Why Space Is Called "Space"

A long time ago in a county far, far away
we built a model of the solar system.

(This was before Pluto was demoted.)

Most models of the solar system put either
~the planets' distances in scale to each other, or
~the planets' size in scale to each other. 
But not both. 

So we went out on an isolated country road, and made ourselves a scale model of the solar system, with the planets' sizes in scale to their distances from each other.  We made 1 inch equal to 50,000 km.  This is awesome.  When you plunk down a couple grains of rice and a few lentils and a marshmallow or two across the space of nearly two miles, you really see why we call it "space."


The next time we laid out our scale model, several years later, I realized that the planets aren't lined up in a nice, neat row.  So our model shouldn't be in a row either.   That time, we placed our planets in two dimensions:  Pluto was about two miles to the west of the sun, Neptune 1.5 miles south of the sun, and Uranus a mile east of our 20" sun.  That really shows you the vast nothingness that's out there.  This project also gives you a really good grip on the difference between the inner and outer planets!

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If you're interested in trying this out yourself,
and if you don't want to bother with the arithmetic,
these are the numbers we used:

Sun  20" diameter
draw it in sidewalk chalk, or use a smallish laundry basket as your model

about 96 feet away
(I took 22 paces, which are about 4.5 feet each, 
calling a "pace" a set of right & left steps, 
but I have long legs)
Mercury   1/10" (we used a crumb of rice)

about 180' from the sun
(another 18 paces)
Venus   1/4"  (we used a dried pea)

about 250' from the sun
(another 15.5 paces)
Earth   1/4"  (dried pea)
with the moon 7" away
1/16"  (a pin head)

about 380 feet from the sun
(another 29 paces past the earth)
Mars    1/7"    (a small lentil)

Then we went back to the sun, and drove,
using the car's odometer to measure distance.
Sun is your zero point.

Jupiter   (3" -- a baseball)
0.25 miles from the sun

Saturn (2.5"  -- a racquetball)
0.2 miles past Jupiter
or .45 from sun

Uranus  (1" -- large marshmallow)
0.45 miles past Saturn
or .9 miles from sun

Neptune (also 1")
0.5 miles past Uranus
or 1.4 miles from the sun

Pluto (1/22 "  -- a pin point)
0.45 miles past Neptune
or 1.85 miles from the sun



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Have fun!

Not Trendy

This evening I noticed something beautiful in the sky.  Venus and Jupiter are very close together.  The computer tells me that this is the closest the two planets will be over the space of a few decades.  The astronomers are saying that this series of three conjunctions (over the space of 14 months) is quite similar to what the star of Bethlehem may have been.

When Maggie and I were first looking up "Sky and Telescope" to see what they said about this lovely sight, I started singing, "... and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then peace will guide the planets ..."  Poor Maggie.  "WHAT are you singing, Mom?!"  So I belted it out: "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius ..."  Yeah.  Like I said -- poor Maggie.

Singing the song reminded me.  Once upon a time, in grade school, I won some contest at the Y.  The prize was a 45 of my choice.  (For you youngsters, a "45" is a record.  The kind that got played on a old-fashioned turn-table.  The little ones, with one song on each side.  It would be comparable to your winning a $3 iTune giftcard.)  They asked all three winners for what songs they'd like.  The other two girls immediately came up with song titles.  At that point, I didn't listen to pop music yet.  So I chose "Age of Aquarius."  It was something I knew.  The adults didn't know what to do: "That's old.  I don't think that's available any more.  Is it still on the charts?  Can you tell us a second choice?  I don't think we'll be able to find that song."



When my hair was initially cut short, here not too long ago, several people complimented me with how "trendy" I looked.  I was offended.  I didn't respond in a nasty way, but yes, that kind of praise bothered me.  If they liked my hair and I didn't, I could accept their compliment.  If they said my haircut suited me, I could disagree but appreciate their well-intended words.  But trendy?  Yuck.  I don't like trendy.  I don't want to be trendy.

"The Age of Aquarius."  I was already out-of-sync and decidedly behind-the-times when I was just a little kid.

Definitely untrendy.
And proud of it.  Darn tootin'.

A Single Red Branch

Winter's coming. 

(Shhhh.  Did I really say that?  Right out loud?  [shudder]  I should have my mouth washed out with soap.)

Leaves are changing color. 

This year, more than other years, I'm noticing how one branch's leaves will turn red or orange, while the rest of the tree's leaves are still green.  It's so patchy.  And it's not just one or two trees; many are showing the same pattern.  It seems odd.

Then I think of people's hair.  How my gray hairs all come from the same small patch on my head.  How a man's beard will change with one stripe graying before the rest.  How some people will turn gray at their temples first.

Maybe those trees are more like us than I thought.

Snow Dimples

the effects of drifting on paw-prints

Out roof-raking in the warm sunshine yesterday, I saw the cutest little dimples in the snow.  The tracks may have been from the kitties, but after the wind whipped around, who knows for sure where the original dents came from?

Two Sunsets

SO cool the other night --
Leaving work, I saw a big, bright fireball of a sun slipping below the horizon.  A gorgeous sunset!  I turned my back to that sliver of light as I stepped into my car and pulled out of the parking lot. 

I climbed the sideroad and turned onto the main thoroughfare, headed east.  When I glanced into the rearview mirror, that huge sun was up again and just barely touching the horizon. 

Really?  That little of a height difference meant a second view of the dipping down below the horizon?  The timing was perfect.  The sun was beautiful.   And this is what can mean to live in kettle-moraine area.  Wow!

Rainbow

Driving home from a visit to Mom, we watched the storms passing behind us or to the south of us. Certainly an interesting weather lesson! But the coolest thing was the rainbow -- the most vibrant one I'd seen in my life. And the fattest.

(after it had already faded quite a bit)

The evening before I'd been reading "Heaven Is for Real," and (whether it's true or not) I thought it was interesting to have read about all the colors in heaven and then to see this glorious rainbow.

Garden Visitor

So, is he going to eat my berries and peck my tomatoes??

The Sun's Bedtime

Last time Pastor went to Scandinavia to preach, he came back and reported to Bible class about his trip.  They were there in early summer; the sun wasn't down for long overnight, and the nights didn't get dark-dark.  I thought it was tremendously interesting that he mentioned how they didn't get tired.  It would get to be midnight or later, and they would notice the clock which told them how late it was.  But their bodies didn't tell them.

The sun is setting earlier and earlier.  And I am so sleepy.  I need naps on the days I'm not at work.  On days I don't nap, I'm yawning away by 7:00 and struggling not to nod off by 8:00 or so.

If this is virus-fighting, I should be giving in and sleeping, letting my body use its reserves to fight the germies.  If this is "the sun went to bed so I should too" I probably ought to be fighting my desire to laze (and popping more D3 capsules).  The trick is figuring out which is which.

FALL Flowers?

Goldenrod and wild asters.  Mums and fall roses.  Wildly red sumac.  Yup.  Sounds like September and October.

But daisies and sunflowers?  Tender young milk weed and new Queen Anne's lace?  Dandelions and bird's-foot trefoil?  And a profusion of wild snapdragons, like I've never seen before!

Not sure what to make of this crazy weather....

Wood Sorrel

There's a reason to yank these beautiful flowers out of my strawberry patch.

But tell me again why I'm pulling them from my flower beds?

Stuff

Perennial onions and cilantro are poking up in the garden.

Maggie and I are working on identifying trees in the pine family. Almost everything we find are spruces, with a pine here and there. No firs, no hemlocks, no junipers. I need to find an arboretum.

We saw the oral surgeon this week about the extraction of Maggie's wisdom teeth.  The doctor said she's one of the rare people who actually has room in her mouth for wisdom teeth, and they came in nicely, unimpacted.  But becauce of the vcfs, her teeth rot so badly.  Some molars erupt with decay already in them.  Wisdom teeth will rot.  Not "might rot."  But will.  So they must go.

One of my favorite talk-radio hosts suggested using Verify the Recall to get an idea of where people running for [non-partisan] local office stand on some issues.  It seemed like a fantastic idea, and I spent some time this evening looking up school board members and town board members.  The village board is a good deal more liberal than the board governing the township.  County board is next on the list.  If you're in Wisconsin, use the list.  (Of course, first you should verify whether your name was added without your signing.  Not that I would ever suggest that there were irregularities or forgeries on these petitions....)

We stayed up too late last night, hoping for better ogling of the northern lights. All we found was ever-so-faint ones. But hey! Northern lights! Cool -- even if they are so faint as to be nearly invisible.

My regularly-scheduled days at work are going to be changing in mid-spring. I was SO looking forward to being able to attend symposium this year. Alas, I am again going to miss much of it. At least I make it through Passiontide this year, still with the bestest imaginable work-schedule.  My schedule will presumably change again in fall, when one of my co-workers begins a new semester in college and her class schedule changes.  This makes it hard to figure out what days to buy APT tickets for.

Athena has gotten snugly in her old age.  She likes sleeping with a person.  She will jump up on laps and ask to be petted.  Last night, our bedroom door did not latch when we closed it.  You know the game king-of-the-hill?  Well, I was the hill, and there was a cat-spat over domination of the hill, and who got to sleep on my back.  Silly girls.

Maggie had a hankering for cookies. So for some unreasonable reason, we threw together a batch of chocolate chip cookies  last night. Mmmmmm. Warm cookies!

Science and Christianity

Most of us learned in school that science disproves Christianity.

But when we begin to look at science, it doesn't disprove anything in the Bible. This year at church, we've been watching some documentaries. They aren't apologetics, intended to "prove" details of the biblical record. But they are neat! God made things that we are only now discovering (and presumably things that we have not yet --and may never-- discover). But it delighted Him to create the intricacies of mathematics and the universe, the varieties of plant life, the loveliness of all the animal life, whether it's in our back yard or in the depths of the Pacific.

Christians revel in the beauties of creation. Science is something that Christians DO. Throughout history, the vast majority of scientists were Christians, spurred on by their faith in the God of the Bible.

So what happened?

Pastor suggested that the devil had to attack scientific knowledge and true scientific pursuit. If science is what Christians do, then that's something the devil can't let stand. Well, of course! Why didn't I see that?

Oh. Yeah. Because I'm still imbued with the brainwashing we got in public schools and from books and from the museums.

But the tide is turning. Christians are no longer shunning the sciences like we did for so many years.

Snow Blower

Look at that! He's removing snow. And he doesn't have a tool of stick-plus-curved-metal in his hand. This thing has a motor. That's an amazing Christmas gift!

Sweet Flowerets

Holy Innocents. The children murdered by Herod the Great in his attempt to snuff out the life of this newborn king he'd heard rumor of.

The imagery in the hymn is something that struck me tonight like it never did before:
Sweet flowerets of the martyr band,
plucked by the tyrant's ruthless hand
upon the threshold of the morn,
like rosebuds by a tempest torn, ...

I remember my friend Jenny writing about her peonies. A few years in a row after she planted them, a driving rain came and took out the flowers just as they were blooming. No flowers. No perfume. They were lost.

There have been times a wicked storm tore through the area. The ground is littered with twigs and ripped-up leaves and flowers torn off the trees and shrubs and flower-stems. It's so sad to see flowers scattered across the lawn or the road, just part of the debris left by the winds and the hail.

But in addition to the beauty-turned-mess, there's the loss. Rosebuds held a promise of loveliness of shape, loveliness of color, loveliness of aroma. And with those buds gone, gone also is what you were anticipating. Like Jenny's peonies.

Death stinks.




But I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

Solstice

Usually --but not always-- the winter solstice (the "Official First Day of Winter") lands on December 21. My 2011 calendar says that winter begins on Wednesday the 21st. This morning in chapel, the headmaster pointed out that today (Thursday the 22nd) was the first day of winter.

Hmmm.

So I did a little checking. Turns out that solstice was last night at 11:30 pm our time, but 12:30 am Eastern time. Thus is explained the discrepancy in dates; those who control the media in the country are mostly in the Eastern time zone.

Either way, we've turned the corner in the solar system and are on our way to more sunlight!

Where Did THAT Come From?

In the gravelly dirt, just outside the garage door, next to the driveway:
It's the middle of November. We didn't try to plant this. It's not even in tilled soil. I just happened to notice these pretty little leaves yesterday while carrying in groceries. Surely they couldn't be ....? Could they? I tasted one. Sure enough, it's delectable baby spinach. All I can figure is that we unwittingly knocked some spinach seed off a dried plant when cleaning up the garden.


Bible class on Monday night was about creation. Pastor was making the point that God's creative word spoken so many millenia ago still has the power to create. Yeah, I know, I know. At least, I thought I knew. Why then is it so striking to see spinach growing --seemingly of its own accord-- in such a stupid spot for anything other than weeds to grow?

Naming Nature

Could you possibly be as clueless as I was back a few years ago? I could identify cardinals and robins. I knew what dandelions were. But naming a tree? Not likely. Wildflowers? Ha!

Mary Blocksma was clueless too. She wanted to start learning about the nature around her. This book is her diary. It not only documents the birds and trees and grasses and flowers she learns about, but her journey demonstrates to the reader how to learn more about nature. It's perfect for those of us in Michigan, Wisconsin, and northern Indiana, because the climate and geographical location is perfect for what we're experiencing along with the author.

Reading this book was one of my favorite homeschool projects. The book begins on January 1, so now is the time to buy yourself an el-cheapo copy of the book. Then you'll be all ready to spend a whoppin' 5-10 minutes a day with a tiny dose of nature study. It's so encouraging and empowering to read a nature book by someone who's not an expert, but who is a plain old normal dummy but is undumbifying teaching herself. I caught the bug that year and spent the summer ID-ing a lot of wildflowers (aka, weeds). After getting our feet wet, we turned around the next year and re-read the book. We've read it periodically. I think this January would be a great time to reprise it.

Extra-Terrestrial Life

Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? One of Philip's friends once asked us to add our computers to a nation-wide project that searches for patterns or messages that may be coming to earth as other life-forms attempt to communicate with us. At first I thought he was joking. As much as we may have fun with Star Trek and Babylon 5 and other science fiction, there is no complex life anywhere but on Earth.

But how do I know? What if I'm wrong? Maybe there is, and I'm just close-minded.

Last month, we had a movie night at church, watching a documentary, The Privileged Planet. It wasn't from a Christian perspective, or even a religious perspective. It was simply the science of Earth's unique characteristics: the iron core which gives us the magnetic field we have; a location in a particular belt around our sun, not too hot and not too cold; our location in the Milky Way; the chemical make-up of our atmosphere; the abundance of liquid water to moderate the climate; gas-giant planets to help protect our solar system from cosmic junk; etc. These things (and many more) are necessary to sustaining life.

But how do we know whether --in the vastness of the universe-- there might be other places with intelligent life? Or if life there might look very different from life here, and not need the same support system?

Does theology tell us what science can only guess at? I think so.

1. Either there is life elsewhere or there is not.

2. If there is life elsewhere, it is similar to human life, or it is not.
2a. If it is not similar to human life, then it is not made in the image of God. Seriously, do I care if there's life elsewhere in the universe if it's an amoeba or a speck of fungus?

3. If there is life that we'd recognize as "like us," then they are sinners or they are not.
3a. Is it possible for there to be life without having them be sinners? Romans 8 tells us that the whole creation has come under the curse and is waiting to be released. Luke 15 tells us that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 just persons who need no repentance. Is it theologically conceivable that there could be life out there that has continued since creation without sinning on their own, and without being sunk into sin by Adam's fall?

4. If there is life out there, and if they are sinners, then they were saved or they were not.
4a. God left them to be damned? Um. No.


5. If God saved them, how could this happen?
5a. God saved them through Jesus' work on our earth. But how would they hear? As Luke 24 shows, it's not enough that Jesus die for sin. It must also be preached.
5b. God saved them through another Savior. Impossible. There is only one Son of God.
5c. God saved them through Jesus' work on their earth. But Scripture tells us His sacrifice was once and for all. This would mean He had to be in two places at once, with His life, suffering, death, and resurrection happening there in those other worlds exactly at the same time as He dwelt among us.

It's looking to me like a little logic, in combination with what the Bible says, rules out every option except "There is no intelligent life-form elsewhere in the universe."

My Strawberry Bed

Actually, when the crabgrass flowers, it's rather pretty.


Pssst -- This is not a good thing to have discovered.

Day Lily Buds

Recently, Karin and EC and I were talking about weeds and pruning raspberries. I teased Karin that she should be eating day lily buds, seeing as how she has way more day lilies than she wants.

I realized last night: it's that time of year. The season for day lily buds is shorter than the season for strawberries or asparagus. If I want to try them, now's the time. So I nabbed about a dozen and a half off the "weeds" and fried 'em up last night. Oh.my.goodness. This is not like eating lamb's-quarter (which is okay), or eating pigweed/purslane (which is okay in small doses or when added to a salad of milder greens). Day lily buds are good. Like, good to the extent that I'm tempted to go out and snatch a lot more of the buds. But I keep telling myself that I don't want to eliminate my orange flowers altogether, no matter how yummy the buds taste.

One more batch. When Katie (who very much missed seeing day lilies last summer) is around to try them too. That's all I'm going to permit myself -- one more.