million light years. 

Allowing that most stars are found in galaxies this equates approximately to a million instances of complex life in the Milky Way, separated by an average of only 300 light years. 

Obviously all this is speculation waiting for an answer.

Use Light right

To be alert in the day and sleep well at night

 Get lots of bright light during the day, especially in the morning - it will make you more alert, happier and help you sleep at night

As you get older you need more light during the day (especially blue light which resets the body clock

Dim the lights before bed-time i.e. no bright screens etc.

Maintain a consistent bed time and wake time from day to day.

Anytime spent in the dark makes your body clock more sensitive to light so don’t turn lights on during the night.

Avoid late in the day caffeine and develop a relaxing bedtime

If you still struggle to sleep try wearing amber coloured glasses in the hours before bedtime (filters out blue wavelengths).

Reading material

Butt T. (2010) The War Report: Waves are Resources. Surfers Against Sewage: Cornwall



Royal Society (2001) The role of land carbon sinks in mitigating global climate change. Document 10/01. Royal Society: London



Royal Society (2005) A guide to facts and fictions about climate change. Royal Society: London



Royal Society (2005) Ocean acidification due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. Document  12/05. Royal Society: London



Royal Society (2008) Sustainable Biofuels: Prospects and challenges. Document 01/08. Royal Society: London

still not curious?

I thought it would be good to get an update on where the rover has been in the last (almost) year.

Curiosity Rover's Location for Sol 345

This map shows the route driven by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity through the 345 Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission on Mars (July 26, 2013).

Numbering of the dots along the line indicate the sol number of each drive. North is up. The scale bar is 200 meters (656 feet). From Sol 344 to Sol 345, Curiosity had driven a straight line distance of about 202.95 feet (61.86 meters). 

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona 

Just a quote

Nothing much to say about this, it speaks for itself.

To fill every unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run


Rudyard Kipling

God, why?

This issue of New Scientist is called the God Issue. I read it because I have issues with the idea of a God, since I believe human kind uses the existence of a God as an excuse for its failings, rather than taking responsibility for the things that we do. Let me say now I am passionately against religion and the idea of a God, but am open minded enough to concede that if the evidence exists for any religious argument I would be prepared to listen. Having said that I do agree that some of the ideas that form the cornerstone of many religions i.e human kindness, love, equality, friendship, appreciation of our world, are all things I do endorse as they help us function together. These things do not need magic (religion) to be important and do not need indoctrination (brain washing) and control to be relevant. I find most religions are not open to discussion or argument. That’s my point of view, now to some of the articles.

In the end I neither want nor need a God. I don't need an after life, what I need is to live the one life I have as fully as possible. Or as Rudyard Kipling put it  "To fill every unforgiving minute with sixty seconds worth of distance run"

I believe Carl Sagan said  You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep seated need to believe.

Finally if you are interested in this type of debate, here are a few youtube offerings from    Stephen Fry

Just a pigment of your imagination

Here's a quick one for all you lovers of the colour magenta (including pinks and purples). In reality it, the colour does not exist. Unlike all other colours of the visible light spectrum, or electromagnetic radiation there is no wavelength of light that corresponds with magenta - hence the reason it's not in a rainbow. It appears that this colour is made up in the software that runs the organ we call our brain. The reason it does this is because magenta falls between red light and blue light and is really the absence of green - our brain does this to cope.

Look at this minute physics lecture on youtube it explains it really well

While on this sort of subject I have really been getting into the minute physics lectures along with many from the Royal Institution and listening to the infinite monkey cage hosted by the it's amazing Brian Cox.

Finally here's a thought about the Voyager space probes that have now left our solar system and the suns influence. As they travel on their interstellar journey think about the gold plaques on their side - these are there as an introduction to mankind, but maybe more importantly to give hope to humanity. The whole venture was the work of Carl Sagan. If you think how insignificant these space craft are, that they are unlikely to ever be found by any species - since they are so tiny in the Universe - and yet they will outlast humanity and will one day be the only evidence we ever existed.

The things you can do with maths

Is this proof that 2 = 1?

If x = 1 and y = 1 then x = y

STEP 1

Multiply each side by x

x² = xy

STEP 2

Subtract y2 from each side

x² - y² = xy - y²

STEP 3

Factor each side

(x + y)(x - y) = y(x - y)

STEP 4

Divide out the common term (x - y)

x + y = y

STEP 5

Substitute the values of x and y

1 + 1 = 1

so,

2 = 1

Curiosity takes one more step for Neil

What a terrific moment today when Curiosity Mars Explorer landed successfully. The people at NASA involved in this project must be very relieved and extremely proud. Lets hope the results from this achievement spur humanity on to greater efforts to explore the solar system. Maybe the example of CERN and the LHC will serve to show what can be achieved working together and that the international community will finally get together. I’d love to see humans stand on the surface of Mars.

While writing about great endeavour and achievement it is great to see all these Olympic athletes (winners and other competitors) giving their best efforts. As someone who has worked at my various sports for all my life I understand the effort and sacrifice. Having watched rowers finish a race, to see how much of themselves they have given and the disappointment and feeling that they had somehow let people down, this upset me when I then thought about the ignorant,arrogant waste of space students I often encounter at work.

Finally I was saddened to see that Neil Armstrong had died recently. He was one of my hero's and an inspiration. One of my first memory's was getting up early in the morning to watch that first moon landing on the TV. Just think that in the whole history of humanity only eleven people have stood on another planet and looked back at our small and insignificant dot that we call home. Neil Armstrong was the first human to ever stand on another planet (well moon actually), what courage must that have taken. Yet when he returned to Earth he remained the quiet, humble man he always was. Maybe we could do with more like him, maybe we could do with people asking why we have not moved further after all it was forty years ago when the last man Eugene Cernan stood on our moon (it's all politics and it's all garbage - mankind needs more than our small planet to survive and to do that we need to be together and the thing holding us down are politics, greed and relgion.)

Here are some quotes from Neil:

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited.

I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.

I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul... we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

All of these quotes say something important: humanity can be great, certainly so much more than we are, when we allow ourselves to be. That we live on a small part of the Universe, nothing special and that we need to reach for more. That we have not allowed ourselves to move on from those days of Apollo.