Week in Review

The weather has not been too supportive for viewing the night sky, except I did see the moon yesterday, Sunday evening when I was goofing around with my dogs. The moon was in the South East at about 20 degrees above my horizon, it was a waxing gibbous moon. According to the Farmer’s Almanac, full moon will be on April 28th. Lots of interesting stuff in that Almanac. For example: Tonight (Monday, April 27.) the moon will rise at 6:41pm, the sun will set at 8:34pm, so the moon is chasing the sun around the sky. Well, we know better, but from my vantage point, that’s what it looked like. If we get a clear night, we might be able to find Saturn, but the light from the approaching full moon might make it difficult to spot anything in the sky. Saturn will rise at 4:33pm and will be in the South, about 40 degrees above the horizon or about half way between the horizon and the zenith at about 10pm.

Most of this week was devoted finishing our labs, making sure all documents were submitted and getting ready for our online test. Never cared much for tests, but what the heck. Got to do them. Love the math stuff; wish I had just a bit more time working with it. The gravity formula or knowing how to calculate the mass of the sun or any other planet, not sure if that is really that important for my business major, but it sure is fascinating. Let’s talk about big numbers. For example, F=gm1 m2/r^2 OK, I can memorize this, plug in then numbers in a calculator and come up with an answer. We know that Newton’s constant is really small; mass of the sun is really big, the result is the force of gravity – but I am not sure what to do with that number.  It means something, but I am not sure what.

I think our brain is not wired to handle really big ideas. The cosmos is such a thing; it is difficult to grasp the idea of size and space, especially for amateurs like me. It is not just astronomical numbers we have difficulties to grasp; we have difficulties to understand the size of our national deficit. What is a trillion dollar? One can find all kinds of description of how large a stack of a trillion dollar bill would be, and yes we understand it is big but we really don’t know until we see it. The first time I truly understood how big the universe is when I was driving from somewhere to somewhere in the middle of Idaho or Montana in the middle of the night. I had to stop for a pee break and I pulled over to the side of the road, shut down the engine, shut off the lights and went out to do my business. It was a perfect still night, cold and clear, not a sound except the occasional pinging sound from the cooling engine and exhaust from my car. The air smelled clear and fresh. As I was standing there I looked up into the sky and I saw the most amazing thing. A sky with billions and billions of stars, I don’t remember ever seeing so many stars. That sight was so overwhelming, I just about fell over. There is no computer animation, no picture, and no description that can duplicate what I saw. It was immense; I still remember that night as if it happened yesterday. In a way it was intoxicating. To this day I continue to have this urge to go to Montana, somewhere far away from any artificial light and look up at the sky… just look and wonder.