The North Star

“Right is of no sex-Truth is of no color-God is the father of us all, and all we are brethren.” – Motto of Frederick Douglass’ paper The North Star.

In 1847, Frederick Douglass founded the paper The North Star in Rochester, New York.  As one would expect, it pertained to the abolitionist movement but also to women and educational rights as well.  The title for the paper came from the star that gave direction for tens of thousands of slaves who, via the Underground Railroad (Douglass himself had found freedom on a real above ground train.), made their way to points north towards non-slave states and into Canada.  The Underground Railroad was not a railroad per se, but a network of safe houses for slaves to stop by on their journey to freedom.  The celestial North Star not only provides direction, but can tell you what latitude you currently are located.

Credit: Library of Congress.  A readable, high resolution image can be accessed here.

The North Star is formally known as Polaris, derived from the Latin phrase stella polaris or star near the pole.  The North Star is situated in space almost directly above the North Pole.  As a result, the North Star appears stationary in the sky as the Earth rotates as can be seen in the time lapse image atop this post.  The North Star is located in the Little Dipper at the tip of the handle.  A common error is to think the North Star is located at the tip of the nearby, more prominent, Big Dipper.  You can, however, use the Big Dipper to help locate the North Star.

Little Dipper
Image from Starry Nights.

The two stars at the end of the Big Dipper will point you directly to the North Star Polaris.  Once you locate Polaris, you have given yourself a sense of direction.  You can also determine your latitude as well.

Latitude and longitude can be a source of confusion.  Latitude is a measure of north-south direction while longitude is a gauge of east-west direction.  This coordinate framework is of European origin and you can remember it in terms of European explorers sailing west to the Americas.  Longitude is a measure of how “long” one traveled on those trips and latitude is a measure of lateral “up and down” movement.

LatLong
Credit: Wiki Commons

If you are at the North Pole, the North Star will lie directly overhead or 90 degrees above the horizon.  The North Pole is also located at 90 degrees latitude while the equator is at 0 degrees latitude.  If you were to trek down from the North Pole to the equator, for every degree latitude south you travel, the North Star would drop one degree towards the horizon.  Eventually, as you reached the equator, the North Star would lie at the horizon.  Thus, your present latitude is equal to the degree the North Star is above the horizon.

If one were to travel from Atlanta, which is 33 degrees latitude to Buffalo which is located on the Canadian border at 43 degrees latitude, the North Star would rise from a third above the horizon to the overhead point to almost halfway above the horizon towards the overhead point.  This is why navigators would use sextants to measure the altitude of the North Star above the horizon.  Those making their way on the Underground Railroad did not have access to such technology.  Instead, they made their way via verbal and musical instructions.  The Little Dipper was referred to as the Drinking Gourd, a reference to hollowed out gourds slaves used to dip into water.  So what exactly were the slaves following to freedom?

Polaris is a star that has a radius fifty times larger than our Sun.  The supergiant is about the same temperature as the Sun, but as a result of its size, is some 2,000 times brighter.  It is located 434 light years away.  That means when you look at Polaris, the light photons entering your eyes left Polaris around the year 1588 or around the same time the Spanish Armada was defeated.  Polaris is not alone.  It has two companion stars, Polaris B and Polaris Ab.  Polaris B can be seen with the aid of a small telescope, but Polaris Ab required the resolving power of the Hubble to image it.  The result is below.

By stretching the capabilities of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to the limit, astronomers have photographed the close companion of Polaris for the first time. Credit: NASA, ESA, N. Evans (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA), and H. Bond (STScI)

Polaris itself is a Cepheid variable star that dims and brightens over a cycle lasting about four days.  The change in brightness is too small to detect with the naked eye.  Polaris has not always been the North Star, and in the future, will cease to be the North Star.  This is caused by the precession of Earth’s axis.  The video below demonstrates this effect.

Over a 26,000 year period, the Earth’s axis rotates in a circle much like a spinning top.  During this cycle, the Earth’s axis will point to other stars than Polaris so that multiple stars take on the role as the North Star.  At times, the Earth’s axis does not point to any star at all meaning no star serves as a North Star.  The image below shows how the North Celestial Pole, the point in space directly above the Earth’s North Pole, migrates during the 26,000 year axial precession cycle.

The circle represents the North Celestial Pole. Stars that lie close to the circle serve as North Stars as the Earth’s axis precesses. The bright star that will be the North Star around 14000 AD is Vega. The North Star around 3000 BC (-3000 on the image) is Thuban. Polaris makes its closest approach to the North Celestial Pole in 2100 AD. Credit: Wiki Commons

Today, Polaris is actually about a half degree off from the North Celestial Pole.  Polaris will continue to move closer to the North Celestial Pole until March 24, 2100.  After that, Polaris will move away from the pole and will eventually lose its status as the North Star until the Earth’s axis completes another 26,000 year precession cycle.  For now though, we get to gaze upon Polaris as the North Star as many have in our recent history, including those on the Underground Railroad making their way to freedom.

Today, the stars are rarely used for navigation.  In particular, GPS has rendered stellar navigation as obsolete.  While technology has changed the North Star’s role as a navigational aid, human nature has not evolved as much.  The Polaris Project, named for the star used formally by Americans to escape slavery, combats human trafficking and slavery around the globe today.  Polaris continues to be an inspiration for those seeking freedom from the worst kind of oppression humanity has to endure.   It is a history that few, if any, celestial objects can match.

*Image on top of post shows the stationary North Star Polaris in time lapse photography.  Credit:  © Copyright Ashley Dace and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Opposition

By that, I am not referring to the latest escapades in American politics, but when planets reach opposition with Earth.  During this time, the planet lies opposite of the Earth from the Sun.  Why should we care about this?  When opposition occurs, this is a planet’s closest approach to Earth and is the optimal time to observe it.  On September 26th, Jupiter was in opposition as you can see below.

Jupiter in opposition on September 26th as seen in Starry Nights

As Jupiter and the Sun are on opposite sides of the Earth, when the Sun set in the west on September 26th, Jupiter rose in the east.  The following morning, as the Sun rose in the east, Jupiter set in the west.  Hence, Jupiter was visible all night.  Also, Jupiter’s day side was facing the Earth, allowing astronomers to capture the shadows of Jupiter’s moons eclipsing the surface of the giant planet.

Three moons eclipsing Jupiter. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona)

While the optimal time to observe any planet that resides outside of Earth’s orbit is during opposition, historically, the opposition of Mars tends to draw the most anticipation.  Today, the approaching opposition of Mars heralds the opening of launch windows to the red planet.  During the late 1800’s, some astronomers observed Mars during opposition in the hope of discovering signs of intelligent life.

Before the age of space exploration, astronomers especially anticipated what is referred to as perihelic oppositions of Mars.  During these oppositions, which occur every 15 or 17 years, Mars is close to perihelion.  That is when Mars is closest to the Sun in its orbit (in Greek, peri means close and helion is the Sun).  And if Mars is at its closest point to the Sun, it is also at its closest point to the Earth if this occurs during opposition. During the 19th century, the perihelic opposition of Mars in 1877 and 1892 would alter our perception of Earth’s closest neighbor for decades to come.

In 1877, at the Brera Observatory in Milan, Giovanni Schiaparelli was mapping the surface of Mars with an 8.6 inch refractor.  In drawing his maps, Schiaparelli employed the same terminology used for the Moon.  Dark areas were referred to as seas and lighter areas as land.  This was not meant to be taken literally.  For example, the Sea of Tranquility, where Apollo 11 landed, is not actually a sea but a dark area (or mare) of basaltic rock.  More important than these distinctions, were the dark lines on Mars that Schiaparelli drew on his maps referred to as canali.

Schiaparalli map of Mars. Credit: Wiki Commons.

Schiaparalli intended the word canali to be interpreted as channel.  However, businessman turned astronomer enthusiast Percival Lowell interpreted canali as canal.  This preconception influenced Lowell as he made observations of Mars during the next perihelic opposition in 1892.  In what is referred today as confirmation bias, Lowell proceeded to take his observations as evidence of an advanced civilization on Mars that built irrigation canals from the polar regions to transport water to the arid mid-latitudes.  Lowell would continue to advance his case until he passed away in 1916.  While this theory did not pan out, it did inspire quite a bit of science fiction (good and bad) during the following half century.

Lowell announces latest discovery of canals on Mars. New York Times, August 27, 1911.
Lowell announces latest discovery of canals on Mars. New York Times, August 27, 1911.  Click on image for full resolution.

Lowell did go on to build the Lowell Observatory, where Pluto was discovered.  It is still active with a recently built 4.3 meter telescope.  Located in Flagstaff, the observatory offers tours for the public.

In all fairness to Lowell, he was not the only one to postulate that life might exist on Mars.  The article below from August 7, 1892, presents a proposal from the Kew Observatory in London to attempt to communicate with beings on Mars via a light beam projected from Earth to Mars.  This is a prototype for modern SETI projects.

Credit: New York Times
Credit: New York Times

With rovers on the surface and satellites in orbit around Mars, we no longer rely on opposition events for close up views of the red planet.  However, we do rely on opposition to open up launch windows to Mars.  As a Mars opposition occurs every 26 months, if a mission is unable to launch due to technical or budgetary issues, it has to wait another two years for the next launch window to open.  The video below shows the trajectory of the Mars Science Laboratory which landed the rover Curiosity on the surface.

On August 27, 2003, another perihelic opposition put Mars closer to Earth than at anytime during the past 60,000 years.  Actually, the differences in perihelic oppositions are difficult to discern with the naked eye.  Nonetheless, the event launched an annual internet meme every August stating that Mars will appear as large as a full Moon.  Even in 2003, this did not come close to happening.  For Mars to appear as large as the full Moon, it would have to be located about a half million, rather than 34 million, miles from Earth.  If Mars was to appear as large as a full Moon, something much more bizarre than opposition would have to be happening.  So come August, if you see that meme on social media, it is safe to ignore it.

However, I do not recommend missing the opposition of Mars on December 8th this year.  Just have realistic expectations of what to see.  If the skies are cloudy on that date, worry not, Mars will be very bright in the skies for weeks to follow.  As Mars approaches opposition, you will be able to discern its reddish hue with the naked eye.  The next perihelic opposition of Mars will be on September 15, 2035.

2018 perihelic Mars opposition via Starry Night.
2018 perihelic Mars opposition via Starry Night.  Click on image for higher resolution.

During the 2020 launch window, the Perseverance mission began its voyage to Mars.  The mission, just as in the 1892 opposition, will explore for signs of life on Mars.  This time, rather than searching for an advanced civilization, the mission will seek out signs of microbial life during Mars ancient history when water flowed on the surface.  While the search for intelligent life has moved beyond the Solar System, the missions launched today will afford us a view of Mars that Giovanni Schiaparelli and Percival Lowell could only dream about.

*Image on top of post is Percival Lowell at the observatory he founded in Flagstaff, Arizona in 1912.  Credit:  Mary Evans Picture Library.

Great Scot

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” – Issac Newton

While in elementary school, I learned of the giants in science.  There was Newton himself, along with Galileo, Copernicus, and even Aristotle whose ideas were overturned by the great Renaissance scholars.  Yet one name overlooked was James Clerk Maxwell.  This is an oddity, as we frequently experimented in class with the concepts of electricity and magnetism.  Maxwell’s work, expressed in four equations, provides all the theoretical underpinning for the properties of electromagnetic waves.  Much of the technological transformation of everyday life in the 20th century is influenced one way or another by Maxwell’s breakthroughs.

maxwell1869
James Clerk Maxwell and his wife Katherine, and one cool looking sheepdog. 1869. Credit: Wiki Commons.

When Maxwell published his A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field a few months before the end of the American Civil War, his theory did not take the form of the four equations so familiar to physics students.  Maxwell presented his ideas in twenty equations.  The simplification occurred a couple decades later as Oliver Heaviside made significant advancements in vector calculus.  This allowed Heaviside to simplify, to the good fortune of future physicists, Maxwell’s results.

Maxwell’s work highlighted the key difference between electric and magnetic fields.  Electric fields can flow away or towards a point source.  An electric field will flow away from a positive charge but flow towards a negative charge.  Consequently, if you surround an electric charge with a closed surface, the electric flux (number of field lines) leaving that surface will be proportional to the charge.

Charge
Credit: Wiki Commons

Friction can cause a migration of negatively charged electrons from one material to another creating static electricity.  This is what happens to cloths in a dryer as the material with an excess of negative charges will cling to the material with an excess of positive charges as opposite charges attract.  Cling free sheets release a lubricant to decrease friction in the dryer so there is no buildup of static electricity.  Another household item, the refrigerator magnet, generates a different type of field also explained by Maxwell.

A magnetic field is fundamentally different in that it requires two poles.  While a positive or negative electric charge can exist in isolation, a magnetic north pole is always accompanied by a southern magnetic pole and vise versa.  Unlike an electric field where field lines flow away or towards a single charge, a magnetic field acts as a continuous loop.   As a result, if you put a magnetic pole inside a closed surface, whatever magnetic flux emerges from the surface eventually reenters the surface.  Thus, the magnetic flux of a closed surface is zero.
Credit: Wiki Commons

An example of this is the Earth, which acts like a giant bar magnet.  However, the Earth’s magnetic field is continually buffeted by the solar wind which deforms its shape.  On the day side facing the Sun, the magnetic field is compressed.  On the night side facing away from the Sun, the magnetic field is blown away by the solar wind into a tail much like a comet.  As the solar wind is constantly changing velocity and direction, the Earth’s magnetic field is dynamic in nature as can be seen below.

Credit: NASA Goddard/SWRC/CCMC/SWMF

Maxwell was able to demonstrate through his equations how a changing magnetic field will produce electric fields.  In the case of the Earth, a perturbation of the magnetic field by a strong solar event can induce electric fields in the atmosphere.  In 1859, just six years before Maxwell published his work on electromagnetic fields, the strongest magnetic event in recorded history occurred. On September 1st, from his solar observatory 25 miles south of London, Richard Carrington observed a major solar flare.  The following night, the disruption in the Earth’s magnetic field produced aurora as far south as Cuba and induced electrical currents to the extent that telegraph operators were able to send messages even when the batteries were disconnected.  The original New York Times report on the magnetic storm can be read here.

A more recent event transpired in 1989 when a magnetic storm caused a twelve hour blackout in the province of Quebec and aurora displays as far south as Florida.  The disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field induced an overload in the electrical grid creating the blackout.  As society becomes more and more dependent on electrical devices such as cell phones, space weather forecaster takes on a greater significance.  A repeat of the 1859 event would cause significant disruption in the electrical grid and is why a premium is placed on producing better space weather prediction models.

While a changing magnetic field will produce an electric field, a changing electric field also produces a magnetic field.  When combined, changing electric and magnetic fields form something of a symbiotic relationship which produces an electromagnetic wave.  An example of such is below.

E = electric field, B = magnetic field. Credit: Wiki Commons

The term electromagnetic (EM) wave may sound foreboding, but we experience these waves in our daily lives in the form of radio, microwave, light, ultraviolet, and x-rays.  What differentiates between one type of wave and another is the wavelength.  Long wavelength radiation, such as radio, are low in energy while short wavelength radiation, such as x-rays, are high in energy.

Credit: NASA

During Maxwell’s life, light (visible, infrared, and ultraviolet) was the only EM radiation known to exist.  The hallmark of a valid theory is to make successful predictions and in Maxwell’s case, his theory predicted other forms of electromagnetic radiation that would have the same properties as light.  That it could be diffracted, reflected, polarized, and would have the same velocity.  Heinrich Hertz discovered radio and microwaves in 1888, Wilhelm Roentgen discovered x-rays in 1895, and Paul Villard discovered gamma rays in 1900.  Astronomers, no longer restricted to observing the universe in the optical range of the EM spectrum, now use an armada of radio, infrared, ultraviolet, and x-ray telescopes to obtain a much deeper understanding of the heavens.  The video below demonstrates how the Crab Nebula appears in various parts of the EM spectrum.

Another prediction from Maxwell’s work would spark a revolution in physics in the 20th century.  His equations calculated the speed of light (or any other EM wave) to be a constant at 3.00 × 108 m/s (186,282 miles per second).  The key here is the word constant, which means the speed of light is the same regardless of your velocity towards or away from it.  To use an analogy, if you are driving on a highway at a speed of 60 mph, and the car in the next lane is traveling at 65 mph, you will be passed by that vehicle at a rate of 5 mph.  Now, lets pretend you are traveling in a car exactly 5 mph less than the speed of light.  If a light beam was next to you, your life experience would make you think the light, just like the car, would pass you at a rate of 5 mph.  However, your intuition would be wrong, the light beam would pass you at the speed of light just the same as if you were standing still. 

What gives?

This was a mystery that baffled physicists for half a century and one reason it took a few decades for Maxwell’s work to be fully accepted.  Maxwell predicted EM radiation could travel in a vacuum at the speed of light.  The prevailing wisdom at the time was EM radiation would need a medium, such as air provides for a sound wave, and it would travel at different velocities relative to its direction in the medium then referred to as ether.  In 1887, Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed an experiment that would measure the speed of light throughout the year as the Earth orbited the Sun.  The concept was to make measurements while the Earth was moving in various directions.  The speed of light was expected to be faster as the Earth moved in a direction opposite the ether was moving in.  The experiment detected no change in the velocity of light and thus, no medium for light to travel in.

This mystery was solved by Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity in 1905.  Einstein’s theory eschews common intuition and treats the speed of light as a constant and time, along with mass and length, as a variable.  So what happens on the highway in Einstein’s world?  As you near the speed of light, your clock slows down relative to a bystander next to the highway.  So, instead of measuring different velocities for the light beam (the bystander measuring the normal speed of light where you measure it at 5 mph), the light beam travels at the same velocity relative to each person.  If you are in the car, your clock will run slower and you will age at a slower rate than the bystander.  Confusing?  Join the club.  We do not experience relativistic effects in our daily lives so our intuition fails us mightily here.  And that was the nature of Einstein’s genius to break through that barrier.

Einstein would pay tribute to James Clerk Maxwell by stating his work was, “the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton”.  Einstein would further enhance Maxwell’s reputation by describing his contributions towards lying the foundations of special relativity in his highly accessible 1940 Science article Considerations Concerning the Fundaments of Theoretical Physics.

While figuring out the theory of electromagnetism, Maxwell found the time to make two other key contributions to science.  James Clerk Maxwell was the first person to develop a method of taking a color photograph.  Maxwell produced a theory that a color photograph could be developed by taking an image with blue, green, and red filters and combining the three to create a single color image.  Maxwell demonstrated this technique in a 1861 lecture at the Royal Institution and the result was this.

Credit: James Clerk Maxwell and Thomas Sutton

The RGB color scheme was used to develop color television and is still used to produce color space images including the Cassini mission which explored Saturn, its moons, and rings from 2004 to 2017.

During the mid 1800’s, astronomers generally thought that Saturn’s rings were either a solid or a fluid (gaseous).  In 1859, Maxwell postulated that the rings were composed of many small, orbiting bodies.  Maxwell determined that the forces imposed on a solid ring system around Saturn would be so great as to break apart the rings.  Also, Maxwell argued that a ring system of many small, orbiting bodies could give the optical illusion of acting as a fluid.  If the rings were one solid piece, the entire ring system would revolve around Saturn at the same rate much like a vinyl record does.  A system of small, orbiting bodies would obey Kepler’s laws.  This means the inner bodies would orbit Saturn at a faster rate than those located in the outer rings. Maxwell’s theory was proven correct in 1895 when James Keeler’s spectroscopic study of the rings indicated they obeyed Kepler’s Law and thus, were composed of billions of small bodies.

True color image of Saturn and rings displaying spokes and clumping features in rings. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI.

When the Cassini mission took a color image of Saturn’s rings, it validated Maxwell’s theory of the rings, used Maxwell’s technique to produce a color image, and sent the image back to Earth via radio transmissions whose properties are explained by Maxwell’s equations.   Maxwell’s ability to unify the forces of electricity and magnetism inspired future physicists to endeavor to unify the other forces of nature, otherwise known as the theory of everything.

Applications of Maxwell’s work is not restricted to physics and astronomy.  Any technology using electricity or magnetism are underpinned by Maxwell’s four equations.  While Einstein stood on Maxwell’s giant shoulders to produce the theory of special relativity, we stand on Maxwell’s giant shoulders everyday when we turn on a light, a television, or a computer.  No doubt, James Clerk Maxwell’s legacy is among the greatest in science.

*Image on top of post is the spiral galaxy M101 formed from a composite of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope (light), Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared), and Chandra X-ray observatories.  All these electromagnetic waves follow the properties of Maxwell’s equations.  The red is infrared and maps galactic dust.  The yellow is light and consists of stars, and blue are x-rays and represent regions of high temperatures such as supernova remnants and black hole accretion disks.  This composite provides a complete map of the galaxy.  Credit:  NASA, ESA, CXC, SSC, and STSci.

Science and Religion

Teaching astronomy, one will inevitably encounter issues such as the Big Bang that may run contrary to your student’s religious beliefs. How to deal with such a situation? Two things I attempt to do in my class is to distinguish between religious studies and science as well as provide proper historical context of the conflict between the two areas.

In every astronomy class I have taught, I have been asked about my religious views. I offer a brief explanation with the disclaimer those are mine and mine views alone. You want to avoid the bad vibe in a classroom when a teacher uses a course to push a personal agenda. My own experience as a student is I want to be evaluated on my knowledge of the subject matter, not how well I imitate the teacher’s personal viewpoints.

An exercise I like to try is to drop a book to the floor and have the students measure its acceleration. All the measurements should be 9.8 m/s2. Then ask the class if the measurements were impacted at all by their religious beliefs. The hallmark of science is observations that can be independently verified by others. This differs from other disciplines that can be subject to what is known in academic circles as reader response theory. This theory holds that a reader’s life experience and values will offer different interpretations of the same work.

An (rather simple) example of reader response theory that can be presented to the class could be a movie. For older students, Titanic might serve as a good example. Some students will remember a disaster movie, others a romance (the pros and cons of the movie are not important for the point to be made). For younger students, a movie like Interstellar might fill the bill. The important point is to understand how the same piece of work will offer differing perspectives to different individuals.

In the case of the Bible, the pre-Civil War era provides a stark example of contradictory interpretations of the same work. For example, the Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union states the following:

“That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations.”

That was not an aberration. The Confederacy often invoked religion to justify slavery. At the same time, Abolitionists often used the same Bible to advance the cause to eliminate slavery. The hymn Amazing Grace was written by a former slave trader turned abolitionist. While this is an extreme example of opposing interpretations of the Bible, it drives the point home. The class can be asked at this point, can the scientific measurement made of the falling book offer such differing interpretations?

At this moment, the class should be ready to examine the historical conflict between science and religion. Most famously, there is the case of the Catholic Church against Galileo. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake by the church for, among other things, predicting planets orbited stars outside the Solar System. Today, controversies surrounding evolution and the Big Bang theory highlight the clash between science and religion.

Conflict is the centerpiece of drama, and because of that, we tend to focus on conflict when examining the relationship between the two topics. But is that the whole picture? It is difficult to imagine now, but the Big Bang theory was originally criticized as having religious overtones as it presented a timeline of the universe with a discrete starting point. Why is that? The first person to conceptualize the Big Bang was Georges Lemaitre, a highly talented mathematician…and a Catholic priest.

Lemaitre deduced the universe had a discrete starting point not from the Book of Genesis, but by examining Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Models of static universes using general relativity are unstable. That is, they cannot stay static and begin to expand or contract. Lemaitre proposed the universe began as a compact “primordial egg” and expanded throughout its lifetime. Most astronomers rejected this concept at first, including Einstein who told Lemaitre, “Your grasp of physics is abominable.” Conventional wisdom among scientists at the time was the universe had no beginning or end.

The turning point in this debate was the work of Edwin Hubble at Mt. Wilson. A survey of galactic red shifts indicated that galaxies were receding from each other. The universe was expanding! The priest and his scientific work were vindicated*. The measurements conducted by Hubble, like the measurements of the falling book, provide the same result regardless of who is measuring and what their religious background is. That included Einstein who seeing Hubble’s work, after a lecture by Lemaitre in 1931, stood up and said, “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened.”

The lesson here that to appreciate and perform high-level scientific work does not matter what your religious views are or are not. What is important is to understand, as Lemaitre did a century ago, the key differences between the two and not to conflate one with the other.

*Lemaitre’s original primordial egg model of the universe has since been replaced by inflationary models of the Big Bang starting with a singularity. However, the expansion of the universe with a discrete starting point of creation still stands

Often, when I introduce Lemaitre to students, there is an assumption as a priest he relied on the Bible in some manner to conceptualize the Big Bang. No way, a cursory glance at his work will indicate it is all science.

Another interesting juxtaposition of science and religion is the famous Apollo 8 Christmas Eve telecast below:

Image on top of post is George Lemaitre teaching at the Catholic University of Louvain.  Photo:  ARCHIVES GEORGES LEMAÎTRE/CATHOLIC UNIV. LOUVAIN/TECLIM

Teaching Science in a Demon Haunted World

“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.” – Carl Sagan from his 1995 book The Demon Haunted World.

This prescient quote links together two of the largest challenges in teaching science today. How to build a strong conceptual background before making the leap into the abstract, and how to maintain that know-how long term. The argument Sagan made, and which I agree, the transition from industrial to service economy has made both tasks significantly more difficult.

My goal is not to romanticize the old industrial economy. Most of those jobs were physically demanding and often resulted in long term health issues, injury, and at times, fatalities. However, the preparation and performance of those jobs provided a better sense of the physical world for those who dropped out of high school to work than many college graduates have today. I grew up in that world, but have lived my working life in post-industrial America.

Jean Piaget’s theory postulates that a student develops abstract thinking skills around the ages of 14-16. The work of Robert Karplus discovered for physics, the ability to solve abstract problems is often delayed into adulthood. To solve abstract physics problems, one must obtain a good conceptual understanding first so vectors do not appear like random arrows. When I was in grade school, we were trained to work in the old industrial economy. This meant grounding in metal shop, electrical systems, and industrial processes such as steel making.

What this meant was by early high school, I was knowledgeable in the laws of force, material science, and chemical processes used in industry. That put one on firm footing to take on abstract chemistry and physics courses in the final two years of high school.

Republic Steel in Buffalo – limestone is used to purify iron ore then made into steel. Heat increases the reaction rate – a basic law of chemistry. Photo: Steel Plant Museum of Western New York.

However, even if one did not take those courses, they often entered jobs requiring a solid grounding in the physical sciences. My father dropped out after two years of high school to work. A career in fabricating and repairing industrial air compressors required knowledge in fluid dynamics, electrical systems, motors, and force. And this leads to the second problem confronting science educators, how is it possible to retain this knowledge if the current economy does not require it to work?

My father, Donald Pijanowski, and the gearbox for Joy Manufacturing Compressor # 7019 dated June 6, 1975. Wonder if this thing is still operating somewhere. Photo: Pijanowski Family Archive.

There are a lot of self styled education gurus who claim to have the solution for this, but the reality is adults retain knowledge they have to actively use. It really does not matter what type of educational process was taught beforehand. For starters, students respond differently to various educational methods. I prefer the Richard Feynman technique of utilizing various methods within a course to cast as wide a net as possible around the class. That said, retention depends on a use it or lose it principle.

Today’s workplace, more often than not, involves the use of computers rather than pulleys. There certainly is physics at play here but remains mostly hidden behind the keyboard. An analogy I think is most people understand the physics of a hot air balloon, but not a modern jet airplane. The electronics and quantum physics behind the computing revolution remains a mystery to most of its users. And when the science becomes a mystery, as Sagan noted, people rely on other methods to interpret the world around them.

My father (1974) utilizing the laws of force and pulleys which are still a staple of physics courses. Photo: Pijanowski Family Archive.

I spent a good chunk of my career in financial services. In processing foreign exchange trades or mortgage closings, none of those duties required an understanding of the physical world around me unlike work in manufacturing. I continued my education during those years in physics and space science, but had I not, my education would have faded away and been replaced with God only knows. Education is only the first step in the process of understanding nature. I’ve know people who went to schools I would have given a limb to attend take a deep dive into the world of conspiracy theories afterwards.

It’s anecdotal, but I’ve found people beyond their formal education tend to adopt views to position them well in their social circle. This is tied to one’s ability to acquire jobs and wealth especially in economically depressed regions such as Upstate New York. And it’s a luxury working in the service sector provides as there is no price to pay for this behavior. However, in manufacturing, ignoring the laws of nature can literally cost your life. The recent development of anti-vaxxers dying from Covid may change this equation but we’ll have to wait and see. This will most likely impact the thinking of the younger generation than my own.

So, what’s the solution?

There are no silver bullets. It requires a variety of efforts and a trial and error approach. On the education front, emphasis towards conceptual chemistry and physics can help. Too many students take their first crack at these subjects in advanced courses requiring abstract thinking skills not yet developed. A conceptual approach makes sciences more accessible. We should not throw students out the science airlock if they have difficulty with abstract topics such as vectors first time at bat. This only breeds distrust of science and those who work/teach in the field.

What about after a person leaves school?

As previously noted, adults tend to retain knowledge to earn a paycheck. In the service economy, often this does not include science. This leaves people vulnerable to cranks and charlatans Carl Sagan mentions in his quote. Science based outcomes have to be made more socially popular. That’s an infamita for those of us trained in the scientific method. I have no desire to be cool or popular for the masses as science is about facts verified with experiment and data. One’s popularity should have no bearing on a scientific result. Yet, the reality is charlatans now possess an impressive infrastructure to transmit bad faith ideas in social media and those of us in science need to combat that.

1959 Tewksbury accident in Buffalo. Factors at play here are buoyancy, momentum, and grain elevators were prone to explosions as the small particles of dust combined gave greater surface area to react. No fatalities in this event but deaths were a fairly common occurance in manufacturing during this era. Credit: Buffalo History Museum.

A thing to avoid is nostalgia for the industrial economy. As the old saying goes, nostalgia is a liar. Endeavoring to bring back the economy of the 1950’s is akin to putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. It’s not happening and we need to look forward, and not idealize the past.

Myself, having an interest in astronomy was not a popular thing in the old working class culture. Often it earned you a side-eye, and at times, a slew of obscenities from those frustrated with their lot in life (my father was not one of them). Aspiring to college was not the way to earn social points. Yet, for all that, those blue collar guys required an understanding of nature to survive, and ironically, had more in common with Carl Sagan than many would have cared to admit.

* Image on top – proverbial tin foil hat. Credit: Wikipedia.

Social Hierarchy on the Job – Déjà Vu All Over Again

Yes, there are advantages to getting older, among them the ability to spot patterns in human behavior. One of these is a top down establishment of social hierarchy on a job site and its consequences upon individuals and the organization. None of it is good. However, if you’re in it, you have to navigate it until you can extricate yourself. Below are some things to expect based on my experience.

Overt micromanagement is associated with excessive guidance on how to do your job, but it’s much more than that. An authoritative manager will attempt to control the social hierarchy of an organization. By this, I’m not referring to the formal organization chart, but establishing a class structure among employees. This will not only disrupt working relationships and friendships, but seriously impair productivity as well. Personnel decisions are based on maintaining the hierarchy rather than fulfilling the organization mission. This leads to mismatches of jobs to ability, but also ushers in a variety of repercussions that cascade throughout the workplace.

Regrettably, I once worked for a company where a manager categorized employees as weak or strong, riffing off Ayn Rand’s classification scheme. Workplace norms begin to change rapidly once employees are tiered like this. Those in the upper tier begin to take liberties on those in the lower tier. And those in the lower tier feel compelled, quite naturally, to demonstrate they deserve respect, leading to needless, time wasting conflict. This is one half of a fight or flight response, combined with excessive monitoring leads to the other half.

Keeping employees in line, another former employer once utilized coworkers for covert eavesdropping and monitoring. We jokingly referred to these people as Cryptomys Hottentotus. Under this type of regime, workers circle the wagons and retreat heavily into their inner circles with their most trusted friends aka cliques. This might seem trivial, but can be detrimental to productivity.

Productivity spillover was a key concern for the great economist Alfred Marshall, who in 1890 wrote that firms and people cluster in high density regions to take advantage of transmission both information and knowledge. This is why, pre-pandemic, 3 million people a day would pack into the 22 square miles of Manhattan, or high-tech flourishes in the Bay Area soaring costs notwithstanding. While Marshall wrote about cities, it does not take much imagination to apply this concept to a firm as well.

Removing productivity spillovers occurs under micromanagement of social hierarchy.  Take a small department, say 10 people, where knowledge is shared freely among all members via a variety of manners. What happens when a department fragments into airtight cliques of say, four, three, two, and one individuals? One? It happens. Remember the movie Office Space where Stephen Root is moved into the basement? I’ve seen it with my own eyes – if not in the basement then banished to a different floor or area far removed from the department. In this scenario, information is hoarded, there is no productivity spillover effect, and even the most simple of tasks can become arduous.

Eventually, management will recognize the problem and force employees to attend team-building workshops hoping to rectify the situation. It doesn’t, but does has the extra benefit of wasting everyone’s time.

Predicting the coda to this is key to making the right decisions. What was the endgame to the two case-studies I am using here?

The first was a bank I worked for in the mid-90’s. The manager hired to handle a large expansion of operations projected confidence in an over the top manner, but in reality was very insecure. The new group leaders were hired based on youth and physical attractiveness. Remember Donald Trump and his hire people who look the part routine? It’s pretty common in business. I’m all for giving young people a chance. Hey, I was young back then! But not based on appearence, and certainly not without the benefit of more experienced people around for guidance. They attended a 90-day training program and were wholly unprepared for the job when they came back. In the end, they were glorified time sheet collectors.

And what happened to us?

As chaos descended someone had to take the blame and guess who that was. Hyper-monitoring ensued to “find the problem”. This included a consultant who stood by me with a stopwatch all day long. I was also instructed not to walk in front of the manager’s office but to walk all the way across the floor and work my way back to my area. That was a time saver. I ignored that one and probably not a coincidence I was let go the following month.

As it turned out, I was the lucky one.

I found a job with better pay shortly afterwards. Those who stayed behind stagnated in an environment of dysfunction and havoc. About three years later, people from corporate HQ flew in and solved the problem by removing the entire management team. The bank is still around, but the operations center where I worked is a shadow its former self and from what I’ve heard, to this day, has not really recovered from that experience.

The 2nd case study was a legal firm I worked for in the aughts. The department I was in was highly productive and often ranked 1st or 2nd in the nation by our largest client. There was a great sense of cohesion and we often socialized outside of work. Our manager was let go and replaced by a friend of the operations VP who promptly instilled a program of heavy monitoring. I was instructed not to speak to anyone during the day and my bathroom usage was recorded.

Needless to say, these rules did not apply to the tier favored by management.

As the department cleaved into higher and lower castes, conflict ensued, various cliques sought to undermine each other, behavior by higher ranked employees slipped badly. In their own small way, they pitched in to what came to be the financial crash of 2008. Thankfully, I walked out a few years earlier.

Management tried to rectify this by having “movie day” where we would watch a movie together as a department. They asked for suggestions and someone offered Caligula. I won’t lie, that was funny. However, that marked the end of movie day.

Eventually the whole department was eliminated. The situation had become such a cancer it was like removing a tumor.

Ok, so what do you do if you find yourself in this situation?

This type of management style tends to flourish in economically stagnant regions such as Upstate New York. In that case, finding another job might be problematic. Still, it should be your highest priority. Changing jobs can have high transaction costs (loss of friends, moving expenses, etc), but the situation will hit rock bottom before anything changes. And don’t count on the work culture reverting back to what it was beforehand.

It’s not happening. Once that egg is dropped on the floor it’s not being put back in the shell.

Always remember, first ones out are the luckiest. The cost is front-ended compared to career stagnation in a dysfunctional situation.

If you’re stuck, understand if the work culture is fragmented by a social hierarchy, you’re going to be disappointed by some in the upper tier. An unfortunate fact of human nature that behavior slips in this situation…and you’ll be on the business end of it. Some won’t go that far, but they look the other way rather than risk their paycheck.

You’ll be lied to and others will lie to ingratiate themselves with management. Sorry, it comes with the territory.

Sexual transgressions committed by those in the higher rung against those of lowest status are a mathematical certainty in these situations. Women especially, have to be on guard here. For sheer volume, most of the other transgressions will be of death by a thousand small cuts variety. This usually involves the suspension of workplace rules and guidelines for those in the upper rung. By themselves, not much, but it adds up eventually to create an acrimonious culture.

You can, in the short term, try to keep the dysfunction out of your cube, but eventually the dam breaks and you’ll be affected by it one way or another.

When the workplace fragments into cliques, you’ll need to keep your ear to the ground to access information that used to come by readily. An oddity here, if you are considered to be on the lowest rung, some on a higher rung will talk freely around you as if you are invisible. You’ll be amazed at what you can learn this way. It’s insulting, but you may as well use it for your benefit.

Otherwise, you’ll need to rely heavily picking up on body language cues. This can include the side eye look, lowering of voices when in your presence, and looking at watches when you arrive to work even on time. This allows you to sort out where everyone stands here.

If you do not exit quickly, there will be an exodus of talent and with it the job knowledge that managers let walk out the door. This will make your job more difficult and demands will be placed on you to make up the slack – It was once exhorted to me that “Stress is Good!”. It’s not. As the hall of fame football coach Bill Walsh noted, if you run on adrenaline all the time, you’ll have nothing in reserve when a true emergency comes along. Don’t fall for it.

The replacements who come in will often be young and inexperienced. Social proof is a concept where those inexperienced in certain situations will emulate others around them. This is key to normalize behavior that was previously thought to be deviant or abhorrent. In reality, some inexperienced people can be molded this way, some cannot. And I’ve seen older, more experienced workers throw away a lifetime of experience down the drain in this process.

The normalization of deviant behavior is key to disaster theory. I personally saw it in the run up to the 2008 financial crash. Like the proverbial snowball rolling downhill, it gains too much momentum in an organization for any one person to stop. It only stops when disaster occurs and recovery (reestablishing norms) begin. Do you want to go through this process? Let me put it this way, would you rather experience a tornado first hand or avoid it all together?

Does anything good come out of an experience like this? Only one that I can think of.

As the workplace fragments into dysfunction and hierarchy, there will be those few people who don’t change or look the other way. They won’t exploit the grapevine that is leveraged against you. In some cases, they’ll be people you barely knew before, but they recognize the bind you are in and reach out to you.

Once you leave, the foulness of the situation will recede from memory and those are the people you’ll remember once you’ve been long gone. This is truly one thing you can take away from these situations and value for a lifetime.

Circle C Ranch, 1974

Circle C Ranch has received much publicity the past few months resulting from an abuse scandal. I was eleven when I spent a week at the camp in 1974. I did not witness anything as horrendous outlined in the reports as the abuse began a couple decades afterwards. However, I did witness a culture at the camp making it vulnerable to such an event. My stay there was the first step, of many, causing me to keep religion at arms length.

Most summer camps in Western New York are located near Lake Erie to enjoy the cool summer breezes as well as the water. Instead, Circle C is located in a rural area an hour drive from Buffalo. The camp is seated on a dead end road and is physically isolated from the surrounding community. The sign pointing to the camp, unlike the prominent sign today, was so small we missed it at first pass. In 1974, before the internet, the brochure on the camp emphasized horseback riding as the main activity. The camp is based on a frontier western town, not unlike Dodge City on the show Gunsmoke, which was very popular at the time.

My first day was filled with the usual summer camp activities such as swimming, arts and crafts, and horseback riding along the trails that wound their way among the woods encircling the camp. We ate dinner, and after the Sun had set behind the hills, we gathered around a fire and here the true purpose of the camp came to light.

The same brochure promoting horseback riding also disclosed the Christian nature of the camp. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I went to Catholic* school up to 5th grade and the church also has summer camps. Like the usual routine at a Catholic school, the morning starts out with mass and then you get on with the rest of the day.

Circle C had something different in mind.

As I sat looking into the campfire, a counselor asked me to name the specific moment I had accepted Christ into my life. A bit stumped at why I was being asked this, I explained I had gone to my parents church since I could remember and could not name a specific starting point. The counselor replied that the devil was inside of me, preventing me from expressing my acceptance of Christ. Quite a judgement from someone who had known me less than 24 hours. With the exception of two of the other campers, the rest around the campfire concurred.

The kids, no doubt, understood the expectations of the camp and were mimicking the adults. The average eleven year old mind does not have the ability to understand when an epistemic bubble is being constructed around them. They were also exhibiting signs of foreclosed self identities. That’s not unusual for children of this age, but it takes a broad life experience to grow out of and the camp leadership were guiding the children away from that.

An example is when one of the campers attempted to impress upon me that my height was a sign of the devil growing inside me. In hindsight, I doubt the kid concocted this himself. Most likely, he heard some variation of the theme from one of the adults in camp and decided this was how to ingratiate himself within the only community he probably knew.

While we were asked by the camp to turn ourselves over to Christ, it was apparent we were being asked to turn ourselves over to the adults at the camp. I was at an advantage as this was my first and only stay at the camp whereas many of the other campers spent time there every summer. Being tall for my age meant adults often talked to me differently. Their biases and flaws got laid bare pretty quickly. I learned at a young age to take adults with a grain of salt.

The physical isolation of the camp played a key role in its mission, but there was also an intellectual isolation. No books, newspapers, radios, or television. Nothing supporting an alternative view was at hand. There was no email or cell phones during this era so no contact with family or anyone outside the camp occurred during the stay. For me, this was a very disorientating situation.

This top-down enforcement of thinking is guaranteed to stunt intellectual growth. As one reads the bible, each individual will incorporate their own life experience into their interpretation of that passage.  And you’re going to require a well rounded education to interpret any source of information properly, meaning humanities, science, social sciences, and the proverbial hard knocks. Not allowing that encourages a foreclosed self-identity where the individual adopts the viewpoints of an authority figure. There may be an absolute truth in the universe, but you’re not going to find it in any single person.

What happens when foreclosed self-identity extends into adulthood?

In my experience, these were the people who frantically tried to discourage me from going to college, who thought I should take on dead on jobs, who play the numbers game online to drown out opposing voices, much like at those campfires so many years ago, and this year, called those who took the Covid vaccine “sheeple”. If I had followed the life path they wanted to impose, I have serious doubts I would be alive today. Perhaps that’s the point, when you are no longer useful, you are disposable.

As the week went on we fell into the routine of camp activity during the day and proselytization at night. The only free time was a half hour after dinner. Under the growing shadow of the lone tree near the center of the camp, me and two other campers would discuss how we would handle the night proceedings. On our state of isolation, the joke was World War III could start and we’d never know until the week was over.

One of my tree-mates decided to simply tell the counselors what they wanted to hear, thinking they would leave you alone for the remainder of the evening. For an eleven year old, that could be the most effective way of dealing with the situation. I kept quiet as much as I could or shrugged my shoulders when asked a question about my faith. Of course, that led to more lecturing on how the devil inside was holding me back, but whatever. I had the luxury of knowing when the week concluded I was done with the camp.

Saturday was the final day and we were to participate in a horse race at a camp rodeo. That seemed to be a good way to finish the week as the horses were the best company in the camp besides my two fellow resistors. As I was packing, a counselor cornered me for one last pitch for the cause to be put on some sort of mailing list, not unlike the final sales pitch at the car dealership for rust proofing extras. Sighing, I put down my belongings for another go round of shoulder shrugging and repeating no until he left to get ready for the closing festivities.

The rodeo went off without a hitch and I headed back home. We had lunch at a restaurant not too far from the camp and the memory of that is quite strong even after 47 years, the vinegar on the table and the taste of the fries especially. After the hour ride home, I consumed magazines and newspapers to see what had happened in the world that week. I headed off to the corner store to check out the book section to see if anything new arrived. On the way there, I had to pass a neighborhood store called The Cracked Pot where Nazi paraphernalia was displayed in the front window, leaving me to ponder how on Earth I was accused of consorting with the Devil the prior week. I was especially grateful to be back among friends not hanging that one on me.

Difficult to imagine in the internet era, I did not hear anything further about the camp until the late 90’s. The camp was outside of Erie County so it was not in the phone book. They did not advertise at all, and when I asked people if they ever heard of the camp no one ever said yes. It remained a surrealistic childhood memory until one day out of curiosity, I did an internet search and sure enough, the camp had a website. It has stayed in ownership of the same family till this day.

The camp got my attention again this year when the abuse situation was uncovered. The details can be read in the news reports. Many of the women who have made the allegations have been subjected to violent threats. Nobody wants to believe someone close to them can do such things, but I think the true source of the anger is the women decided to challenge the authority of the camp. In the culture of the camp, it’s just not something that is done, especially from the camper side.

I have to leave to legal experts how this will unfold for the camp. It is untenable in its current state. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve realize I found my experience there disagreeable. Still, I can respect the sweat equity put in the place, providing for the horses and from what I understand, the volunteer labor that built the camp facilities. However, it is time for the camp leadership to stand down, and their followers to stop making empty death threats. It is long past time to reconfigure the camp experience more towards the benefit of the campers and less towards the self-aggrandizement of the camp leaders. 

Otherwise, one way or another, the camp will need to be shut down.

If Circle C was ever “God’s Camp”, it was campers such as these women who have spoken out that made it so. The adults at the camp would have realized that if only they took the time and had the modesty to listen to them.

*The Catholic church obviously has its own abuse issues – the isolation of abuse victims in this instance tended to occur on an individual basis, while the church itself was embedded and protected in the community power structure rather than hidden from it. 

Apollo Program vs Manhattan Project

Whenever a need solving a complex scientific issue arises, calls often go out to start another Apollo/Manhattan Project. It is constructive to make a comparison of those two programs and determine if they are really a suitable model for today’s problems.

Cost

The media often cites the costs for these programs without accounting for inflation, otherwise known as nominal costs. That’s a serious mistake, especially when attempting to make a comparison to modern effort.

The Manhattan Project cost $1.9 billion in 1944 dollars. Adjusting for inflation, that is $27.5 billion in 2019. The average annual cost of the project is on par for annual spending on tobacco marketing. While most associate Los Alamos with the Manhattan Project, over 50% of the spending was for facilities at Oak Ridge, TN. This would include the gaseous diffusion plant to extract fissionable uranium.

The Apollo program cost $19.5 billion which equates to $150 billion in 2019. It was considerably more expensive to put a human on the Moon than to build the atomic bomb. What both programs had in common is spending spiked before their successful conclusion. Funding for the Manhattan Project peaked in 1944 and the Apollo program in 1966. Spending surged to build the industrial plants at Oak Ridge and Hanover for uranium enrichment and for the development of the Saturn V rocket. If a politician proposes a modern type project of this nature without increasing spending in the front end, it’s not a serious proposal.

Source: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34645.pdf

A key difference between the two programs was spending for the Manhattan Project was secret while the Apollo program was public. In his autobiography, Man of the House, Tip O’Neill relates John McCormack’s story how then Speaker Sam Rayburn arranged funding for the atomic bomb:

“Einstein estimated the project would cost two billion dollars. Not surprisingly, the president was concerned about how to allocate that kind of money without alerting either the public or the press.

“Leave it to me,” said Sam Rayburn.

The next day, Sam called all the committee and subcommittee chairmen and told them to put an extra hundred million dollars in their budgets.”

No questions were asked or meetings held while those funds were siphoned off to build the atomic bomb. In contrast, President Eisenhower mandated NASA’s work and results to be public. This was to differentiate from the highly secretive Soviet program. Funding Apollo was often contentious as it had to compete with other priorities (Vietnam War/Great Society). Public approval for Apollo spending topped 50% only once, that during the first Moon landing.

Sustainability

The Manhattan Project and Apollo Program had varying success in sustaining their mission. The key components of the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos and Oak Ridge remained in operation as national laboratories. No doubt, the Soviet success in 1947 with their own atomic bomb was the driving point. Many would argue the Manhattan Project was too sustainable. The original program built four atomic bombs. By the 1960’s, America had 30,000 nuclear warheads (the Soviets had 40,000 by the 1980’s). Since then, a series of treaties have caused a reduction of both stockpiles to a few thousand and atomic testing eliminated.

Apollo met a different fate. After the Moon landing was accomplished, President Nixon had no particular loyalty to the Kennedy inspired program. Once a recession hit in 1971, the final three missions (18-20) were cancelled. These were to be the major scientific phase of the program. Nixon directed NASA to work on the reusable Space Shuttle, thought to be a more economical means of space travel, but in reality, was more costly than expendable rockets. NASA has continued a robust planetary/observatory program, but its human program has not left Earth orbit since 1972.

Mars mission profile proposed in 1969 by Wernher von Braun. Apollo funding had peaked three years prior and would never return to that level. By the mid eighties, von Braun’s team brought to America under Operation Paperclip were under investigation for their V-2 efforts, especially the use of slave labor camps. Von Braun passed away in 1977. Credit: NASA.

Sustainability for both these programs were dependent upon political viability. During the Cold War, America felt the need to maintain nuclear superiority to the Soviet Union. While Americans generally wanted to stay ahead of the Soviet space program, this did not translate necessarily into human space exploration. NASA has far exceeded any other space agency in terms of planetary exploration, astrophysics, and Earth science. That gap is closing as developing nations such as China and India build their space programs.

Benefits

I’ll spare you the tales of NASA developing Velcro. Certainly private industry could have developed such a product. However, both programs contributed key innovations to American society.

As one might imagine, the Manhattan Project required solving complex mathematical problems. Given the urgency of the program, innovations were sought to speed up the process. John von Neumann expanded upon the IBM tabulating machines used at the project to build the first modern computer. The Apollo program began the miniaturization of the computer. While these computers were rudimentary compared to today, modern high tech has its roots in these programs.

The Manhattan Project kick started the field of nuclear medicine (used for imaging) and radiation treatments for cancer. The Apollo program contributed advancements for pacemakers, dialysis treatment, and development of CAT scan imaging. Both projects required the development of high-speed and powerful film imaging of the results of their work.

Nuclear bomb less than one millisecond after detonation. Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Often overlooked, given the political nature of the Apollo program, is its scientific contributions. Prior to Apollo, there were three competing ideas how the Moon was formed – capture (Earth’s gravity captured Moon), accretion (Earth & Moon formed together), and fission (Moon split off from Earth during formation). Apollo proved all three incorrect. The generally accepted theory supported by evidence brought back by Apollo is the Moon was formed in the aftermath of a Mars sized planet colliding with Earth. The key point here is a scientific idea, no matter how impressive it may by, needs to be supported by evidence to be proven.

While spinoffs are secondary to the primary objective of these programs, as we can see, they often have powerful impacts on the economy and society in general.

Analogies

The most obvious analogy today would be addressing climate change. It’s not a perfect analogy. Climate change is much larger and more international in scope, but there are some lessons to be culled.

The urgency of climate change is similar to the Manhattan Project. If the Soviets had beaten the U.S. to the Moon, it would have been distressing but not an existential threat. However, solving climate change does not require secrecy and any innovations on that front, as with NASA work, should be in the public domain. A large scale program to combat climate change would entail the following:

An upfront surge in spending as similar to both the Manhattan Project and Apollo, the time frame to solve this problem is exceedingly short.

A realization that such an effort will rely on a mixture of government/university/private sector initiatives. The worst thing we could do is introduce ideology into the program i.e. must be an all government or private sector effort. All 3,000,000 parts of the Saturn V was designed and built by private contractors. DuPont produced plutonium and Kellex designed the uranium enrichment plants for the Manhattan project.

What should the government do and what should be left to the private sector?

Historically, government has performed best at providing an infrastructure the private sector can innovate upon. Infrastructure can take many forms including transportation, research centers, and the internet (developed by state universities and CERN). NASA, for one, provides intensive remote sensing of Earth to monitor the climate.

As challenging as the problem of climate change appears, it has one major advantage over the Manhattan Project and Apollo. There are market forces sustaining the advancements to reduce carbon emissions. The cost of renewable energy is now competitive with fossil fuels. Unlike space exploration, where Pan-Am flights to the Moon were once envisioned, market forces now favor investment and research into renewable energy.

As hard as our current president might try, he’ll not be able to cancel the fight against climate change as Nixon cancelled Apollo.

But, and this is a big but, it will be difficult to provide an accurate cost estimate. Any program that relies on the invention of new technology to bring to completion will have this problem. It’s not like repaving a road. Budget overruns of this nature often provoke political blowback. Here is where political leadership is required to keep moving a program forward.

If, as is often said, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes”, taking the proper lessons from history along with some flexibility will enable us to solve today’s most urgent problems. Things looked bleak in 1941 and 1960, but a strong effort and resolve overcame the odds.

  • Image atop post – left: Trinity Test, credit: Department of Energy, right: launch of Apollo 11, credit: NASA.

The Great Mirage of 1894

On the morning of August 16, 1894, the din of commerce, streetcars, and horse carts reverberated through the hot summer morning in downtown Buffalo where canals, railroads, and harbor converged. At 10 AM, the city started to quiet as some 20,000 gazed upwards to see a city in the air. That city was Toronto, which lies 59 miles away. The mirage was created by a temperature inversion over Lake Ontario.

Main St, Buffalo, 1894. Credit: Buffalo History Museum

Familiar for those who live in Western New York, the temperature of Lake Erie rises and falls seasonally like clockwork. Peaking in late summer in the upper 70’s, the lake eventually cools until mid-winter when it usually freezes at 32 degrees. Lake Ontario is a different animal. Much deeper than Lake Erie, Lake Ontario can be fairly cold in the summer while unfrozen in the winter. As I write this in July, Lake Ontario’s temperature in Rochester is 47 degrees. As warm air passes above cooler air over the lake, it can create a superior mirage.

Refraction of light as it passes through denser medium (water). Photo: NASA

A mirage is created by refraction (bending) of light as it passes through different mediums. The denser the medium, the greater the refraction. You have seen this before if you place a straw in a glass of water. Water is denser than air and gives the illusion of the straw being bent. You also see this every day when the Sun rises and sets. As sunlight travels from the vacuum of space through more and more dense layers of the atmosphere, it is bent. When the Sun is near the horizon, it is passing through more atmosphere than during midday. The result is we can see the Sun a few minutes before it physically rises above the horizon and few minutes after it physically sinks below the horizon.

The atmosphere bends sunlight allowing us to see the Sun even though it is below the horizon. Credit: Wiki Commons

A superior mirage is one where the image of an object lies above its location. The lower layer of cold, dense air bends light downwards along the curvature of the Earth. On average, Earth curves downward 16 feet every five miles. This bending of light enables an object below the horizon to be visible to distant observers. The image below demonstrates this effect.

Superior mirage. Credit: Wiki Commons

Today, Toronto has an impressive skyline including the CN Tower clocking in at 1,815 feet. In 1894, like most cities, church spirals dominated the skyline of Toronto. It was church spirals that were most prominent in the mirage along with ships navigating Toronto’s harbor, including the 175 foot steamer The Norseman. Below is an image of Toronto as it was in 1894.

St, James Cathedral and St. Lawrence Market. Credit: Josiah Bruce

The mirage ended after about an hour. Clouds moved in, and later that day, a cold front passed dropping temps into the 60’s terminating the conditions that produced the mirage. There are no photographs of the mirage, and reporting of the event seems muted by today’s standards. The Buffalo Courier had a brief article on page one with the same prominence as catching stray dogs, a husband and wife passing a forged check, and a Peeping Tom who was fined five dollars. The Buffalo Enquirer gave the mirage equal footing with a dog bites man story (dogs really seemed to be a problem back then). Scientific American would report on the mirage a few weeks later.

Mirage as reported by the Buffalo Courier.
Mirage as reported by the Buffalo Enquirer.

No doubt, such an event today would receive more coverage, along with YouTube videos. One could imagine thousands of people gazing at the mirage through their cell phones, instantly sending images around the world on social media. The mirage itself would be markedly different with Toronto boasting 57 buildings taller than 500 feet. Not too many steamers ply the lakes these days, but perhaps a modern mirage would feature planes taking off from Toronto Island Airport. As much as things change, the laws of physics remain the same. While a rare event, a future repeat of the 1894 mirage is not out of the question.

*Image atop post is no mirage but Toronto as it appears these days 30 miles away from Niagara-on-the-Lake. Photo: Gregory Pijanowski

Space Weather

Space weather is a term applied to conditions in space as a result of solar activity. The Sun’s corona generates a stream of electrically charged particles (plasma) called the solar wind, which expands far beyond the planets. The composition of the solar wind mostly consists of hydrogen protons and electrons, as well as a small amount of ionized helium atoms. The terms electrically charged and ionized are interchangeable. The atoms become ionized in the Sun’s corona. The extreme heat of the corona gives the electrons sufficient energy to remove from orbit around the nucleus. This separation of the electrons and the protons, which are located in the nucleus, gives the particles an electric charge since electrons have a negative charge and protons have a positive charge. An atom in its normal state has no charge since the number of electrons equals the number of protons, canceling the positive and negative charges.

The solar wind is tenuous, with an average density of one to ten particles per cubic centimeter around the area of the Earth. The average velocity of the solar wind is 450 km/s (it can travel from London to New York in twelve seconds), although it can vary between 200 and 900 km/s. As the Sun rotates, the solar wind emanates from the Sun very much in the same fashion water does from a sprinkler. An image of this effect is below.

Credit: NASA

The solar wind has a direct effect on the shape of the Earth’s magnetic field. Much in the same way that the solar wind directs a comet’s tail away from the Sun, it pushes the Earth’s magnetic field downstream from the Sun. This pushes the magnetic field towards the Earth on the day side and pulls the field away from the Earth on the night side. The tail of the Earth’s magnetic field is about 300,000 kilometers long on average.

Credit: NASA

Disturbances in the solar wind can have consequences to us on Earth. To understand this, it is necessary to understand the following three principles regarding electricity and magnetism:

A changing or moving magnetic field creates an electric current.

An electric current creates a magnetic field.

A particle with an electric charge will travel in a path along a magnetic field line.

As electrically charged particles surf the solar wind and hit the Earth’s magnetic field, they will move along the Earth’s magnetic field lines. In the picture above, these field lines connect the Earth’s magnetic poles, which are close to the Earth’s geographic poles. As the field lines converge towards the poles, they enter an area called the polar cusp. The solar wind particles follow the field lines into the cusp entering the Earth’s atmosphere. The collisions between the solar wind particles and atoms in the upper atmosphere creates the aurora. This is why the aurora is generally only seen near the poles. The creation of the aurora is a two-step process. The solar wind particles collide with atoms in the upper atmosphere and transfer their kinetic energy to these atoms. As the atom absorbs the energy, electrons are excited to a higher energy state in a higher orbit around the nucleus. As the atom relaxes back to its normal lower energy state, it releases the excess energy in the form of a light photon.

Below is an image of the aurora from the International Space Station.

Credit: NASA

A disturbance in the solar wind can be caused by an event such as a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). A CME is an ejection of a large amount of mass from the Sun. The CME produces a large shock wave striking the Earth’s magnetic field. This produces a change in the Earth’s magnetic field, referred to as a magnetic storm, as it reaches down to the surface towards the poles. This causes an electric current to be produced in a conductor. Consequently, electrical surges are generated in power grids. An example of this was the 1989 Quebec blackout caused by a magnetic storm. Space satellites are also at risk as a current can be generated overloading circuits. Thus, space weather forecasting has become an important area of research. If a magnetic storms are predicted accurately, electrical systems can be put in a protective mode to prevent damage.  The video below demonstrates how computer models show us the manner in which CME events disrupt the Earth’s magnetic field including the historic 1859 Carrington Event.

NASA’s MMS mission has allowed us for the first time to directly observe a magnetic reconnection event.  These events on Earth’s day side transfer mass and energy from the solar magnetic field to Earth’s magnetic field.  The CME event distorts the Earth’s magnetic field compressing field lines on the day side and stretching back away from the night side.  On the night side, the field lines reconnect again and like rubber bands stretched too far, snap back and release their storage of charged particles towards the Earth’s poles.  This phenomena is responsible for massive aurora eruptions that can often be seen farther away from the usual polar position of the aurora.

To obtain the current status of the solar wind and aurora, you may visit the Space Weather Prediction Center website.

*Image atop post credit: NASA/SDO