Fri 1 Jan New Year's Day
Mon 18 Jan Martin Luther King Day (Holiday)
Tue 2 Feb Groundhog's (midwinter) Day
Sun 7 Feb Superbowl L, Santa Clara, CA
Mon 15 Feb Presidents Day (Holiday)
Sun 13 Mar Daylight Savings Time begins
Mon 20 Mar 04:30UT (19 Mar 21:30PDT) Spring Equinox
Sun Mar 27 Easter
Mon 1 May May Day (midspring)
Mon 30 May Memorial Day (Holiday)
Sun 5 Jun Ramadan begins
Mon 20 Jun 22:34UT (15:34PDT) Summer Solstice
Mon 4 Jul Independence Day (Holiday)
Tue 5 Jul Ramadan ends
Mon 1 Aug Midsummer day
Mon 5 Sep Labor Day (Holiday)
Thu 22 Sep 14:21UT (07:21PDT) Autumn Equinox
Sun 2 Oct Sundown Rosh Hashana begins year 5777
Mon 10 Oct Columbus Day (Holiday for some people)
Wed 12 Oct Yom Kippur
Mon 31 Oct Hallowe'en
Tue 1 Nov Mid autumn day
Sun 6 Nov Daylight Savings Time ends
Tue 8 Nov Election Day
Fri 11 Nov Veterans Day
Thu 24 Nov Thanksgiving (Holiday)
Fri 25 Nov Holiday
Thu 21 Dec 10:44UT (02:44PST) Winter Solstice
Sat 24 Dec Sundown Hannuka begins
Sun 25 Dec Christmas (Holiday)
Mon 26 Dec Holiday
Sun 1 Jan Sundown Hannuka ends
Days off work in bold
Astronomical events in italic
20 September 2016
2017 Calendar
Sun 1 Jan New Year's Day
Mon 2 Jan Holiday
Mon 16 Jan Martin Luther King Day (Holiday)
Fri 20 Jan Inauguration Day
Thu 2 Feb Groundhog's (midwinter) Day
Sun 5 Feb Superbowl LI, Houston, TX
Mon 20 Feb Presidents Day (Holiday)
Sun 12 Mar Daylight Savings Time begins
Mon 20 Mar 10:28UT (03:28PDT) Spring Equinox
Sun 16 Apr Easter
Mon 1 May May Day (midspring)
Sat 27 May Ramadan begins
Mon 29 May Memorial Day (Holiday)
Wed 21 Jun 04:24UT (20 Jun 21:24PDT) Summer Solstice
Sun 25 Jun Ramadan ends
Tue 4 Jul Independence Day (Holiday)
Tue 1 Aug Midsummer day
Mon 4 Sep Labor Day (Holiday)
Wed 20 Sep sundown Rosh Hashana begins year 5778
Fri 22 Sep 20:02UT (13:02PDT) Autumn Equinox
Fri 29 Sep sundown Yom Kippur
Mon 9 Oct Columbus Day (Holiday for some people)
Fri 13 Oct Friday the 13th
Fri 31 Oct Hallowe'en
Sat 1 Nov Mid autumn day
Sun 2 Nov Daylight Savings Time ends
Sat 11 Nov Veterans Day
Thu 23 Nov Thanksgiving (Holiday)
Fri 24 Nov Holiday
Tue 12 Dec Sundown Hannuka begins
Wed 20 Dec Sundown Hannuka ends
Thu 21 Dec 16:28UT (08:28PST) Winter Solstice
Mon 25 Dec Christmas (Holiday)
Days off work in bold
Astronomical events in italic
Mon 2 Jan Holiday
Mon 16 Jan Martin Luther King Day (Holiday)
Fri 20 Jan Inauguration Day
Thu 2 Feb Groundhog's (midwinter) Day
Sun 5 Feb Superbowl LI, Houston, TX
Mon 20 Feb Presidents Day (Holiday)
Sun 12 Mar Daylight Savings Time begins
Mon 20 Mar 10:28UT (03:28PDT) Spring Equinox
Sun 16 Apr Easter
Mon 1 May May Day (midspring)
Sat 27 May Ramadan begins
Mon 29 May Memorial Day (Holiday)
Wed 21 Jun 04:24UT (20 Jun 21:24PDT) Summer Solstice
Sun 25 Jun Ramadan ends
Tue 4 Jul Independence Day (Holiday)
Tue 1 Aug Midsummer day
Mon 4 Sep Labor Day (Holiday)
Wed 20 Sep sundown Rosh Hashana begins year 5778
Fri 22 Sep 20:02UT (13:02PDT) Autumn Equinox
Fri 29 Sep sundown Yom Kippur
Mon 9 Oct Columbus Day (Holiday for some people)
Fri 13 Oct Friday the 13th
Fri 31 Oct Hallowe'en
Sat 1 Nov Mid autumn day
Sun 2 Nov Daylight Savings Time ends
Sat 11 Nov Veterans Day
Thu 23 Nov Thanksgiving (Holiday)
Fri 24 Nov Holiday
Tue 12 Dec Sundown Hannuka begins
Wed 20 Dec Sundown Hannuka ends
Thu 21 Dec 16:28UT (08:28PST) Winter Solstice
Mon 25 Dec Christmas (Holiday)
Days off work in bold
Astronomical events in italic
15 September 2016
Life on Other Planets?
Is there life on other planets? Of course there is. There are 100 billion stars in this galaxy and it looks like the majority of them have planets. There are at least 100 billion galaxies in the universe. that's 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (10 septillion) stars with planets. most of them will not be inhabited, but even if only one in a trillion is inhabited, that's 10 billion planets with life. I'm confident will be far higher than that.
The circumstances that allow life as we understand it are fairly narrow:
the only specific chemistry that this requires is water. Our life is based on carbon and water, but silicon or potentially any other chemistry is conceivable.
So far, there is only one planet that we know meets all these criteria, and it's the one we live on. About 3000 exoplanets have been detected so far and only one of them doesn't have obvious disqualifying factors. The Kepler spacecraft is looking at 145,000 stars and has only detected planets on a few thousand of them. The mechanism used wouldn't detect a system with one of the poles pointed at us--around half of the stars examined--and virtually all qualifying planets are below the minimum size that can be detected with Kepler.
Of course, it may not be necessary for the physics we're familiar with to be relevant at all:
They're Made Out of Meat
A Fire Upon the Deep
The Drake equation:
calculates the number of extraterrestrial civilizations that might be able to generate signals that we can detect. Most of the parameters are unknown.
R* is the rate of star creation (known)
fp is the fraction of stars that have planets (still unknown but appears to substantial)
ne is the number of planets per such star that could contain life (still unknown, but in our system, if we count all moons and planets, it's about 2%)
fl is the fraction that actually go on to develop life (totally unknown)
fi is the fraction that develop intelligent life (totally unknown)
fc is the fraction that release detectable signals into space. (totally unknown)
L is the average length that such civilizations are able to communicate (totally unknown)
he omitted one: fraction that are close enough that any signal might be detected. It's hard to imagine this coming from anywhere outside of our galaxy and probably only the local quarter.
The first four terms address the same question I'm asking. The only one that's still completely unknown is fl, the fraction of planets or moons that actually develop life. The earliest fossil record found so far of life on earth is about 3.5 Billion years ago. The first time life as we know it could possibly have formed--the first time that liquid water was available on earth--was about 4.4 Billion years ago. So we know life started at some time in the first 900m years that it was possible. There's not much left of the fossil record from that long ago, so it's probable that it was a lot longer than 3.5B year ago.
Life tooled along making stromatolites and other primative things, until about 1.2B years ago, some protozoa figured out how to reproduce sexually. This created lots of new things: species that would breed true, yet allowed a lot of very small variation, to allow evolution by natural selection to take place. It took another 650m years for the real excitement to happen, in what's called the Cambrian Explosion, when all of the multicellular phyla of plants and animals evolved.
So we took at least 3 Billion years to develop above the protazoa stage (and most of that to develop to the protazoa stage), and more than another half billion years to develop intelligence. if this is typical, chances are pretty good that whatever life we find will be very, very simple. We know that over 3/4ths of the time that life has been possible on earth, that it has existed. It is entirely possible that the first life occurred in the first few million years, or even earlier. As it stands, it seems like that 3/4ths is a plausible guess for fl.
So far, we have only sent missions capable of detecting life to one of the extraterrestrial bodies in our planet where life would be at all possible, Mars, and we know that it's unlikely there because atmospheric pressure is too low to sustain liquid water and temperature too high to allow a permanent frozen shell. There are a handful of moons that probably do have liquid water, around Jupiter and Saturn, although in all cases, it's under a very thick layer of ice. Until we find out whether there is life there, we really have no handle on that all important term: fl. But we have the beginnings of a handle on some of the others. Life on about 1 in 200 planets seems possible based on what we know. And since most stars that have any planets probably have multiple planets, the number of stars with life is probably similar.
The circumstances that allow life as we understand it are fairly narrow:
- the ambient temperature needs to stay fairly close to the melting point of water: a little above it and not too far below it. too hot and too much of the water will be vapor.
- the ambient temperature can't vary too much.
- enough gravity that most of the water will stay liquid.
- not so much gravity that complex molecules break down.
- enough solar energy to provide a source of energy
- not so much solar that complex molecules will break down
- enough radiation to generate some mutation.
- not so much that a species can't be stable long enough to reproduce widely.
- has another big planet in the same system that cleans out most of the asteroids
- has a relatively circular orbit (to keep temperature constant)
the only specific chemistry that this requires is water. Our life is based on carbon and water, but silicon or potentially any other chemistry is conceivable.
So far, there is only one planet that we know meets all these criteria, and it's the one we live on. About 3000 exoplanets have been detected so far and only one of them doesn't have obvious disqualifying factors. The Kepler spacecraft is looking at 145,000 stars and has only detected planets on a few thousand of them. The mechanism used wouldn't detect a system with one of the poles pointed at us--around half of the stars examined--and virtually all qualifying planets are below the minimum size that can be detected with Kepler.
Of course, it may not be necessary for the physics we're familiar with to be relevant at all:
They're Made Out of Meat
A Fire Upon the Deep
The Drake equation:
calculates the number of extraterrestrial civilizations that might be able to generate signals that we can detect. Most of the parameters are unknown. R* is the rate of star creation (known)
fp is the fraction of stars that have planets (still unknown but appears to substantial)
ne is the number of planets per such star that could contain life (still unknown, but in our system, if we count all moons and planets, it's about 2%)
fl is the fraction that actually go on to develop life (totally unknown)
fi is the fraction that develop intelligent life (totally unknown)
fc is the fraction that release detectable signals into space. (totally unknown)
L is the average length that such civilizations are able to communicate (totally unknown)
he omitted one: fraction that are close enough that any signal might be detected. It's hard to imagine this coming from anywhere outside of our galaxy and probably only the local quarter.
The first four terms address the same question I'm asking. The only one that's still completely unknown is fl, the fraction of planets or moons that actually develop life. The earliest fossil record found so far of life on earth is about 3.5 Billion years ago. The first time life as we know it could possibly have formed--the first time that liquid water was available on earth--was about 4.4 Billion years ago. So we know life started at some time in the first 900m years that it was possible. There's not much left of the fossil record from that long ago, so it's probable that it was a lot longer than 3.5B year ago.
Life tooled along making stromatolites and other primative things, until about 1.2B years ago, some protozoa figured out how to reproduce sexually. This created lots of new things: species that would breed true, yet allowed a lot of very small variation, to allow evolution by natural selection to take place. It took another 650m years for the real excitement to happen, in what's called the Cambrian Explosion, when all of the multicellular phyla of plants and animals evolved.
So we took at least 3 Billion years to develop above the protazoa stage (and most of that to develop to the protazoa stage), and more than another half billion years to develop intelligence. if this is typical, chances are pretty good that whatever life we find will be very, very simple. We know that over 3/4ths of the time that life has been possible on earth, that it has existed. It is entirely possible that the first life occurred in the first few million years, or even earlier. As it stands, it seems like that 3/4ths is a plausible guess for fl.
So far, we have only sent missions capable of detecting life to one of the extraterrestrial bodies in our planet where life would be at all possible, Mars, and we know that it's unlikely there because atmospheric pressure is too low to sustain liquid water and temperature too high to allow a permanent frozen shell. There are a handful of moons that probably do have liquid water, around Jupiter and Saturn, although in all cases, it's under a very thick layer of ice. Until we find out whether there is life there, we really have no handle on that all important term: fl. But we have the beginnings of a handle on some of the others. Life on about 1 in 200 planets seems possible based on what we know. And since most stars that have any planets probably have multiple planets, the number of stars with life is probably similar.
11 September 2016
September 11th
15 years ago today, 19 Arab guys, 15 from Saudi Arabia, 2 from UAE, one each from Egypt and Lebanon, funded by a wealthy scion of the Saudi regime and partly inspired by the same Wahhabi fundamentalist crackpotism that inspires the Saudi regime, attacked America and killed about 3000 of us.
Our initial response was to invade Afghanistan, which was a failed state and not involved in the attack, but some of the warring parties allowed some of bin Laden's other projects to train there and it appears that bin Laden himself was there for a time. It didn't really address what had caused the attacks, but it made a little progress against Afghanistan's real problems. But like our efforts 20 years earlier, after the first superficial successes, we gave up on the real solutions (e.g. schools and a way for ordinary Afghans to make a decent living) and moved on to making yet another failed state in Iraq.
All together, our response to the September 11th attacks have killed more than 3 times as many US and allied soldiers, wounded far more than that, killed hundreds of thousands in the countries we've attacked, exacerbated the problems of Afghanistan, created newly failed states in Iraq and Syria where there had been stable states before, and created a far more deadly terrorist organization in ISIS than bin Laden's al Qaeda ever was.
By any standard I can think of, the "war" on terror has given a huge victory to the terrorists, and to the cause of nihilism in general.
The Saudi regime in Arabia is extremely repressive, and their huge wealth allows them to stay in power in spite of it. The Arab guys who attacked us 15 years ago knew there was no point in attacking their oppressor. As long as the money keeps rolling in, the family of ibn Saud will use it to retain power. So they attacked the enabler of their oppression.
Meanwhile, we have been quietly increasing development of US petroleum reserves. Corrected for inflation, the price of gasoline is about where it was in the mid '70s, down from all-time highs. The Saudi are feeling the bite, but they're still making good money. But more important than that, we've been installing renewable energy sources, mostly wind and solar, at a rapidly increasing rate. In another decade or so, we may be able to stop buying buying from them entirely. Once that happens, and the profligacy of the Saudi family burns through all that money, there will be regime change in Arabia.
That will be a victory for all of us.
Our initial response was to invade Afghanistan, which was a failed state and not involved in the attack, but some of the warring parties allowed some of bin Laden's other projects to train there and it appears that bin Laden himself was there for a time. It didn't really address what had caused the attacks, but it made a little progress against Afghanistan's real problems. But like our efforts 20 years earlier, after the first superficial successes, we gave up on the real solutions (e.g. schools and a way for ordinary Afghans to make a decent living) and moved on to making yet another failed state in Iraq.
All together, our response to the September 11th attacks have killed more than 3 times as many US and allied soldiers, wounded far more than that, killed hundreds of thousands in the countries we've attacked, exacerbated the problems of Afghanistan, created newly failed states in Iraq and Syria where there had been stable states before, and created a far more deadly terrorist organization in ISIS than bin Laden's al Qaeda ever was.
By any standard I can think of, the "war" on terror has given a huge victory to the terrorists, and to the cause of nihilism in general.
The Saudi regime in Arabia is extremely repressive, and their huge wealth allows them to stay in power in spite of it. The Arab guys who attacked us 15 years ago knew there was no point in attacking their oppressor. As long as the money keeps rolling in, the family of ibn Saud will use it to retain power. So they attacked the enabler of their oppression.
Meanwhile, we have been quietly increasing development of US petroleum reserves. Corrected for inflation, the price of gasoline is about where it was in the mid '70s, down from all-time highs. The Saudi are feeling the bite, but they're still making good money. But more important than that, we've been installing renewable energy sources, mostly wind and solar, at a rapidly increasing rate. In another decade or so, we may be able to stop buying buying from them entirely. Once that happens, and the profligacy of the Saudi family burns through all that money, there will be regime change in Arabia.
That will be a victory for all of us.
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