earth – The Pensive Reverie

Lunar Awesomeness

Having fallen sick the prior weekend, I was hard pressed to be dedicated in my efforts toward a speedy recovery while ruing the lost opportunity of posting a new article on the blog. A sudden cold, and the ensuing fatigue left me out of sorts; the origins of which could be traced back to a persistent cycle of late-night at work along with irregular sleep.

The past week has helped me recover, and now that I’m back, I would like to recapitulate on my original plans for a post dedicated to the lunar awesomeness coinciding with the final and initial weeks of January and February 2018.

The night of January 31st hosted a special treat for amateur and professional astronomers alike with three lunar events coinciding upon the occasion: a supermoon, a blue moon, and a blood moon.

Unfortunately, the weather in Edmonton was less than accommodating with a rapid slew of snowfall enveloping the city at January’s end, and resulting in quite the cloudy forecast on the night of the occasion.

While this was a mild disappointment, I drew delight by watching the video recordings of the event that were made available online the following morning. With that being said, what do astronomers mean when they use the terms supermoon, blue moon, and blood moon? Your friendly neighborhood astronomer is here to explain.

Simply put, the supermoon refers to a full moon or a new moon where the moon is at its closest distance to our planet in its orbit. This makes the moon appear slightly larger and brighter than usual.

A supermoon would be at least 14% bigger and 30% brighter as opposed to a “normal” moon.

The moon’s average distance is 382,900 km from Earth. To get some context, if we were to scale the Earth’s size or diameter (12,756 km) to that of a beach ball (16 inches), the distance from the Earth to the moon would be an equivalent of 40 ft. Thanks to its elliptical orbit, the moon tends to experience both a closest (perigee) and farthest (apogee) distance of approach to our planet.

Now, this doesn’t imply that a supermoon will occur every month as the moon’s orbit changes orientation as our planet revolves around the sun. Thus, a full or new moon won’t always happen at apogee or perigee. 12-13 full or new moons are possible every year, with 3-4 usually being classified as a supermoon. The most recent supermoon occurrence will be followed by another at the year on December 22, 2018. The closest supermoon of this century is set to occur in the relatively far future on December 6, 2052.

A blue moon refers to an additional full moon that appears among the months of a year. The term can refer to either the third of four full moons in a season or the second full moon over a month of the calendar year. The existence of the second definition is due to an erroneous parallel drawn by amateur astronomer James Hugh Pruett (1886-1955). Having misunderstood the measures for calculating the seasonal blue moon, Pruett would publish an article in 1946 in the Sky & Telescope magazine writing instead that the a blue moon was the second full moon in a month. The phrase “blue” has nothing to do with the actual color of the moon. Nevertheless, varying atmospheric conditions may cause the moon to take on a tinge of blue e.g. elevated fires or volcanic eruptions that may result in particles being spewed into the atmosphere resulting in the preferential scattering of red light.

Lastly, the blood moon refers to a lunar eclipse, when the moon passes directly behind our planet and into its shadow. This occurs only when the sun, Earth, and moon are aligned exactly or at least closely enough, with the Earth smack-dab in the middle.

This is also why a lunar eclipse can only occur on the night of a full moon. January 31, 2018 witnessed a total lunar eclipse, a perfect alignment that resulted in sunlight being completely blocked by the earth’s shadow.

The moon’s “color” is nothing more than the reflection of the sun’s light upon its surface. During a total lunar eclipse, the only light seen is refracted or bent through our planet’s shadow. This light is mainly of a “red” nature thanks to the scattering of its bluer spectrum (an opposite process to what may occur in a “literal” blue moon). Therefore, a total lunar eclipse is also called a blood moon as the moon takes upon a reddish color during the event.

So, what is so special about January 31, 2018?

Well, this was the first time in 152 years that these three lunar events coincided with each other making it a rare gem of a beautiful lunar display. Pretty much everyone in the UK missed out on the spectacle while those in the US, Asia, Australia, and Russia got to see the full eclipse. But not to worry, if you missed this lunar awesomeness of a super blue blood moon, the next one is up for grabs in 2037.

Finishing up with this astronomy treatise for today, unlike the 19 year wait in the case above, I hope to see you all soon again the following week with another interesting story to share.

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Cages

A few months ago, I had visited my family at Bangalore, India. Returning to my homeland was a nostalgic experience. During this period, my family, and I took a trip to a biological park.

While I enjoyed my time at the park, the excursion accompanied a fair share of contemplation on my part particularly with regards to the treatment of the world’s wildlife, and environment.

As much as I enjoyed observing the various species of animals that the park hosted, I felt a certain measure of guilt, remorse, and even anger at the state of said animals within their caged amenities.

I felt distraught that the freedom of said beasts, so majestic, was dampened within these structures, structures that were all too human; built around our ego, and will for dominance that have left us blind to the truth that we all depend on the measured balance of the ecosystem for survival.

While we pride upon our intellect to differentiate, and set us apart from the beasts, it grieved me to think, that in this modern day, and age humankind continues to digress to a base notion of primacy in its interaction with other species on this planet, and the environment.

Ruminating on these thoughts, I passed by a message upon our departure from the park. Carved along the head of a rock, the message read, (as I recall, it was a quote by the founder of the institution)

The survival of man is dependent on the survival of animal, and plant life.

Providing poetic irony to my reflections, the message inspired me to write the poem below, a brief meditation on the Cages that imprison human nature.

Cages

Decrepit,
Those shadows stare,
The blackened soot of their vacant eyes,
Clamoring against the leering smiles,
Forcing open the void from whence,
Comes that onerous resonance,
Tarnished ivories gaping amid the sputum,
Coagulating in the filth of their stature,
Wrinkled by the posture of their pride,
Dictating their steps,
Upon the earth they tread,
Mutely claiming what they desire,
Declaring their supremacy,
In these rusted chains,
So to rest,
Behind these bars,
Where this existence caged,
In limbo dwells,
Awaiting the spell,
That falls to the ground,
Submitting to the prejudice of vanity,
In ignorance of an action,
That remains,
Human, all too human…

crime-search-and-seizure-dna-bars — “They’re animals, all right. But why are you so goddamn sure that makes us human beings?” – *The Long Walk,* Stephen King

The Dragons of Eden – Chapter 1 – The Cosmic Calendar

“What seest thou else in the dark backward and abysm of time?” – William Shakespeare

Time is a component quantity of our daily lives. It is symbolic of the indefinite progress of existence, and events that are generally considered to occur in an apparently irreversible sequence from the past, to the present, and onto the future.

The concept of time has been central to the growth, and evolution of human civilizations. It has also served as an important facet of knowledge that has been studied to a great effect in religion, philosophy, and science. But, to this day, an absolute definition of time still evades scholars.

In The Dragons of Eden, Sagan does not extend his arguments toward an extensive discussion on the concept of time, but rather focuses on its use as a metaphor to describe humanity’s place in the cosmos. To infer the future, it is necessary for us to understand our origins. This is the basis of Sagan’s approach.

Now, it is argued that the predecessors of modern-day human beings, the Homo sapiens¸ evolved somewhere between 250,000, and 400,000 years ago. This number pales in comparison to the appearance of the first primitive humans, such as the Australopithecines, which happened somewhere between 8-9 million years ago. But, even these events, are preceded by an even greater “vista of time” reaching far back into the history of our planet, the solar system, and the universe. Very little is known about these periods of time, and even with the numbers mentioned earlier, we still struggle to grasp the immensity of these time intervals (Figure 1).

**Figure 1.** Humanity is yet to define its existence amidst the vast cosmos.

Nevertheless, science has found success in the establishment of specific methods that have allowed us to date events from the remote past, such as geological stratification (Figure 2), and radioactive dating (Figure 3).

**Figure 2.** Geological stratification, bluntly said, involves the study of rock layers, and layering.

**Figure 3.** Radioactive dating is a technique involving the tracing of radioactive materials in select objects, carbon dating is one such method that is limited to the dating of organic (carbon-based) organisms.

These two methods have provided information on archaeological, paleontological, and geological events. Astrophysical theory has provided for the same on a grander scale involving the dating of stars, planetary surfaces, galaxies, and the even the age of the universe (Sagan states this to be 15 billion years old, though recent results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) puts the number somewhere at 14 billion years old). The earliest event known in record is called the Big Bang, an intense explosion from the universe is said to have formed, but rather than a beginning, the Big Bang is generally considered to be a discontinuity in time where the earlier history of the universe was destroyed.

To put this further into perspective, Sagan introduces the Cosmic Calendar, where he compresses the 14-billion-year-old chronology of the universe, into the span of a single earth year. In this manner, one billion years of Earth history is the equivalent of twenty-four days of our cosmic year, and one second of the cosmic year is the same as 475 real revolutions of the Earth about the sun. The Cosmic Calendar is a humbling account of humanity’s place in the universe, with all our recorded history occupying the last few seconds of December 31.

Though a short chapter, Sagan’s use of the Cosmic Calendar is quite analogous to a common argument used in astronomy to provide a picture of our place in the universe (Figure 4).

**Figure 4.** Our place in the universe. The planet Earth is smaller than a speck among the greater part of the observable universe.

While the major premise of Sagan’s book focuses on discussions on the evolution of human intelligence, this introductory chapter is a necessary prelude that helps to symbolize the significance of the subject matter. While it may be true that humanity occupies an insignificant instance in the face of cosmic time, we are now embarking on a new cosmic year, one which is highly dependent on our ability as a species to come together, use our wisdom, and unique sensitivity to the world for our survival, and a greater future.

References

Sagan, Carl. The Dragons of Eden: Speculations On The Evolution of Human Intelligence. Ballantine Books, 1977.
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