A PISSANT IN THE COSMOS

I got up this morning at seven o-clock, went down stairs and started the woodstove while my wife fed the demanding cats.   

We have to wait an hour to eat breakfast because of pills my wife takes.   So back upstairs to my office, den, mancave (I hate that word- it is so prissy, phony macho) and did twenty minutes on my total-gym.  

I hadn’t worked out in three days because of all the shoveling and snow moving after each storm. 

 

Today we are going down town to shake off the cabin fever.   We will have a nice lunch out, walk around town, get our mail at the post office, go by the new kitchen store, and of course drop in to the used book store before returning home.  

Meantime the planet is warming faster than any time short of an asteroid collision or massive volcano eruption.    The Kepler space craft has confirmed 100 new planets.   

The cosmos is expanding and showing no sign of slowing down.   Parallel universes are being studied by theoretical physicist.  Light is being bent by gravitation, time can be altered by speed and I am thinking very seriously of having fish and chips for lunch.

Just another day in the foothills of western Maine.

the Ol’Buzzard

 

A NICKLE AIN'T WORTH WHAT IT USE TO BE

We wake every morning into our mundane life worrying about finances, relationships and Donald Trump.   We move through this venn diagram of intersection relationships and concerns with the idea that if a tree falls in the forest and we don’t hear it – it doesn’t exist.

And then there is a moment of awakening where we realize how small and insignificant we actually are

Yesterday I was listening to Maine Public Radio in our car and the discussion was on the possibility of alien life in the universe.   Noted astronomers, including Stephen Hawkins, made the case that the chance there is not life scattered throughout the universe is so small as to be discounted.

Our Milky Way galaxy is believed to contain upward to one hundred billion stars, and with the discoveries of the Hubble and Kepler telescopes we have found that most stars have orbiting planets, which brings the estimate of planets in our Milky Way Galaxy into the trillions.   

It is also estimated that at least ten billion of those planets are located in what astronomers call the ‘sweet spot.’   This is a location relative to its star where the temperature and conditions could support life forms.    

Beyond our own galaxy there are hundreds of billions of other galaxies containing trillions of stars and uncountable planets, many with the possibility of supporting life.  

The soon to be launched James Webb telescope will expand our knowledge ever farther - to the first light of the universe - and the possibility of defining actual life habitable planets

The idea that only the earth, among the expanses of the cosmos, could develop life (and what in our egocentric idea is intelligent life) verges on the ridiculous. 

And that's jinga
the Ol'Buzzard