Today's selection-- from Alien Earths by Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger. Discovering planets in other parts of the galaxy is hard:
“The discovery of new worlds outside our solar system started with a mystery: a tiny wobble. In 1995 two Swiss astronomers, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, whom we met earlier, detected a weird signal from the star 51 Pegasi. The star, a near twin to our own Sun, about fifty light-years away from Earth, unexpectedly wobbled back and forth on its stellar journey. And stars don't wobble for no reason.
“Majestic Jupiter, the biggest planet in our solar system, contains the vast majority of the material left over from our Sun's creation and provided the first clues as to what afflicted 51 Pegasi. Jupiter makes our Sun wobble just a tiny bit. Jupiter is a humongous ball of swirling gas around a rocky core a dozen Earths big. This colossal gas giant, the fifth planet from the Sun, out beyond Mars, is a sight to behold: stunning patterns of storms cover the whole planet. Monstrous weather systems stir and twist the gases and paint the planet in patterns that look like van Gogh's The Starry Night.
“If Jupiter were an empty box, all the other planets could fit into it and there'd still be room to spare. Jupiter dwarfs the Earth; you would need to put seventy Earths, one next to the other, to make a belt for Jupiter's middle (a fresh idea for a Halloween costume!). Powerful wind speeds exceeding 400 miles ( ~ 600 km) per hour create some of the largest storms in the solar system. One of them, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, has been observed for over a century—and is large enough to easily engulf Earth. Voyager 1—the spacecraft carrying the Golden Record out of the solar system-sent back the first detailed images of this gigantic storm in 1979.
“But compared to the Sun, Jupiter is a lightweight. If Jupiter were a tablespoon of water, the Sun would be a four-gallon jug. If you had a cosmic set of scales, you would need about a thousand tablespoons of water on one side (a pile of Jupiters) to balance the Sun on the other side. In this comparison, Earth would be the size of a waterdrop. To balance the Sun on these cosmic scales, you'd need to place about three hundred thousand waterdrops (a humongous amount of Earths) on the other side. All the planets in our solar system together would make the cosmic scale tilt only a minuscule bit. The Sun is just so massive. The disk surrounding a nascent star contains only a tiny part of the material that creates the star at its center, and that disk forms all of its planets.
“It would take about a hundred Earths to span the diameter of the Sun. To imagine this, line up one hundred peppercorns on the floor. (Pro tip: it is extremely helpful if the peppercorns are not the same color as the floor. In my first trial, I used black peppercorns on a dark floor, which, in hindsight, was not the smartest choice.) The one-hundred-peppercorn line shows the vast size of the Sun compared to our Pale Blue Dot. You would need more than one million Earths to fill the inside of the Sun ( volume is proportional to radius cubed).
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| Sunset studies on Titan by Cassini help understand exoplanet atmospheres (artist's concept). |
“So finding an exoplanet in the vast cosmos is extremely hard. If you wanted to find a planet circling another star, what kind would be the easiest to locate? Astronomers looked around our solar system and chose as their prototype the biggest, most massive planet to look for somewhere else: Jupiter.
“The Sun's gravity loses some of its pull at the colossal giant planet's distance, so Jupiter does not need to travel as fast as the Earth to counter its gravitational pull. The balance between gravity and speed determines how long it takes for a planet to complete a circle around its star. While Earth does it in one year, Jupiter takes a leisurely eleven Earth years to circle the Sun. Knowing they would have a slightly easier time finding massive planets like Jupiter than finding tiny Earths, astronomers settled in for a decade-long search.
Like the other giant planets in our solar system, Jupiter consists mostly of gas and ice because it formed far enough away from the hot Sun that ice and gas did not evaporate, leaving massive amounts of planet-building material as we have seen. It's cold beyond the ice line. Jupiter receives only one photon for every twenty-five photons Earth gets.
“Planets are different than stars in more ways than just their size. They do not have nuclear-fusion reactors in their cores, so they do not produce energy and they do not shine. Like our Moon, they just reflect the starlight that hits them. That makes planets tiny, dim objects, incredibly hard to spot beside a huge, illuminating star. Seen from space, the Sun is more than one billion times brighter than Earth to our eyes. Think of it this way: one billion seconds is about thirty-one and a half years. If we compare the numbers not in brightness but in time, you would have to wait more than thirty-one and a half years of starlight to get one second of light from the planet. The light of an Earth is drowned out by the light of its host star.
“But planet hunters have clever ways of finding their quarry. When you look up at night, you can see thousands of stars moving across the sky. In most cases, what appears to be the motion of the stars is actually the result of the Earth rotating around its axis and circling the Sun. But sometimes, there is an additional, unexpected motion, an indication that we’ve spotted something truly spectacular. Because even lightweight planets tug—just a little—on their heavyweight hosts. Both the star and its planet counter the other's gravitational pull by adding a little extra to their movements. Because the star is so much more massive, it wobbles only slightly if a planetary companion tugs on it. But that tiny wobble makes all the difference. It led astronomers to discover the first new worlds on our cosmic shore.”
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| author: Dr. Lisa Kaltenegger | |||
| title: Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos | |||
| publisher: St. Martin's Press | |||
| date: | |||
| page(s): 159-163 |
Edith Wilson Biden (Nee Jill Giacoppo)
This is not the first time that an invalid has occupied the Oval Office. After apparently exhausting himself in behalf of the “War to Make the World Safe for Democracy” and orchestrating the “peace conference” at Versailles that guaranteed the carnage of WWII, Woodrow Wilson succumbed to a nearly fatal stroke in October 1919 while barnstorming the nation in behalf of the League of Nations Treaty.
As it happened, America was than blessed with a perfectly serviceable Vice-President, Thomas R. Marshall, who had been a famous Midwestern lawyer, governor of Indiana, outspoken “progressive” and contender for the Democrat nomination in 1912.
Wilson won the nomination on the 46th ballot but only after his advisers secretly promised Marshall the vice presidency in a very smoked-filled room in the wee hours of the Dem convention.
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Perhaps that is why Marshall’s most famous quote is known to almost everyone more than 100 years later. Thus, observed America’s #2 leader—
“What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar.”
Notwithstanding Marshall’s status as a second term almost-president, Edith Wilson was having none of a succession plan. And that’s despite the fact she did not have a degree in “education” nor did she answer to the “Dr. Edith” title.
But she had proven herself around Washington as no mean hostess when she slipped into the First Lady role during and/0r after (it’s disputed!) the illness and death of Wilson’s first wife in 1915. Either way, Edith Wilson was not about to disembark from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue solely because her husband was virtually paralyzed on the entire left side of his body.
Indeed, the extent of her intrigues and deceptions designed to hang on to power are now legendary. As medical historian, Howard Markel, has told,
Everything changed on the morning of Oct. 2, 1919. According to some accounts, the president awoke to find his left hand numb to sensation before falling into unconsciousness. In other versions, Wilson had his stroke on the way to the bathroom and fell to the floor with Edith dragging him back into bed. However those events transpired, immediately after the president’s collapse, Mrs. Wilson discretely phoned down to the White House chief usher, Ike Hoover and told him to “please get Dr. Grayson, the president is very sick.”
Grayson quickly arrived. Ten minutes later, he emerged from the presidential bedroom and the doctor’s diagnosis was terrible: “My God, the president is paralyzed,” Grayson declared.
What would surprise most Americans today is how the entire affair, including Wilson’s extended illness and long-term disability, was shrouded in secrecy. In recent years, the discovery of the presidential physicians’ clinical notes at the time of the illness confirm that the president’s stroke left him severely paralyzed on his left side and partially blind in his right eye, along with the emotional maelstroms that accompany any serious, life-threatening illness, but especially one that attacks the brain. Only a few weeks after his stroke, Wilson suffered a urinary tract infection that threatened to kill him. Fortunately, the president’s body was strong enough to fight that infection off but he also experienced another attack of influenza in January of 1920, which further damaged his health.
Protective of both her husband’s reputation and power, Edith shielded Woodrow from interlopers and embarked on a bedside government that essentially excluded Wilson’s staff, the Cabinet and the Congress. During a perfunctory meeting the president held with Sen. Gilbert Hitchcock (D-Neb.) and Albert Fall (R-N.M.) on Dec. 5, Grayson and Edith even tried to hide the extent of Wilson’s paralysis by keeping his left side covered with a blanket.
As it turned out, the immobilization of the presidency during the last 18 months of Wilson’s term was one of history’s great serendipity’s. Absent Wilson’s tireless promotion, the abominable League of Nations Treaty died aborning. America was thus given one more chance to return to its ways as a peaceful Republic untroubled by the petty intrigues of nations beyond the great Atlantic and Pacific Ocean moats.
Needless to say, that reprieve has long since been kicked away. America is now a dangerous Empire and its president is virtually the helmsman of the planet. So the fact that Jill Biden has apparently read and copied the entirety of professor Markel’s account of America’s first Spousal Regency is troubling indeed.
It was evident beyond a shadow of a doubt last Thursday night that a second Spousal Regency is now underway. “Joe Biden” would have received his gold watch from Washington’s grateful ruling apparatchiks long ago, save for the obvious fact that Jill Biden has said that absolutely “nyet means nyet”.
At this point, of course, it would be helpful if Jill did speak a bit of Russian because the minions helping her conduct this unauthorized, unlawful and constitutionally- repugnant Regency have gotten her marooned in what amounts to an hellacious Moscow Winter. Alas, however, it appears that her second language lies elsewhere.
That is to say, Jill Jacobs Giacoppo’s tribal ferocity did not originate from the bucolic hills of Willow Grove Pennsylvania or the classrooms of Upper Moreland High School or even the instructors at Brandywine Junior College. Her father’s family had emigrated from the Sicilian village of Gesso, losing the “Giacoppo” part within days of passing Lady Liberty, but hanging on to the blood loyalty part even unto the present fraught hour.
That is to say, Edith Wilson Biden is a clear and present danger to the American Republic. She has spent the last 47 years marinating in the self-righteous hypocrisies, follies and evil-doings of the Washington ruling class—without ever once have been called to accountability by any kind of electorate at all.
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Like Edith Wilson, she was apparently an able spouse and hostess—who taught classes at Northern Virginia Community College on the side and was pleased to call herself “doctor” owing to a quasi-honorary degree from the Biden family’s political sinecure at the University of Delaware.
And yet and yet. Jill Giacoppo is an utterly unqualified usurper, who has even less excuse for her blatant power grab than did Edith Wilson back in the day. At least in Edith’s time there was no 25th Amendment to regularize, organize and legitimize the transfer of power to the constitutionally prescribed role of Vice President.
To be specific, section 4 of the 25th Amendment addresses the precise case of a President unable to fulfill his constitutional role but who cannot or will not step aside.
In that event, it provides both a decision-maker and a procedure. The deciding group is the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet. If this group declares a President “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” the Vice President immediately becomes Acting President; and he remains so unless a two-thirds majority of both chamber reinstate the former president.
So why was “Joe Biden” still in the Oval Office last Thursday night making a spectacle of his very disabled self before a global audience of 51 million?
Today's selection -- from Things That Go Bump in the Universe by C. Renée James. The violent death of a star:
“Because of its mass, the Sun's fate might not be particularly exciting, but plenty of stars do explode. To create the sort of supernova that Zwicky and Baade envisioned, you need to start with a star whose mass is between 9 and 25 times that of the Sun. Those stars are not easy to come by. Less than one in 100,000 stars are born with such heft, and those that are die in a flash. If the Sun's entire 10-billion-year life were compressed into a day, a star with 10 times its mass would be gone in about three minutes. A star with 25 times its mass would be gone in less than a minute. Of the millions of stars within 1,000 light-years of Earth, there is only one monstrous 25-solar-mass cosmic mayfly—Zeta Puppis, also known as Naos—and even it is likely a hair farther than 1,000 light-years.
“In the simplest explanation, the life of a star is dictated by how rapidly it uses up its own fuel stores, and this pace is determined by the unforgiving laws of physics. The nuclei of four hydrogen atoms can fuse into the nucleus of a single helium atom while converting some of the original mass to energy only in environments of extreme temperatures and pressures. The most-massive stars have such extreme environments in spades, and as a consequence they burn through their hydrogen at a rate tens of thousands times that of the Sun. If the Sun swaddles a billion Krakatoas each second in its core, these stars cradle tens of trillions. The end result is the same, though. Eventually both gluttons and dainty eaters will consume all the hydrogen on their plate (in their core), and this is where a star's mass makes all the difference.
“There is a poster in nearly every Astronomy 101 classroom that illustrates the seemingly unremarkable track that the Sun and its ilk will take from hydrogen fusion to giant to planetary nebula to white dwarf. The same poster reveals the slightly more exciting fate of the one-in-a-million stars with significantly higher masses. The extreme environment that allowed for hydrogen fusion shrinks, forcing helium nuclei to join to make carbon, oxygen, neon, magnesium, sulfur, and ever heavier atomic nuclei. Each new fusion channel is shorter and shorter in duration as the star's core desperately tries to squeeze another bit of life from the nuclear mass. All the while, the dying star's outer layers are swelling, and the star morphs into a supergiant.
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| The Cat's Eye Nebula, a planetary nebula formed by the death of a star with about the same mass as the Sun |
“When the core fuses its contents into iron, the star is done. Unable to produce further energy, but equally unable to efficiently shed the energy it has created, the heart of this seething monster hits temperatures of several billion degrees Celsius and densities billions of times that of water. Although the star has spent its entire life working to create its iron core, the high-energy light trapped within now destroys it, ripping apart the iron nuclei.
“It might not be immediately obvious why this should be a problem for the star, but pulling so much light energy out of the core to disintegrate the iron nuclei is like pulling out the first of many support blocks. The balance of light and particles and gravity was already a precarious one, with gravity held at bay largely by the outward push of electrons in the core. That balance is tipped ever so slightly by the removal of light energy and the rearrangement of the core's particles. The core begins to collapse, and as it collapses, it becomes hotter and denser. Soon, protons and electrons, typically holding each other at arm's length by the rules of subatomic particles, join to become neutrons. Taking all that like-charge repulsion out of the picture is like removing the last support block. The core has nothing left to hold itself up until the nuclear forces between the neutrons put a halt to the madness.
“All of this plays out in less than a second. In the time between the tick and the tock, the core has compressed almost to the point of vanishing, becoming even more intensely hot and dense in the process. Now 100 billion degrees Celsius and 100 trillion times as dense as water (about 100 million times as dense as a white dwarf), this least extreme forge of a massive star crafts a newly minted neutron star. The energy generated in this final dramatic act of the stellar core blows the rest of the star to kingdom come in a heartbeat.
“And that's what a not-so-well-behaved star can do.”
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| author: C. Renée James | |||
| title: Things That Go Bump in the Universe: How Astronomers Decode Cosmic Chaos | |||
| publisher: John's Hopkins University Press |
