Taking a break today from my last series of posts (on the Goldilocks Zone) to report on my recent doings.
Today is a rain day. No chance to work outside unless the rain clears this afternoon. So I’m working indoors. Also, since this is a Saturday, the only stock market work I had was wrapping up my weekly spreadsheet. I greatly simplified my spreadsheet in June when I resumed trading activities, so that spreadsheet updating now takes all of ten minutes.
I transcribed four of my father-in-law’s WW2 letters. I’m now up to 65 complete. It looks like well over 100, maybe as many as 200 yet to go. I never said it would be quick or easy.
Yesterday I finished the second editorial pass (the first pass having been two years ago) on Vol 6 in the A Walk Through Holy Week study. I think two more quick passes and I’ll be ready to publish.
Typical rainy day activities for me are filing papers and updating the check book. Not really feeling like doing either one today, but we’ll see. For sure I’ll get in an hour or more of reading. Oh, yeah, I’ll have to prepare supper, and perhaps vacuum.
What if Earth were in the center of the galaxy instead of a far away arm? How would gravity be different, and could human life be sustained or develop?
In several prior posts, I’ve written about the so-called Goldilocks Zone, a place on a planet where conditions are “just right” for human life to be sustained. Or for human-type live to have developed in the first place. with the deployment of powerful new telescopes in the last decade, astronomers are looking for and finding many more exoplanets, and astrobiologists are trying to figure out if any of these could sustain human life.
The bounds of the HZ are based on Earth‘s position in the Solar System and the amount of radiant energy it receives from the Sun. Due to the importance of liquid water to Earth’s biosphere, the nature of the HZ and the objects within it may be instrumental in determining the scope and distribution of planets capable of supporting Earth-like extraterrestrial life and intelligence. As such, it is considered by many to be a major factor of planetary habitability, and the most likely place to find extraterrestrial liquid water and biosignatures elsewhere in the universe.
The habitable zone is also called the Goldilocks zone
But my way of thinking is it’s more than temperature that is needed to develop or sustain human life. In a recent post, I discussed gravity. Too much or too little—in other words, too different than the gravitational tug we have on earth—would, I think, make human life difficult or impossible. Too much gravity and we would crawl around like a bunch of slugs. Too little gravity and we would bound around with great leaps, except that muscle mass and tone might never develop. I think gravity is really important.
What about light? Does the amount of light that reaches Earth have an impact on our being able to live here? Did it have a factor in our developing in the first place? The graphical depiction above shows our solar system as being far away from the galactic center of the Milky Way. Thus, it is dark at night when we have rotated away from our sun’s direct rays. We get a little light from the thousands of stars we can see, and a little more from the moon, but obviously a whole lot less than during daylight. I think that, if we were located near the galactic center, we would have no night. The number or stars close enough that an exoplanet would not experience night, even when rotated away from its star.
What would perpetual daylight do to a person? Would the lack of a mostly dark period lead to some form of madness? I fear it would.
Or what if God used evolution as the way He made humans instead of creating them as a fully-formed and developed Adam and Eve? On an exoplanet with no night, could human-like life have evolved? How important is alternating periods of light and darkness to the development of the brain power we possess? I’m asking questions here about something I wonder about, and suspect is important, but in truth know nothing about.
This is the last of the factors I’ll write about that might have an impact on the habitable zone of any star. Actually, though, I wonder if there are more factors involved that I haven’t thought of.
I had hoped to have Volume 5 of A Walk Through Holy Week published in late July, but I wasn’t able to get my act together and do the required publishing tasks. I finally put my mind to it over the last two days, and the book is now published. Final Teaching covers chapters 14-15-16-17 of the gospel of John, where Jesus gave his disciples instruction, encouragement, and cautions after they had finished eating their Passover meal. It’s a section of the Bible that is rich in words that can help us on our discipleship walk.
So Volumes 1-5 are published. They are:
Vol 1: To Jerusalem
Vol 2: Temple Teaching
Vol 3: Coming Troubles
Vol 4: A Difficult Meal
Vol 5: Final Teaching
The print book cover
Volumes 6, 7, and 8 are written, requiring only editing followed by the usual publishing tasks. Hopefully I can do all that by the end of the year, then be able to move on to other writing.
Concerning Volume 5, as of this moment the e-book is approved and for sale. Here’s the link to the Amazon listing. Just waiting for the print book to be approved and for the two listings to sync up. Hopefully that will happen today.
What if Earth were in the center of the galaxy instead of a far away arm? How would gravity be different, and could human life be sustained or develop?
Continuing our discussion about the Goldilocks Zone—that area of a planet where conditions are just right to sustain life, especially human-like life—I move now from conditions on the planet itself to things in the planet’s neighborhood. I’ve already discussed the general concept of a Goldilocks Zone and factors affecting the temperature, which must be just right for human life to thrive.
The first of two things off the planet to discuss is gravity. Gravity? you say. Isn’t that on the planet? Well, yes, it is. Perhaps “off the planet” is not the best term. Anyone who has taken fundamental science in school has learned about gravity: the pull two objects exert on each other. It holds air close to Earth, creating the atmosphere we need for life. It’s what keeps our feet firmly planted on Earth, and why we can’t jump off of it. It’s why we fall if we lose our balance.
But we know it takes two bodies to gravitationally tango. This is demonstrated by the tides, which have been shown to be related to the moon’s gravitational tug on earth. Those tides are variable based on the lunar cycles.
I’m not saying we need a moon-ocean connection for human life to form but simply using the moon as an example of something in the neighborhood that affects our gravity. I’m trying to talk through the likelihood of another planet being out there somewhere in the Milky Way or another galaxy being able to sustain human life. Some people believe, given the number of galaxies and stars out there, the existence of finding other life-sustaining planets is a virtual certainty, including planets where human-like life could have developed. I’m simply talking through that scenario.
The Goldilocks Zone concept, as I’ve seen it presented, is usually posed as a question of temperature and nothing else. But could gravity play a factor? What if you had a planet with the moon’s gravity. If it could hold an atmosphere in place, could humans live in only that little gravity? Could human life have developed in only that little gravity? I sort of doubt it. Some different kind of life would have developed. You wouldn’t see a bunch of Armstrongs and Aldrins bounding around. But will wait for scientific experts to weigh in.
What about other celestial objects, such as the sun and other planets? Obviously the sun plays a big roll, its gravity holding Earth in orbit. Could you find a planet with a sun, say, three times the mass of ours, and place a planet in orbit around it so that a Goldilocks temperature could exist, would the gravity properties be such that human life could exist? Or what if the planet were twice as big as Earth? Same question. Would that planet hold so much air in place that the atmospheric pressure would be too great for humans to live in it?
Let’s go a little farther afield in the celestial neighborhood. What about a planet rotating around a star near the center of our galaxy. Would all the other stars around it combined exert so much gravitational force that it would be so different from ours that human life couldn’t exist? or not develop in the first place? I realize we are talking about four or five light years between stars. But what if you had bunches and bunches of stars?
I’m asking questions I don’t know the answers to. I suspect scientists, somewhere on Earth, understand gravity so much they can tell what conditions are an a supposed planet twice Earth’s size rotating a sun thrice our sun’s size in a celestial neighborhood 100 times more cluttered than ours. What are the “G” forces on a human at that equator, and could they exist there in that gravity if the temperature were right?
We have learned from long-term periods in space that it’s almost impossible for humans to maintain muscle mass and tone in Zero G, even with lots of exercise. What will happen on a theoretical exoplanet with G forces so foreign to our bodies? A biologist might—or might not—be able to answer that question.
The next post in this series will discuss one more celestial neighborhood factor in the presence of a Goldilocks Zone.
Does this galaxy, of a billion or more stars, have an exoplanet that includes a Goldilocks zone?
So, we are talking about planets outside of our solar system, exoplanets, and whether we might find among them a so-called “Goldilocks Zone”—a place on the planet where the amount of sunshine, atmosphere, and water could sustain human-like life. A side question would be whether such a planet could sustain any type of life. But, for the sake of this series of articles, we are discussing only human life.
It seems to me, the biggest factors in the presence of a Goldilocks Zone are the location away from its star and movement relative to that star and how those impact the planet’s surface temperature.
A just-right temperature is the most obvious need. But that’s a fairly wide range. With environmental adaption and bodily protection, humans live from the lower polar regions to the hot deserts. Not the coldest parts of the poles, and not the very hottest, dryest deserts, but close to them. As I say, that’s a pretty good range, indicating that humans are adaptable in a broad range of temperatures. That means we should have a pretty good chance of finding a suitable exoplanet, right?
Not so fast. On Earth, part of what determines the temperature is the Earth’s rotation. If it didn’t rotate, not much of the world’s surface would be habitable. The tropics would be out, for without 12 hours rotated away from the sun’s rays, the temperature would be too hot. I don’t know just how much Earth’s own Goldilocks Zone would shrink, but I would think it would shrink significantly.
Then, what about the tilt of Earth’s axis, that thing that gives us seasons? This results in a change in temperature between winter and summer, but does it also impact average temperature? Good question. And if the tilt impacts the Goldilocks Zone, does the wobble of the tilt also have an impact?
Then, what about the elliptical nature of Earth’s orbit? We aren’t always the same distance from the sun. Does that have an impact? I’m not sure it does, but it’s one more factor in Earth’s movements relative to the sun to think about.
Another obvious factor in maintaining temperature is the atmosphere. The heat from a star would radiate away at those parts of the planet not receiving sunlight except that the atmosphere holds some heat in. We know this because of how much colder it gets on a clear winter night compared to a cloudy winter night. And does the amount of moisture in the atmosphere affect this? I think it does.
What else is involved? I suspect the color of the planet makes a difference. Certain colors will reflect heat; certain other colors will absorb heat. And does the color of the Earth’s oceans, i.e. the reflection vs. absorption factor of the color of major water bodies, (not the heat retaining factor) affect the overall temperature? I suspect so.
One other factor occurs to me, which is the temperature of the inner core of the planet. Earth’s core is molten, covered with a thin, colder crust. Some of this inner heat finds an exit via volcanos, but it seems to me that some of this heat, perhaps just a little, must move up through the crust. I kind of suspect this is a minor factor, or maybe an Earth scientist will tell me it is no factor at all. If so, fine; I stand corrected.
All of this tells me that the factors that determine Earth’s temperature are very complicated. Distance. Rotation speed. Rotation angle. Orbit shape. Surface color. Interior temperature. Some of these factors are obviously major, some perhaps minor.
And temperature is not the only factor in a planet’s ability to have a Goldilocks Zone. The next couple of posts will discuss other possible factors in an exoplanet that may affect support of human lfe.
Images from the James Webb telescope are fascinating.
New telescopes, positioned in earth orbit and not hampered by earth’s atmosphere, have shown amazing pictures of space, both far and near. We now see further and further into space and, based on how long light takes to travel, closer and closer to the beginning of the universe, with greatly clearer images. Hubbell and Webb are creating quite a stir.
This once again has resulted in a discussion of what’s out there. Is there any kind of life on other planets, planets we now know exist outside our solar system? What about human-ish life, with human constitution, mobility, and ability to think, reason, and build, to refashion their environment to better suit who they are?
Or looked at another way: is there a planet out there, somewhere in space, to which mankind can flee should we despoil out planet to such an extent—or if natural processes proceed to a point—that earth becomes unlivable? That’s assuming, of course, that we overcome the time-based limitations of space travel and get to the point where humans can physically travel to that planet and arrive there not only alive but also healthy enough to set up their new habitation.
What do we need in another planet to be able to live there? Scientists talk about a planet needing a so-called “Goldilocks Zone”—that is, a part of the planet where the climate is just right: not too hot and not too cold. For example, life can’t exist on Venus, as it’s too hot and we would all fry. Nor can it exist on Mars, which is too far away from the sun, hence too cold and we would all freeze. Oh, I know some say we could adapt the Martian environment sufficiently to create a source of heat and thus develop a suitable habitation. Maybe. I’d have to study that one more.
Science fiction books talk a lot about terraforming other planets: the hypothetical process of modifying another planet’s or moon’s environment to make it suitable for supporting human life, transforming it into an Earth-like world. Check out a discussion of that here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming.
But just how rigid or flexible is the Goldilocks Zone? To look at how well humans have done in adapting to the wide range of climates Earth has, from the frigid polar regions to hot, humid tropics and hot, dry deserts, it seems we ought to be able to live on any planet that comes close to the conditions on Earth.
And, given the number of stars out there, and the number of galaxies, and the number of exoplanets we have already seen using our new telescopes, surely there’s a new earth for us. Heck, given the billions or maybe trillions of stars we can see, finding an exoplanet with a Goldilocks Zone is virtually assured. So the experts say.
Or maybe it’s the dreamers, not the experts, who are saying that.
In this series or posts, I’m going to explore the concept of a Goldilocks Zone, and talk through what it would have to include to support a transplanted human existence—or to have supported life in a way that resulted in another intelligent existence parallel to ours,
It was about June 1998. I obtained some data about my maternal family from old address books of my grandmother that I took from my dad’s house after his death. We knew almost nothing about her family except her mother’s name (Rita Harris, the last name from a later marriage) and that she was from St. Lucia; the names of two half-sisters, Hiris and Hazel (but not, at that time, of the third, Muriel). My grandmother had told us her half-sisters were spinsters who had no children. But in the address books I found their names with different last names. Both Hiris and Hazel were in NY, but Hazel’s address was changed from NY to Alburquerque.
Making a long story a little shorter, another name with a New Mexico address was Evelyn Menzies. I sent to the Albuquerque newspaper for an obituary for Hazel (who I learned had died there in 1993), which listed Evelyn Menzies as her daughter. If Hazel was my grandmother’s half-sister, Evelyn would be my mom’s half-first-cousin and her children my half-second-cousins.
I decided to write Evelyn out of the blue, saying you probably don’t know who I am, but my research suggests you’re my mom’s cousin. Here’s how that letter started:
My name is David Todd. I am the grandson of Alfy M. (Sexton) Dorion, who was a half-sister of Hazel (Harris) Wildman. My research indicates that you are Hazel’s daughter. I got your address from the Albuquerque phone book, and your name from Hazel’s obituary. My purpose in writing to you is to introduce myself and to hopefully share family history and information.
While growing up, I knew that my grandmother had two half-sisters, Hiris and Hazel, but we never had any contact with them, never knew their last names, if they had families, etc. While going through dad’s papers over the last eight months (he died last August), I found address books which included Hiris’ name and address in New York City, and Hazel’s name and addresses in NYC and then Albuquerque. I next checked the Social Security Death Index, which listed both Hiris and Hazel and gave death dates and locations. Finding Hazel as having died in Albuquerque in 1993, I sent off to the newspaper for a copy of her obituary. It arrived yesterday.
I gave her information about the family and an anecdote about my great-grandmother so that she would know that I really knew her. Before long Evelyn called me. She said she knew who I was, that she had always known about her cousin Dorothy and her three children, even had pictures of us. I asked her why we never knew about them, and why my grandmother never had photos or them. Evelyn said, “It’s because we’re black.”
She went on to say that my great-grandmother was approximately 1/2 black, meaning I was part black. That was a bombshell, listening to Evelyn on the phone that Sunday in August, 1998 and hearing her strong Brooklyn accent. I had no idea.
That family wedding in 2000. Four of my half-second cousins in this photo.
Evelyn invited us to come to NM and meet them. We did that in November 1998. Evelyn put together some meetings with other family in the area. I met all her children and their children. It was a great time. A couple of years later Evelyn had us back for their son’s wedding, and then came to our daughter’s wedding.
Our contacts in person were few after that, but we kept in touch by phone. I found it incredible that she accepted us so readily into her family. Through the meetings, Evelyn told me much about our mutual family and what she knew about the St. Lucia years. Because of her, a new world and culture opened to me.
Evelyn died on August 14 [see her obituary here] after a long life, her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren gathered around her. She is already missed by them all, me included.
I used to have what I considered a cute expression that described my writing. This was before my wife got on Facebook. The expression was:
When I want to hide something from my wife, I post it on Facebook.
When I want to hide something from my family, I blog about it.
When I want to hide something from the world, I write it in a book and publish it.
Cute? Perhaps so, perhaps not. But accurate? Most assuredly.
Too much to do, no significant results.
The fact is my writing has never caught on. I could post here the number of books and stories I’ve published and the number of sales I have. But it’s depressing. If it weren’t for running a few Amazon ads, I’d have no sales at all. But at least I’ve had enough sales over the years to more than cover the cost of the ads and put me a few hundred dollars ahead.
But this blog was for the purpose of getting my name out there and hopefully drive people to want to buy my books.
Obviously, I’m doing something wrong. Writing the wrong kind of books, or not writing well, or not publicizing/advertising them correctly. It costs me close to $500 a year to maintain this website. Most of that ($440) is for a security service I put in place after the site was hacked, I think that was in 2018. I’ve had no problems since then, other than many, many spam comments to posts. It’s about 30 spam comments to each real comment.
So, do I keep the website and blog? I don’t really know at this point. It’s not serving any useful purpose, so why keep it? The world doesn’t need to know about my daily schedule or the occasional genealogical triumph. They don’t care about where I stand with my current book, what books are planned, what I’m reading and if I liked it or not.
So I’m seriously considering stopping the blog more or less immediately, and stopping the website after my security subscription runs out in January.
My summer schedule continues, though knee and balance troubles have prevented me from walking as much as I would like.
My special projects continue. I’m transcribing one WW2 letter a day, handling 50 scan files a day, getting rid of most of them, and doing a few other odd things. Though I’m falling behind a little on my correspondence, and on family finances. Maybe I’ll get to them before the week is out.
A morning rainstorm is preventing me from going out to pick blackberries. The vines will be loaded tomorrow—or this evening if I can get out then.
One thing I got a little ahead on is editing my latest book, A Walk Through Holy Week Vol. 5. I knuckled down yesterday and finished it, which was one of the reasons I didn’t get a blog post written. I also wrote the Introduction, though it still needs a bit of work.
Leaving The Dungeon in a minute for a mug full, and reading in the sunroom.
In my first editorial pass through the book, which was mainly for proofreading, I was concerned that I had been repetitive in places. In the second editorial pass, just finished, I was able to make corrections to eliminate the most blatant redundancies. However, I’m not sure I caught them all. Thus, I will make a third editorial pass through it, reading it quickly as would someone who bought it and couldn’t put it down. I hope in this manner any more obvious repetition will stand out. I’m going to do this pass via an e-reader, marking any edits needed, I hope the reading takes only two or three days, and that I’ll find nothing more is needed, except for minor things.
My expectations now are that I’ll do the publishing tasks next week, July 14 to 18, and have it up for sale right after that.
I’ll then wait until September to tackle the remaining books in the series.
It’s now 11 AM and still raining. Time to get a little reading done—with a fresh mug of coffee.
The harvest is in progress, and a good harvest it is.
Today, on our Independence Day holiday, my work continues. I transcribed another WW2 letter, bringing the total up to 13. No end in sight, but a pattern for what the letters are is beginning to emerge. I went through at least 50 scan files, verified that I have them also stored and properly named in OneDrive folders, and so was able to delete the scan files. Then brings me down to about 1325 left to go through, or about five weeks of work. I think it might actually be less than that, because I’ve already skipped close to 100 files that I’ll be keeping.
I picked blackberries this morning, close to a pint, from less than half the plants and only getting the easiest ones to pick. Cut back a few of the new branches so that the paths between rows are more easily navigable, and raked up the cuttings. The harvest is plentiful. After the season is over, I plan on a major cut back of the bushes. I have four rows of blackberry plants that have sprung up naturally. With judicious cutting on my part and a bit of training, these are producing a good harvest for three years in a row. But it’s at least twice as many blackberries as I need. So after this year’s harvest, and when the weather cools off some, I’ll take two rows out completely. I’m actually looking forward to that.
I’m finding the book I’m currently reading a bit of a slog (I have a habit of picking those), but I’ll get through the last 65% of it, somehow.
Decumulation continues. On Wednesday, we drove to south central Kansas and delivered to Lynda’s brother all the Cheney photos we don’t plan on keeping. That included six large framed photos and a large painting of the Cheney homestead ranch in Meade County. Her brother can now decide what to do with them. Good riddance to one burden. It frees us up to work on photos from the other side of her family and finish those, hopefully within a month.
Today I edited a chapter in my Bible study. Only two chapters to go. Then, I think one more read-through at a normal pace to check for duplication or incomplete sections, with hopefully only minor final edits, and it will be on to publishing.
Last night we walked to the municipal fireworks display. We don’t live far from where they shoot them off, but a ridge, a valley, and lots of tall trees prevent us from seeing them from our house. Driving there and getting involved in that mass of traffic is a pain. So for the first time we walked to the top of the ridge, a little over 1/3 mile, and joined a hundred or so people who had done the same thing. I don’t really care about fireworks all that much, but Lynda enjoyed it.
So as you can see, I’m staying busy. Wouldn’t have it any other way.
