Did You Know? - 8 Awe Inspiring Facts about the Milky Way

                                                    Certain Certitude #21

     Only two votes were cast in this past week's poll. Therefore there was a tie for what the best season of the year is: summer and winter! Check out this week's poll to your right ----> Now here are 8 interesting facts about our galaxy:

1. 1. It’s warped. The Milky Way is a disk about 120,000 light years across, with a central bulge that has a diameter of 12,000 light years. The disk is far from perfectly flat though. What warped it? Two of the galaxy’s neighbors – the Large and Small Magellanic clouds – have been pulling on the dark matter in the Milky Way like in a game of galactic tug-of-war. The tugging sets up a sort of oscillating frequency that pulls on the hydrogen gas (of which the Milky Way has lots of).
   2. It has a halo, but you can’t directly see it. The Milky Way has a halo of dark matter that makes up over 90% of its mass. Yes, 90%. That means that all of what we can see (with the naked eye or telescopes) makes up less than 10% of the mass of the Milky Way. Now, it doesn’t have a halo like those old cartoon characters that die, sprout wings and play a harp in the clouds. The halo is actually invisible, though we know it exists by running simulations of what the Milky Way would look like and how fast stars inside the galaxy’s disk orbit the center. The heavier it is, the faster they should be orbiting. If you assume that the galaxy is made up only of matter that we can see, then you get a rotation rate for the stars that is well below what it should be, so the rest is made up of what is elusively called “dark matter,” or matter that only interacts gravitationally (so far as we know) with “normal matter”.
   3. It has over 200 billion stars. As galaxies go, the Milky Way is a middleweight. The largest galaxy known, IC 1101, has over 100 trillion stars, and other large galaxies can have more than a trillion stars. Smaller galaxies like the aforementioned Large Magellanic Cloud, have about 10 billion stars. The Milky Way has between 200-400 billion stars, but when you look up into the night sky the most you can see from any one point on the Earth is about 2,500. We aren’t stuck with this many stars forever, though, because the Milky Way is constantly losing stars – through supernovae – and producing stars, netting about seven stars per year.
   
   4. It’s really dusty and gassy. You may not think so by looking at it, but the Milky Way is full of dust and gas. And when I say full of dust, I mean that we can only see out about 6,000 light years into the disk of our own galaxy in the visible spectrum, and the galaxy is about 100,000 light years across! The dust and gas makes up a whopping 10-15% of the “normal matter” in the galaxy, with the remainder being stars. The thickness of the dust deflects visible light, but infrared light can pass through the dust, which makes infrared telescopes like the Spitzer Space Telescope extremely valuable tools in mapping and studying the galaxy. Spitzer can peer through the dust to give us extraordinarily clear views of what is going on at the heart of the galaxy and in star-forming regions.
   5. Every picture you’ve seen of the Milky Way from above is either another galaxy or an artist’s interpretation. We can’t take a picture of the Milky Way from above (yet) because we are inside the galactic disk, about 26,000 light years from the galactic center. This means that any pretty pictures you see of a spiral galaxy with elegant arms that is supposedly the Milky Way is either a picture of another spiral galaxy, or the rendering of a talented artist. Imaging the Milky Way from above is a long, long way off; however, this doesn’t mean that we can’t take breathtaking images of the Milky Way from our vantage point!
   6. There is a black hole at the center. Most galaxies have a supermassive black hole at the center. Ours is no exception. The center of our galaxy is called Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A-star”), and it houses a black hole with a mass of 40,000 Suns that is 14 million miles across (about the size of Mercury’s orbit). But this is just the black hole itself. All of the mass trying to get into the black hole – called the accretion disk – forms a disk that has a mass of 4 million Suns, and would fit inside the orbit of the Earth. Though like other black holes, Sgr A* tries to consume anything that happens to be nearby, star formation has been detected near this black hole behemoth.
   7. It’s part of the Virgo Supercluster, a grouping of galaxies within 150 million light years. As big as it is, the Milky Way is part of an even bigger structure called a supercluster. Superclusters are groupings of galaxies on very large scales (100s of millions of light years). In between these superclusters are large voids of space where any space traveler would encounter very little in the way of galaxies or matter. Our close neighbors include the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and the Andromeda Galaxy (the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way), and along with about 30 other galaxies this group of galaxies makes up what is called the Local Group. But as you get further on out, on the scale of hundreds of millions of light years, the Milky Way can be seen to be just a small part of a large grouping of galaxies 150 million light years in diameter called the Virgo Supercluster.
   8. It’s on the move. The Milky Way, along with everything else, is moving through space, and puts to shame anything from everyday life that one could compare its speed to. The Earth moves around the Sun, the Sun around the Milky Way, and the Milky Way is part of the Local Group, which is moving relative to the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation – the radiation left over from the Big Bang (you know, when God said, "Let there be light." AND BANG! There it was!), which is a convenient reference point to use when determining the velocity of things in the Universe. The Local Group is calculated to move relative to the CMB at about 600 km/s (2,200,000 km/h), which is pretty darn fast!

March in G by J. S. Bach

                                                          Violoncello Lunedi #2

     As simple as the notes may be, I find this march to be very pretty. Enjoy! :-)

                                                            Click here to watch!
                                                          


           

                                                           

Shrugging Responsibilty

                                                       Wondering Weekend #17

     Do you ever feel depressed? Do you ever do stuff out of a “compulsion”? Do you ever hear voices in your head? Then you may need the newest drug straight from us psychiatrists! Its list of side effects are extensive, but it helps much more than it hurts. We can even try combining this with other medications to give you a concoction that will knock all the bad right out of you!

If you couldn’t tell, I was being sarcastic. Do you ever wonder where all these diseases came from and what causes them? I’m talking about bipolar, anxiety, clinical depression, schizophrenia, etc. According to Sigmund Freud, they could be a result of something that happened in your past or how you were brought up. Ever notice when you watch shows like Hoarding: Buried Alive or Intervention that they always highlight something really bad that happened right before the hoarder or addict went down a bad road? All the blame of their problem is placed onto that event, or events, and turns them from the person who committed the crime to the victim. No mention of sin or their lack of repentance to God is cited as a cause for their troubles. The blame is shrugged right off their shoulders and onto those of Freudian theology.

I don’t want anyone to get the impression that I am completely against depression, anxiety, bipolar, etc. medications or believe that these problems do not exist. I do believe in their validity and even think that these diseases may be how demons manifest themselves today. My aim is to point out what Freudian thought has done to America, but more specifically, Christians. 

One of the worst examples of this way of looking at things is when someone who murders, steals, or commits rape, etc. is declared not guilty because they were in a psychotic state. One hundred and fifty years ago, any person who committed murder would go to jail. Their reason for murdering is irrelevant. In the eyes of God, their sin has made them guilty.

Christians must be very careful when they are dealing with Freudian thought. I do believe it is possible to have depression and that there is medicine to help it. What I don’t believe is that it is an excuse to be lazy or not do what you are supposed to do in day to day life. If you are “too depressed” to pray or read the Bible, that is a sin. 

We must also be careful about not over medicating ourselves. I really believe there is a point when over medication can take place. Maybe it won’t kill you to take three different depression or anxiety medications, but if they replace God’s role in it all, isn’t that bad? 

In the end, I want to urge every Christian out there to disregard Freud’s theories. Examine what’s going on in your head in the light of the Bible. Call sin what it really is and don’t blame your mistakes on an “impulse” or other such nonsense. If you have anxiety you can seek medicinal help, but don’t throw God’s help out the window. If you are depressed you can take a pill, but you must pray for God’s help with your lack of interest or desire to things. Don’t shrug the responsibility of sin off your shoulders. Repent! 

Did You Know? - 10 Mind-Blowing Facts about Shakespeare

                                                      Certain Certitude #20

     I apologize profusely for not posting on Saturday! I had a family emergency. O.o I wanted to point out that I have started making polls. You should see one right here ----->
Make sure to vote and look for a new one every Wednesday. I'll post the weekly results with my Certain Certitude every week. Anyways here are some crazy facts about Shakespeare!

1. Shakespeare’s father held a lot of different jobs, and at one point got paid to drink beer.

The son of a tenant farmer, John Shakespeare was nothing if not upwardly mobile. He arrived in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1551 and began dabbling in various trades, selling leather goods, wool, malt and corn. In 1556 he was appointed the borough’s official “ale taster,” meaning he was responsible for inspecting bread and malt liquors. The next year he took another big step up the social ladder by marrying Mary Arden, the daughter of an aristocratic farmer who happened to be his father’s former boss. John later became a moneylender and held a series of municipal positions, serving for some time as the mayor of Stratford. In the 1570s he fell into debt and ran into legal problems for reasons that remain unclear.

2. Shakespeare married an older woman who was three months pregnant at the time.
In November 1582, 18-year-old William wed Anne Hathaway, a farmer’s daughter eight years his senior. Instead of the customary three times, the couple’s intention to marry was only announced at church once—evidence that the union was hastily arranged because of Anne’s eyebrow-raising condition. Six months after the wedding, the Shakespeares welcomed a daughter, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith followed in February 1585. Little is known about the relationship between William and Anne, besides that they often lived apart and he only bequeathed her his “second-best bed” in his will.

3. Shakespeare’s parents were probably illiterate, and his children almost certainly were.
Nobody knows for sure, but it’s quite likely that John and Mary Shakespeare never learned to read or write, as was often the case for people of their standing during the Elizabethan era. Some have argued that John’s civic duties would have required basic literacy, but in any event he always signed his name with a mark. William, on the other hand, attended Stratford’s local grammar school, where he mastered reading, writing and Latin. His wife and their two children who lived to adulthood, Susanna and Judith, are thought to have been illiterate, though Susanna could scrawl her signature.

4. Nobody knows what Shakespeare did between 1585 and 1592.
To the dismay of his biographers, Shakespeare disappears from the historical record between 1585, when his twins’ baptism was recorded, and 1592, when the playwright Robert Greene denounced him in a pamphlet as an “upstart crow.” The insult suggests he’d already made a name for himself on the London stage by then. What did the newly married father and future literary icon do during those seven “lost” years? Historians have speculated that he worked as a schoolteacher, studied law, traveled across continental Europe or joined an acting troupe that was passing through Stratford. According to one 17th-century account, he fled his hometown after poaching deer from a local politician’s estate.

5. Shakespeare’s plays feature the first written instances of hundreds of familiar terms.
William Shakespeare is believed to have influenced the English language more than any other writer in history, coining—or, at the very least, popularizing—terms and phrases that still regularly crop up in everyday conversation. Examples include the words “fashionable” (“Troilus and Cressida”), “sanctimonious” (“Measure for Measure”), “eyeball” (“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”) and “lackluster” (“As You Like It”); and the expressions “foregone conclusion” (“Othello”), “in a pickle” (“The Tempest”), “wild goose chase” (“Romeo and Juliet”) and “one fell swoop” (“Macbeth”). He is also credited with inventing the given names Olivia, Miranda, Jessica and Cordelia, which have become common over the years (as well as others, such as Nerissa and Titania, which have not).

6. We probably don’t spell Shakespeare’s name correctly—but, then again, neither did he.
Sources from William Shakespeare’s lifetime spell his last name in more than 80 different ways, ranging from “Shappere” to “Shaxberd.” In the handful of signatures that have survived, the Bard never spelled his own name “William Shakespeare,” using variations or abbreviations such as “Willm Shakp,” “Willm Shakspere” and “William Shakspeare” instead. However it’s spelled, Shakespeare is thought to derive from the Old English words “schakken” (“to brandish”) and “speer” (“spear”), and probably referred to a confrontational or argumentative person.

7. Shakespeare’s epitaph wards off would-be grave robbers with a curse.
William Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, at the age of 52—not bad for an era when the average life expectancy ranged between 30 and 40 years. We may never know what killed him, although an acquaintance wrote that the Bard fell ill after a night of heavy drinking with fellow playwright Ben Jonson. Despite his swift demise, Shakespeare supposedly had the wherewithal to pen the epitaph over his tomb, which is located inside a Stratford church. Intended to thwart the numerous grave robbers who plundered England’s cemeteries at the time, the verse reads: “Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forbeare, / To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, / And cursed be he that moves my bones.” It must have done the trick, since Shakespeare’s remains have yet to be disturbed.

8. Shakespeare wore a gold hoop earring—or so we think.
Our notion of William Shakespeare’s appearance comes from several 17th-century portraits that may or may not have been painted while the Bard himself sat behind the canvas. In one of the most famous depictions, known as the Chandos portrait after its onetime owner, the subject has a full beard, a receding hairline, loosened shirt-ties and a shiny gold hoop dangling from his left ear. Even back in Shakespeare’s time, earrings on men were trendy hallmarks of a bohemian lifestyle, as evidenced by images of other Elizabethan artists. The fashion may have been inspired by sailors, who sported a single gold earring to cover funeral costs in case they died at sea.

9. North America’s 200 million starlings have Shakespeare to thank for their existence.
William Shakespeare’s works contain more than 600 references to various types of birds, from swans and doves to sparrows and turkeys. The starling—a lustrous songbird with a gift for mimicry, native to Europe and western Asia—makes just one appearance, in “Henry IV, Part 1.” In 1890 an American “bardolator” named Eugene Schiffelin decided to import every kind of bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s oeuvre but absent from the United States. As part of this project, he released two flocks of 60 starlings in New York’s Central Park. One hundred twenty years later, the highly adaptable species has taken over the skies, becoming invasive and driving some native birds to the brink of extinction.

10. Some people think Shakespeare was a fraud.
How did a provincial commoner who had never gone to college or ventured outside Stratford become one of the most prolific, worldly and eloquent writers in history? Even early in his career, Shakespeare was spinning tales that displayed in-depth knowledge of international affairs, European capitals and history, as well as familiarity with the royal court and high society. For this reason, some theorists have suggested that one or several authors wishing to conceal their true identity used the person of William Shakespeare as a front. Proposed candidates include Edward De Vere, Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe and Mary Sidney Herbert. Most scholars and literary historians remain skeptical about this hypothesis, although many suspect Shakespeare sometimes collaborated with other playwrights.

Did You Know? - The History of DST

                                                    Certain Certitude #19

     Although not punctual in the modern sense, ancient civilizations adjusted daily schedules to the sun more flexibly than modern Daylight Savings Time (DST) does, often dividing daylight into twelve hours regardless of day length, so that each daylight hour was longer during summer. For example, Roman water clocks had different scales for different months of the year: at Rome's latitude the third hour from sunrise, hora tertia, started by modern standards at 09:02 solar time and lasted 44 minutes at the winter solstice, but at the summer solstice it started at 06:58 and lasted 75 minutes. After ancient times, equal-length civil hours eventually supplanted unequal, so civil time no longer varies by season. Unequal hours are still used in a few traditional settings, such as some Mount Athos monasteries and all Jewish ceremonies.

     During his time as an American envoy to France, Benjamin Franklin, publisher of the old English proverb, "Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise", anonymously published a letter suggesting that Parisians economize on candles by rising earlier to use morning sunlight. This 1784 satire proposed taxing shutters, rationing candles, and waking the public by ringing church bells and firing cannons at sunrise. Franklin did not propose DST; like ancient Rome, 18th-century Europe did not keep precise schedules. However, this soon changed as rail and communication networks came to require a standardization of time unknown in Franklin's day. 

      

     Modern DST was first proposed by the New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson, whose shift-work job gave him leisure time to collect insects, and led him to value after-hours daylight. In 1895 he presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society proposing a two-hour daylight-saving shift, and after considerable interest was expressed in Christchurch, New Zealand, he followed up in an 1898 paper. Many publications incorrectly credit DST's proposal to the prominent English builder and outdoorsman William Willett, who independently conceived DST in 1905 during a pre-breakfast ride, when he observed with dismay how many Londoners slept through a large part of a summer's day. An avid golfer, he also disliked cutting short his round at dusk. His solution was to advance the clock during the summer months, a proposal he published two years later. The proposal was taken up by the Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) Robert Pearce, who introduced the first Daylight Saving Bill to the House of Commons on 12 February 1908. A select committee was set up to examine the issue, but Pearce's bill did not become law, and several other bills failed in the following years. Willett lobbied for the proposal in the UK until his death in 1915.

      Starting on 30 April 1916, Germany and its World War I allies were the first to use DST as a way to conserve coal during wartime. Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year and the United States adopted it in 1918.

     Broadly speaking, Daylight Saving Time was abandoned in the years after the war (with some notable exceptions including Canada, the UK, France, and Ireland for example). However, it was brought back for periods of time in many different places in the coming decades, widely during the Second World War. It became widely adopted, particularly in North America and Europe starting in the 1970s as a result of the 1970s energy crisis.

    

    

Concerto in A Minor, 2nd Movement, Op. 3, No. 6 (A. Vivaldi)

                                                              Violino Lunedi #2

     Here I am being a dork on my violin. ;) Enjoy my squeakiness!

Never Again

                                                  Wondering Weekend #16

      What is the one thing you fear most? Maybe the collapse of our government, that your house is robbed, that someone you love is going to die, or even global warming? The correct answer for any Christian should be God! Not spiders, not the dark, and especially not the destruction of our world as we know it! Why should we not fear these things? Mostly because we should not fear anything but God’s wrath if we are His. For now, I’d like to address more closely the fear of global warming and the end of the world. 
     In Genesis, we are told the story of the Great Flood. We all know how God commanded Noah to build an ark and prepare for the destruction of the ancient world. We also know the promise God made in Genesis 9:11, “Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” He then gives us a physical sign: the rainbow. Why is it then, that if we all supposedly know this verse from Sunday school, we do not believe it?

  You may be thinking, “Um, yea...I do believe it.” But I’d like to challenge that idea with this thought: Do you believe in global warming or any related theories which claim that the end is near? If you answered yes, then you do not believe that verse. Global warming would end in a world wide flood. The verse says that is not possible. Point taken? 

As for pollution, over-population, or any such problems that would supposedly make earth uninhabitable, do you truly believe in those things? If you do, realize this: Jesus will return one day. How will he return to get us if there is no one left? Any theories that claim the end is near are simply unbiblical. No Christian can believe in doomsday and the second coming.

Does this mean that I am against “going green” and all the efforts to stop the supposed global warming that is happening? No! God gave us the beautiful earth to sustain us. It goes against Biblical principles to tear it apart and leave it in a state of chaos. With the help of modern science we know that is better for the environment to use catalytic converters, leave forests untouched, and not dump garbage into the ocean. To mistreat the earth would be disrespectful to its Creator. It only makes sense that we recycle, avoid littering, and don’t leave our cars idling constantly. 

Although I am a fan of recycling, I must warn against the tree-hugger, hippie mentality. If you spend a great majority of your time more concerned for “Mother Earth” then Father God, you have a serious issue. Yes, we should treat the earth with kindness, but we should not worship it. Our goal in life should not be to save the planet, but to help save souls. 

In the end, I urge every Christian to disregard all scientific theories that claim the end is near. They are unbiblical, unneeded, and cause foolish fears. Despite the fact that global warming is not happening, we should still treat our planet with respect. Wind energy saves money, but worshipping the earth is breaking one of God’s commandments. Go recycle something. Maybe a global warming article?