Sunspots 914

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to others*:

The Arts: NPR has posted on the wildlife comedy photo awards. Worth seeing!

Christianity: A Christianity Today article examines the effect of  reading the Bible on a device, rather than from a book.

Reader's Digest tells us why red and green colors are symbolic of Christmas. (They mention some other colors, too.)

Computing: Gizmodo reports that Elon Musk now wants employees to sleep at the office.

Politics: NPR reports that nearly a million people became US citizens in the past year.

Science: NPR reports on a 190-year-old tortoise.

2.4 million year-old DNA has been used to determine what organisms lived in the locale where it was deposited, according to an article in The Scientist.

NPR reports on a new type of treatment for cancer, using gene editing.

When I was in college, over 5 decades ago, there was discussion of using atomic fusion (the sun, and Hydrogen bombs, use this) for power generation, but a drawback was that it took more energy than it released. That has been licked, apparently, according to NPR, but we are still a long way from using fusion as a power source.

*I try not to include items that require a password or fee to view.

Thanks for reading.

Is the sun important to us? Absolutely

Why is the sun important to us?
 
For starters, the gravitational attraction of the sun holds the earth in a stable orbit, which is necessary for our very existence as living beings on this planet.

The sun is a giant source of energy. Einstein pointed out the relationship between energy and mass, in his famous e = m c-squared equation. Every second, thousands of tons of mass are turned into energy, by the sun. The process involves four Hydrogen nuclei fusing into a Helium nucleus, which has a little less mass than the Hydrogen nuclei. This fusion wouldn’t be possible without the extreme temperature in the core of the sun – millions of degrees. Temperature is a measurement of the velocity of molecules. At absolute zero, all motion ceases. In the core of the sun, the velocity of particles is so high that they can overcome natural forces of mutual repulsion, hence slamming together and fusing nuclei.

In case you didn’t know, the c in Einstein’s equation is the velocity of light, a large number, and it’s squared. That means that a little bit of mass can be converted to a lot of energy.

What happens to the sun’s radiated energy? Most of it goes off into space, perhaps eventually hitting something. The sun is about 93,000,000 miles away from us. Think of a giant sphere, with a diameter that large. The sun’s radiated energy goes off evenly in all directions. The earth occupies only a very small fraction of the surface of that imaginary sphere. But that very small fraction gets hit by a tiny bit of the sun’s emitted energy, and that is very important to us.

Energy from the sun keeps the earth at a temperature compatible with human, and other, life. It is possible that there is life elsewhere in the solar system, but not likely. Either conditions would be too hot for life, or too cold, in most planets and planetary moons, such as the moons of Saturn.
 
Energy from the sun, in the form of light, makes it possible for us to perceive the world around us, using vision. Most insects, most vertebrates, and some other animals use vision, which would be impossible without light from the sun. (Some animals can see types of light that we can’t, but that statement still applies.) We can perceive the world around us in other ways, to be sure, but vision is arguably more important than the other senses we have.

Energy from the sun makes the seasons possible, and also makes various critically important earthly phenomena, such as the water cycle, possible. Energy from the sun makes erosion and weathering of rocks possible.

Energy from the sun, in the form of light, makes photosynthesis possible. Essentially all of the food energy we take in came directly or indirectly from photosynthesis. In photosynthesis, light is captured by green plants, who use it to produce sugars and various other organic substances, that we need to build ourselves, and to release energy to keep us going.

Is the sun important to us? Absolutely. Yes, that’s the right word – absolutely.

Perhaps St. Paul was speaking of the critical importance of light, when, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he wrote “1 Timothy 6:15b who is the blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; 16 who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light; whom no man has seen, nor can see: to whom be honor and eternal power. Amen. (World English Bible, public domain.)

I'm thankful for nuclear fusion

I’m thankful for nuclear fusion, the process by which the sun, and other stars, transform mass into energy. In the sun’s case, this is through 4 Hydrogen nuclei (protons) fusing into a Helium nucleus. About 0.7% of the mass involved is turned into energy. The reaction is not going on very fast. Scientists estimate that, at present rates, it would take about 10 billion years to exhaust the sun’s supply of Hydrogen. To put it another way, a human body at rest gives off more energy than the same volume of the sun’s material does. But the sun is so large that it gives off enough energy to heat our planet, over 90 million miles from it, losing about 5 million tons of mass per second. (Most of the sun’s energy goes out into space without striking anything in the solar system.) Without nuclear fusion, we wouldn’t be here. Our planet would be frozen, and there would be no light for green plants to convert to food. Although I’m very thankful for nuclear fusion, I’m sorry that we have, sort of, harnessed nuclear fusion, and that Hydrogen bombs exist.

See here for my main reference. Thanks for reading!

Sunspots 446

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Computing: Gizmo's Freeware tells us that there is a free Merriam-Webster Dictionary app. I tried it on my Android tablet, and it works. It can even look up spoken words, so you don't have to know how to spell it to find it.
Philosophy: The BioLogos Forum has a two-part post on "Questions on Time and Eternity." A subject with lasting interest. Here's Part 1, and Part 2.
Politics (and Sports): An article on Dean Smith, super-successful coach of the University of North Carolina men's basketball team for many years, who was also a pioneer in race relations, and against the death penalty. Unfortunately, Smith is a victim of dementia.
Science: The sun is losing about 5,000,000 tons of mass to Hydrogen every second. But fear not. At that rate, it won't stop emitting significant amounts of energy for about 5 billion years, and by that time, it will have lost only a tiny fraction of its mass.
From the Greenville (SC) News, an article on a dog which is said to have an amazing vocabulary, and can understand parts of speech.
Sports: (And Christianity!) An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, no less, about the evangelical Christianity that is part of the Clemson University football team.


Image source (public domain)