January 30, 2011

Tired of the constant budget cuts for NASA and other scientific institutions, I decided to e-mail the government to voice my thoughts and opinions. Below is my comment.

"Dear Government of the United States of America,

NASA’s current budget is inadequate to complete their projects. The American government must become much more prudent. Scientists worldwide agree that space exploration is crucial for the survival of the human race. NASA is less than one percent of the federal budget. In comparison, defense and homeland security spend over forty times NASA’s budget each year. The government could easily cut a small percentage of the defense budget and put it towards public education, medical science, and space exploration, without any additional cost to tax payers. This is possible due to the withdraw movement of troops from Iraq. In retrospect, this would be good for Public Relations. Taxpayers would not need to pay additional taxes, education and science funding would increase, and more jobs could be created.

America: The leader in science and space exploration"

January 26, 2011

It seems fit to let Mr. Carl Sagan write today's entry-

"The Frontier is Everywhere"

We were hunters and foragers. The frontier was everywhere. We were bounded only by the earth, and the ocean, and the sky. The open road still softly calls. Our little terraqueous globe as the madhouse of those hundred thousand millions of worlds. We, who cannot even put our own planetary home in order, riven with rivalries and hatreds; are we to venture out into space?

By the time we are ready to settle even the nearest other planetary systems, we will have changed. The simple passage of so many generations will have changed us; necessity will have changed us. We are... an adaptable species. It will not be we who reach Alpha Centauri and the other nearby stars. It will be a species very like us, but with more of our strengths, and fewer of our weaknesses; more confident, farseeing, capable and prudent. 

For all our failings, despite our limitations and fallibilities, we humans are capable of greatness. What new wonders undreamt of in our time, will we have wrought in another generation, and another? How far will our nomadic species have wandered, by the end of the next century, and the next millennium? 

Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds through the solar system, and beyond, will be unified, by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by the knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the universe, come from Earth. They will gaze up and strain to find the blue dot in their skies. They will marvel at how vulnerable the repository of all our potential once was, how perilous our infancy, how humble our beginnings, how many rivers we had to cross, before we found our way.

January 21, 2011

Astrology.  The religion of the sky. This “religion of the sky” was created thousands and thousands of years ago in ancient civilizations such as the Egyptian Empire and the Indus River Valley (modern day Pakistan). The “religion of the sky,” or astrology, was created to predict the fate of princes and kingdoms. It was not until Johannes Kepler in the 17^th century, that the world shifted from the study of the pseudo-science of astrology, into the study of scientific astronomy. Oddly enough, in the 21^st century, the pseudo-science of astrology still holds an uncanny amount of followers and believers. It amazes me how quick people are to announce their zodiac sign, nevertheless have no basic understanding of the stars and cosmos.

How do people believe that the alignment of the stars at the moment of their birth predicts their future? They were born in a hospital and therefore could not see the stars nor the light that they produced. The doctor who delivered them had more of a gravitational-pull than the planets in the sky. Astrology can easily be disproven by the study of two twins. Twins are born minutes apart on the same exact day; therefore, they have the same zodiac sign, yet each twin can be substantially different. One twin could be struck by lightning at the age of ten, while the other lives to a ripe old age. If astrology was true, shouldn’t both twins have similar traits and similar fates?

Astrology could even be argued to be “racist” and can discriminate people of different zodiac signs.  Astrology and racism share many of the same ideologies. The one similarity between the two is in both cases a person is judged by factors beyond their control. Just as people have no control over their skin color or appearance, they have no control over when they were born. If it is racist and stereotypical to assume that African-Americans are lazy, Arabs are terrorists, and Asians are smart, then in retrospect, why is it acceptable to assume that Cancers are emotional, Geminis are optimistic non-conformists, and Aries are born leaders?

           Besides, due to the wobble effect of the earth, astrology has been wrong for 2,000 years. Hate to break it to you…

January 20, 2011

It captivates me as to the profound impact that stars played, and continue to play, in human civilizations. Ancient empires have risen and fallen based on the position of stars (No exaggeration. Astrology was created to predict the fate of princes and kingdoms). On the first day of creation, “God created the heavens (stars) and the earth.”  The three wise men followed the star that led them to the manger where Jesus lay. The American flag has fifty stars on it, with each star representing a state. Israel’s flag has one star, China’s flag has five, Australia’s flag has six, and New Zealand’s flag has four. Most of the Islamic countries have cresset moons on their flags. Almost half of the flags in the world display astronomical symbols, a reflection of the importance of the universe around our small, pale-blue planet named Earth, which floats like a mote of dust in the morning sky through space. I feel that nations, along with the people in the nations, wish to form a connection with the cosmos. This connection is even seen though the language that we speak. Many common words present in our vocabulary are relevant to the cosmos.  Two words of particular come to my mind at the moment. The word “disaster” for instance, is a Greek word which means “dead star.” The word “influenza,” or flu, is the Italian word for “influence”, in relationship to the stars.  These words are proof of our need to connect with the stars. It turns out that we are already connected, due to the fact we are made from recycled particles from blown-up stars. It is no doubt ironic, to say the least.

January 19, 2011

I often hear people, usually of Caucasian (or white) decent, use the phrase "reverse-racism" when they feel discriminated against (e.g. African-American only scholarships). How can discrimination against Caucasians be reverse-racism? Since Caucasian is a race, discrimination against them would simply be racism. Racism is purely discrimination, hatred, or intolerance of another race. Besides, wouldn't reverse-racism be the opposite of racism, therefore supporting equality?

January 18, 2011

The sheer size of the universe is unfathomable. Even if you traveled at the speed of light, or 180,000 miles per second (or around the entire earth seven times a second), it would take nearly 100,000 years to travel across the Milky Way Galaxy. There are hundreds of billions of known galaxies in the universe. In theory, it would take nearly fifteen billion years to reach the end of the universe going at the speed of light. Realistically, this is not possible. It is not possible due to the fact that the universe is constantly expanding in all directions which may prevent you from ever reaching your destination at the end of the universe.  How many more epochs shall the universe expand for? Maybe forever, though I doubt that to be the case. I feel that the universe will end similarly to how it began, not with a big bang, but a big crunch. The gravity pushing the galaxies and matter outward may reverse and pull them inward toward the center of the universe. All the matter could be condensed in a small, centralized area and could create a new big bang with a new universe containing totally new matter, elements, and laws of nature. A universe 2.0 so to speak. I wonder how many times this process may have occurred or if it has ever occurred. We may never know the answer but that is the beauty of science.

January 17, 2011

"Until death do us part” means we’re all single in heaven, right?

January 16, 2011

We find ourselves once again at the cross roads of a new and perplexing question: What is intelligence? We must first understand that intelligence, contrary to popular belief, is not about how much you know but instead how you apply what you know.

To better understand this concept let us use a computer as an example. A computer can be programmed to save the entire history of the world, the greatest musical pieces, the physics of the universe, and the greatest literature. But, one must ask, is this computer intelligent? The question is most certainly no. Although the computer "knows" a great deal in regard to these topics, it cannot do anything with the mentioned topics unless a programmer sends it commands on what to do. This is because the computer as the same intelligence as an insect (The fastest supercomputer in the world is as smart as a cat).

It is how you apply the information that you know that determines if you are intelligent. As Carl Sagan once said; "Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which information is collected and used."

January 14, 2011

It is extremely plausible; one could even say certain, that ninety of the ninety-two natural elements present on our planet were formed in a dead star. The dead star would have had existed billions of years ago (perhaps close to eight billion?...I am not certain). Stars are mostly composed of the elements hydrogen and helium, which combined make up 99.9% of all the matter in the universe. Hydrogen and helium molecules collide together to create pure nuclear energy inside a star. Since helium is slightly heavy than hydrogen, the helium molecules sink to the center of the star and heat up to form new elements, such as carbon and iron, which are essential building blocks for life on earth. The iron in this "dead" pre-historic star would have become so dense that the star would have burst and would have created a supernova, spitting all of the matter out into the universe for a new star, our sun, to be formed. It is through this explosion that our solar system was made possible. I marvel at the fact that humans, all of us, are simply star dust. You, I, and everyone you have known are simply the matter recycled from a dead star.

  

January 13, 2011

Today was a rather lackluster day. I must admit, I have not accomplished much lately apart from wandering out of the house to sled and get milk, the latter of which I was basically forced to do. I have begun to read the classic novel, "The Prince," which was written in Florence, Italy( fantastic city) circa the 16th century. "The Prince" discusses how to obtain and hold control of a nation or city. I find it very intriguing how this novel can still be relevant to modern-day governments in the twenty-first century, those of which are not a republic or anarchy. I just hope that this books retains its popularity for many more epochs and does not become "kipple"( a word coined by Philip K. Dick in the novel "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"). I need not even say this, because I am certain that future generations will still have much appreciation for "The Prince". I am certain of this because of Socrates:

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

-Socrates (469 BC–399 BC)

Future generations looked bleak 2,400 years ago acording to Socrates, yet I believe we are doing just fine. We must not be so nostalgic and have faith in the future and in the future generations.