My World View

My world view

Dec. 11th, 2008 | 07:29 pm

Hello all,

Well after my last blog in regards to the children of Africa and some of the responses that I received (some good, some bad, some indifferent, some asking to be deleted from my blog), I think that I want to turn this blog into a regular thing. At this point in my life I feel that I don't have a whole lot to offer society with the exception of my voice and art.

So what makes this silly looking dork qualified to speak on anything, you may be asking? Well, nothing really. I almost got a BA from NAU in arts Management. I have studied Astronomy, Quantum mechanics, comparative religions, Philosophy and history at great length. One might say that I am a bit obsessed by these. That and I am a human being.

So to understand some of the social issues that I will discuss later I feel it is necessary to know our place in the universe, as it seems to be important to any future blogs.

My world view:

The visible universe is a sphere with a diameter about 93 billion light-years. A light year is the amount of time it takes light to travel a year at 186,000 miles per second, about about 5,878,630,000,000 miles. A number that If I were to write out here would take me a very, very long time.

The largest structures in the universe are superclusters, which are large associations of galaxies that can extend over distances of more than 100 million light-years. The largest supercluster is the Sculptor Supercluster, which is nearly 1 billion light-years away, and extends roughly 250 million light-years from end to end.

The diameter of a typical galaxy is only 30,000 light-years, and the typical distance between two neighboring galaxies is only 3 million light-years. As an example, our Milky Way galaxy is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter, and our nearest sister galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy, is located roughly 2.5 million light years away. Typical galaxies range from dwarfs with as few as ten million stars up to giants with one trillion stars, all orbiting a common center of mass bound together by the gravity of a massive black hole. Galaxies can also contain many multiple star systems, star clusters, and various interstellar clouds. There are probably more than 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe.

A star is a massive, luminous ball of plasma that is held together by its own gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth. For most of its life, a star shines due to thermonuclear fusion in its core releasing energy that traverses the star's interior and then radiates into outer space. Almost all elements heavier than hydrogen and helium were created by fusion processes in stars. This includes the matter that we are made of. In a very real way we are made of star dust. We can estimate the number of stars in our galaxy alone as roughly 100 billion. Our Sun is so large that it would hold 1.3 million Earths.

Earth, our home planet, is the only planet in our solar system known to harbor life - life that is incredibly diverse. All of the things we need to survive are provided under a thin layer of atmosphere that separates us from the uninhabitable void of space. Earth is made up of complex, interactive systems that are often unpredictable. All the millions of lifeforms on Earth seek energy and food while generating waste heat and materials. The most successful animal species, in terms of biomass, is probably the Antarctic krill, with a biomass of about 500 million tonnes. However, as a group, the small aquatic crustaceans called copepods form the largest animal biomass on earth. Humans comprise about 100 million tonnes of the Earth's biomass, domesticated animals about 700 million tonnes (1.0%), and crops about 2 billion tones. The total biomass of bacteria is estimated to equal that of plants

So beyond that we enter the realm of the very small……..

A molecule is defined as a sufficiently stable electrically neutral group of at least two atoms in a arrangement held together by very strong chemical bonds. Molecules make up all living and non-living things. Molecules are so small that there are more molecules in your body than there are stars in the universe! Molecules in living things are made from only about 25 of more than 100 known atoms in the universe. Molecules are made from as few as two atoms to hundreds of millions of atoms. Each molecule has a unique shape that allows it to interact with other molecules.

All Molecules are made up of elements which are fundamental substances which cannot be broken down by chemical means. There are 92 elements that occur naturally. The elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen are the elements that make up most living organisms. Some other elements found in living organisms are: magnesium, calcium, phosphorus, sodium, potassium. Remember that all these elements were created in a super massive star billion of years ago, spewed out, and coalesced into our solar system, planet and us. Molecules are made up of even tinier particles called atoms.

All elements are comprised of atoms in specific combinations. An atom is comprised of protons and neutrons in the nucleus and electrons in a shell surrounding it. A hydrogen atom is only about a ten millionth of a millimeter in diameter, but the proton in the middle is a hundred thousand times smaller, and the electron whizzing around the outside is a thousand times smaller than that! The rest of the atom is empty. When you touch the table, it is the electron fields in your finger interacting with the electrons in the table, not you physically touching it. It is your brain and the nerve pathways that give the illusion of touch. But more on that later…..

Protons and neutrons are comprised of quarks. A quark is a fundamental particle which possesses both electric charge and 'strong' charge. They combine in groups of two or three to form composite objects (called mesons and baryons, respectively), held together by the strong force. Protons and neutrons are familiar examples of such composite objects -- both are made up of three quarks.

So I've talked about how big the universe is, but how old is it?

The Universe is probably 10-20 billion years old with Our Solar System 4-5 billion years old.

If we were to compress the time since the Big Bang into one year, and make the time of the Big Bang January 1,

• The Earth was formed in mid-September.

• The mammals appeared on December 26.

• All human prehistory (from the first known stone tools) and history have occurred in the last 1/2 hour of New Year's Eve.

And here is a simple timeline of life on earth.

• 3.8 billion years of simple cells (prokaryotes),

• 3 billion years of photosynthesis,

• 2 billion years of complex cells (eukaryotes),

• 1 billion years of multicellular life,

• 600 million years of simple animals,

• 570 million years of arthropods (ancestors of insects, arachnids and crustaceans)

• 550 million years of complex animals

• 500 million years of fish and proto-amphibians,

• 475 million years of land plants,

• 400 million years of insects and seeds,

• 360 million years of amphibians,

• 300 million years of reptiles

• 200 million years of mammals

• 150 million years of birds,

• 130 million years of flowers,

• 65 million years since the non-avian dinosaurs died out,

• 2.5 million years since the appearance of Homo,

• 200,000 years since humans started looking like they do today,

• 25,000 years since Neanderthals died out.

• 60 thousand years ago Homo sapiens appear.

• Roughly 13,000 years ago the first settlements appeared and 7,000 years ago the first cities.

Thus, all of human history is but a fleeting instant on the cosmic timescale.

So what does this all mean to us? What does it mean to me? Well, think about this for a moment, in the entire universe, in all the galaxies, stars, planets, in the 15+ billion years the universe has been around and for all the time left, there has only EVER been one of you. You are totally and completely unique to this universe. No one has ever been exactly like you, nor will any one ever be. There are more combination's of neurons in your brain than stars in the universe. In a very real way, we are a way for the universe to know itself.

To me this world view is infinitely more powerful than any religion or creation myth. It is based on science. How do we define science? According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of science is "knowledge attained through study or practice," or "knowledge covering general truths of the operation of general laws, esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method [and] concerned with the physical world." What does that really mean? Science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge. This system uses observation and experimentation to describe and explain natural phenomena. Not guessing, not faith, not "cause god said it was so", but observation of the world around us. Perhaps the most general description is that the purpose of science is to produce useful models of reality.

So I am sure I have "stirred the pot" with my heretical beliefs, remember now, people have been killed, tortured, driven out, because this world view was not convenient to those in power.

So If I am not burned at the stake, next week will be about human perception! Until then,

"You're born, you live and you die. There are no do-overs, no second chances to make things right if you frak 'em up the first time. Not in this life anyway. Like I said, you make your choices and you live with them. And in end you are those choices." --Kendra Shaw