Jupiter's Lesson on Perspective

Stargazing in Alaska is problematic. In the summer, there is too much light to see many stars. Spring and autumn each offer a few weeks with a good view, but in the winter clear means cold. Since I am a wimp and a terrible Alaskan, my normal view of the stars takes place during the walk from the car to the house.


Last night was a rare exception – a dark, clear sky and a not-too-cold temperature. Several planets took advantage of the chance to show off their best view. In the east Mars shone bright red and lonely over the Chugach Mountains. Normally that view would have been a showstopper, but Venus and Jupiter blazed so brightly in the west, directly opposite poor Mars, that I didn’t like to look away from them. I don’t think I have ever seen Jupiter shine bigger or brighter than it did last night.

It was a busy evening, so I got several opportunities to stare at Jupiter last night. Since red lights are for thinking strange thoughts, sitting there I was amazed that I could see anything at all that is 741 million km away. Paradoxically it is amazing that anything the size of Jupiter could ever be made to look like a pin head in the sky. It is strange that something that massive can be made to look so tiny to us. It is awe inspiring to live in that kind of world. I was in a terrible mood, but still, I was moved by mighty, tiny Jupiter.

Since I habitually over think things, I got to thinking about perspective. We never really know the truth or the magnitude of something when we see it from our point of view. There is too much about it that we will never see. The truth is that Jupiter is the second-largest thing in the solar system. At two and a half times the mass of all the other planets combined, and 66 moons, it dwarfs everything else we can see from the Earth except the sun. From my perspective it is a small, bright dot in the sky over Cook Inlet. The space between those two ideas is where I find my place in the universe.

Einstein & Heisenberg

Whew! It has taken me weeks to get through this last book I was reading, Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the Great Debate about the nature of reality by Manjit Kumar. Since I find both science and the history of science fascinating, this book was right up my alley. But it was dense, and I was busy so it took me a while to get through. Saturday afternoon I approached those last few chapters like a marathon runner reaching out for that ribbon. We need not speculate about whether or not I actually lapped the living room with the book held above my head. Let’s just move along.

Amongst all of the interesting scientific advancements and attempt to peer into the universe’s weave was a very human story that has stuck with me. Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg were both highly respected German theoretical physicists who were on opposite side of the great debate over quantum mechanics. (I promise I will not bore you here with particles, etc.) Before WWII, Einstein refused to return to Hitler’s Germany and settled in Princeton, NJ. Many Jewish scientists were exiled from Germany and many non-Jews left in support of their colleagues. Heisenberg stayed and went on the head the German nuclear weapons program.

In his book’s penultimate chapter, Kumar tells a brief story about Heisenberg visiting Einstein in 1954 in Princeton during a speaking tour after the war. Einstein claimed that the men avoided the subject of politics and discussed physics. It is a brief aside in the book, but it has stuck with me for days. How do you do this? This wasn’t like reconciling scientists after WWI where people ended up on opposite sides of a continental meltdown almost by chance. How do you sit down with an old acquaintance and pretend? How does one not ask, how did you try to help this man succeed, this man who wanted to see me and everyone like me dead? After learning about the camps and the slaughter, how do you sit across from someone and sip coffee? How do you not ask if he knew what was going on and what he did about it? If Heisenberg has built the bomb first, how horrible the outcome would have been, and yet they sat, and discussed particles and old times. For that matter, what did Heisenberg say? How do you suggest that bygones be left to be bygones after the government you helped tried to wipe out the other person’s entire race? Did he even attempt to say he was sorry?

I don’t understand this. I don’t even know if I admire Einstein’s equanimity or if I am appalled as his lack of demonstrated outrage. I’ve been thinking about this story for days and I have imagined it playing out in numerous fictional ways. Physics and its waves that are also particles are complex and fascinating, but we humans are each little universes ourselves and the stories or why we do what we do is the world’s most interesting puzzle.

Happy Carl Sagan Day

Happy Carl Sagan Day!

The winter holidays can be a struggle, but this is one I can get behind. For those of you with Netflix instant streaming Cosmos is available. I think I know what I am watching tonight.

Physics and Goodnight Moon

OK, one more sciency thing and then I will settle down. Like many of you I overdosed on Goodnight Moon when my kids were little and now a physicist approaches the beloved and obligatory tiny tome.

Nerdcore parenting. Word.

Isaac Newton & Alchemy

This article is for other fans of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, which I highly recommend if you like your sci-fi mixed with historical fiction and a cast of thousands.

Humanist Pilgrimage to Mauna Kea

I went on a spiritual pilgrimage last week. A Humanist pilgrimage.
While visiting Hawai’i I got the chance to go the summit of Mauna Kea to see the astronomical observatories located there and it was a deeply moving experience for me. I just wish I had been better dressed for it. There are seven observatories on Mauna Kea which are run and supported by countries from North America, Asia, and Europe for the purpose of peering outside this little planet of ours.

Out of the entire world, Mauna Kea has been deemed to be the best spot on Earth for astronomical observation. There are also big telescopes in Chile, but Mauna Kea is generally judged Number 1. This is the one place in all the world where the people of Earth come together to try to figure out the answers. That is a powerful idea. All of the big cosmic questions about the universe, its origins and destiny, and our place in it are addressed here. Where did we come from and where are we going? The eternal human need to know, to wonder, and explore finds expression in those massive telescopes. Our connection to the rest of the universe is underscored on that summit.

The whole way up the mountain I was so excited. We were going to the best place to see the stars. Metaphorically, it seemed like the place closest to the rest of the universe, closest to the unknown, closest to creation. The wind blew so hard at the summit that we didn’t stay long, but the drive up and down the mountain was unforgettable. The view was absolutely spectacular and I only worried about our driver running us off the road a few times. At some point halfway up I realized I was on a religious pilgrimage. This journey was every bit as loaded with meaning for me as other holy sites are for their own adherents. This spot was sacred for me.

People of every religious faith I can think of have sites considered holy, places where believers travel and sometimes gather to grow closer to their faith. If ever there was a place for Humanists do the same, Mauna Kea was it for me. There are no shrines or temples, just telescopes that stand as monuments to international cooperation and the undying human need to know what is out there. They stand as testimony to the idea that answers are knowable and that we should continue to strive for them. There is an amazing universe out there beyond our globe, and our tiny place in that vast network is so awe inspiring that I don’t need a belief in the supernatural to feel humbled and connected there.

The Hawai’ians have long considered Mauna Kea sacred for their own reasons. I am happy that they share their sacred mountain with the rest of the human race, and with me.

Chaos Theory and Spirituality

I recently finished re-reading Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick which recounts the development of the new cross-disciplinary study of Chaos Theory. This book is highly recommended for any of you interested at all in science. One of the things that draws me to UUism is that I don't have to give up a belief in the rational in order to have an experience with the spiritual.

I can honesty say that the first time I read this book about 8 or so years ago it changed my life. This book is the reason I became an agnostic instead of an atheist. I doesn't make me believe in a god or a God, but I do believe the universe exists around an organizing principle, for lack of a better term, and I'd like to become more in tune with that principle.

Chaos theory is largely about the study of patterns. It shows us that any order we imagine or try to create will always contain disorder inside of it, but that random and disorderly things contain a strange and unexplained logic when looked at closely enough. I'm not explaining it nearly as well as Gleick does, but his book gave me a whole new way to look at the world and everything in it. It gave me a way to make sense of the interconnected web so that I could accept it. All of the Buddhist aphorism and Pagan declarations in the world could not make me feel that we are all part of the same great thing they way that this scientific explanation does.

Chaos theory gave me the name for this blog: a strange attractor is a mathematical concept where a seemingly random pattern stabilizes around an unexplained equilibrium, never repeating exactly, but always staying within the parameters of the pattern. To me, that is a beautiful metaphor for free will and the tides of history. Also, it seemed like a fun pun for all of the strange and wonderful people in my life. Any philosophy that denies free will just turns me off immediately, but you cannot deny that so many things are totally out of our direct control. The concept of the strange attractor portrays to me that the universe and history will roll on as they must, but that my particular role within all that is still mine to determine.

I never used to believe the old chestnut that every snowflake is unique. Out of all the trillions and trillions of snowflakes in the history of the world, surely there must be some repetition. How many possible shapes can there be? Now I understand why they are each unique. They are each shaped by the path they follow as they form and fall to the ground. Turbulence tells us that each path is almost random and unrelated to the paths around them. Each snowflake makes a totally unique journey from the clouds to the ground. Snowfall got even more beautiful as I read that.

I don't understand it well enough to explain it, but the Mandelbrot set is one of the most fascinating things I have ever encountered.

Chaos also shows us that many things that we think, in our Aristotelian way, have nothing to do with each other, are actually quite similar and organized along the same principles. The human circulatory system, the formation of clouds, the flow of water, the oscillations of pendula are all related. Scale becomes much more important than definition. This reminds me to look at things from another angle, to look deeper at things and people. Our common assuptions about things are not necessarily in tune with reality and connections always deserve a closer look.

It's and I'm rambling now, and I wish I understood chaos theory well enough to explain why it fascinated me so much. I do know that learning about it rang true with me in a way that my religious upbringing never did. I believed in God as a young person, but I didn't feel him. I felt the beauty of this theory as I read this book and it has forever changed the way I look at everything in the world. The miraculous structure of a leaf feels real to me. It is accessible in a way that Bible stories are not. Now, when I come across religious writing that speaks about interconnectedness, I have a frame of reference that works for me, that feels true.

It seemed very strange to base my spirituality on a scientific theory. I didn't even know if it was legitimate, but if felt right. I don't know of any other religion that would have made room for me to let reason inform my spirituality like the UU's. I can embrace Paganism emotionally, some of Buddhism and Chaos theory intellectually and feel like I am trying to understand what the world is and to find my place in it, rather than existing to worship some outside being or accept what a spiritual leader says without examination. Maybe I am the only person in the whole world who find fractals to be his or her most meaningful symbol of the mystery, but I am glad to have found a place I can explore that and integrate it with whatever else seems beautiful and meaningful. I'm glad to have found UU's.