John Cronin

Of Lunar and Human Impacts

If we can crash a machine on the moon . . .

Copyright 2009, John Cronin

Occasionally, the juxtaposition of two disparate events renders both in high relief.  Such is the case with today's announcement by NASA that it set off explosions on the moon's surface in search of water, and the story of drought and human devastation coming out of Africa.

Relief agencies estimate that up to 23 million people in the Horn of Africa now face a mortal threat from thirst and starvation.

This morning, NASA  intentionally crash-landed its LCROSS Centaur rocket and Sheperding Spacecraft on the lunar surface, sending up six-mile dust clouds that are being analyzed for the presence of water.  NASA describes LCROSS as a "fast-track, low-cost" mission of $79 million.  

Let's stipulate that an unflattering numerical comparison is not the real point here.  But what of human imagination?  What of great endeavors? 

On any given day, 1.2 billion people on the planet are without drinking water, due to drought, pollution, pestilence, water diversions, crumbling infrastucture, and inequitable privatization.  Is solving this crisis not as great a human endeavor as a moonshot?  A super-collider? 

The Pale Blue Dot

The narration for the above video is taken from the book Pale Blue Dot by the late Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. It is Dr. Sagan's voice. I chose the images.  The featured photo is by Stephen Codrington.

The Planetary Society explains that the book's title "was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size."

See this post for more on Dr. Sagan, Ann Druyan and the Voyager mission.

Everything is Hot

 Copyright 2009, John Cronin

There is no such thing as cold.  You cannot produce it, cannot measure it, cannot locate it.

“Cold” is a handy piece of vocabulary, but that is all.  Dictionaries define it in relation to heat and warmth. 
They define "hot" in the same fashion. Recall the most objectionably frigid conditions of this past winter? You weren’t cold, only less warm than you liked.

The winter sun is 92 million miles from Earth.  Its core burns at 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.  Midway between Sun and Earth, beyond the thin blanket of atmosphere that contains the solar heat that warms our planet, the temperature in space is minus 455 degrees.  That is 4.67 degrees warmer than absolute zero, the theoretical state at which no heat is present.   I suppose absolute zero could be an acceptable definition of “cold,” except that it has never been found. Anywhere. And no amount of experimentation has achieved it, not even in a lab environment.  The Third Law of Thermodynamics tells us that absolute zero is an impossibility.

So, Dream

From Guts and All, Copyright 2008, John Cronin

In August 2000, I was invited to contribute a letter for a time capsule that was to be buried in Seattle, Washington that October, and unearthed 100 years later.  I was asked to address my letter to “The Children of 2100.”  I agreed happily.

The task took on an unexpectedly eerie aspect.  It was a letter to the future, after all, a one-way correspondence.  I could never expect a reply, nor could my distant penpals send one.

I imagined myself in their place.  I would wonder about the author.  The long-dead author. My worry continued.  When the appointed year arrived, who would remember the buried capsule?   Would it even survive 100 years of Northwest damp and dirt?  Why, for that matter, would anyone care? 

My letter had one of two possible destinies: internment in a permanent tomb or magical transport to another century.  To get the job done, and preserve my peace of mind, I settled on the latter. 

The next matter was the text itself.  What would be meaningful to a generation far from my time and reality? What could I write that would remain relevant for 100 years?