Monthly Archives: December 2020

Happy New Year!

by in Environment, Hmmm..., Luminous Aether, Numbers | 25 Comments

Earth is about 4.6-billion years old.  It formed along with the sun and the rest of the solar-system from a collapsing cloud of gas and dust that was left by the explosions of previous generations of stars in their death throes. This is still happening in places such as the “Pillars of Creation”. But the time that has passed since our planet was first formed in such a place is almost unimaginable.

Humans don’t live for billions of years, so this is a scale that our minds haven’t evolved to comprehend. But if we were to think of Earth as a mere one-year old, we can at least glimpse some perspective.

So at midnight of January first of this year, imagine an emerging planet Earth, a molten mass heated to incandescence by the energy released in a barrage of in-falling matter. It’s a chaotic place. And some time in the first week or so, another proto-planet about the size of Mars collides with it in a glancing blow, sending a mass of material into orbit as a ring of debris. About six-hours later in our one-year timescale, the debris coalesces into an early moon.  It is so near the earth that it appears many times larger, rising and setting every few-hours.

For the next month, both the Earth and the moon are pummeled. But by February, early oceans have formed beneath a heavy atmosphere of water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia. A dimly shining sun illuminates the surface through heavy clouds that rain sulfuric acid into pea-green seas saturated with iron. Near the end of the month, a self-replicating chemical process starts, perhaps in some collection of coastal tide-pools, or maybe near a string of underwater geothermal vents.

The first rock that will survive through December isn’t formed until early March. And a few days later, the first simple, single-celled organisms appear. They spread along the edges of the early oceans, forming sticky mats that cement layers of sand together. Their patterns become the first fossils.

Around mid April, one of these organisms evolves a way to use the sun for energy. It’s an evolutionary bonanza, allowing it to consume a seemingly inexhaustible supply of carbon-dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere. But these new organisms also release oxygen which reacts with the iron dissolved in the oceans. So much iron is precipitated out of the seas that it leaves a thick layer of rust accounting for 60% of the iron in the earth’s crust. By the end of April, the seas have become transparent, and oxygen begins to accumulate in the atmosphere.

By May, the carbon-dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has been drastically reduced, causing the the planet to cool. Accumulating oxygen breaks down atmospheric methane, cooling the planet even faster. Eventually, the atmosphere can no longer retain enough heat to keep Earth’s surface waters liquid.  Earth freezes over in June.

The cold days pass, but life holds on in deep waters near geothermal vents, or in places where volcanic activity keeps the ice at bay. Eventually, a brightening sun thaws the planet. And by mid July, the first cell with a nucleus appears, allowing new ways to utilize energy. Some of these cells evolve a means to use oxygen. Photosynthesizing (sun-using) and aerobic (oxygen-using) organisms spend the entire month of August experimenting with better ways in which to survive with each other.

The first multi-cellular life appears in September. Clusters of specialized cells find ways to better survive by teaming to becoming more efficient. They float in the seas, experimenting with becoming ever more complex through the entire month of October and into November.

Then, in mid-November, emerging from another freezing of the planet’s surface, the first animals with shells appear in an almost “anything goes” explosion of life. Over a period of just eight days, nearly all of the 34 “phyla” of animals emerge, accounting for more than 1.5-million species. By the end of the month, the first animals are crawling out of the seas and onto land.

On December 3rd, complex plants and tough trees begin populating the land. For almost five days, they accumulate a biomass of carbon leached from the planet’s atmosphere in a new organic material that no other organism can break down. Their undigested remains are buried in the earth to become coal, oil and natural gas. On December 12th, the dinosaurs first appear. They hang around until Christmas-eve, gifting following generations of mammals with the extinction of all of their forms except birds.

The first “Hominid” mammals, the most ancient ancestors of what would become “humans” appear at 8:15PM on the very last day of the year.  At 11:26PM, the first modern humans appear.  They learn to control fire, and light the darkness.  In those last minutes of the year, they look up to see a more distant moon covering an arc of sky now the same as that of the sun and ask, “Why?” 

The first civilizations begin with just 41-seconds left in the year, and it takes humans another 34-seconds to discover how to use iron.  The industrial use of that fossil energy stored during the first week of December begins at 1.8-seconds from the New Year, and humans leave their footprints on the moon 1.4-seconds later.  All of 2020 covers less than seven-thousandths of a second.  And here we are…

Happy New Year from planet Earth!

August 19, 1945

by in A List, Boundary Behavior, Japan, Politics, Science, War | 36 Comments

“What is history but a fable agreed upon?“
-Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenell, L’Origine des Fables (Of the Origin of Fables), 1728.

Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II is usually ascribed to two factors, the invasion of Japan’s northern territory of Sakhalin by the Soviets, and the dropping of two atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, there remained a faction among Japan’s military that wanted to fight on to the very last, leading a civilian army wielding farm implements if necessary.  Starting in June of 1945, this will was reflected in a propaganda campaign ominously called, “The Glorious Death of One Hundred Million“.

Leaders within the United States were well aware of this.  They understood that a direct invasion of Japan would have taken years with perhaps a million Allied casualties, and resulted in the deaths of many millions of Japanese civilians.  Against this backdrop, President Harry S. Truman had to make the terrible decision to allow the US military to employ the use of atomic weapons on Japan.

The ethical implications of Truman’s decision can be debated. But as Japan remained a nation guided by a military leadership that had unleashed untold devastation and suffering across Asia and the Pacific, no nation upon which it had declared war could accept anything less than its unconditional surrender. 

It’s often stated that the United States’ use of the two atomic bombs in World War II was a bluff. The first was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, and the second on Nagasaki.  But it wasn’t clear if any more of these weapons actually existed.  Due to the known difficulties in refining the particular type, or “isotope“, of Uranium intended for use in atomic bombs, many Japanese military leaders and scientists suspected that the Americans had no more of them.  And ironically, had the Japanese known just how painstakingly slow and difficult the refining process really was, they could accurately have concluded that the US had but a single atomic bomb.

In fact, the US had expended nearly all of its supply of very slowly accumulating, “enriched” Uranium-235 in the heart of just the relatively simple atomic bomb that exploded over the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.  And this underscores the significance of the atomic bomb dropped by the B-29 “Bockscar”, detonating 1,800-feet above the dome of the Urakami Cathedral in the city of Nagasaki just three days later.  What the Japanese didn’t know was that at White Sands in New Mexico, American scientists had functionally demonstrated an atomic bomb that used another element altogether to generate its explosive chain reaction.

The bombs that exploded both in New Mexico and over Nagasaki utilized a man-made element, Plutonium. Both of these bombs were extraordinarily complex mechanisms, designed to very precisely implode a sphere of Plutonium-239, and relatively plentiful Uranium-238.  Despite their complexity, the use of these materials meant that these bombs could be created almost as quickly as they could be built.

It’s a common misconception that there were no more atomic bombs.  In fact, the next one had already been moved to Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands, and was ready to be dropped on the 19th of August.  After that, another could have been dropped on the 1st of September, and two more were nearing completion. Had Japan not surrendered, at least four more cities could have been obliterated by already existing weapons. And by October, more would have been available at a rate of about one bomb every ten-days. 

Historians have never concluded which cities would have been next, but it’s likely that Kokura with a population of around 130,000 would have been the target for the 19th of August.  Located at a strategic passage between two of Japan’s main islands, it was the original target for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki.  And as with Hiroshima and much of Nagasaki, Kokura was among few cities in Japan spared the firebombings that had incinerated virtually all of the country’s larger population centers by that point in the war.  But lack of visibility over Kokura due to cloud cover and smoke from a previous day’s incendiary attack on the adjacent city of Yahata had compelled shifting the plan to its secondary target. 

Whether or not the US would have bombed Tokyo is debatable. There was little of the city left standing in the wake of repeated firebombings. Military leaders had considered killing Emperor Hirohito and his inner circle by bombing the Tokyo Imperial Palace. However, political leaders in the US didn’t want to risk leaving Japan without leadership for negotiations. The seaports at Yokosuka in Tokyo Bay might have been targeted.  And it’s possible that Sapporo or Hakodate on the northern island of Hokkaido might have been destroyed as warnings to an approaching Soviet military. Fortunately, all of these remain in the realm of mere speculation.

At 12:00 noon on August 15, 1945, the Japanese people heard the voice of the Emperor of Japan over the radio for the very first time in the, “Jewel Voice Broadcast”.  Speaking in the formal, rarefied language of Japanese aristocracy, many commoners needed to hear translations of the emperor’s announcement that Japan would accept the Potsdam Declaration, effectively marking the country’s unconditional surrender to the Allies. Explaining this decision, he in part referred to the atomic bomb. “…the power of which to do damage is truly incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization.“

Imports

by in Boundary Behavior, Fear, Humanity, Loneliness, Love, Verse | 5 Comments

Supposedly, about 20%
are, or were
positive right now.
So the schools are closed,
the local mid and high, 
…though I understand
the elementary
still holds out, “essential!“

But to be honest,
I feel like people here
have given up.
Smiles and greetings
smothered into empty spaces,
hidden under fear
and masks of normalcy.

Post long weekend visit,
my husband’s back to toiling
in the land of absent
Sunday beer.
So I run through town,
breathing deeply
five or six
times each week,
wondering if I will end up getting it,
despite the nights alone.

I don’t know how much
the locals traveled,
sharing bread or love 
over the long weekend.
But from the number of visitors
who crossed the divide,
I don’t think it so much matters.

We import just about everything here.

Adapted from a comment I left elsewhere in this lonely place.  Going back and re-reading it and the thoughtful response it received said something profound to me…

“The lines from ‘The Green Mile’ just popped into my head, not just from COVID but also the political situation:

‘I’m tired, boss….Mostly, I’m tired of people being ugly to each other. I’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world…every day. There’s too much of it. It’s like pieces of glass in my head…all the time. Can you understand?’

Still, we persist.“

I do understand.