Pleased to meet you …

[This week’s orbital collision between Cosmos and Iridium satellites gave me the motivation to finish this piece and reduce the debris cloud of unfinished blog items orbiting this site by one. I hereby submit it for your consideration, dear reader. - bc] 

I was looking at some of the American Astronomical Society papers for the 2009 Conference in Long Beach, CA, when I stumbled across this open Request for Information issued by the National Academy of Science’s Space Studies Board for ideas for “detecting, characterizing, or mitigating NEOs” [Near-Earth Objects]. These NEOs are asteroids and comets that are in eccentric orbits around the Sun and happen to wander close enough to Earth to pose a risk for a Significant Co-Spatial Event. In other words, the NAS’s scientists are asking for ideas to help figure out how to find and deal with rocks or comets that might clout the Earth right out of human habitability, much less existence. Or possibly worse, into a Significant Economic Downturn — but I digress.

The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach recently wrote about theories and evidence that a large cometary object penetrated Earth’s atmosphere and exploded in a Tunguska-like event 12,000 years ago, wiping out the Clovis people living in North America and rendering many large animal species extinct.

So between that and the Cretaceous–Tertiary (KT) extinction event which wiped out the dinosaurs and almost all life (such as it was) on Earth 65 million years ago, theoretically due to a comet or meteor strike on the Earth at the Yucatan Peninsula [Note: what’s bad for the dinosaurs and the planet in general may be good for Mexican tourism, Exxon/Mobil and OPEC], it’s fair to say that People Who Should Know are somewhat nervous about what could happen to all life on Earth and Angelina Jolie in particular if Our Mother gets her bell rung by Lucifer’s Hammer, astronomically speaking.

Interestingly, the RFI also asks for cost estimates for any suggested solutions to the NEO problem. This thought gave me pause: are we - the Human Race - *worth* saving? Also interestingly, Jason G. Matheny recently wrote a paper, “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction” which provides some thought, discussion and analysis regarding the value of the human race over time and cost effectiveness of preserving it from possible extinction (the answer: it depends).

For the sake of argument, I’m just going to assume that the cost/benefit analysis of the Future of Humanity comes out in Mankind’s favor, otherwise I’ll never get that $40 I won from a bar bet on how many Maraschino cherries my friend Dave could stuff up his nose (he swears 19 went in, but only 16 came out; I didn’t check his ears, though.) or be able to read George W. Bush’s forthcoming Big Pop-Up Book of Presidential Memoirs with Smell-O-Rama Scratch n’ Sniff pictures. (I’ll be careful not to drop it into the toilet while I’m sitting down to experience it in my own G. W. Bush Presidential Library.).

Buying into Matheny’s arguments that under certain conditions the Human Race *might* be worth saving (from a financial perspective, anyway), I looked at the RFI with renewed motivation:

I can sink my teeth into this RFI - a Big Problem, requiring Big Thinking, and possibly Big Solutions. And with levels of resourcefulness and cleverness - not to mention a credit card limit - normally associated with Wile E. Coyote.

These NEOs - the ones that we’re worried about - are all good-sized chunks of rock or ice rolling around the billiard table of the Inner Solar System in a complex dance right out of Ike Newton’s Principia Mathematica. Some of these NEOs are more or less mountain-sized and move at a pretty good clip relative to the Earth. Conventional thinking suggests that the prudent thing to do to would be to give them a little nudge from the stroke of a cosmic cue (a cue, like, say, megaton-yield nuclear weapons as in the cosmically forgettable movies Armageddon or Meteor.) and impart just enough english to their orbits - when compounded over billions of miles of travel - to miss sinking Earth in the corner pocket. Perhaps not even a cue, but just a finger tap to move brazilians of tons of rock in its orbit by just a hair. The finger of God at hand, as it were.

But we can’t tap too hard, because we don’t want to risk shattering a deflectable cueball into Dick Cheney-class spread of astronomical bird shot…

In order to address this in an orderly fashion, I made some lists.

The first was to consider what Expendable or Otherwise Useless Resources humanity has to throw at the problem, and after consulting with my crack staff, came up with these:

Rocks, used Cars and SUVs, water, the detritus of the G W Bush Administration, the Moon, people, Axl Rose, Regis Philbin, Microsoft Windows Vista Install Disks, Securities and other financial instruments traded on Wall Street, styrofoam packing peanuts, Global Warming/Greenhouse Gasses, pleated men’s pants, all of the foreclosed or abandoned McMansions in the US, print news organizations, VCRs and CD players, roughly 20,000 pieces of space junk in orbit, the assets of Linens & Things, all of the Chrysler Crossfires sitting on dealer’s lots, paparazzi, Circuit City and millions of 401k accounts across the country, and Oprah (the Doomsday Defensive Weapon of Absolutely Last Resort and almost-Senator from Illinois).

Next was a list of Tools and other Not-Necessarily Expendable Resources humanity can bring to bear on the problem:

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Rockets, new Cars and SUVs other than Chrysler Crossfires, Wikipedia and Google, Nuclear Weapons, rubber bands, Warren Buffett, three used NASA-spec Space Shuttles in running condition (can be registered with Historic License plates), duct tape, twist ties, 6.75 Billion people *and* Angelina Jolie, paper clips, sportscaster Jim Nantz, the Chinese, Russian, European, Japanese, and Indian space programs, the complete inventory of the Home Despot hardware store chain, cardboard toilet paper tubes, Ginsu knives, Al Gore, Apple Computing Products (including iPhones), FedEx, incandescent light bulbs, YouTube, LostInThought’s closetful of FMPs (Sorry, LiT, the Earth is in the Balance here. Besides, when they’re gone, you get a free pass to go *shooe* shopping.) and Jack Bauer.

The third list was the first pass of Ideas. For some reason, we seem to be more focused on mitigation than detection or characterization — probably because I’m a guy, and guys usually wait until problems find *us,* rather than going around looking for them:

1. Mitigation - Make the Earth look like a giant “8″ ball - this might not prevent a strike, but everyone knows that you have to sink the 8 ball last, so this should buy us some time. Resources required: All the black towels and black Sharpies and Laundry markers Linens & Things has on hand, and a bunch of white towels to make the “8,” Tools: duct tape to secure all of it to the Earth (Note: Clearly, this is *not* a Magic 8 Ball.]
2. Mitigation - Have everyone on Earth move to one hemisphere and lean *hard*, tipping the whole planet up and out of the way, like they did with that bus in the movie “Speed.” Resources: people. Tools: All the planes, trains, and automobiles that can be mustered to move 3.4 Billion People from one side of the Earth to the other (This includes those semi-useless Chrysler Crossfires).
3. Mitigation - Melt comets at a distance. This could be accomplished by using the Earth’s natural and unnatural Greenhouse gasses in a focused stream of methane and CO2, directed at the comet like a giant smelly hairdryer. [We call it the FartGun.] Resources: Greenhouse gasses right out of the atmosphere and all of the industrial vacuum cleaners in Home Despot’s inventory to suck all the gasses up and store them until they’re needed. Tools: All of the Toilet Paper tubes in the world to provide raw materials for a giant million-barreled FartGun, ditto duct tape, rubber bands, twist ties, paper clips, and Al Gore to manage the whole enterprise (and possibly provide the first blast of hot air into the FartGun barrels, like priming the flue on a wood stove.)
4. Mitigation - Melt comets at a distance by building a large mirror to reflect and focus sun- and other light at it. Resources: All of those unused Windows Vista Install discs (for the mirror itself), toilet paper tubes (for the structure), duct tape, twisty ties, rubber bands, paparazzi. Tools: Space Shuttles and the various Space Programs, Angelina Jolie to provide inspiration to the mirror, as there hasn’t been one yet that didn’t like her. Additionally, if there’s an Orbital Oscar to be had, rolling out the red carpet at the Giant Space Compact Mirror may cause Ms. Jolie to walk down it in a terrific gown and LiT-class shooes *in view of the whole world,* causing every paparazzi on the planet to take flash photos of her, thus providing the first blast of light into the beam system, like priming the flue on a wood stove. [LiT suggests bringing along one of RD Padouk’s Redheads such as Amy Adams, to provide an initial flaming-hot pulse to the system and an overwhelming thermal inertia. I’m checking with the EPA and friends at the DOT and NRC about filing Environmental Impact Statements and Waivers for the transport and presence of weapons-grade fissionable materials so close together, and reviewing the annual EPA statements filed by the Producers of the Academy Awards shows.]
5. Mitigation - Assuming that most NEOs are traveling relatively close to the plane of the ecliptic, consider installing a big Red Emergency Handle somewhere [e.g. ‘Break Glass in Case of Emergency’] to activate greenhouse gas-powered rocket engines or nuclear/nuclear bomb-powered reaction-mass single-use Global Elevator thrusters at the Earth’s North and South poles to shove the Earth clear of planet-buster-class NEO co-spatial events. [Obviously, you’d want to figure out which direction the threat was coming from and only activate the devices at the pole that’d get the Earth out of the way in the quickest, most efficient manner possible. We understand that actually employing any of these in an emergency is likely to wreak havoc with china cabinets the world over, unfortunately.] Resources: Greenhouse gasses, nuclear weapons. Tools: Warren Buffet to decide when to execute the maneuver (his record of deciding when to buy and sell is pretty good), Jim Nantz to act as the flight attendant and deliver the pre-flight emergency instructions (what to do when the masks drop, seatbelt and floatation cushion usage protocols, etc.).
6. Mitigation - Camouflage the Earth (Paint it Black?), so comets and meteors can’t find it (a variant of #1). Resources & Tools: same as #1, except for the white towels.
7. Mitigation - Install giant greenhouse gas- or nuclear bomb-powered airbags to bounce comets and asteroids away. Expendable Resources: greenhouse gasses and/or nuclear weapons, Linens & Things sheets (to construct the airbags themselves), newspapers (to act as wadding for the bombs in order to prevent the igniting gasses from burning the airbags.)
8. Mitigation - Nuclear bombs/nuclear waste installed in critical-mass densities at various locations on the Moon, and rigged to detonate in a controlled fashion so as to steer the Moon into the path of a dangerous NEO and let the Moon take the impact. Look at the Moon for a minute - will anyone notice a few extra craters? [Though we may miss moonlit nights, and there’s likely to be havoc when Personal Cycles go haywire in the event the Moon gets reduced to a ring of shrapnel, or is whacked out of orbit and cha-chas right out of the Solar System entirely (see Space: 1999). Or worse, swings out a few hundred million miles and comes back towards Earth…] Resources: Axl Rose to serve as Ballistic Pilot for the Moon, Tools: Space Shuttles and the space programs to ferry everything up to the moon. And oh, yeah, [bc, slapping his head] every nuclear weapon we can muster.
9. Mitigation - Send Oprah up to an NEO that happens to be heading towards the Earth, and have her scold it into submission on a live prime-time TV broadcast of the “Oprah Winfrey Show.” Resources: Oprah. Coffee. And several dozen boxes of Dunkin’ Donuts. Tools: Space Shuttles and various space programs.
10. Mitigation - Launch the entire closetful of LostInThought’s stiletto-heeled FMPs and all of the world’s Ginsu knives to an intercept course with a threatening NEO, and deploy them in a shotgun blast of flechette footwear and cookware, slicing it to ribbons with sharp style. Tools: Ginsu knives, Space Shuttles and the various Space Programs, LiT’s FMPs, and Wile E. Coyote’s credit card (so LiT can get started on the FMP replacement program).
11. Mitigation - Construct a Border Fence between Outer Space and the Earth (like the one under construction between the US and Mexico) out of orbital Space Junk and all of the SUVs sitting on New Car lots across the US. It’ll take a few trips for the various Space Programs to throw all that stuff together into a nice shiny ring of Orbital Chain Link, and as more junk collects out there during the course of construction, we might even consider building complete shields or Space Parasols which could have a secondary use of being positioned between the Earth and the Sun to mitigate Global Warming and/or the occasional Coronal Mass Ejection event. [Note: Who gets to set up the Border Crossings to check Little Green Cards for Alien Workers, and, most importantly, collect tolls and fees for doing so? Could this pay for itself over time?] Resources: Space Junk, and Home Despot instructions for putting up fencing (translated into the English), Tools: the various Space Programs, and a few home contractors with the Right Stuff. 
12. Detection - Here in the United States, the unemployment rate is creeping up towards 8%, meaning that nearly 12 million smart, capable Americans are available for work. Why not put as many of them as possible into a Government work program to look for NEOs? I think the Obama Administration can use their vaunted Internet savvy to locate, organize, schedule, and arrange to pay Americans for these jobs and make sure they each have a set of good binoculars while they’re at it (perhaps they can also send kaleidoscopes to older folks who want to feel useful). For those that are interested, why not put motivated but underemployed people with the right skills to work on improving the view for the NEO Lookout Team? How about an Orbital Home Improvement project to add a nice Observation Deck on the International Space Station, or even maybe get started building a cabin (with a nice porch) on the Moon? These places would make far better vantage points for NEO lookout duty than light-polluted cities like Chicago (ya might see a little more, ya know?). Granted, you’d have to manage this in close coordination with #7 above, including busses to get off the Moon in case of emergency and maybe take them someplace safe (you thought I was going to suggest the Astrodome, perhaps?). Tools: Space Shuttles and space programs, duct tape, toilet paper tubes, rubber bands, twist ties, water, Fed Ex, people and Regis Philbin. Also, carpentry tools, 2″ x 4″s and nails. Lots and lots of 2″ x 4″s and nails. We’ll want to be able to call in Jack Bauer for Lunar Evacuations, too.

Still, for all we know the Asteroid with Our Name on it is already on its way, and by the time we notice it, it’ll already be too late. And that brings another thought — what if an NEO were mysteriously but obviously intentionally directed towards the Earth? Could it be aliens wanting to play catch with us  - “Hey, kid – think quick!” - or a tryout for Interplanetary Little League (how big of a baseball bat or glove do we need to construct?), or simply an errant ball that went into the neighbor’s yard? Speaking of errant balls [and ignoring the obvious John Edwards joke], perhaps someone’s playing the third hole on the Solar golf course - I remember someone playing the 5th hole at Jupiter some years back - and we’re on the wrong wavelength to hear anyone calling, “Fore!” Maybe the Cosmic Carnival started today and we’re first in the dunk tank, or we happen to be living on one of the water balloons - and here comes the first dart (you know, the heavily weighted darts that need to be thrown in a large parabola)! [I’d be very curious to see the stuffed animal Something’s going to win for popping the Earth. Probably an old “Alf.”] Whee, we’re having Big Time fun! 

Science Fiction writers would suggest that it’s some sort of cosmic intelligence test; obviously a pass/fail exam. If we stop it, we’re allowed to join some Galactic Defense-Mensa Federation Society (GD-MFerS) of civilizations, a United Nations of the Milky Way, as it were?

Or perhaps, as in a twist on the classic film “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” an asteroid were directed at Earth as a means of dealing with the problem of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney at liberty in the Galaxy. These aliens may have decided that it’s worth writing off the nice real estate of Earth (and then there’s the regrettable matter of 6.75 billion civilian losses), but that it’s worth it in order to rid the Galaxy of Rove and Cheney and the Weapons of Mass Distraction that the Grey House Administration believes they’re hiding somewhere on this planet. [I wonder — would the Grey House try to cover it up by referring to the incident as a “NEOCon hunting accident” of some sort?

On the other hand, an incoming asteroid might simply be thown by aliens who are sick of “I Love Lucy” and “The Jack Benny Show” and just want us to shut up already; a stellar shoe thrown at a noisy cat.

In any case, we as a species need to figure out how to deal with this problem of detecting and mitigating the threat of NEOs to our civilization.

What we really need and don’t know if we have, is time (Someone said, ”Time is meaningless, yet it’s all that exists.” Clearly this person understands waiting in line at the Motor Vehicle Administration for a Driver’s License Renewal.) And maybe we’d need that Supernatural Digit, after all.

But perhaps He’s already given us the Finger, just not in the way we wanted.

bc

Thanks, as always, to the Editor.

P.S. Please feel free to post *your* ideas for “detecting, characterizing or mitigating” NEOs, and remember - nothing is *ever* too stupid or crazy for this blog.

The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach writes about the new toilets being delivered to the International Space Station on Space Shuttle Endeavour, which recycle human waste into drinkable water:

“Standing between the urine and the consumable end product are muscular apparatus that distill, filter, heat and chemically transmogrify the liquid. The instruments include a catalytic reactor, a gas separator, multi-filtration beds, a particulate filter, a reactor health sensor, a microbial check valve, a fluids control and pump assembly, and a pressure control and purge assembly. This removes almost all the organic molecules from the liquid.” 

Love the use of the word “transmogrify.” And ”almost.” 

On a related topic, I’ve been reading a paper by Jason Matheny, “Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction” which, aside from being highly humorous in spots (for those of us with a dark sense of it), is an analysis of the cost-effectiveness of preventing human extinction. In other words, “How much is it worth to save humanity?”

Naturally, one of the options discussed is avoiding total human extinction by isolating or sheltering some people from the risk of earth-based catastrophic events such as asteroid impacts, pandemics (natural or man-made), nuclear war, Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) from nearby stars, and drastic climate change. Means of achieving this could be in the form of Earth-based sheltered communities, or space-based colonies in Earth orbit, or on the Moon, Mars, etc. In any of these cases, such recycling technology as Joel describes would be required for self-sustaining communities with few outside resources available, particularly water.

Matheny’s paper is a little dated in spots (it was published a year ago):
“For instance, if we invest our money now in a stock market with an average 5% real annual return, in a century we will have 130 times more money to spend on extinction countermeasures (assuming we survive the century). This reasoning could be extended indefinitely (as long as we survive). This could be an argument for investing in stocks rather than extinction countermeasures if: the rate of return on capital is exogenous to the rate of social savings, the average rate of return on capital is higher than the rate of technological change in extinction countermeasures, and the marginal cost effectiveness of extinction countermeasures does not decrease at a rate equal to or greater than the return on capital.”

As if the state of my 401K isn’t enough to make me want to jump off of a building?

It seems that NASA is shooting for the stars with these state-of-the (ahem) art recycling toilets, and perhaps we will need something like them if we decide that we’re worth insuring over the long term. To that end, I’ve counseled my children to reconsider their plans for law school in favor of a future in plumbing after getting a Bachelor’s in Information Technology, of course. [This could position them well for an early career for data waste management in Government IT shops before blasting off into the Wild Blue Yonder of solid and liquid waste management for NASA.] 

Something that NASA nor Joel mention, though would be much on my mind — recycling human waste in a closed environment would be one thing, and even turning the solid waste into some sort of compost or fertilizer to grow fresh foods would be acceptable, but somebody needs to figure out how to develop an add-on to this Galactic Standard Techno-Throne system for recycling toilet paper, pronto.

Well, and there do not appear to be any special instructions for jiggling the high-tech handle, either. I would think this would be very important in orbit, where the nearest plumber is 200 miles away and falling behind at 17,000 miles an hour.

I’ll leave you with a thought from Matheny’s paper:

“Farthest out in time are astronomical risks. In one billion years, the sun will begin its red giant stage, increasing terrestrial temperatures above 1,000 degrees, boiling off our atmosphere, and eventually forming a planetary nebula, making Earth inhospitable to life (Sackmann, Boothroyd, & Kraemer, 1993; Ward & Brownlee, 2002). If we colonize other solar systems, we could survive longer than our sun, perhaps another 100 trillion years, when all stars begin burning out (Adams & Laughlin, 1997). We might survive even longer if we exploit nonstellar energy sources. But it is hard to imagine how humanity will survive beyond the decay of nuclear matter expected in 10 [to the] 32[nd] to 10 [to the] 41[st] years (Adams & Laughlin, 1997).3 Physics seems to support Kafka’s remark that ‘[t]here is infinite hope, but not for us.’”

An infinite future for humanity without toilet paper sounds hopeless to me, too. If there’s no cost-effective way to save humanity with TP, then perhaps we deserve to be wiped out.

bc

There have been a lot of questions about this week’s startup of the Large Hadron Collider (the “LHC”) particle accelerator at the European Organization for Nuclear Research’s [the Organisation Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (renamed from Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, but the acronym was kept in the way that the more things change, the more they stay the same) hereinafter referred to with a sigh as “CERN”] laboratory on the French/Swiss border near Geneva.

In particular, there have been concerns that as the LHC’s scientists smash beams of particles together at fantastic energy levels (like, 7 Trillion electron volts, which is comparable to the electricty created by an unimaginable number of people stroking an equal number of cats), those collisions may inadvertently create subatomic mini-black holes that could swallow the Earth, or unleash some other large-scale disaster which could be blamed on France, like mayonnaise on French Fries, or the continued popularity of Jerry Lewis movies.

The LHC was built in order to create exotic short-lived yet massive subatomic particles that may have existed at the time of the Big Bang [The participants (which may or may not include some character called “Higgs”) wisely decided against making any video recordings of the timeless encounter (unlike Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee), though the shockwaves from it are still resonating through all Creation in the Universe’s background radiation. Astronomers are still trying to transcribe the dialog, though they believe that they’ve that the words “Oh, God,” and “Now!” were used. And something about a towel.]. Measuring the characteristics of these particles’ creation and decay should prove or disprove theories about the nature of mass and matter, and subsequently theories of the natures of space and time as they pertain to the universe we experience. You know, Everything.

CERN is scheduled to start up and run the LHC through operational tests for the first time on Wednesday, September 10, 2008, with the first particle beam collisions to take place in late October (around the time the Oakland Raiders will be mathematically eliminated from the NFL playoffs).

Getting to the bottom of the the Big Bang is going to take a while; a timeless moment deserves all the attention we can give it and is best left to proceed at it’s own pace.

I’ll attempt to address some questions I received on this topic:

bc, is there any truth to the rumor that the LHC project fell behind schedule and that Darth Vader flew in and oversaw final construction of this fully operational battle station? And can they build another here in the USA? - Richard, Location not disclosed

We have not been able to get in touch with Grand Moff Tarkin to confirm or deny the motivation level of the team that completed the LHC. But we note that the circular tunnel for the particle acceleration is 17 miles around, so you’d need a lot of room in a remote area that no one really cares about, like Texas or Alaska. Thanks for the reminder to get in touch with my Realtor to put my beach house on Alderaan on the market, or at least up my homeowner’s insurance. And thanks for the question.

What preparations are the CERN scientists and LHC operational teams making in case there are problems when they try to start the LHC? - Ralph N. Washington, DC

Well, there are those uncomfirmed reports that there was a mad scramble the other day at CERN to locate the spare starter crank handle in case the Primary LHC pull cord rope breaks. Also, we’re told that they have ether on hand to spray down into the carburetor in case it does not fire up immediately, and if it does not operate properly once started, a scientist has been elected to go in and jiggle the handle. All staff have been instructed on the location of the CERN kitchen fire extinguisher and have been issued Rosaries and head-sized brown paper bags in case of serious problems.  

Are you afraid of the operations of the LHC, and the possible End of the World through a cataclysmic mistake? And do you expect it to happen before a certain new movie, “Angels & Demons” opens on May 19, 2009? I sure hope not. - D. Brown, Somewhere in New England

If the world were to end suddenly, I’d expect it to be due to a mistake, oversight, or some other ”oops” moment - a human Error - rather than petty malice or soulless machines rising up and taking over the world.

The End, not with a bang or a whimper, but with slapping ourselves on the forehead.  

That suits us, I think.

Also lets us file a nice accident claim on the insurance policy - er, we did pay the premium for the LHC’s road insurance, didn’t we?

bc

© Copyright by the author 2008, all rights reserved.

PS Thank you, thank you, thank you.

For more information on the LHC, see Joel Achenbach’s article from the March 2008 National Geographic (it has great illustrations and photography, too).

The Baja Fluffitado Saga

or

The First and Last (?) Race of bc and Mudge

Part II: 40 Miles of Bad Road. And Another 40. And Another 40…

or

More Than One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

by bc and Curmudgeon

When we last left our intrepid heroes in Part I, they had over-prepared Mudge’s beloved 1954 MG-TD convertible into a finely tuned, supercharged and utterly desecrated off-road racing machine, about to participate in the grueling 1,500-mile off-road rally race from Tijuana, Mexico, down the spine of Baja California to its southernmost tippy-tip, and then back again, across desert, mountain and burning wasteland. With their leather “Snoopy”-type flying helmets, goggles and flying silk scarves, they are a dashing pair.

Extracts from Curmudgeon’s race logbook:

Mile 0.0, 7:40 a.m.: The Achenblog Beano Thelma-Louise and Hortense Stostakiewzchewski Flyer crosses the start line! We’re off! Wish us luck!

Mile 1.6: The route hugs the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean; bc is learning to steer the overpowered little car on the throttle, throwing the tail out from one turn to the next in a pendulum motion, arcing smoothly from a wide entry point, to corner apex on the inside, to corner exit on the outermost edge of the road (and then some) and back again in big beautiful broadslides, roostertails of dust and tire smoke pluming from the rear tires. Ethereal in the morning sun. I’m sure it’s beautiful from the mountaintops above, but it’s utterly terrifying from in the car. I think I’m going to hurl. Hitting him with my hat does not get him to slow down at all. Rounding a sharp bend, I’m leaning out of the car and deciding whether to blow chunks or not, and see down on the beach the carcass of a dead whale, with perplexed villagers wondering what to do about it. Looks like a full-grown gray whale, very big and getting bigger as it bakes in the sun. Must have been there several days already; smell rises to cliff road: very pungent. Not helping at all. Ugh.

Mile 17.6: Quick stop for me to deal with Montezuma’s Revenge. I notice several buzzards overhead, circling us. Three race cars pass us, including a V-16 Cadillac. bc asks why I am now wearing only one sock.

Mile 34.8: Quick stop for bc to deal with Portnoy’s Complaint. Buzzards still circling. Four race cars pass, a bathtub Porsche, a Hudson Hornet, a Rolls of some flavor, and a Stanley Steamer. Both of us now wearing only one sock.

Mile 56.3: Batteries crap out in my hand-held GPS, so must navigate old-fashioned way, with map and pencil. Pencil breaks, forgot to bring sharpener. Using yellow highlighter and Post-it Notes stuck to dashboard for navigation data; having difficulty reading yellow writing on yellow Post-Its, especially with goggles fogging up. Stop for Montezuma’s Revenge again. Notice buzzards circling; seems like a few more than before. Now sockless. Seven cars pass including a BMW Isetta driven con considerable brio.

Mile 71.2: bc eats last of Slim-Jims. Swerving to avoid armadillo in road, several Post-it notes fly off dashboard. Going full speed on straight-away in top gear. Looks like bc installed an axle and final drive out of a Chalmers-Allis tractor. “It was the only old, cheap rear end I thought would be strong enough,” bc explains nervously. “Aside from yours, of course.” We set new low in race car performance, being passed by a barely modified 1926 Peugeot. Very humiliating.

I hit bc with my hat to spur him to greater speeds.

Mile 118.9: Not supposed to, but we stop at small Mexican village looking for lunch. Nothing available but refried beans at small cantina. Villagers want to hire us to drive away band of marauding bandits led by nasty man named Calvera. They say previous seven gringos they hired are now buried in their churchyard. We decline job offer. Lots of buzzards up there in the sky. Wonder why.

Mile 123.7, Mile 129.6, Mile 134.6, Mile 140.8: Various stops to deal with problem re: refried beans. Not only are our socks gone (including those we packed), but we had to ditch our pants for expediency’s sake. Sure are a lot of buzzards.

bc found a purple crayon during one of his Personal Pit Stops, which he proudly brought back to the car and silenty laid on the dash like a bird dog presenting a duck. I had hopes that this was a sign things were beginning to turn our way.

Then the crayon started to melt.

Mile 196.4: The Achenblog Beano Thelma-Louise and Hortense Stostakiewzchewski Flyer is seriously overheating, steam coming from under hood. bc pulls over into shaded area behind billboard, scowling and muttering that he wished he’d just spent the extra half-hour on the car, whatever that means. Buzzards perch on top of billboard, watching us. We inspect engine, discover fan belts to water pump and radiator fan had broken and were gone. We craft makeshift fan belts using the belts from our discarded pants, reinforced with duct tape. Radiator takes most of our water supply. When we look up, two banditos are standing there, with shotguns and perfectly straight, blindingly white toothy smiles. They take our wallets, and drive off in their pickup, laughing. Now we have no money, credit cards, driver’s licenses —nothing. When we get back on road, I discover buzzard poop on several of my most important Post-it notes on dashboard, including route to next checkpoint.

Mile 226.4: At top of a rise, water pump gives out again. bc puts car in neutral, turns off engine, and we coast downhill into small village. We have no money, so attempt to barter with garage/gas station owner for new water pump and fan belts, but we have nothing he wants. Then he gets idea. He leads us around the back, and points to his hacienda on a small knoll. The house has a beautiful lawn and is nicely landscaped. “Chew,” he says, pointing to bc, “Usted lo cortará.” You will mow it.

“¿Qué? What?” bc croaked.

He pointed to an ancient lawnmower nearby.

“Corta,” he said, addressing bc directly in heavily accented English, “Mow.”

He turned to me and continued in Inglés, “And you, trim,” handing me a pair of blunt children’s scissors. “And mulch.”

There were many, many flower beds around the outside of his hacienda, and in its interior courtyard as well.

“That’s a lot of mulch,” I said.

“Si,” he replied. “Es muy mulcho.”

“Who normally does this work?” I asked.

“My muchachos.”

“Your children? They must be very macho. In fact, one might say, ‘Your macho muchachos got muy macho from muy mucho mulcho.”

Not having much choice, bc and I go to work. A few minutes later, I look up and notice a dozen villagers have gathered to watch us. They are pointing, laughing, cheering, and apparently making bets. Several more villagers arrive, and I notice the gas station owner collecting money from them for letting them watch. Since we don’t have belts, the gas station owner has given us old jumper cables to hold up pants that the villagers have donated to us. We work in the broiling sun, while under shade trees hundreds of villagers have gathered, sitting in lawn chairs and on picnic blankets. Vendors are moving through the crowd selling fajitas and chimichangas, while children with sticks try to break a piñata that looks remarkably like…well…me, complete with leather flying helmet and long white scarf. The padre has arrived from the little church in the square, and proclaimed a miracle, to be commemorated every year as a feast day, La Fiesta de la Briggs e Stratton, the day two gringos came to town and cut Senor Lopez-Portillo’s lawn and mulched his flower beds, in exchange for a water pump, two fan belts, and two heaping, steaming plates of refried beans con queso.

And pants.

Coming in Part III: Manny, Moe and Hack

or

Two Fuels for Love

© Copyright by the authors 2008, all rights reserved.

Here’s something interesting - a new paper by physicists at Penn State provides a theoretical mechanism as to how information swallowed up by black holes might escape later.

For many years, physicists believed that anything yanked into a black hole was destroyed, even though that concept ran contrary to basic quantum mechanics, which states that information cannot be lost, unlike car keys, jewelry, innocence, and about half of the space probes sent to Mars.  [Speaking of which, NASA’s Memorial Day weekend travel plans included taking their old Phoenix there this past Sunday. Congrats to them for a safe and successful trip without having to stop and ask for directions and for leaving before gas hit $4.00 per gallon] 

Now, this new theory depends on a couple of other theories being true (naturally) - some regarding quantum gravity and the notion that space-time is not a continuum (somebody better tell  Q)!) but in fact made up of discrete chunks or loops. Instead of the tradtional flat rubbery sheet used in two-dimensional modeling to represent the fabric of space-time, think about space-time as chain mail, a nice afghan, or a very intricate doily.

But back to the original topic. A short time back in the Achenblog, guest Kitter Caitlin Gibson put forth The Bloopy Brain Theory in which she proposes that when a brain gets too crowded, unused or unneeded information can get bumped out and away as if into a black hole, “blooped into nonexistence.”

But if black holes don’t destroy information, and can in fact retain it intact under the worst conditions Stephen Hawking could dream up, then they could be fantastic information storage devices. A black hole storage device would be able to store a whole galaxy’s worth of information (yes, more than Wikipedia) and protect it from space and time, only able to be recalled if you had Mad Space Time Skilz and/or were God’s Own Hacker. A black hole would be the Ultimately Hard Disk.

This also puts an interesting spin on the recent  lawsuit filed to prevent the LHC from operating. What if there was a secret plan for the LHC to actually generate a black hole and gobble up the entire Earth with it, pulling it out of space and time into some sort of stasis, to be restored in the future like a Model A Ford or Ted Williams’ head. And like many restorations (some might suggest ‘Pebble Beach Concours-level over-restorations’) of historic cars, they would make Earth better than it was originally by eliminating some of its shortcomings like non-synchronized transmissions, Global Warming and the Republican Party. 

Giant black holes are at the center of almost all of the known galaxies and are thought to be a sort of gravitational anchor, similar to the Sun in our Solar System. Most galaxies have many smaller black holes scattered throughout them, gobbling up loose matter and information like hungry news bloggers. Which makes me think - is there a model here for the universe to be some giant quantum information network, with galaxies as network nodes/servers and black holes as information storage and backup systems? This, of course makes us essentially clever dust mites in the Big Computer Room in the Sky, but that’s not so bad as long as no one important notices us (Note to self: Can we recall those ”I Love Lucy” telecasts we started beaming willy-nilly through the universe a half-decade ago? I, for one, wouldn’t want Someone clean out the little infestation in the Milky Way Server chassis…) 

On a more personal level, perhaps I should work with the CERN LHC folks on developing a mini-black hole information storage system, so people (with the means to pay me Substantial Sums, of course) can “bloop” information out of their memories whenever they’d like, such as prior to answering a summons to testify before Congress, at the departure gate at McCarran International Airport , or just before attending their 25th High School Reunion. They can decide to replace them later, if they can remember, of course.

For me, as appealing as having the Eternally Spotless Mind sounds, I’ll keep as many of my memories and thoughts as I can, and all the information I can retain. Of course, there are the questions of accuracy - relativity and subjectivity being what they are - and frankly, some of the memfomation in my head is quite painful and unpleasant. It would be tempting to get rid of them if I could, give myself a good thorough cleaning (note: I did *not* use the phrase “brain enema”). And then I’d have to do it regularly, like taking out the trash on Tuesdays or Saturday afternoon Confession.

The entire universe may just be information, but in order for me to experience it, my perceptions of Everything are filtered through my head and my heart. Contrary to some peoples’ opinions, my mind and heart aren’t black holes, but I’m willing to consider the idea that they might be intellectual and emotional junkyards. But they’re *my* junkyards, aren’t they?

Still, I might be willing to set up black hole storage pod by my front door, so folks can leave any bad feelings and memories they choose to when they enter - and any new ones they picked up during their visit when they leave.

Everybody has a bloopin’ good time at my house, whether they remember it or not.

bc 

Copyright by the author 2008, all rights reserved.

On the Big Island of Hawaii, the name of which I can never seem to remember, a former research physicist and retired Federal Safety Officer who specialized in the handling radioactive materials who currently runs a botanical garden, and his partner in the suit, a Spaniard named Sancho, have filed a Lawsuit in the Hawaiian US District Court to prevent CERN from operating the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator nearing completion on the border between France and Switzerland.

According to New York Times writer Dennis Overbye’s coverage of the suit, Walter L. Wagner and Sancho believe that the giant research instrument is actually a danger to the Earth, able to spin up all manner of ferocious theoretical subatomic monsters, such as long-lasting miniature Black Holes that could eventually swallow the planet, or generate “strangelets” which could convert all of the atoms of regular matter comprising our planet to “strange matter” in a runaway chain reaction, rendering Mother Earth a dense lifeless lump (any resemblance to The Author is unintentional). No word from the Plaintiffs if they would consider those results a Mortal Insult to Gaia, or simply make what’s left of this planet a lousy place to find a drink.

According to Overbye, this isn’t the first time Wagner has lowered his ‘Concerned Citizen Asks, What If’ lance at high-energy particle accelerators. Wagner filed suits in 1999 and 2000 against the Brookhaven National Laboratory in attempt to stop them from performing experiments using the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The suits were dismissed, and the RHIC has been operating without incident for the past 8 years.

But I began asking myself some questions about all this, such as: What story could be presented to Wagner that would convince him to stop tilting at particle colliders, drop his suit and go back to his garden?

Suppose someone convinced Sancho to tell Wagner that the CERN Directors General signed an agreement with three Insurance companies for appropriate policies against any LHC accidents involving stable mini-Black Holes and Strange Matter?

Apparently, I think along the same lines as Overbye, wondering what professional oddsmakers (in this case, Insurance Companies actuaries) would think of this subsequent essay, “Gauging a Collider’s Odds of Creating a Black Hole.

Can this suit be settled out of court if the CERN scientists were able to get the appropriate insurance?

What would those policies look like, and who would pay for them? Would there be one policy for the CERN LHC itself, one for regular homeowners along the lines of earthquakes, floods and water damage, and one for the entire planet along the lines of auto insurance?

With that last: Do you try to save some money by sticking with a collision policy rather than comprehensive? How big of a deductible do you want to take? 

Can you imagine an insurance adjuster assessing the damage to the world if it were partially damaged in a LHC Black Hole/Strangelet accident?

What about a hemisphere-bender versus a big accident where the cost to repair is worth more than the value of the planet? Do you total the planet out, have it towed away and use the money to start shopping for a new one?

Does the insurance company offer a rider to specify Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) repair parts - such as continents and mountain ranges - rather than Chinese knock-offs?

A lot to think about there.

Hmm. This makes me wonder if Wagner, Sancho or other concerned citizens will retain lawyers to consider further suits seeking injunctions against Global Warming, an asteroid strike or the Second Coming.

And I’d like to see the insurance policies on those.

On the other hand maybe I wouldn’t. Personally, I have a hard time facing reality. Giant windmills are a lot easier to deal with.

bc

Copyright by the author 2008, all rights reserved.

In the April 13, 2008 Washington Post Outlook section, Joel Achenbach writes about the difficulty of predicting the future based on our perceptions of what’s happening today. He uses the now-ubiquitous Internet as an example of how seemingly insignificant events and inventions turn out to be portents of humanity’s technological and social futures.

And he notes that even the best futurists, practitioners of the “hard sciences,” and technologists rarely even come close to predicting how the future really unfolds.

There is some room for argument there, I think.

If one steps away from technology and engineering for a moment and considers some of the theoretical sciences, there may be some answers — from a philosophical point of view, anyway.

Quantum mechanics describes events at the smallest, must fundamental levels, in terms of probabilities, and uses terms like “uncertainty,” “indeterminacy,” “decoherence,” “interpretation,” and, of course, “relativity.”

Essentially, every quantum event can be described with a mathematical probability as to the chances of that event actually occurring over a given period of time, until some other event occurs as a result of that event. This can be described as a “measurement,” or, put another way, the result is information. In some theories, this requires an Observer with some sort of apparatus to measure and decide the result (as in the classic Copenhagen Interpretation), and in others, any subsequent event that occurs within the realm of certain possibilities (such as the environment surrounding the event) is a measurement apparatus itself and determines what the result of the original event was (as with the more flexible Many-Worlds Interpretations).

In either case, at the most basic levels, darn near anything can happen, mathematically speaking. And with the Many-Worlds Interpretations, Observers are not required to determine what the hell just happened — which is handy, because we humans can’t go around watching Everything All the Time (though the Internet and web cams are probably changing that.). And in a Relatively short period of Time, other Things happen because of that first Thing — but what?

Here’s an interesting part: The Many-Worlds Interpretations take their name from the idea that those chains of events - and the mathematical possibilities of subsequent events that they spawn - branch off into separate sequences of events, becoming new Worlds on separate timelines and taking that information with them, branching further and further like the root system of a great tree or the neural pathways of the human brain, but going out to infinity. Infinite information, infinite possibilities, infinite worlds, each just as “real” as any other for the entities that live and experience them. Determinism, only on an infinite scale.

Remember that guy you met at that conference a couple of years ago, the one you thought about hooking up with? Well, in some Multiverse somewhere, you did (no, I’m not going to tell you if he was any good). The time you lifted $20 from your Mom’s wallet and snuck out late on that Friday night during the summer between 11th and 12th grades? Well, you still did it, but in another Multiverse, you also took Mom’s car without asking, and got caught (grounded for the rest of the summer in that Multiverse, what were you thinking?). Anything that you could have done, you did — somewhere, somewhen. Talk about Too Much Information…

All of this is, of course, going to make that eventual conversation with St. Peter at the Pearly Gates very, very complicated. But I digress.

Let’s get back to Joel’s Outlook column for a minute.

In a Multiverse where just about anything can happen, predicting exactly what will happen becomes infinitely difficult - or easy, depending on you point of view.

In one sense, it’s essentially impossible to predict the events on any given Multiversal timeline. On the other hand, anything anyone predicts is likely to come true, if they happen to be in the right place on the right timeline.

But ultimately, in the Future, as in the Now, shit happens.

Whether you expect it or not.

And in my case, I’m essentially Infinitely wrong, which should please my teenage daughters to no end.

bc 

Copyright by the author 2008, all rights reserved.

UPDATE, 4/14/08: Don’t forget to submit questions for Joel’s Chat, Live From the Future today.

Are Extrasolar planetary astronomers helping cause the slide of the American Housing market, and a possible economic Recession? 

Hot on the heels of last week’s announcement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that an Extrasolar Planet (that is, a planet that orbits a star other than out Sun) has organic methane in its atmosphere, is Marc Kaufman’s article in the Washington Post regarding efforts to locate Earthlike worlds.

Kaufmann writes, “This explosion in planetary discoveries is taking place at such warp speed that even those most intimately involved are often amazed — especially because their ultimate goal is nothing less than finding life elsewhere in the universe.”

While this may be nominally true, there is an unforeseen side effect: Those scientists are also finding more Real Estate, and some of it could be more desirable than what’s currently available here. Certainly, there are tax advantages to properties that are not governed by the Bush Administration or any of the current US state or municipal legislatures, much less by the laws of physics as we understand them.

With the housing market in a slump, glutted with available properties that are losing value by the minute, the last thing Realtors want to hear is that there are 277 confirmed Extrasolar planets coming on the market and available for development, with more being located every week it seems. And for the moment, these properties don’t have any Climate Change or Global Warming issues that they need to disclose to any potential home buyers either, which should increase profitability for Extrasolar beachfront properties (yes, we do know some of these planets have water). Expolanet HD 189733b appears to be quite close to its star, and rather warm - in the neighborhood of 1700 deg. F. - which your typical Realtor might describe as “ready for year-round beachgoing, and a perfect retirement location.”

The detection of methane in the atmosphere of property, er, planet HD 189733b has scientists quite excited at the moment, more so than the detection of water vapor in that planet’s atmosphere last year, it seems. Is it an indicator of exotic atmospheric chemistry, or perhaps an indicator that there may be some sort of ongoing long-term organic processes on that planet already?

Perhaps that methane is an indicator that there’s an Alien Retirement Community set up there already (remember, In Space, no one can hear you fart), and that we can save the name “New Florida” for some other hellishly hot, humid, methane-rich Real Estate.

Remember to ask your Realtor for “New Florida” by name, and to inquire soon, before prices - and mortgage loan rates - start going back up. When this planet gets too hot and too crowded, everyone’s going to be looking for some secluded Real Estate on the cheap to build a retirement home. Don’t wait until the last minute.

Besides, it’s going to take at least 63 years just to get there. And that’s a *long* ride in a Realtor’s car when they take you to visit.

bc

Copyright by the author 2008, all rights reserved.

Release: 10thcircle Wire News, January 14, 2008:

In a surprise move this morning, Republican and Democratic Presidential Candidates arrived on the planet Mercury this morning for a quick campaign stop to take advantage of the media coverage of the arrival of NASA’s Messenger spacecraft , the first such visit of an NASA probe in 34 years.

It is expected that the candidates’ campaign stops on the hottest and most hellish planet in the Solar System will translate to favorable caucus and primary results in warm weather states such as Nevada, the Carolinas and especially Florida on the run-up to the ExtraTerrestrial Tuesday primaries on February 5th.

John Edwards will reportedly visit every single crater on the surface of the planet in a whirlwind tour lasting four hours, while Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama will campaign from Mercury’s North and South poles in order to address both the dark and light sides from a single position (a Mercurial day lasts almost 59 Earth days, so the candidates will have to provide their own spin to address both sides) while appearing to keep as much distance as possible from each other.

Clinton and Obama’s campaigns continue to snipe at each other, with the Obama campaign claiming that Hillary’s choice of addressing the issues of both sides of the planet from the North Pole “unfortunate” and “ill-advised,” while Clinton’s people are speaking off the record that Obama is distorting Clinton’s position on Mercury due to Obama’s campaign failing to properly assess Mercury’s orbit by accounting for the effects of Einstein’s General Relativity and the warpage of spacetime so close to the sun, and claiming that it is indicative of Obama’s lack of experience in Interplanetary Affairs.

Dennis Kucinich is expected to do well on Mercury, as rumor has it that he has family and friends with winter homes there and regularly charters private flights to visit them.

Republican Candidates by and large are remaining in the dark on the planet, with John McCain being the notable exception. McCain is reported to have said that he doesn’t care what Fred Thompson thinks, he’s going out into the light and doesn’t care what damage that level of exposure may cause his skin; he’s 71 years old, for Pete’s sake.

Mitt Romney’s staff reportedly considered the idea of a “Mitt’s Mission to Mercury” media campaign but discarded it after a cost-benefit analysis.

Populist Mike Huckabee’s staff is hurriedly setting up a stage and his band’s instruments, we expect them to run through a set of music to include “Age of Aquarius,” “Space Oddity,” “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” and conclude with “Mercury Blues.”

NASA cameras expect to capture all of the action today, but the results are unlikely to be formally released until after February 5th.

We at the 10thcircle were able to locate a recent test photo of Mercury, and noted that one grassroots campaign team was far out ahead of the mainstream candidates:

Copyright by the Author 2008. All rights reserved.

Courtesy Joel Achenbach’s Achenblog, we found Garrett Lisi’s “An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything” simply (ahem) maps the Standard Model of Particle Physics and the properties of the interactions between them in a standard manifold of four-dimensional spacetime - including the long time SM bugaboo, gravity, which is why many physicists are so excited - to a very complex 3-dimensional spherical geometric model called E8:

Lisi uses E8 as a visual representation of the Standard Model, and it’s been referred to as a ‘Periodic Table of the Standard Model,’ which is a pretty cool way of describing it.

Curiously, this mathematical group was developed by a 19th century Norwegian mathematician by the ominous name of Sophus Lie, and is referred to as the Lie group E8, the largest of the Lie groups.  

Down here at the 10thcircle, we knew that Everything was a Big Lie a long, long time ago.

And that the important parts of the Universe are spherical and concentric, just like E8.

Here’s Hell:

And here’s Heaven (and the only view I’m likely to get of it):

bc

Copyright by the author 2007, all rights reserved.