Ritual 101 :)

Betting pool, it's the left foot prior to entering the bathroom. :)

Musica universalis

The ancient Greeks would relate to this newly discovered six planet system bigtime regarding how the planets orbit their sun is in almost perfect "harmony" as said planets exhibit an elegant orbital resonance that's rare to the nth degree.

By now, we have discovered hundreds of stars with multiple planets orbiting them scattered throughout the galaxy. Each one is unique, but a system orbiting the star HD 158259, 88 light-years away, is truly special.

The star itself is about the same mass and a little larger than the Sun - a minority in our exoplanet hunts. It's orbited by six planets: a super-Earth and five mini-Neptunes.

After monitoring it for seven years, astronomers have discovered that all six of those planets are orbiting HD 158259 in almost perfect orbital resonance. This discovery could help us to better understand the mechanisms of planetary system formation, and how they end up in the configurations we see.

It gets better.

Orbital resonance is when the orbits of two bodies around their parent body are closely linked, as the two orbiting bodies exert gravitational influence on each other. In the Solar System, it's pretty rare in planetary bodies; probably the best example is Pluto and Neptune.

Orbital resonances have also been identified in exoplanets. But each planet orbiting HD 158259 is in an almost 3:2 resonance with the next planet out away from the star, also described as a period ratio of 1.5. That means for every three orbits each planet makes, the next one out completes two.

They're all very tight. Starting closest to the star - the super-Earth, revealed by TESS to be around twice the mass of Earth - the orbits are 2.17, 3.4, 5.2, 7.9, 12, and 17.4 days.

These produce period ratios of 1.57, 1.51, 1.53, 1.51, and 1.44 between each pair of planets. That's not quite perfect resonance - but it's close enough to classify HD 158259 as an extraordinary system.

When one reads this, the notion of Music of the Spheres/musica Universalist and the Greek Modes come to mind as the ancient Greeks were into both concepts in their endless pursuit of trying to understand how reality works at deep level.

The musica universalis (literally universal music), also called music of the spheres or harmony of the spheres, is an ancient philosophical concept that regards proportions in the movements of celestial bodies—the Sun, Moon, and planets—as a form of music. This "music" is not thought to be audible, but rather a harmonic, mathematical or religious concept. The idea continued to appeal to scholars until the end of the Renaissance, influencing many kinds of scholars, including humanists. Further scientific exploration discovered orbital resonance in specific proportions in some orbital motion.

Ionian Mode AKA The Major Scale

Take the major natural scale. It corresponds to the first Greek mode, called Ionian mode. We will show you later where this nomenclature came from, don’t worry about that now.

Think Miles Davis and the modes as Kind of Blue, the greatest jazz album of all time,

is based on musical concepts nearly 3000 years old.

The greatest jazz tune ever written.

Read the liner notes on the album penned by Bill Evans, 

which, to me, is the best explanation of what jazz truly is.

What it means to be human ...

Blade Runner, a commercial flop in theaters but a masterpiece in reality. delves into the existential question of what it means to be human, a question asked by so many starting with Homer and the Greek Myths to Shakespeare, Faulkner and Camus. My dear friend D, a film savant and superb documentarian turned me onto this clip as it does answer the "existential" question of whether Deckard was a replicant of a different kind, along the lines of his lover Rachael.

Camus would relate to Roy Batty's Tears in Rain monologue without question.

A rosette for the ages

Einstein stated this was, and is, the kind of orbital path Mercury makes when orbiting the sun. Seems a star orbiting  Sagittarius A* the supermassive black hole located at the center of the Milky Way does the exact same thing, thus confirming yet again, Einstein was something else altogether. :)

It's been nearly 30 years in the making, but scientists with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) collaboration in the Atacama Desert in Chile have now measured, for the very first time, the unique orbit of a star orbiting the supermassive black hole believed to lie at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The path of the star (known as S2) traces a distinctive rosette-shaped pattern (similar to a spirograph), in keeping with one of the central predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.  The international collaboration described their results in a new paper in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

“General relativity predicts that bound orbits of one object around another are not closed, as in Newtonian gravity, but precess forwards in the plane of motion," said Reinhard Genzel, director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching, Germany. "This famous effect—first seen in the orbit of the planet Mercury around the Sun—was the first evidence in favor of general relativity. One hundred years later we have now detected the same effect in the motion of a star orbiting the compact radio source Sagittarius A* (SagA*) at the center of the Milky Way."

NuSTAR has captured these first, focused views of the supermassive black hole
at the heart of the Milky Way in high-energy X-rays.

How cool is that? :)

Lest we forget ...

An estimated 7,000 demonstrators in Philadelphia on Earth Day, April 22, 1970.  AP Photo

April 22, 1970/50 years ago, Earth Day, a day the US supported in ways beyond comprehension doesn't change the fact we have screwed the pooch on how we treat our home.

The first Earth Day protests, which took place on April 22, 1970 brought 20 million Americans – 10% of the U.S. population at the time – into the streets. Recognizing the power of this growing movement, President Richard Nixon and Congress responded by creating the Environmental Protection Agency and enacting a wave of laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act.

But Earth Day’s impact extended far beyond the United States. A cadre of professionals in the U.S. State Department understood that environmental problems didn’t stop at national borders, and set up mechanisms for addressing them jointly with other countries.

How times have changed ... for the worst.

Contrary to its posture today, the United States was an ardent proponent of the conference. The U.S. delegation advanced a series of actions, including a moratorium on commercial whaling, a convention to regulate ocean dumping and the creation of a World Heritage Trust to preserve wilderness areas and scenic natural landmarks.

President Nixon issued a statement when the conference concluded, observing that “for the first time in history, the nations of the world sat down together to seek better understanding of each other’s environmental problems and to explore opportunities for positive action, individually and collectively.”

One result of this inaction of cleaning up our act is the rise of COVID-19

Any questions?

We have met the enemy ...

Pogo daily strip from Earth Day 1971 - Walt Kelly

Pogo, the brilliant creation by Walt Kelly, rings true, not only in terms of how man soils his nest in so many ways but also in terms of what is happening in the year of our lord 2020 under the auspices of a deranged president inciting violence against the COVID-19 shutdown of three states run by, you guessed it, Democratic governors. 

As followup to BRT's Harbinger of things to come is this ...

It’s apparently “intellectually casual Friday” at the White House, where President Trump, in a series of tweets, has delved deeper into the crazy to signal his support for protesters opposing state social-distancing orders aimed at stemming the spread of the coronavirus.

At 11:21 Friday morning, our itchy president tweeted “Liberate Minnesota!” before following up a minute later with “Liberate Michigan!” and three minutes later with “Liberate Virginia, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”

The Darwin Awards awaits a new batch of people needing to be culled from the gene pool.

We live in dangerous time without question.

Harbinger of things to come ...

The crazies, the stupid and the uneducated, spurred on by Agent Orange, promises the possibility of violence as COVID-19 continues to ravage the country in ways beyond the realm of comprehension. A depression of biblical proportions looms and our woefully inadequate president seems not to care or understand how dangerous this situation truly is. He needs to be removed from office now ...

In a series of all-caps tweets, Mr. Trump declared “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” — two states whose Democratic governors have imposed social distancing restrictions that have shut down businesses and schools and forced people to remain at home. He also tweeted “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!

Any questions?

@ 5PM ...

It's the Daily Show @ 5 PM, you know, the one that seamlessly mixes COVID-19 updates from people who actually know a little bit about pandemics plus rants on god knows what from, you guessed it, Agent Orange, AKA The Donald, AKA the POTUS.

Donald Trump’s daily 5 p.m. show — officially described on the White House schedule as a press briefing by Members of the Coronavirus Task Force — was scheduled to start. It is at this surreal moment in American politics the only news event that really matters. The entire country is sitting at home looking for expert guidance. On some days, we get it. Early on when Dr. Anthony Fauci first explained the idea behind social distancing or when Dr. Deborah Birx introduced us all to the concept of bending the curve, the briefings were crucial— perhaps the closest thing in modern times to one of FDR's fireside chats during the Depression and World War II, a news briefing from government officials who your life actually depended on.

But they quickly descended into Trumpian theater. Useful information from the doctors became mixed in with long rants from Trump on peripheral issues. The relationship between Trump and the task force members themselves, especially Fauci, who became a media hero, gradually started to dominate the sessions, as if Trump couldn’t help but turn the crisis into a reality show about himself and his staff and his peculiar obsessions of the moment.

Read the rest of Politico's long and detailed piece. It will warm the cockles of your heart without question.

The real pandemic

This picture of a little sea turtle hatchling racing toward the water before being eaten evokes the now terrifying possibility of wildlife collapse happening in a time frame not considered possible until now.

Climate change could result in a more abrupt collapse of many animal species than previously thought, starting in the next decade if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, according to a study published this month in Nature.

The study predicted that large swaths of ecosystems would falter in waves, creating sudden die-offs that would be catastrophic not only for wildlife, but for the humans who depend on it.

“For a long time things can seem OK and then suddenly they’re not,” said Alex L. Pigot, a scientist at University College London and one of the study’s authors. “Then, it’s too late to do anything about it because you’ve already fallen over this cliff edge.”

Phase transitions are never linear, think the onset of ice on a pond, a day before the surface is fully covered, the surface of said pond is 50% ice-free. This, in effect, is what's happening with the rapid collapse of wildlife as global warming is accelerating at such a pace, animal populations can no longer adapt. Because of this, COVID-19 is not the real pandemic mankind is facing, climate change is.

Coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists say recent bleaching events suggest that major die-offs in tropical seas are already underway.Credit...James Cook University Australia/Agence France-Presse

1781

1781, the notion of Federalism is nigh thanks to COVID-19 and the irresponsible and inept actions of The Donald raises the possibility of splintering the country whereby the notion of The United States of America becomes but a mirage of the first order.

Covid-19 is not just changing Americans’ daily lives, it may also transform their system of government. On many important current issues, the U.S. may end up with an arrangement that looks more like the Articles of Confederation than the Constitution.

Consider how this might evolve. First, states and regions are recovering (or not) at dramatically different rates. The worst may be over for much of California and Washington State — but New York City, because of its density and reliance on the subway, may find the problem especially difficult to control. Louisiana is on the verge of catastrophe, while some other states, such as Virginia, are still not sure how bad it will be.

Hence the idea that America is inching closer to what it was under the Articles of Confederation, which governed the U.S. from 1781 to 1789. The U.S. constitutional order has not changed in any explicit manner, but the issues on which the states are allowed to diverge have gone from being modest and relatively inconsequential to significant and meaningful if not dominant.

Example 1

This divergence may create further pressures on federalism. In Rhode Island, for example, state police have sought to stop cars with New York state license plates at the border, hindering or delaying their entrance. Whether such activities are constitutional, most governors do have broad authority to invoke far-reaching emergency powers.

Bringing the concept of splintering to the nth degree is John Feffer's powerful novella Splinterlands where climate change, combined with resource depletion and environmental degradation, becomes an all too real dystopian nightmare of the first order.

1781 indeed.