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Contemplating Discovery

Contemplating Discovery

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Late last week I met friends at the Udvar Hazy Museum, which is part of the Smithsonian’s Air and Space complex. Built in the shadow of Dulles International Airport, this structure walks, talks, eats, sleeps and dreams aircraft.

There you can see the Apollo 11 command module, Amelia Earhart’s Lockheed Vega, and the 1903 Wright Brother’s flyer, which covered 852 feet in 59 seconds.

But to me the most impressive object on display is the space shuttle Discovery. It’s a hulking behemoth of a spacecraft, battered and brave. I found it strangely moving: its hoary hull and missing tiles. It wears its adventures and its miles — all 150 million of them — with dignity.

When I looked at it I thought of the optimism, even the naiveté, required for space travel. Although Discovery was retired only 14 years ago, it already seems a relic, the embodiment of an earlier, more optimistic chapter of our nation’s history.

(Photo: Wikipedia, courtesy NASA)

‘All Was Light’

‘All Was Light’

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Last week’s class was about Galileo. This week it was Sir Isaac Newton, widely regarded as one of the most influential scientists of all time. His laws of motion and universal gravity put to rest any doubt about an earth-centered universe, and his book Principia laid the foundations for classical mechanics.

Newton was one of the inventors of calculus and his theories on optics showed us that white light is composed of all the colors of the rainbow. His work spanned optics, physics, mathematics, thermodynamics, chemistry and early economics. Later in life he was named Master of the Mint and he reformed British currency.

After hearing all of this in class last night, I wanted to learn more about the man himself, so I looked him up this morning. He was born prematurely, three months after his father’s death. He was so small at birth that his mother said he could fit in a quart jar. The plague interrupted his studies at Cambridge and sent him home to spend two of the most productive years any scientist ever spent, when he developed theories of gravity and optics.

Newton was the first scientist to be buried in Westminster Abbey. Alexander Pope wrote this epitaph: “Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night. God said, “Let Newton be” and all was light.”

Alive on the Page

Alive on the Page

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I’ve been reading Oliver Sacks’ Everything in its Place: First Loves and Last Tales, a posthumous collection of essays by a master of that form. That he was a master of so much else — neurology, weightlifting, chemistry — ripples out from every page.

Sacks loved to swim, to walk in botanical gardens, to study ferns in Central Park, and the book contains short chapters on these topics and many more, easy explorations in the personal essay form. They move from the particular to the general, are informal and discursive. 

Sacks is most well-known for his book Awakenings, which chronicles his treatment of patients with a rare sleeping sickness, people who had missed whole decades of life then woke up and found themselves once again in the land of the living. 

Awake is how I feel after reading the work of this scientist and writer, gone almost 10 years but alive to me now thanks to this final, exhilarating collection. 

(Sacks’ signature courtesy Wikipedia)

Totality or Bust

Totality or Bust

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The idea was growing all week, fed by accounts of those who’d experienced a total eclipse in 2017 or earlier. It’s a lot different than 80 or 90 percent, they said. If you can drive to totality, do it.

And so we did, shoving off early Sunday, bound for Washington, Indiana, where the moon will completely block the sun — and where we have kind and accommodating relatives.

It’s totality or bust. Now let’s hope the clouds stay away. 

Moon Landing

Moon Landing

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To continue with the theme of wonder, there is now a U.S. spacecraft on the moon for the first time since 1972. It landed Thursday on the lunar surface, near the south pole. 

The space craft was built and flown by a Texas-based company, Intuitive Machines, with NASA equipment on board. There were some tense moments at first due to issues with the craft’s navigation and communications systems. But those appear to be resolved and the robot lander, Odysseus, is now transmitting signals.

Surely it’s worth a song. I’m imagining this one set to the tune of Yusuf/Cat Steven’s Moon Shadow. 

We’re being treated to a moon landing, moon landing, moon landing. 

Leapin’ and hoppin’ with a moon landing, moon landing, moon landing.

And if we ever lose our way, tip our craft, botch our stay. 

And if we ever lose our way — let’s hope we can launch once more. 

Jollity

Jollity

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Last night under the stars, a glimpse of the planets:  At Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts, the National Symphony Orchestra performed Gustav Holst’s “The Planets,” accompanied by NASA photographs, with my favorite movement, “Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity,” scoring the most applause. 

Jollity is defined as “the quality of being cheerful.” Can a planet be cheerful? Perhaps if it’s named after the king of the gods. Or if it’s a gas giant more than twice as massive as all the other planets combined. 

One reason not to be jolly: what looks in photos to be a big red eye. It’s not the result of excessive interplanetary partying, but a centuries-old storm bigger than Earth.

And speaking of Earth, the only planet Holst omitted from his piece, today at 7:15 a.m. EST is the one moment of the year when most of its people are bathed in sunlight — an incredible 99 percent of us. A reason for jollity, to be sure. 

(Photo: Courtesy NASA)

Stepping Up

Stepping Up

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I’ve never been a step counter, so the headline in yesterday’s newspaper, “New Walking Tips Drop the 10,000 Steps Goal,” wasn’t a disappointment. But given that the article was about walking, well, I had to read it. 

I learned some interesting facts: While experts have lowered the 10,000 steps goal— the number of steps doctors recommend we get each day for healthy living — they haven’t lowered it by all that much. For adults under 60 it’s 8,000 to 10,000 and for those over 60 it’s 6,000 to 8,000.

What I found especially useful were the equivalencies: 1,000 steps is approximately half a mile, and 3,000 steps represents about a half hour of walking. Helpful — to a point. I usually measure a walk by the number of ideas it inspires … and I’ve yet to see a scale for that. 

Bird Song

Bird Song

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It’s a sunny afternoon on the deck as hummingbirds buzz the feeders, sparrows chirp and cardinals peep. In the distance, I hear a hawk cry and a bluebird squawk.  

Turns out, all this bird listening is good for my mental health, according to two different studies published in Scientific Reports, summarized in a Washington Post article published today. 

I’m not surprised. Hearing birdsong is one of the reasons I love walking and being outside in general. Turns out I’m not alone. Researchers asked 1,300 participants to answer questions about their environment and well-being through an app called Urban Mind. They found a strong correlation between hearing or seeing birds and a positive state of mind. Another study found that listening to six-minute audio clips of birdsong reduced anxiety and depression. 

According to this, I should always be bopping around with a smile on my face because in addition to hearing outside birds, I also hear inside ones, Alfie and Toby, the parakeets who grace our house with their chatter and whose racket often prompts callers to ask, “Do you have birds?” 

Yes, I always say, yes, I do, and they’re wonderful. 

(Alfie and the late, great Bart.)

Solstice Miracle

Solstice Miracle

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The low light was shining directly into my eyes during part of today’s trail walk. But it’s all part of the package on the shortest day of the year. 

For some reason now, as I write this post, a funny little glob of a rainbow has appeared. I don’t recall seeing anything like it before: an ordinary sky except for one cloud bleeding yellow and orange light.  We’ve had no rain; the sun is lower in the firmament. 

I’m sure there’s some sort of scientific explanation. But I’m going to consider it a solstice miracle.

(P.S.on February 2, 2023: I just learned that my “solstice miracle” is called a sundog.)

Grandparents Rock!

Grandparents Rock!

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New research finds that grandmothers may be one reason for the dominance of homo sapiens. Humans have alleles (alternative versions of a gene) that protect against late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease and otherwise safeguard the functioning of  grandmothers and “other human elders who are involved in caregiving of the young.” 

This study helps explain why women live on past menopause and bolsters the “grandmother hypothesis,” which posits that it’s in grandmothers’ evolutionary interest to ensure that grandchildren survive to reproductive age.  

Scientists who study the evolutionary effect of various genetic mutations have noticed that these mutations were not present in Neanderthals and other early human lineages. 

All of which says, to me at least, that grandparents rock!

(My parents, who lived to see almost all their grandchildren graduate from high school.)