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Light unto the end of the Universe...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 775
Or, more simply put - Olbers's Paradox. If the sky is filled with stars - and it is - then why at night is it dark?
To quote the Wiki:
The theory that the night sky should be filled with light from the infinitude of stars that present themselves....
Arguments that explain it away:
#1) Big Bang - time has not allowed the light to reach here.
Nope. I hate to say it but I don't buy the Big Bang theory. There are problems with it. Many, many problems, too many to lay out here. But before you second guess my skepticism let me remind you that it's losing it's cache even as we're talking now -
#2) Gravity could deflect and concentrate those infinitude of tiny, distant stars into larger and larger stars, merging the wavelengths of a thousand distant stars into one - or black holes could deflect and suck the light in, creating black voids.
This is probably true. But true for many instances does not explain all the instances. Maybe it does? But while we're brainstorming here...
#3) That as light travels, it shifts red or blue - coming towards us, heading away from us. And that shift takes it off the visible spectrum. So the night sky is in fact filled with light, but beyond the spectrums our eyes can see.
So the night sky presents itself to us as black but is in fact filled with more colors than our eyes can perceive.
More below:
via Scientific American: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-is-the-night-sky-dark/
via Emma Osborne: https://www.ogdentrust.com/assets/media/THS_Emma_Osborne_Physics_Essay_-_Olbers_paradox.pdf
Clutter
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 799
And, getting nowhere in the departments that matter, in a holding pattern of sorts, I finally take it upon myself to clear the table.
I really need a desk.
The table, piled high with notes, pertinent and largely irrelevant, is a source of Anxiety. Like the dishes piled beside the sink and the unmade bed. SO - 2 minutes later and the table is cleared. That's how long it takes. The table is cleared and I can begin to "concentrate" on the project(s) I need to get done.
1 at a time.
This clutter, it's an externalization of my mental processes, an extension, I need only to review my notes to see, abundant notes, 100, 000 words where I only needed 1000, but the RIGHT words, the RIGHT phrasing, there is an alchemy to their combining, a recipe, a rhythm that I hit upon only occasionally, that I need to exercise, find the flow.
There are - so far as I know - 2 forms of creation. One, the generative - building, things upon things, growth - add letter to letter, build a word, word to word to build a sentence, sentence to paragraph to chapter to novel. So it goes. The other form, destructive, hammering upon stone to free the form you imagine is imprisoned within.
I am somewhere between them both, add, edit, revise, add some more, edit, revise, from a page of notes I - if I am lucky, inspired, quick, find a paragraph or verse. And begin it again, write another page, then reduce, edit, compress, scratch out, erase, write again, and - perhaps - another paragraph at the end.
So it goes.
Concentrates from Trail
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
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Concentrates I saved from a panning trip with Chris to Trail.
Pictured - under the USB microscope - abundant quartz, garnet, some what appears to be spessartine garnet (orange), hematite spheres (lots of those), various amphiboles, peridot, etc, etc.
Anyways, a lot of pretty pictures. But - as far as I could see - no definite diamonds or other gems.
For those that go past the read-more - find the "Alien" head. And the Death Star. And the hexagonal grain with the perfect circle in one face, like ...? I dunno.
If you're better advised as to geology than I and want to share your analysis/identification of any of these photos - by all means, get in touch.
And, as this could get boring real quick for you I'll insert a read more:
Lost Island of Gold - Kingdom of Srivijaya
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
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For the last five years, fishermen and divers on the Musi River near Palembang (on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia) have been bringing up gold rings, jewelry, seals, encrusted Buddhas and other treasures, leading Archeologists to suspect they may have discovered the "Lost Island of Gold", or the Kingdom of Srivijaya.
Via the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/22/have-sumatran-fishing-crews-found-the-fabled-island-of-gold
or the Daily Mail (Worse Journalism, Better Pictures): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10122973/Lost-Island-Gold-Sumatran-fishermen.html
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