“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.
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.
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.
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. 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
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. 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.
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.
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.
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
Halley’s Comet is arguably the most celebrated celestial object. It does in a sense, provide the link between humanity’s belief in superstition and science. In its previous appearances, Halley’s Comet was often viewed as a bad omen. The most famous case its appearance before the Battle of Hastings in 1066. King Harold II viewed it as a bad omen and suffered mortal wounds during the battle. Halley’s Comet also represents a triumph of science. Utilizing Kepler’s Laws of Motion, Edmond Halley predicted the comet that had appeared in 1682 would reappear in 1759. Halley died in 1743, but when the comet made its predicted appearance, it was named in Halley’s honor.
The Mawangdui silk, showing the shapes of comet tails and the different disasters associated with them, compiled in around 300 BC. Credit: NASA/JPL via phys.org
The first known recorded appearance of Halley’s Comet was in 240 B.C. Chinese astronomers referred to comets as “Broom stars” that appeared in the sky for weeks at a time. The comet has returned roughly every 76 years since. The size and brightness of the comet varies on each visit due to its distance from the Earth on each visit and increasing light pollution on Earth. The closest the comet has been to the Earth was in 837. Halley’s came within 4 million miles of Earth and its tail was 90 degrees. This is the equivalent distance from the horizon to directly overhead. Halley’s last appearance in 1985-86 was somewhat disappointing. Its closest approach to Earth was 38 million miles and while visible, was not quite the remarkable sight that it had been in earlier visits. However, it was during that approach the Giotto probe was able to take photographs 376 miles from the comet nucleus. Below are images of Halley’s Comet recorded during its prior visits.
Credit: Wiki Commons
This is part of the Bayeux Tapestry commemorating the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The comet appears in the image top center. King Harold II of England took it as a bad omen and indeed, he was killed in the battle. William the Conqueror of Normandy won the battle and pronounced himself King of England. This tapestry can be viewed by the public in the Bayeux Tapestry Museum. Bayeux, incidentally, is located just a few miles from the American D-Day landing site on Omaha Beach.
Credit: Wiki Commons
This painting by Giotto di Bondone of Italy called Adoration of the Magi. A comet is used to represent the Star of Bethlehem. Painted in 1304, three years after Halley’s appearance in 1301, the comet appears top center and is generally believed to be derived from the appearance of Halley’s Comet. It is located in the Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua, the same town Galileo would make historic observations with his telescope in 1610. In 1986, the European Space Agency (ESA) named it’s Halley’s Comet space probe Giotto, in honor of the artist.
Credit: Wiki Commons
This is a painting by Samuel Scott in 1759. The scene depicts Halley’s Comet over London. Westminster Abbey is visible to the far left. This was the appearance predicted by Edmond Halley, who had passed away 15 years earlier.
Credit: Mt. Wilson Observatory.
Halley’s appearance in 1910 provided astronomers with the first opportunity to photograph the comet. This series of photographs shows the comet over a two month period as it approached and then receded from Earth. The images were taken from Mt. Wilson’s 60-inch telescope. This was one of Halley’s most celebrated appearances. It’s tail stretched 30 degrees across the night sky. In fact, on May 18, 1910, the Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet. Entrepreneurs sold “comet pills” which were supposed to counteract the effects of cyanide gas which had been detected in the tail. Of course, the tail is far too tenuous to have any effect on life on Earth.
Comet Halley as seen over New York City on May 14, 1910. Although electric lights were making inroads, the stars could still be seen in the Big Apple. Credit: New York Times.
The front page article from the New York Times of this event is quite interesting. Mark Twain, who was born a couple of weeks after the previous visit by Halley’s Comet in 1835, predicted in 1909 that, “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835…and I expect to go out with it.” Mark Twain died on April 21, 1910.
Credit: ESA.
While Halley’s last appearance in 1986 may have been disappointing to earthbound viewers, it provided us with the first space mission (Giotto) to a comet. The nucleus of the comet is approximately 16 x 8 x 8 kilometers. The closest image was taken 95 seconds prior to Giotto’s nearest approach, which was 376 miles. The nucleus itself is one of the darkest objects in the solar system. It is, in fact, darker than coal. The jets are emanating from the sunlit side are not uniform in nature. This could account for some of the irregularities detected in the orbit of Halley’s Comet. The comet will begin its next approach to the Sun in 2024, and will be visible on Earth again in 2061.
*Image atop post is engraving from Halley’s 1682 visit. Edmund Halley was 26 years old during this visit.
“The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” – Albert Einstein
A comprehensive overview of the theory of relativity and its applications in astronomy would require a course in itself. The purpose of this post will be to give a brief overview of the subject and in particular, the history of its development as a theory. What I would like to stress that despite its fearsome reputation as being difficult to understand, the major concepts of the theory can be understood by the public. In its most advance form, the mathematics of relativity can provide a challenge to any student of physics. However, this is true of any area of physics. You will not find many physics students tell you that a graduate level electricity & magnetism course is a breeze. However, the subject of electricity & magnetism can be presented in a manner that the public can understand. The difficulties of relativity lie in that it deals with phenomena we do not ordinarily observe in our lives. Relativity provides accurate predictions in two areas where Newton’s Laws do not. These are when matter has velocity near the speed of light and/or is located near a large gravity well (such as a star or a black hole). However, I do want to stress that outside of these two situations, Newton’s Laws and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity give essentially the same results.
Beginnings
In the latter part of the 1800’s, physics was thought by many to be a dead science. Newton’s Laws were considered the final say in predicting the behavior of matter in motion. James Clerk Maxwell, using four equations, successfully provided a comprehensive explanation of the properties of electricity and magnetism. The major problems in physics and astronomy seemed to be solved. However, as the century came to a close, cracks were appearing in this assumption. One was the failure of Newton’s Laws to accurately predict the orbit of Mercury around the Sun. The perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) advanced 574″ (about 1/6 of a degree) per century, which is 43″ more than the 531″ advance predicted by Newton’s Laws. This advance is caused by the presence of the other planets in the solar system. For a time, scientists thought the extra advance in Mercury’s orbit was due to the presence of an undiscovered planet. As none was found, a new explanation was required. An image of the advance is depicted below. It is exaggerated to demonstrate the effect.
Credit: Rainer Zenz/Wiki Commons
Einstein’s Papers
In 1905, Albert Einstein, who was working as a technical expert in a Swiss patent office, published four landmark papers (in addition to his doctoral dissertation) revolutionizing physics. This year is often called “annus mirabilis” or miracle year. The topics of these four papers are the following:
1. The photoelectric effect demonstrating light behaves as a stream of particles as well as waves. It was known at the time that a beam of light would knock electrons off a metal surface. This is similar to a baseball thrown on a beach. The impact of the ball will knock sand in the air. The accepted theory at the time was light consisted as a series of waves and this could not explain the photoelectric effect. Einstein showed that light behaves as a stream of discrete particles as well. Thus, light has a duality in that it behaves as a stream of particles as well as waves. This discovery is the foundation of quantum physics.
2. The second paper concerned the nature of Brownian motion explaining that heat is created by the motion of atoms and molecules. It was this paper that put the rest the ongoing debate if atoms existed as the constituent particles of matter.
3. The Special Theory of Relativity. This paper was concerned with the motion of objects in non-accelerating frames of reference. This means gravity is not a factor in the Special Theory as opposed to the later developed General Theory of Relativity.
4. The mass-energy equivalence principle. This paper gave us that famous equation E = mc2.
The last two papers will be discussed below.
Albert Einstein circa 1905, Credit: Einstein Archives/Wiki Commons
The Special Theory of Relativity
As mentioned earlier, James Clerk Maxwell, in the mid-1800’s, formulated four basic equations outlining the properties of electricity and magnetism. One outcome of these equations is electromagnetic radiation travels at a rate of 3.0 x 108 m/s (186,282 miles per second). This rate of speed is constant regardless of the observer’s velocity relative to the radiation. What exactly does this mean? Think of yourself on a highway and your speed is 55 mph. The car in the lane next to you is moving at 60 mph. That car will pass you at a rate of 5 mph, as their velocity is that much faster than your velocity. Now, let’s ramp up the speed of your car to 186,277 miles per second. This is exactly five miles per second slower than the speed of light. Remember, light is just a form of electromagnetic radiation. Imagine a beam of light traveling in the lane next to your car. At what rate of speed would it pass you? All your life’s experience would lead you to answer five miles per second. But that would be the incorrect answer! The light beam would pass you at a rate of 186,282 miles per second as if you were standing still. This is true regardless of your velocity relative to the beam of light. The genius of Einstein was to realize that contrary to what we perceive, the speed of light is constant for all observers and time is variable as a function of your velocity. The Special Theory of Relativity leads to the following conclusions:
1. As an object (or person) approaches the speed of light, their clock slows down compared to a stationary observer. If you were to take a round-trip voyage 100 light years away and travel at 99.995 percent of the speed of light, you would only age two years but arrive back on Earth 200 years later. In popular entertainment, the original 1968 movie Planet of the Apes gives a reasonably accurate portrayal of this effect.
2. Mass of an object increases as it approaches the speed of light. In fact, the mass of an object approaches infinity as it approaches the speed of light. This is why the speed of light is the maximum speed obtainable in our universe. As its mass approaches infinity, the force required to accelerate it approaches infinity.
3. The length of an object appears to decrease to a stationary observer as it approaches the speed of light.
4. E = mc2. This is the equation that gives us the understanding of nuclear fusion that occurs in the Sun. As hydrogen fuses to form helium, the mass of the helium atoms is less than the mass of the original hydrogen atoms. The difference is converted to energy. The Sun converts 4.3 million tons of mass into energy each second. A fraction of which reaches the Earth providing the energy to sustain life.
General Theory of Relativity
After publishing his Special Theory of Relativity, Einstein spent the next ten years working out the General Theory of Relativity. It is general in that it applies to all reference frames, accelerating and non-accelerating. This theory was published in 1916 and provided a dramatically different way of looking at gravity. Unlike Newton, who postulated gravity was a force between two bodies, Einstein postulated that gravity represents a curvature in space-time itself. Lets look at an analogy. Think of a trampoline with nothing on it. This represents a universe with no mass in it. If you rolled a golf ball across it, the ball would move in a straight line. Now place a baseball (which could represent a planet) on the trampoline. The ball would depress the trampoline slightly. Now roll the golf ball again. As it approached the baseball, the depression in the trampoline would cause the golf ball to move in a curved motion. Now place a bowling ball (this could represent a star) on the trampoline. The depression becomes more pronounced and the path of the golf ball as it moves towards the bowling ball becomes more curved. In fact, if the golf ball got too close to the bowling ball, its path would curve into the bowling ball much like a meteor would fall to the Earth’s surface if captured by Earth’s gravity well. The video below describes the difference between Newton & Einstein’s theories on gravity.
Experimental Proof
Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity predicted the advance of Mercury’s perihelion accurately. Remember, the predictions of relativity and Newton’s Laws diverge in two circumstances. When an object travels near the speed of light and when it is located near a large gravity well. Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun. This closeness is enough for predictions of its motion using the theory of relativity to vary slightly than Newton’s Laws. While this created a buzz in the physics community, relativity did not gain general acceptance until it passed an experimental test in 1919. Relativity predicts that light would be deflected by the Sun’s gravity. A beam of light would follow the path of space-time. If space-time is curved, then the path of light is curved as well. On May 29, 1919, British astronomer Arthur Eddington led an expedition to measure a star’s position near the Sun during a solar eclipse. Einstein’s theory predicted a deflection of 1.75 seconds of arc as opposed to Newton’s Law predicting the deflection at 0.875 seconds of arc. The measurements came in at 1.98 and 1.61 seconds of arc. These measurements are within the range of 30 seconds of arc error allowed for observational uncertainties and proved light was deflected by the Sun’s gravity well. Both the London Times and the New York Times reported the story and Einstein quickly became, by far, the most famous scientist of the era.
Negative photo of 1919 eclipse, Credit: Royal Society of London/Dyson, Eddington, Davidson
The Sun’s gravity well deflects starlight. Credit: ESA
The Cosmological Constant
The General Theory of Relativity yields a field equation which takes the following form: (Ruv)-1/2 (guv) R = (8)(π)Tuv – Λ(guv)
The subscripts in the equation are indications of what are called stress tensors. This enables mathematicians to express a complex set of equations in a compact form. You can think of this as a mathematical version of a zip file. This equation explains how matter and energy ( Tuv) curves space-time [(Ruv)-1/2 (guv)]. Now, I won’t go into the gory details of this equation. In fact, Einstein himself needed help with the complexities of the mathematics when he derived it. What is important about this equation is it predicts the universe must be either contracting or expanding as matter will deform space-time.
Einstein was not satisfied with this result. At the time, the universe was considered to be a permanent unchanging entity. What Einstein did to correct this was to add the constant Λ in the right side of the equation. This constant changes the equation providing a stable universe offsetting the effects of gravity on space-time. During the 1920’s, Georges Lemaitre argued the cosmological constant was not required and the universe could expand after originating from a primeval atom. Lemaitre used relativity to formulate what would later be called the Big Bang theory. Edwin Hubble (whom the Hubble Space Telescope was named after) discovered that all the galaxies in the universe were receding from each other. The universe was expanding! Relativity, in its original form, had predicted this result. Einstein would later admit his addition of the cosmological constant was an error.
New knowledge contradictory to our preconceived ideas can form a disequilibrium in our minds that can take time to sort out . Even Albert Einstein, who did as much as anybody to revolutionize physics, suffered once from an inability to overcome a preconceived idea. In this case, he believed the universe was static. It is something we all must guard against. In science, we must let the evidence point us to a conclusion and not allow a preconceived conclusion allow us to define the evidence. It should be noted that once the evidence of the Big Bang arrived, Einstein came around as a supporter of the theory rather than sticking with an outdated idea of the universe. As I speak of preconceived ideas, most would assume when Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921, it would have been for relativity. However, he won the Nobel Prize for his explanation of the photoelectric effect.
If you want to read more about Einstein and Relativity
The following sources I highly recommend for anybody who desires a greater understanding of the theory of relativity.
Issacson, W., (2007) Einstein. New York, Simon and Schuster.
A very readable biography of Einstein includes non-mathematical overviews of Einstein’s work. I found this book very enlightening describing the educational and life experiences that enabled Einstein to make breakthroughs where others failed.
Guttfreund, H. & Renn, J., (2015). The Road to Relativity. Princeton, Princeton University Press.
This book contains Einstein’s original manuscript for the theory of general relativity with a page by page interpretation for the public. It also has an excellent historical background on how Einstein developed the theory.
Einstein, A., Relativity: The General and Special Theory.
Want to learn about relativity directly from the source? This is Albert Einstein’s attempt to describe the theory to the public. The book can be purchased in the usual online outlets but is also in the public domain and can be read online for free, for example, here.
Lambourne, R., (2010). Relativity, Gravitation, and Cosmology. Cambridge University Press.
If you are seeking a textbook to get started on relativity, this is the best treatment I have seen. It will walk you through the algebra of special relativity to the tensors of general relativity. The text has many problems to work through to obtain a solid understanding of the subject. Lambourne has in the past taught a short course in relativity at Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education open to the public. Sounds like a good way to spend a week in the summer.
*Image atop post is the gravitational lensing of a galaxy by another galaxy in front. Typically, such lensing can result in two or more images of an object but if the alignment is just right, it will form a ring structure. Gravitational lensing was predicted by Einstein in 1915. Credit: ESA/NASA/Hubble
Packing up my books as I prepare to move from Buffalo to New York City is a bit like watching my life pass in front of my eyes. My collection of books began in the early 1970’s. This was just before the emergence of book chains and finding what you wanted required searching in a hodgepodge of venues. In the neighborhood, supermarkets and corner stores had book racks. For some reason, the Erb Deli had sci-fi books not found anywhere else. At the Thruway Mall, J.C. Penney’s had a book department in the basement and downtown there was Ulbrich’s on Main St. The 2nd floor book department at Ulbrich’s was accessed by a stairway hidden off to the side. You’d never know it existed unless someone told you it was there.
Bought this one in the basement of the Thruway Mall J.C. Penney’s. Always liked the artwork but that Klingon Captain really seems asleep at the wheel.
On the non-fiction front, this was my first astronomy book. Bought from Two Guys on Walden Ave for $1.05. Don’t actually remember that – the price tag is still on the inside cover.
Two oddities stand out from this era. One being a plethora of TV and movie adaptations and the other is the heavy sludge of 1970’s pseudoscience. Before the VCR, the only on-demand technology available was books. The pseudoscience holds up to my discerning adult eyes about as well as one would expect. For example, space-faring civilizations that solved the physics of interstellar travel would certainly not appear similar to 20th century astronauts, anymore than the Wright brothers flying outfits bear any similarity to jet fighter pilots. These books are valueless except perhaps as a historical curiosity. That decade’s embrace of UFO’s and ancient alien visitations may somehow explain part of my generation’s gullibility to the likes of Alex Jones.
The answer to the question on top is no, of course not, silly. Got this at the Genesee St Bell’s on the way to Avenue Pizza for a sub. Don’t ask me why I remember that 44 years later.
Anyways, there is one interesting aspect to these books, none of them mention Roswell. That 1947 episode did not hit the popular radar until Jesse Marcel, an Air Force desk jockey who was a Walter Mitty type prone to exaggeration, gave the National Enquirer his long tale of a UFO crash in New Mexico in 1980.
OJ Simpson during the 1970’s was what Michael Jordan was during the 1990’s. We know better now. This was bought at the Thruway Mall Waldenbooks – a sign of changes to come in the book business.
From the late 70’s to mid 80’s, my collection is a bit fallow. My move to Houston, the ultimate unwalkable city, in high school blunted my daily access to book sources and later in my college years, I was too buried in textbooks to read a whole lot else. However, there was the most excellent Spectrum Books, located in what I can only describe as an upscale strip mall (only in Houston) on Westheimer Road. By the mid 1980’s, the Mom & Pop book venues were by and large replaced by chains such as Waldenbooks in the malls. And those chains heavily stocked Stephen King. I read the 1,100 page It bit by bit at my stops to the Bryant St. Laundromat. This facility served as an odd fulcrum of life at Buffalo State. With its constant drone of dryers in motion and on the wall a poster of a perpetually upcoming Pete Seeger concert, I met more students and profs here than any other place save the campus pub. Not a bad reading spot, really.
I highly recommend King’s take on horror stories as a companion piece to his classic On Writing.
It was Stephen King who turned me on to Jack Finney in the book Danse Macabre. Finney’s work was anything but macabre. You can kind of think of Finney as the Twilight Zone on steroids. To start off, I’d recommend The Third Level, Second Chance, and Home Alone. As luck would have it, Finney’s classic short stories were compiled and republished in the late 1980’s. I would find those in a newer, larger chain, Barnes & Noble. I never had the antipathy that others had for Barnes & Noble. Perhaps because the first one I stepped in was the decidedly off-beat 5th Avenue New York City location. Fact is, B&N offered a far superior selection than any other place and the people who manage and work there love the business. I’d venture to guess I have bought more books there than any other venue.
One of my favorite late 1980’s books bought at Waldenbooks in downtown Houston. Most times, the reviews you read on the covers are a crock, but in this case, it is entirely accurate.
Not everything I wanted could be found at B&N. As the 80’s came to a close, it was an exciting time for astronomy. President Bush proposed a crewed mission to Mars while at the same time NASA’s great observatory program (including the Hubble) was taking shape. The former never got off the ground, the price tag was simply too large. The latter was one of NASA’s great success stories and continues to pay dividends to this day. It was difficult to find a wide array of astronomy books in stores back then. I relied on the Astronomy Book Club from Sky & Telescope magazine.
It’s easy to get discouraged by the challenging physics of interstellar flight. However, this book from the Astronomy Book Club ranks as one of my all-time favs.
It worked on the same premise as the old record clubs. You got six books essentially for free and you agreed to buy four more over the next three years. I entered into this with a bit of trepidation. When I was in high school, I joined a record club and some of the records were of sub-par quality. For example, the mix on Led Zeppelin IV muffled the drums. How do you muffle John Bonham? There was no need to worry. A good chunk of my collection came from the book club, ranging from astronomy texts to popularized science. This book club no longer exists as a result of technological advances in the 1990’s.
When I bought this at the Buff State bookstore, the cashier asked me what cats had to do with quantum mechanics. I didn’t have the heart to tell her.
The internet radically changed the nature of the book business. None more than Amazon. I initially embraced Amazon with great enthusiasm but these days, I do not buy from Amazon unless I really, really, have to. Like a lot of the tech world, Amazon has metastasized from a entrepreneur start-up to an oversized behemoth. Besides concerns over the possible lack of competition in the book world, the working conditions in Amazon’s warehouses are atrocious. The final straw was hearing Amazon’s decision to place an ambulance outside its warehouses to treat heat stroke rather than install air conditioning for its employees.
Some things you just could not get at the chain bookstores or book clubs. Picked this up at the Caltech bookstore during my stint at the Mt. Wilson CUREA program in 1997.
During my college days, I worked in a NAPA warehouse unloading trucks in Texas. I remember being dehydrated to the point when I did have access to water, I felt a cold rush to my head when I took a drink. Jeff Bezos’ net worth is approaching $150 billion, certainly enough to afford better working conditions. For now, I’ll stick with Barnes & Noble and whatever indie stores I can find.
The story of this purchase is pretty modern. Saw it recommended by Cornell Professor Jonathan Lunine on a YouTube lecture and found on Barnes & Noble’s website.
Speaking of which, the original 5th Avenue Barnes & Noble store has closed, a victim of gentrification. A lot of indie businesses have fallen pray to this trend. Still, in a city of 8.5 million, I have to believe there are some interesting bookstores to explore, not unlike the first time I set out to buy books in the 1970’s. I am looking forward to some good hunting.
*Nope, image atop post is not my place but the old Cincinnati Public Library which was torn down in 1955. Photo: Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County
Classical music was considered passe during the 1970’s. As a result, I never really learned about Aaron Copland in school. I heard his music in bits and pieces without context. Simple Gifts from Appalachian Spring opened for CBS News special reports and Hoe-Down from Rodeo was used for beef commercials. These rural themes are remarkable compositions as Copland was raised in Brooklyn and educated in Paris. Copland’s most famous composition was Fanfare for the Common Man. This composition took an odd twist in the 1970’s as ELP performed a version often used as a sports theme while the original was played as a prelude to Rolling Stones concerts. As the title suggests, Copland intended the piece for something quite different than to extol celebrity.
Copland derived the title from then VP Henry Wallace’s Century of the Common Man speech in 1942. Wallace thought of World War II as a global version of the American Civil War. That is, a global struggle to eliminate slavery under fascism and free the common man. Interwoven into that was the common man draftee armed services fighting the war both in Europe and the Pacific. Wallace identified literacy as a key foe of totalitarianism and that the population must be well fed and housed to be well-educated.
Henry Wallace next to FDR. Credit: FDR Library
The term common man can be a source of derision. In 1945, Wilhelm Reich wrote the 130 page essay, Listen, Little Man, pillorying the common man for allowing to be grifted in support of fascism. A few decades later, under less dire circumstances, hockey coach Herb Brooks would tell his players that “common men go nowhere.” I suppose this is arguing semantics, but I think everyone is a common man in some aspect of their lives. To continue the hockey analogy, Bobby Orr once commented that his greatness on the ice was contained in a bubble, it did not transfer to life outside the rink.
Even if a career path is found that vaults one to greatness, outside that world, you’re going to be a common man with all the potential pratfalls. It’s why Ben Carson can be a distinguished neurosurgeon and believe the biblical Joseph built the pyramids to store grain. It is also why Carson is woefully unqualified to lead HUD. Much worse, it’s why Hans Asperger and Werner Von Braun, two accomplished scientists, collaborated with the Nazi regime to accelerate their careers. As educators, we have to think of student success in broader terms than just career advancement.
There is the proverbial three-legged stool. That is, providing an education not only in subject content and physical education, but ethical training as well. This may have provided a braking mechanism in say, the mortgage bubble. When I worked in the mortgage industry during this era, I saw some managers, when confronted with the high risk of mortgages beginning around 2003 retort, “Bleep you, we’re making money.” – without the courtesy of the bleep. However, I suspect something more than ethics is required.
In academia, we’re used to fact-based debates. Typically, the argument with the best model to explain the facts wins. Beyond academia, that’s really not how things work. More often than not, arguments are based on social positioning. People tend to align with positions that maintain their status within their social group. It’s not a trivial concern. The ability to earn a living is usually dependent upon one’s social network. This is especially true in regions that are economically stagnant. It can be a powerful motivator for ill-advised actions.
Infrastructure, physical and social, not only move goods, but can transmit ideas. Good and bad, unfortunately. Studies have shown that civic associations were a key component in spreading Nazism. Embracing Nazi politics was a means of maintaining social status within various sub-cultures. Given that Germany was in the throes of the Great Depression, social status meant being employable. Add to that pogroms had been ongoing in Eastern Europe for a century normalizing violence against the Jewish population. While Hitler amplified that greatly, that ongoing ethical/moral lapse had already left the door ajar for Nazism.
Is there any way education could prevent such social rot from spreading? I won’t pretend to have a definitive answer for that, but below are a few ideas as food for thought.
A rigorous study of ethics should be completed before high school graduation. This alone is not sufficient. Students should be trained to stand against the crowd. Intellectual achievement alone does not provide this skill. During World War I, Bertrand Russell demonstrated this trait by holding firm against nationalism that prompted the catastrophic events from 1914-18:
“I knew it was my business to protest, however futile that protest might be. I felt that for the honour of human nature those who were not swept off their feet should show that they stood firm.”
Henry Moseley, who had organized the periodic table by atomic number, did not. He would die at Gallipoli in 1915, cutting short a brilliant scientific career. Moseley’s disdain for foreigners imbued him with a nationalistic enthusiasm for a useless war.
We also have to emphasize to know what we don’t know. I never went to trade school so I do not dispense advice on how to fix plumbing. That’s innocent enough, but as already mentioned, many a fine mind has ventured outside their lanes. This is how John Maynard Keynes, who gave us an understanding of the Great Depression and how to end it, also made the dreadful decision to embrace eugenics. We have to impress upon our students it is the argument, not the person, that wins academic debates. I’ve seen to many people root for their side like sports fans and not analyzing the arguments itself. That approach can take you down the wrong path like whales following the leader to beach themselves.
Learning subject content is a key component of education, but that alone does not make a well-rounded student. An ability to discern between good and poor reasoning has to be developed. In addition, diversity of experience and community is a crucial factor of education.
It’s easy to look back at the era when Henry Wallace made his Century of the Common Man speech and think of the negatives. Top of this list would be Jim Crow segregation, but there were positive aspects to draw upon. Buffalo, where I grew up, had steel mills but also the Philharmonic with the groundbreaking Lukas Foss. Next to pro sports was the Albright-Knox and it’s famous 1965 Festival of the Arts. Another example is Columbus, IN. During the 1940’s, the CEO of Cummins, Inc, a diesel engine manufacturer, commissioned architects such as I.M. Pei, Eero Saarinen, and Cesar Pelli, making this town of 45,000 a pioneer in modern architecture. Today, far too often, I see community interests listing too heavily towards sports or guns. We need to be better than that.
I hear a lot of arguments which is more important, trade school vs universities vs community college. It’s a dumb argument. You need all that for a functional society. True, we eventually specialize to make a living, but it’s no reason not to have an appreciation of what other occupations bring to the table. Instilling respect for honest work is important. I have far more respect for the honest work of often disparaged burger flippers than say, private equity managers who have pushed for unneeded dental work on children. Beyond respect for other occupations, we need to build respect for people in other communities.
It’s constructive to take city students out to the country and vise-versa to see how people live and work in those regions. International travel is helpful, but not always available due to lack of resources. But certainly, webcasts between two classes across the globe can be set up. Stereotypes arise most easily when people have never met each other. One reason why some of the powers that be favor segregation.
Education needs to build connections between people, disciplines, and cultures. This infrastructure of knowledge and ideas has to be guided by a sense of ethics. Ideally, the internet can help build these social connections, but it can also break down these connections. Educational institutions need to act as vanguard against that breakdown. If we don’t succeed in that, we are in danger of going from the Century of the Common Man to the Century of the Grifter.
In some quarters of the media, global warming is presented as a natural rebound from an epoch known as the Little Ice Age. Is it possible the rise in global temperatures represents a natural recovery from a prior colder era? The best way to answer that is to understand what the Little Ice Age was and determine if natural forcings alone can explain the recent rise in global temperatures.
The Little Ice Age refers to the period from 1300-1850 when very cold winters and damp, rainy summers were frequent across the Northern Europe and North America. That era was preceded by the Medieval Warm Period from 950-1250 featuring generally warmer temperatures across Europe. Before we get into the temperature data, lets take a look at the physical and cultural evidence for the Little Ice Age.
You can see the retreat of the glaciers in the Alps at the end of the Little Ice Age to the current day. In the Chamonix Valley of the French Alps, advancing glaciers during the Little Ice Age destroyed several villages. In 1645, the Bishop of Geneva performed an exorcism at the base of the glacier to prevent its relentless advance. It didn’t work. Only the end of the Little Ice Age halted the glacier’s advance in the 19th century.
The River Thames Frost Fairs
The River Thames in London froze over 23 times during the Little Ice Age and five times, the ice was thick enough for fairs to be held on the river. When the ice stopped shipping on the river, the fairs were held to supplement incomes for people who relied on river shipping for a living. These events happened in 1684, 1716, 1740, 1789, and 1814. Since then, the river has not frozen solid enough in the city to have such an activity occur. An image of the final frost fair is below:
The Fair on the Thames, February 4th 1814, by Luke Clenell. Credit: Wiki Commons
The Year Without a Summer
The already cold climate of the era was exacerbated by the eruption of Mt. Tambora on April 10, 1815. If volcanic dust reaches the stratosphere, it can remain there for a period of 2-3 years, cooling global temperatures. The eruption of Mt. Tambora was the most powerful in 500,000 years. Its impact was felt across Europe and North America during the summer of 1816. From June 6-8 of that year, snow fell across New England and as far south as the Catskill Mountains. Accumulations reached 12-18 inches in Vermont. In Switzerland, a group of writers, stuck inside during the cold summer at Lake Geneva, decided to have a contest on who could write the most frightening story. One of the authors was Mary Shelley and her effort that summer is below:
First Edition cover for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Credit: Wiki Commons
Let’s take a look at what the hard data says about the Little Ice Age. Below is a composite of several temperature reconstructions from the past 1,000 years in the Northern Hemisphere:
The range of uncertainty is wider as we go back in time as we are using proxies such as tree rings and ice cores rather than direct temperature measurements. However, even with the wider range of uncertainty it can be seen that temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were about 0.50 C cooler than the baseline 1961-90 period. Was the Little Ice Age global in nature or was it restricted to the Northern Hemisphere?
Recent research indicates that the hemispheres are not historically in sync when it comes to temperature trends. One key difference is that the Southern Hemisphere is more dominated by oceans than the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere did not experience warming during the northern Medieval Warm Period. The Southern Hemisphere did experience overall cooling between 1571 and 1722. More dramatically, the Southern Hemisphere is in sync with the Northern Hemisphere since the warming trend began in 1850. This indicates the recent global warming trend is fundamentally different than prior climate changes.
The Census of Bethlehem by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Painted in 1566, inspired by the harsh winter of 1565. Credit: Wiki Commons.
Keep in mind that we are dealing with global averages. Like a baseball team that hits .270, but may have players hitting anywhere between .230 and .330, certain areas of the globe will be hotter or cooler than the overall average. During the 1600’s, Europe was colder than North America, and the reverse was the case during the 1800’s. At it’s worst, the regional drops in temperature during the Little Ice Age were on the order of 1 – 2 C (1.8 to 3.6 F). At first glance, that might not seem like much. We tend to think in terms of day-to-day weather and there is not much difference between 0 and 2 C (32 and 35 F). But yearly averages are different than daily temperatures.
We’ll take New York City as an example. The hottest year on record is 2012 at 57.3 F. The average annual temperature is 55.1 F. If temperatures were to climb by 3 F, the average year in New York City would become hotter than the hottest year on record. Again, using the baseball example, a player’s game average fluctuates more so than a career batting average. You can think of daily weather like a game box score, and climate as a career average. It’s much more difficult to raise a career batting average. In the case of climate, it takes a pretty good run of hotter than normal years to raise the average 2-3 F.
Although the Northern Hemisphere was emerging from the Little Ice Age in the late 1800’s, cold winters were still frequent. This train was stuck in the snow in 1881, the same winter that served as the inspiration for Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter, part of her Little House on the Prairie series. Credit: Minnesota Historical Society.
Lets go back to the climate history. Global temperatures dipped about 0.5 C over a period of several centuries during the Little Ice Age. Since 1800, global temperatures have risen 1.0 C. This sharp increase gives the temperature graph the hockey stick look. The latest warming trend is more than just a return to norm from the Little Ice Age. There are two other factors to consider as well. One is the increasing acidity of the oceans, the other is the cooling of the upper atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid. Since 1800, the acidity of the oceans have increased by 30%. A rise in global temperatures alone does not explain this, but an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide delivered to the oceans via the carbon cycle does. As carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, it traps more heat near the surface. This allows less heat to escape into the upper atmosphere. The result is the lower atmosphere gets warmer and the upper atmosphere gets cooler. The stratosphere has cooled 1 C since 1800. A natural rebound in global temperatures would warm both the lower and upper atmosphere, observations do not match this. However, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does explain this.
The Little Ice Age looms large historically in that the colder climate played a role in many events leading to modern day Europe and America. What caused the Little Ice Age? That is still a matter of debate. The Maunder Minimum, a sustained period of low solar activity from 1645 to 1715, is often cited as the culprit. However, solar output does not vary enough with solar activity to cause the entire dip in global temperatures during the Little Ice Age. As the old saying goes, correlation is not causation. That’s were the science gets tough. You need to build a model based on the laws of physics explaining causation. While the cause of the Little Ice Age is still undetermined, the origin of modern global warming is not. To deny that trend is caused by human carbon emissions, you have to explain not only the warming of the lower atmosphere, but the cooling of the upper atmosphere and increase in ocean acidity.
To date, no one has accomplished that.
*Image atop post is Hendrick Avercamp’s 1608 painting, Winter Landscape with Ice Skaters. Credit: Wiki Commons.
On April 7, 1947, the largest sunspot in recorded history was observed. Forty times the diameter of Earth, this solar activity would be connected with some odd happenings later that year in Roswell, NM. That’s a testament, as we’ll see, to humans’ ability to connect dots that really are not there. Nonetheless, this event does offer the opportunity to explore solar physics along with history.
Sunspots were first observed by ancient Chinese astronomers around 800 BC. The invention of the telescope accelerated the study of sunspots and Galileo spent several years observing them. Sometimes it takes a few centuries of observations to discern a pattern and that was the case with sunspots. In 1843, Samuel Schwabe discovered sunspots appear in roughly 11-year cycles. One major exception to this was the Maunder Minimum from 1645 to 1715 when very few sunspots appeared at all. It would not be until the early 20th Century and the work of George Ellery Hale that the physics of sunspots would be understood.
Animation of Galileo’s sunspot drawings from June 2 to July 8 in 1613. The Sun rotates once every 25 days. Credit: Rice University Galileo Project.
From 1897 to 1993, the world’s largest telescope was one built by Hale. These telescopes discovered galaxies existed beyond the Milky Way, the expansion of the universe, and quasars, the most distant objects known. Somewhat overshadowed by all this was Hale’s work in solar physics. In 1908, Hale discovered sunspots were regions of intense magnetic activity. The magnetic field acts as a bottleneck for convection to the solar surface. As a result, sunspots are a few thousand degrees cooler than the surrounding region and consequently appear dark. Hale would also discover the polarity of sunspot magnetic field flips after each 11-year cycle as part of an overall 22-year cycle. It was the 150-foot solar tower at Mt. Wilson that imaged the great sunspot of 1947.
Great sunspot of 1947. Earth and Jupiter added to image for scale. Credit: Mt. Wilson Observatory
Despite the darkness of the sunspots, this type of solar activity does not significantly change visible light radiation received on Earth. However, high energy ultraviolet and x-ray radiation increases during times of intense solar activity. This radiation is harmful to life but thankfully, an upper layer of the atmosphere called the thermosphere absorbs it. This layer, 500 to 1,500 km above the surface, is where the International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope, and many other satellites reside. We think of this region as outer space as the atmosphere is so rarefied here, but rarefied as it is, an increase in solar activity can expand and increase the density of the thermosphere enough to drag orbiting objects to a lower altitude, or in the case of Skylab in 1979, back down to Earth.
Skylab was America’s first space station. This image was taken on February 8, 1974 as Skylab’s final crew departed. Credit: NASA
Some have claimed the massive solar activity of 1947 is responsible for an extraterrestrial space vehicle crash near Roswell, NM that year. What crashed in New Mexico was earthly in origin, but solar activity would not bring down this type of craft at any rate. Skylab was an abandoned space vehicle and it took several years for the energized thermosphere to drag it down to Earth. An advanced space vehicle with propulsion would simply compensate for any decay in its orbit with a minor burn. Orbiting satellites perform this maneuver routinely. So what happened in the New Mexico desert in 1947?
In mid June, rancher W. W. Brazel found a crash site filled with debris he thought may have been part of a flying saucer. By early July, Brazel notified a nearby Army Air Force base and three men were sent to investigate. Here’s where things got complicated. The debris field contained items described as foil, balsa wood beams, and other parts held together with scotch tape. There was also a black box which looked like some sort of radio transmitter. Now, this obviously is not something built to withstand the rigors of interstellar travel. However, the United States was in the mist of the great flying saucer wave of 1947 and a Roswell paper famously reported the military captured the remains of a crashed saucer.
The term flying saucer had just been coined in late June of that year when pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine saucer type objects near Mt. Rainier. A wave of sightings was followed over the summer. The military quickly backtracked on that initial news release and stated it was a weather balloon that had crashed. Brazel knew that wasn’t quite right as he had seen weather balloons before and what he discovered this time did not look like his previous finds. Annoyed by the publicity, even the Russians chimed in, joking that the flying saucers reports were the result of too much scotch whiskey, he kept quiet and the story of Roswell died down until the late 70’s when new claims of a government coverup emerged.
Brazel was right, it was not a weather balloon, and there was a coverup by the government, just not the one usually promoted by those who make a living off this event. I can recall a 1989 episode of Unsolved Mysteries sensationalizing the Roswell incident. I happened to like Unsolved Mysteries quite a bit back in the day. However, television is a business and sensationalism sells. In between the 4-5 legitimate mysteries presented each week the show would delve once into the paranormal. Even then, you had to discern what was real and what was fake. Roswell was a legit mystery that would be resolved in the mid-90’s. In retrospect, looking at the 994-page Air Force Roswell Report, it was well beyond the scope of Unsolved Mysteries or ufologists to untangle Roswell.
Unlike most ufoligists accounts of Roswell, the Air Force investigation interviews first hand sources. Three key interviewees are Sheridan Cavitt, who recovered the original remains at Roswell with Jesse Marcel, Irving Newton, who inspected the debris in Fort Worth, and Albert Trakowski, who was director of Project Mogul. Jesse Marcel died in 1986. It was Marcel from the military side who was a key force in reviving the Roswell story in the late ’70’s. Cavitt described Marcel as a good man but was prone to exaggeration. Cavitt confirms the original debris field was consistent with a balloon crash. Newton confirms the same and in fact, broke out laughing at the thought the debris might come from an alien craft when he saw it in 1947. It was Marcel again who pushed that idea in Fort Worth, noting what he thought was alien writing on the balsa wood beams. The Roswell story lied dormant until 1978, when Marcel appeared in a National Enquirer article claiming he recovered a flying saucer at Roswell in 1947.
From there, the Roswell myth picked up steam until it became a cottage industry onto itself. The report interview with Trakowski is key. This interview provided information on a project that was classified in 1947 and when unclassified in 1994, solved the Roswell mystery.
In the dawn of the Atomic Age, the United States was researching methods to detect atomic bomb tests in the Soviet Union. One such effort was Project Mogul. This program designed high altitude balloons to detect sound waves from atomic explosions. The balloons were unusual in design, consisting of balloon trains up to 600 feet long. The balloons were made of polyethylene material and the train included radar reflectors. The original find by Brazel indicated the lack of an impact crater. And the alien hieroglyphics? Those were flower/geometric shaped figures on tape used to seal the balloon’s radar targets. This tape was procured from a toy manufacturer when the targets were built during World War II. The material shortage during the war forced the use of a toy manufacturer’s tape and was often the source of jokes within the Project Mogul staff.
Schematic or 600-foot project Mogul balloon train. Credit: USAF.
The materials discovered fit the description of the Mogul balloons. Brazel’s intuition was correct, it wasn’t a weather balloon, but given the then classified nature of Project Mogul, the military could not disclose its true nature in 1947.
The debris was to be shipped to Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson) in Ohio with a stop in Fort Worth where it was photographed. The purpose of sending the debris to Wright was to properly identify it. However, the debris never made it to Wright as it was identified as some sort of balloon rather than a flying saucer in Fort Worth. In fact, the entire contents was described as being able to fit in a car trunk. Another aspect of the Roswell myth was a second crash where alien bodies were discovered and shipped to Wright. No first hand accounts of a second crash exist and those who make this claim can’t even agree on its location. Fact is, it never happened. While the people at Wright Field were not examining alien bodies, they were at work making aviation history.
After World War II, Chuck Yeager was assigned to Wright Field where the Army Air Force maintained its test flight center. The Bell X-1 was built in Bell Aerospace’s plant in Niagara Falls, but many of the design features came from the engineers at Wright. It was at Wright where the decision was made to model the Bell X-1 after a .50 caliber machine gun bullet. When the push came to move the X-1 past the sound barrier, operations were transferred to Muroc Air Base in the Mojave Desert and Yeagar went supersonic on October 14th. There were a lot of interesting going-ons at Wright Field in 1947, just none of it involving extraterrestrials.
Bell X-1 during a test flight. Credit: NASA Langley Research Center
So why does the myth of Roswell endure, more than two decades after it was debunked? As the poster from the X-Files says, “I want to believe.” People naturally want to be in on the discovery of something momentous as alien life. Problem is, science requires evidence and all that evidence points towards Project Mogul as the source of the Roswell crash. That, and the Roswell UFO story is a livelihood for authors. As I said before, sensationalism sells, and as much as people don’t want to give up on myths, they are more stubborn giving up a cash cow.
It’s unfortunate that the remains of the Project Mogul balloon crash was disposed of. Wright-Patterson is now the home of the National Museum of the USAF. A fabulous collection of aviation history from the Wright brothers to the Space Age, an exhibit of the crash remains from Roswell would have been a great addition. Besides an interesting historical artifact from the nascent atomic age, one could laugh just as Warrant Officer Irving Newton did in Fort Worth back in 1947, when told this debris was the flying saucer found in Roswell.
