In the market for a used car? Have I got an unbelievable deal for you!

This baby is a racy red two-year-old Tesla Roadster, like new with perfect tires and, get this, it goes from zero to 42,600 miles-per-hour so fast it could make your head look like this: 

Yes, Teslas are impressive.

So what's the catch? OK, the car does have a few miles on it... just a little over 93 million and counting, but it gets great gas mileage,11,745.9 per gallon... really.  It is out of warranty but according to the calls I receive around supper-time at least 4 or 5 days a week, I can extend my warranty if I act now. Delivery is problematic but hey, it's a Tesla, right? 

Oh, that  figure in the car is a manikin in honor of David Bowie listening to Space Oddity nearly 300,000 times  in right ear and Is There Life on Mars about 400,000 time in the left if the battery is still working...and I wouldn't bet against Elon Musk. This tells more. 

You can see the car somewhere near Mars but you'd have to wait for when a telescope that is about 8,000 feet in diameter is invented to do the job.You perhaps remember the story, and it is really impressive, so a reread is called for. Below is that blog post I wrote when this happened three years ago. 

And yes, I am a fan of Elon Musk who, coincidentally, just became the world's richest man, worth $185 billion and passing Jeff Bezos. He is eccentric and that makes him even more interesting. And he makes rockets to send people into space (like his car) and return to earth standing up on the launch pad just as the did when they left.

That blog post: 

Both are unbelievable but one is true, one is false. Any guesses?

We were thrilled when Henry bicycled across the moon with ET in his bike basket.

 

We were also thrilled (sort of) when the red Tesla streaked past the earth on it's way past Mars.

OK, everyone knows ET will never reach home in the basket of Henry's bicycle. But could a red Tesla ever speed past Mars, with David Bowie's Space Oddity blasting on its audio device, and drive forever into space? Most incredibly amazing, it could. That IS an actual photo you're looking at.

Is there anyone today more interesting and inventive that Elon Musk? Truly this South African born 

Elon Musk

Canadian American billionaire at age 48 has done more than even the best fiction writer could imagine... but it's true. He founded Xcom which became Infinity which bought PayPal which was bought by ebay. He founded the automotive company that developed the Tesla automobile and founded SpaceX which developed the most powerful rocket booster that put his red Tesla with a manikin driver behind the wheel into space forever. Even more astounding, two of the three rocket boosters on the most powerful rocket actually returned to base, landing as if reverse of the take-off. Take that NASA.

So his failure is that the space-bound Tesla that was supposed to land on Mars but missed, is destined to drive forever, at 42,600 miles per hour, into outer space for infinity. It joins with NASA's two Voyager missions to infinity. Imagine the incredible gas/electric mileage per gallon and what would happen if it was ever pulled over for speeding by an alien patrol officer with radar. "Sorry officer, I was running late for Mars so I stepped on it and didn't realize how fast I was going."

Consider that perhaps, eons from now, a distant civilization will encounter both Voyager spacecrafts with their golden records of us saying 'Hello" in 140 different languages and also the Tesla playing David Bowie's Space Oddity and wondering who in the hell those people are/were.

Well, that's space for you.

Two galaxies collide! Earth is doomed!... oh, never mind.

That's the Andromeda Galaxy (left) colliding with us, The Milky Way galaxy (right)

This is a Hubble Space telescope depiction of our Milky Way galaxy--with some 300 billion stars--colliding with the 1 trillion star Andromeda Galaxy (galaxies not shown actual size) in just 4.5 years... er, I mean 4.5 BILLION years, moving towards each other at 68 miles per second!  So let this be a warning to all of us... WATCH OUT!

Yes, this will actually happen. But aside from the almost unbelievable numbers of stars and space, here's an even more incredible fact: As the 1 trillion-star galaxy passes through our 300 billion-star galaxy, the long odds are that not one star will even come close to a collision with any other. 

Space is so vast that if our sun was the size of a ping pong ball, the nearest solar object would be the size of a pea 689 miles distant. The pass-through speed of the galaxies would be a not too shabby 100 billion miles-per-hour.

In our observable universe, cosmologists are certain there are at least 2 trillion universes consisting of trillions and trillions of stars and our universe is expanding at an enormous rate beyond any known number. 

So how did all this happen. Was it always there, limitless and growing?  And who are we in the grand scheme? 

Our Milky Way galaxy is only average in size compared to the trillions of others. And we think WE are the intelligent life in our universe. What nerve!

This is an actual photo of our Earth and Moon, taken by a satellite we launched, from a mere 71 million miles away. NO, NOT THE BIG WHITE ROUND THING IN THE UPPER RIGHT CORNER, and not even that little teensy dot near the lower left... but the even tinier dot almost lost near the tiny dot, if you can see it. That's us. The bigger tiny dot (oxymoron alert) is our sun!

And if you want to read how really small we are in fiction, take a look at this Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss. It helps put things in perspective.

Will we ever learn that we control nothing but ourselves and often, not even that.

 

Think your electric bill is high? This should make you feel better. (Some of this and a little of that.)

A Penn- 
sylvania woman got a $284- billion electric bill in the mail last January.
"We put up Christmas lights," she said, "and I wondered if  had put them up wrong." Well, I guess! But my-oh-my, what a show that must have been.

• In Tennessee you CAN now legally carry guns into the state legislature... BUT, you CAN NOT carry home-made signs! Legislators explained, "Hand-carried signs and signs on hand-sticks represent a serious safety hazard." Don't they know "sticks don't kill people, people kill people." Gun rights trump (natural pun) free speech, I guess.

 

• In 2013, following Barack Obama's second term victory, American gun companies produced almost 11 million firearms, 222 percent more than produced in the year after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  The number of pointed sticks produced is not known.

•  The universe is expanding at a rate of about 72 kilometers per second... faster than the speed of light. So, that's forever, right?

• The first electronic calculator on sale in 1957 could add, subtract and multiply. It weighed 308 pounds and sold for $11,000 in today's equivalent. So the abacus wasn't that bad after all. It just didn't do billions and trillions well... but what was a billion or trillion in those days?

• An estimated 50,000 limbs were amputated during the Civil War. Amputation was better than killer gangrene infections despite the fact that 'biting a bullet' was the closest thing to anesthesia and sterilization was not even known except by "kooks with a crazy idea."

• An Illinois anti-gambling activist won $25,000 in a sweepstakes game. She quickly explained it was "God showing His grace on me" for her noble fight against gambling. Hmm, two-to-one God wins every time. 

• Over the last 50 years our prison population has increased 500 percent. We now have 2.2 million behind bars. The United States represents 4.4 percent of the world's population but houses 22 percent of the world's prisoners. Yippee! We're NUMBER ONE! We must be doing something right... or wrong.

• Our moon, being constantly bombarded by micrometeorites traveling at 33,000 miles per hour, is eroding at the alarming rate of 0.04 inches every million years. At this rate, we will have no songs like "Shine on Harvest Moon" or " By the Light of the Silvery Moon" or "Moon River" to sing to our sweethearts when we are a billion years old. Hope I don't live that long. 

• A doctor walks into the examining room and puts his hand on the patients' shoulder. "I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. You're dying and you don't have much time left." "Oh no!" replies the patient. "How long do I have to live?" "Ten," the doctor says. "Ten what? Days? Weeks? Months?" The doctor calmly replies, "Nine... "

Sunny, windy and hot

Credit NASA/SDO with thanks

As winter wanes...  a good forecast is worth its weight in gold. Don't forget to use your sun tan lotion.




Sadly, this wasn't the forecast for our area... or our planet. A few days ago, NASA's Solar Dynamic Observatory noted an enormous burst of plasma--a solar flare. These things happen, you know.

As big goes, this bigger-than-most eruptions from the sun's surface was estimated as a million-plus miles... accompanied by a 4.5 million miles-per-hour wind so hold on to your hats.

Want to be impressed? Take a look at this.

You might suspect I'm a little over-the-top when it comes to the enormity of space and its every facet. A few night ago, I watched the International Space Station cross my section of sky. The ISS has now logged over 1.5 billion miles since 2000 when it was launched, and has been visited by more that 200 astronauts. The space station, including its large solar arrays, spans the area of a U.S. football field, including the end zones, and weighs a little shy of 100,000 pounds. The complex now has more livable room than a conventional six-bedroom house and has two bathrooms, a gymnasium and a 360-degree bay window.

It is only 220 miles from earth traveling at 17,000 miles-per-hour--peanuts by space standards--but it sure is awesome. Want to see it? This website will tell you where and when to look.

Oh, by the way, if anyone should ask, those who know say there are at least 8.8 billion planets that are similar in size and temperature to earth... and lots, lots, lots more that aren't.

I love this stuff!

A tribute to NASA as Space Shuttle Atlantis heads home from the International Space Station for the last time...

Can you imagine... this is a real, undoctored photo!

It is astronaut Bruce McCandless II who became the first human satellite just 25 years ago! He is a football field away from the Challenger, 170 miles above the earth, moving at 17,500 mph.... though it doesn't seem as fast to him because he can't see the telephone poles zipping by. He and astronaut Robert L. Stewart made the first untethered spacewalks in history using their nitrogen-propelled "ray guns" (my words) to zip this way and that.

They were floating free in space for six hours while they circled the earth almost five times--105,000 miles-- with nothing but a few essentials (space suit, air, toothbrush, Swiss Army knife, etc.)  Without phone booths, even Superman can't match that.

Discounting the obvious mortal consequences if anything went wrong, that must have been like no carnival ride on earth... I can't imagine. I couldn't even step out on the glass floor section of Toronto's CN Tower.

Commander Corey fights for you!

Well, these guys may have been the first ACTUAL human satellites in space but we have long known what it is all about. We had Commander Corey of the Space Patrol on radio and early television in the '50s, Captain Video on TV and Flash Gordon of the comics who fueled the fire. These fictional heros introduced us to  space and stirred imaginations. And as kids, we were enthralled. From that generation came the space pioneers at every level, from scientists, astral-physicists and technicians to astronauts and the those who worked the launch pad.

Captain Video and Video Ranger

Space Patrol was best... it was first a radio serial where acting was over the top... with great sound effects--Whoosh! Zoom! Tzaaaap!-- to add (to the best of anyone's knowledge) realism. Commander Buzz Corey and sidekick Cadet Happy (really), with help from the beautiful Tonga of course, fought the the villains: Mister Proteus, Dr. Ryland Scarno and my personal favorite, the evil scientist, Prince Baccarritti whose evil laugh would curdle milk.

Program commercials were voiced by 'Captain' Dick Tufel for WheatChex and RiceChex with "... out of this world Space Patrol stuff that all Space Patrollers will want to have...spaceophones, projectoscopes and atomolights..." often with an important alert: "The letter "O" is very important in the future."

When Jules Verne wrote "From the Earth to the Moon" in 1865, who would have ever guessed... THANK YOU NASA FOR A GREAT RIDE.









Does that make Walt Disney the next visionary by naming Mickey's dog, Pluto? Hmm. Maybe.   

So, going from the sublime to the ridiculous, as Loony Tunes Porky Pig would say, "Th-th-th-th-"That's all folks!"

Things that amaze me most.... Part II

As I told you before, there are a number of things/events/emotions that absolutely blow-my-mind because they are so introspectively amazing and give me a deeper sense of awe. So I made a list of the things that amaze me most... some big, some small, some acts, some things... but all, in my mind, amazing. So far:


Part I:  THE PACIFIC OCEAN
Part II: BIG NUMBERS


I don't know about you but my mind can only absorb so much before the wheels start to spin like the numbers on a hot Las Vegas slot machine. Maybe it was a blessing that I never got rich because now I can count what I have on my fingers and toes (metaphorically). But how do you put your arms around
5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (reads 5 million trillion trillion).

       

That is the scientific best guess of the number of bacteria alive on this earth at this time.

Add that to the 10 quintillion (10 followed by 18 zeros) individual insects. Doesn't that worry you just a little bit? If all of those little buggers got together, us 6.9 billion people wouldn't have much of a chance. Let's just hope that there isn't an insect Winston Churchill or George Washington or FDR to organize the charge.

Then of course, you have space. How much is 6 billion light years--the estimated breadth of our universe... which is constantly expanding? One light second is how long it takes light to travel 7 times around the Earth. One light year is 32 million light seconds... a lot farther than the out house on a frigid winter farm night.

Then you have stars which are not scattered randomly through space but gathered in galaxies. Our Sun belongs to the Milky Way Galaxy. (I didn't know that!) Astronomers estimate there are about 100 thousand million stars in the Milky Way alone... and there are millions upon millions of other galaxies. As for size, Earth is smaller than a grain of sand on the Universe Beach. Can you imagine...?

Then you have time. It is scientifically estimated that The Big Bang, which is believed to be the event that triggered the formation of our Universe, happened 13.7 billion years ago, give or take a few billion. If that time was condensed in scale to one earth year, you and I would have been born just a blink of an eye before the stroke of midnight on December 31st at 11:59:59 p.m.

So how old am I? Less than a fraction of a second, of course... and looking good for my age.

A year in time

Ever watch The Big Bang Theory on CBS TV? It's a popular sit-com about two weird and nerdy Caltech geniuses, Seldon and Leonard, who share an apartment right across the hall from Penny, an attractive blond waitress/aspiring actress. The show, now in its 3rd year, has added a few more characters and is really funny (my opinion... and I am a genius at funny, obscure and inane things).

I was originally 'taken' by the way the show introduced itself, with perhaps 30 rapid-fire images starting with the Big Bang that created the universe then flashing through time and space, creation of earth and evolution of plants and animals, dinosaurs, man and  recorded history, up to the show's main actors in present day. The intro takes about 15 seconds and is really well put-together.

That scenario of creation to present day, as fantastic as it is to watch,  just isn't as dramatic as astronomer Carl Sagan's cosmic calendar. (An awe-inspiring work.)

The universe is 13.7 billion years old, give or take a few billion years, so Sagan showed the chronology of events if time, from then to now, was represented in the scale of one earth year?

Well, the Big Bang that started... er, everything, occurred in the absolute first tick of January 1... and immediately after that instant... a billionth of a trillionth of a second to be precise, the universe 'happened.' (Don't ask me... I didn't make that up. That is really what astronomers concur.)

In that context, the Milky Way Galaxy appeared on May 1st and our planet showed up on September 14th. Mammals on earth arrived Dec. 26th. Prehistoric man? Well, he didn't come along until 10:30 pm. on December 31st... the Peking Man, the first to use fire, at 11:46 pm. The invention of the alphabet happened at 11:59:51 pm... and a blink of an eye before year's end, you and I were born.

So I guess I have to ask: what insignificant pip-squeaks are we to think that we are the center of the universe? We barely made it in the door. In fact, we are less than a millisecond of its existence. Hey! It's not bad to be humbled. It adds a perspective.

But perspective is a funny thing. That millisecond is a lifetime to us... but compared to the mayfly, which might live to a ripe old age of perhaps two days, we are Kings of The Universe.

Moral of the story... life is short. Let's not mess up our moment in the sun.

About a baby... and other amazing stuff

Long time no post (about 2 wks) but been busy.  

Biggest News:

Got a new 
grandbaby!
Mom and son
doing well...
and so am I.

And if that wasn't the coolest, I got frosting on my cake when I was running yesterday. It was about 7 am and the sun had just cleared the horizon on a beautiful day. As I was doubling back across a dam near my house, I saw something big sitting on the guard rail ahead of me. As I got closer, I recognized a magnificent American bald eagle looking intently over the grass and wooded landscape below... on the opposite side of the man- (or woman-) made lake.

The majestic bird let me get within 10 feet before it looked my way and winked (or it seemed like it did in my mind) before soaring out over the valley... just the eagle and me (in my new five-finger running shoes, no less), morning sun, lush valley under bright blue sky... and total silence. How often does that happen in a lifetime? I think it was God's punctuation mark.
 

So while I am on the wonders of it all, I just read something pretty amazing about the bar-tailed godwit... you know ( suuure you do), the migrating bird that summers in both Alaska and New Zealand/Australia. The question (though not my question) always was, how does it get from here to there?

It had long been presumed the birds flew down across Asia, resting and eating as they migrated because the distance is enormous. But when a godwit-specializing biologist noted that the birds, just before migration, looked almost as fat as a softballs, he wondered if they didn't take a more direct route.

Years passed and the answer could never be confirmed... until 2006 when technology created micro satellite transmitters.  The birds then were track-able on his computer's Google Earth program. What he discovered was mind-boggling. The bar-tailed godwits were flying directly over the Pacific ocean...7,100 miles in nine days--the longest nonstop flight ever recorded... and the time without sleep ain't shabby either.  (I once flew from L.A. to NZ nonstop... over the Pacific one minute into the flight and didn't pass over any land until touchdown... a total of 13 hours... and boy, were my arms tired.)


Last amazing discovery today: Monster in space. Scientists have confirmed that one of our 'close-in' planets (WASP-12b) -- still thousands of light years away --  is being 'eaten' by a neighboring star! At today's rate of consumption, this jumbo world, cooking at 2,800 degrees, has only 10 million years before it is completely consumed. Apparently, the star, which we will name Godzilla, is a slow eater, not unlike my mother.

I wonder if this stellar cannibalistic behavior has anything to do with the recent death of David Durston? He was the guy who wrote and directed I Drink Your Blood, one of our early cult thrillers, in 1971? In case that name doesn't ring a bell, perhaps you remember his other movie shown as a twin-bill... I Eat Your Skin? He also did Zombies aka Voodoo Blood Bath.

So we have gone from miracle of birth to David Durston's death. Covered a lot of ground. Did we learn something today?

What is the largest machine in the world?

No. It's not my toaster which I bought cheap. It's really 18-inches square... pretty big for a toaster.  But it's not that.

It is the Large Hadron Collider, (left: blogger's guess of what it might look like.... but probably not. May not be to scale) built to unlock the deepest secrets of the universe. (Of all the stars and sky we see-- millions of light years into space-- we see less than 4% of the universe's total mass.) This machine, built 300-feet underground near the Swiss/French border,  is basically a connected 17 mile circular tunnel. It contains two large tubes lined with powerful magnets and is helium-cooled to near absolute zero. It's sole purpose is to slam two infinitely tiny particles the size of the center of an atom (and yes, they are way too small to inscribe the Lord's Prayer on. You are, no doubt, thinking of the head of a pin) into each other at almost 186,000 miles per second. (This translates to going around the 17 mile loop 11,000 times per second.)

The cost is modest-- but only if you compare it to all the money in the world-- $10 billion. It's purpose is to try to recreate the Big Bang that scientists believe made our universe happen a mere 13.7 billion years ago. This is so sci-fi-incredible that some physicists say, if we are wrong in our calculations, this could trigger the destruction of earth.  But enough of this happy talk.

Some impressive work has already been done by an atom-smasher in the U.S. The pipsqueak 2.4-mile-wide Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven, NY has smashed two super cooled, high-speed atoms into each other to create a temperatures of 7.2 trillion degrees-- 250,000 times hotter than the sun's core.

But really, how hot is 7.2 trillion degrees?  Well, the human body is 98.6 degrees; iron's melting point is 2,800 degrees; the Sun's core is 27 million degrees; a supernova is 180 billion degrees; one microsecond after the Big Bang, 7.2 trillion degrees; one millionth of a microsecond after the big bang, 18,000 trillion-trillion degrees.  I just can't imagine how long it would take to toast a marshmallow, but if you are an impatient sort, your s'mores are ready when you are.

Remember physicists, plenty of sun tan lotion... and wear those shades. (Seriously, pretty mind-boggling. Right?)

Hey Mr/Mrs Big Shot...

Now I know we are all pretty important... at least to ourselves if no-one else. But let's face it... we sometimes think we are more critical to the world than we really are. So exactly how big are you. Check out this 2 1/2 minute video to get a better perspective. (I love this stuff.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q

Wanna see something no-one alive today will ever see again?

By the end of August, mars, the Red Planet, the subject of so many of our solar myths and sci-fi flicks, will be closer to earth than ever before.

As our respective orbits come closer, mars will continue to brighten in our sky and by late August, the two planets will be a mere 34,649,589 miles apart... a hair's breadth away in space terms!

Mars will rise in our late August sky at about 10 pm (EDT) and reach its peak at 12:30 am. Now here's the good part. It will look as large as our full moon to the naked eye! Imagine that.

Martians for dinner, anyone? Oh, it's a cook book.

Phew! Did you feel the breeze?

About the size of a 10-story building is the way one news source described it. I am referring to the pretty big asteroid that narrowly missed the earth last Monday morning. According to CNN, the giant hunk of space gunk whizzed by just 38,000 miles from us... an incredibly close distance compared to space. When you think about it, that is a little less than twice-around the earth at the equator.

And when you consider that our space tracking capabilities can identify a object floating in orbit as small as 2 inches in diameter, it is surprising that we didn't even see it until two days before its pass-by. Of course, it was traveling toward us at an incredible speed. Listen... only Superman can destroy asteroids on two-days notice. We just sit here like soccer players defending a free kick... with our hands, figuratively of course, covering our genitalia.

Actually, space is, as we say, bigger than a breadbasket. It is, best we know now, 5-6 billion light years across. That is, 192,000 miles per second x 60 seconds in a minute x 60 minutes in an hour x 24 hours in a day x 365.3 days per year x 5-6 billion years. That number still boggles my mind. And, even more fascinating, there are an estimated 100 billion-billion stars bigger than our earth.

So what are the chances? Well, if there are only two flys buzzing randomly around in an area the size of the United States, there is a greater chance that they will collide than we would be hit by an asteroid of that size. Before you feel too comfortable though, consider that about a century ago, one blasted Siberia. On the other hand, the law of averages is now on our side.