The average 75 kg person (about 165 pounds), has lurking in his or her genes — or more specifically, in his or her atoms — an amount of energy equivalent to about 1.6 gigatons of TNT, some 28 times greater than the largest nuclear bomb ever exploded (Tsar bomba, Soviet Arctic, 1960, 57 megaton yield).

Should your nucleons suddenly ignite in 100 percent conversion of matter to energy, the resulting release of energy would be the equialvent of an asteroid several hundred meters across (about a quarter mile) colliding with the Earth at 17 km (nearly 11 miles) per second. The impact would be sufficient to completely obliterate a large metropolitan area, gouge a crater about 5 km across and 300 meters deep. (That’s about 3 miles across and 1000 feet deep). This is several times larger than the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona. The surface effects including an atmospheric shockwave would decimate everything for many kilometers around, and would send a blast of heat to incinerate everything in its path. The resulting earthquake would be severe over a wide area, and the dust and debris thrown up by this event would gradually encircle the Earth, possibly even triggering a kind of “nuclear winter” sufficient to cool the temperature of the planet for months or years, killing vegetation and then the animals and people who depend on them thousands of kilometers away.

Given the amount of energy that Nature has stored in the matter of your body, your detonation would change the course of history and kill millions, leaving no trace of you except in the photons of energy that escape into space and the vibrations and heat captured by the planet.

Based on the laws of quantum physics, everything here is true. You do embody the awesome force of nature. However, how likely is it that you will suddenly explode in a nuclear holocaust? Quantum physics is probably the most studied and confirmed theory of nature in history. As with everything, there are problems and things we don’t yet understand about it, but the energy stored in particles is not one of these. This has been proved far beyond doubt. Witness the nuclear bomb, for instance.

Another thing, less widely known, is that quantum physics is a statistical study, and based on its laws, we can express the probability of almost anything happening. It is not absolutely impossible for all the mass in your body to suddenly transform into nuclear energy. But on the other hand, it isn’t likely. Not likely at all. There is an equation to calculate such probabilities, but I would not be so rash as to try and apply it here. However, suffice it to say that you and your immediate descendants are more likely to win first in every single lottery and contest on the planet Earth, every day of every year for the next million years, than you are to spontaneously transform into nuclear energy. It is not exactly impossible, but it is about as close to impossible as it is possible for anyone to imagine. There are better things to worry about.
This brings me to the CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the latest “atom smasher” scheduled to open on September 10. This enormous new scientific instrument, and many associated instruments, can and will change our conception of the Universe, its inner workings and its origin. But, just as with you and your incredible store of nuclear energy, there is a chance that this collider could produce “mini” blackholes that in the bizarrest and indescribably unlikely of scenarios, could damage the Earth. And as with the chances of you suddenly detonating, the chances of any planetary harm due to the LHC, is frankly unimaginably small.

It is not so unimaginable that the LHC could produce “mini” blackholes, but these are not anything like the popular conceptions of a black hole, fueled by often highly inaccurate movies and over-anxious imaginations. The “mini” black holes that the LHC could produce — although still unlikely — would be microscopic at best, and unstable, which in this case just means that the could last only a tiny fraction of a second at most. Any that are produced — and again this is unlikely in the first place — will “evaporate” long before they would have any chance of pulling in any other matter. In any event, their mass would be far too small to produce enough gravity to pull in matter even as large as a microbe.

The real and dangerous thing about the LHC is not any imagined threat that it poses, but rather the unbridled, unschooled and utterly absurd fears promulgated by uninformed people. Of course such things have always occurred such as in the with hunts of the middle ages, but today absurdities spread with the speed of light through the Internet, and can have potentially deleterious affects on genuine and well-founded research. Too bad that human reasoning and the intelligence of the average public (which of course my dear reader, does not include you) has not kept up with the pace of technological development.

There is far, far, far more potential harm in the outcome of the current election season than there is of even the smallest hair on your head igniting in a bizarre nuclear transformation.

Keep in mind that physicists are people, too, not the “mad scientists” of moviedom. They have families. They love life as much as anyone else, and would not pursue the LHC and related technologies if they felt that there was any reasonable concern about safety. Also keep in mind that Physics is the most basic study of Nature. They are looking for truth. Yes. physicists developed the atomic and nuclear bombs, but that was under order from politicians. If you trust anyone, trust physicists, not politicians. Politicians sometime have to make the decision to go to war, and sometimes that is justified and should not be criticized (although sometimes if should be). Mark Twain once said something like “Be faithful to your country always, and to your government when it deserves it.”

In general, physics is a search for truth. The same is true for other sciences. Politics is a search for votes and power. Trust physics.

Spread the truth, and please don’t forward on emails with absurd claims, conspiracy theories or any of a host of other claims by people who know naught of which they speak.
(As clarification, the transformation of energy in a nuclear (fusion) bomb and in the Sun is not 100 conversion of all matter involved into energy. In fact it is on the order of 1 to 2 percent. The only process that we know of that reliably converts 100 percent of mass into energy is a matter-antimatter interaction — and yes, that is what they talk about in Star Trek and in fact has been demonstrated many times on a very small scale.)

Special thanks to the Dr. David Morrison and the Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards (NASA) website.

It might not be so dramatic as Nero thought, but events thousands of miles away can affect our weather and our view of the sky. Spaceweather.com has just issued an alert for “volcanic sunsets”, the various colorations of the sky, especially around the setting sun, due to gas and ashes erupted from the Kasatochi volcano in Alaska’s Aleutian islands.

The particles are of the right size to scatter sunlight of certain wavelengths, effectively acting as a filter to change the Sun’s apparently “monochromatic” light into a wide variety of hues. I put “monochromatic”, meaning one color, in quotation marks because our view of sunlight as white is merely an ironic illusion. While the sun’s light normally appears to us as a warm white, maybe slightly yellow, it’s light is really a mixture of all the colors of a rainbow. In fact a rainbow is sunlight spread out into all the constituent colors.

However, dust, molecules of water, smoke and a wide variety of airborne particles — aerosols such as the dust and sulfur dioxide in the volcanic eruptions — can result in a multicolored sunset.

We are accustomed to the golden and red hues of sunset, the painted sunset skies that are common from my home in Denver, which are caused by dust and larger molecules in the air. But in relatively small concentrations, smoke can turn the sky a milky blue or brownish, and other particles such as are frequently found in volcanic eruptions can cause less common and often dramatic pinks and purples and other unsuspected tints.
Don’t confuse these atmospheric effects (if you are so privileged as to observe them) with other unusual sky colorations caused by notilucent clouds, the aurorae, or even the faint hazy glow of the zodiacal lights.

The specific eruption that has caused the sunset light shows recently was several weeks ago, and presumably its affects will taper off over the next few days or weeks, so be sure to enjoy the sunsets soon. Of course it could happen again at any time, and sunsets can be spectacular at any time. If you are lucky, you’ll see something rare and unforgettable. But even if you aren’t lucky you can enjoy the sunset anyway. It’s never a waste of time.
“When in evening, ye say, it will be fair weather: For the sky is red. And in the morning, it will be foul weather today; for the sky is red and lowering.” Matthew XVI: 2-3

Larry S.
I have to admit it. The photo above is not a volcanic sunset, bur rather an “ordinary” winter sunset as seen from Denver in December 2007. And I may have used it before, but hey, it’s my photo!

But while you are out looking at the Perseids, consider the constellation for which it is named, Perseus. Frankly the ancients must have had remarkable imaginations (or else they were on drugs!). The typical depiction of this constellation is that of a muscular Greek youth holding the Medusa’s head in one hand and the sword with which he had cut it off in the other. (Similar to this statue from the Vatican museums on Wikipedia: Perseus.)

Yeah, right. I’m afraid that that interpretation is a bit much for me. The stars of Perseus just don’t fit as far as I see. However, as a child of the 50s and a teenager of the 60s, I can make other associations. Many of my age remember an old Grateful Dead song called “Truckin‘”. Indelibly associated in my memory with this song is a cartoon character, that I remember simply as the “Keep on truckin” guy. Due to copyright concerns I won’t post the picture here, but you can see it on this Sony Pictures Classics page as the “keep on truckin” dude. This is how I see Perseus, although the starry version is a mirror (left-to-right) reversal of this comic interpretation. In my imagination, the star Gamma Persei (gamma) is the head, Algol or Beta (beta) Persei is the rear (left) foot, and Zeta Persei (zeta) is the tip of that big outstretched foot.

OK, so the 60s were good to me. But I can go back further, to a cartoon that made its debut in the 1930s called the “Little King.” If you are as old as I am (Lord help you), you will remember this comic that ran until the mid 70s. I can imagine Perseus as the Little King, with Gamma Persei as the tip of the kings oddly conical crown, and both Zeta Persei and Algol marking the bottom of his oddly skirt-like robe. (No, I really am not drunk!)

Of course you can view this constellation and all constellations by whatever visual associations work for you, but if you are of my generation, perhaps these mental images will help you identify Perseus in the sky.

SPECIFICS OF THE PERSEID SHOWER: It is difficult and maybe a bit misleading to predict an exact moment of the peak of the shower. However, a good guess is that the best time will be about 7 a.m. (a little late) EDT, 6 a.m. CDT, 5 a.m. MDT and 4 a.m. PDT (best bet). Keep in mind that meteor showers are spread out a bit, and in the absence of a Moon to interfere (it goes down on this morning at very roughly 2 a.m. in North America, depending on your location), several hours before predicted peak could be good, too. Wherever you are in North America, Perseus is rising in the northeast at about 9 p.m., and is highest shortly before dawn. Basically, the best time to look for the meteors (from as dark a place as you can find) is between about 2 a.m. and sunrise, local time. Look generally to the northeast, although the meteors actually can appear to radiate toward any part of the sky. If you are familiar with the Big Dipper (Ursa Major), a line drawn from Megrez (Gamma, the rear bottom of the cup of the dipper) through Dubhe (Alpha, or the front upper star of the cup) very roughly 6 times the distance between them, leads to Perseus.

Good luck, and keep on truckin.

For more information on the Perseid Meteors, see Perseid meteors before dawn August 12 and 13 on Earth & Sky.

But knowing your precise geographical coordinates can be useful, especially in astronomy. If, for instance, you want to look for Iridium satellites, or you are timing occultations of stars and planets by the moon, knowing your precise location is essential.

Unfortunately, not all of us have handheld GPS devices or such electronics built into our cell phones or cars. Almost everyone has a computer, though, and while you might not be able to carry it on a long trip or always be able to find a Wifi “hotspot,” there are plenty of ways online to pinpoint your exact position.

First and foremost there are GoogleMaps and Google Earth. Generally speaking, it’s enough just to type your address in and Google Earth will give you the coordinates, but there’s just a little more to do when you are using GoogleMaps:

Go to GoogleMaps (maps.google.com) and enter your address. Wait for the map of your location to show, then hit “Link to this page” and copy out the URL from the address bar. The geographic coordinates of the location will be embedded in the URL.

Here is an example with the coordinates for the new Community College of Aurora (CCA) Observatory:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&ll=39.717381,-104.80412 … (extraneous
material in the URL removed.)

The observatory coordinates are 39.717381 North Latitude and 104.80412 West Longitude. (North latitude is positive, although the “+” sign normally is left out, and west longitude is negative.) These are in decimal degrees. Note that some webpages and other resources, including iTouchMap.com below, will give coordinates with many more decimal places. However, as far as non-military GPS and online map tools go, 5 decimal places is about the limit of reason.

The CCA observatory is on the CentreTech Campus of the Community College of Aurora in Aurora, Colorado, and is so new that at the time of this writing it has not yet been dedicated, and the Google image just shows a barren parcel of ground!

Here’s another site that uses Google Maps and lets you zoom in on your location, as well as where to point your satelite dish: Satellite Signals.

If you use a Wifi enabled laptop with Firefox and Windows XP or later, Loki great piece of free software that turns your computer into a “virtual GPS device.” Unfortunately it does not appear to work with Firefox 3.0, but there is a Mac version and one for Windows Mobile.

Thanks to Google, there are so many many other Firefox add-ons that it is bewildering. Another one I really like — and frankly use more often than Loki — is Mini Map Tabs. It works on all versions of Firefox. Just type in an address, or pan and zoom to a location on the map. The geographical coordinates of that location appear in the upper right corner of the map.

If you already are reasonably good with maps, go to EarthTools (www.earthtools.org). Pick your coutry (e.g. United States of America) in the box near the top of the left column, click on “Find Places,” and then enter your city (e.g., Austin, Texas). It will give you Austins all over the place (!), but Austin, Texas should be the first listed. It gives Austin’s coordinates as 33.7243°N 97.7344°W (5th and Congress). Recenter the image and zoom in, then find your street address on the resulting map. Double click on your location (on the map) to center it. The geographic coordinates are displayed in the left-hand menu page.

Note that the latitude and longitude are given in decimal degrees, rather than the traditional “minutes” and “seconds.” This is generally easier to deal with and useful in most situations. However, some applications may ask for the latitude and longitude in the degrees, minutes, seconds format.

And for the map geek in all of us, try  iTouchMap.com, but don’t get carried away!

Finally, this is of course Earth & Sky, so we shouldn’t forget to mention Google Sky. Cool!

So, where are you?

Two other missions, the Mars Rovers Spirit and Opportunity, are alive and well — far past their designed lifetimes — in widespread locations near the Martian Equator so the new lander will send back information from a completely different region of Mars. (Unlike the two rovers, the Phoenix Mars Lander is not a rover, but will stay in one location.) Several other American spacecraft, along with the European (ESA) Mars Express, are posed to assist tracking and provide communications assistance.

You can find links to live online coverage of the landing on the Jet Propulsion Lab and on the NASA TV website.

However, my experience is that these live video sites get really clobbered up during such important broadcasts, so you might have a hard time maintaining a connection. But you can still join in by taking a look at Mars yourself. No telescope on Earth or even the Hubble Space Telescope will be able to see any of the spacecraft at Mars, but the planet itself is still well placed to see from your backyard, weather permitting. Go out about an hour after sunset (about the time it gets good and dark) and face west. Look high overhead and slightly to the left and you will see two bright “stars” close together. They will be just a bit farther apart than the width of two fingers held at arm’s length. The brighter one, Saturn, is to the upper left of the star Regulus. Now, hold out your left hand, at arm’s length, in front of you with palm toward you. Spread your fingers as wide as they will go. Place your thumb on the Saturn-Regulus pair, and point your little finger to the lower right. Mars should be in the general vicinity of the tip of your little finger. I can’t be terribly precise, but Mars is somewhere around 4 o’clock relative to the Saturn-Regulus pair.

Barring any unforeseen problems, the first images likely will be released to the media and Internet by about 10:30 or 11 p.m. EDT.

Mars Phoenix Lander is a project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in cooperation with several other agencies. All missions currently at Mars are managed by JPL for NASA. For details on the missions, timelines and other information, please see the Jet Propulsion Laboratory homepage.

I should also mention that I am a NASA/JPL “Solar System Ambassador” (SSA’s), of which there are nearly 500 in the U.S. The SSA force consists of volunteer educators who present public programs about JPL missions to groups at museums, nature centers, libraries, parks and other venues. You can find out more about the program, and how to contact an SSA near you, at the Solar System Ambassador program homepage.

The Solar System Ambassadors Program focuses on public or group events. For information about activities intended primarily for schools, please see the JPL Education Gateway and the NASA Education homepage.

Larry S.

Changing to Mecca time, he claims, will help clear up time discrepancies between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, make the blood and circulatory systems work better, and apparently heal the aged and infirm. The mechanism is some vague, undocumented and frankly absurd negative properties attributed to the Earth’s magnetic field. Even if this were true, its relation to our time keeping system would be unknown and probably non-existent.

As best I can tell, Mecca has a magnetic declination of several degrees East, although it appears to be near the magnetic equator. But even if it were exactly on the magnetic equator and the “magnetic prime meridian,” so to speak, so what? Time is an arbitrarily defined concept to begin with, so it makes no real difference if we define it based on the meridian of London, Tokyo, Sydney or Mecca. But since it already is defined based on Greenwich time (or one of the many associated systems), what possible value — scientific or practical — would we gain by changing it?

It would make about as much sense as renaming the Moon for Groucho Marx. “Oh, look! There’s a full Groucho out tonight.” Or can you imagine a romantic walk in the Groucho-light? A Moon by any other name would be as bright, but what sense does it make to change it?

Changing the time zones to coincide with “Mecca Time” makes about as much sense as… well, Daylight Saving Time.

Moments later I lost sight of this bright spot while we drove to a nearby Post Office to send out — guess what — tax returns. At this point I was convinced that the “UFO” was simply landing lights of an incoming jet. I don’t know of any better or more reasonable explanation. But if that were all there was, I would have forgotten it by now.

Minutes later when we parked at the Post Office and started to walk inside, I noticed another odd sight to the west. It was in the same general direction as before, but a little higher in the sky. I doubt that there was any connection between the two sightings, but this one was obviously not landing lights on a plane. Nor was it a weather balloon. It was larger and more diffuse that the first sighting, maybe roughly a quarter the size of a full moon. It was slightly rectangular or just oblong — I couldn’t be sure. It appeared in a relatively clear patch under a rapidly encroaching deck of clouds. My impression — and that is all it is because I have no actual evidence — was that this object was considerably farther than the clouds which were intervening. It looked like a small bit of jet contrail broken off and shining in the last rays of the sun. Caught off guard and camera-less, I did not get any photographs, although I’m pretty sure they would have appeared as a sunset with clouds and a barely distinguishable spot.

Now, I could jump to the conclusion that these two sightings — or perhaps two sightings of the same object — were outside the bounds of normal experience. I could jump to the conclusion, as some did with the image of “aliens” pictured here, that they were evidence of extraterrestrial visitations. I admit that such sightings would be fantastic, but there just isn’t any good evidence of that, and every reason to believe that what I saw had a much more mundane explanation.

By the way, the two “aliens” in the photo shown here made the rounds over the Internet recently when they appeared on the side of a house in Calgary, Alberta. They are striking, but hardly extraterrestrial. Instead, they are fairly complex and admittedly odd reflections off a nearby window, and only show up in the late afternoon when there are no clouds. It is understandable why people think they look like “aliens.” But it is as unreasonable to think that they are extraterrestrials communicating with us as to think that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Interesting idea, maybe, but hardly worth serious consideration.

Unfortunately it has now faded below unaided-eye visibility, but for a few shining hours, those who might have seen it were fortunate to have observed an event unlikely to occur again in our lifetimes.

It brings to mind the previously known farthest objects ever seen. Within the Milky Way Galaxy, one of the farthest was Tycho’s Star, a supernova seen in November 1572. Its distance has been estimated at about 10,000 light years. Beyond the Milky Way the farthest objects normally visible to unaided human eyes include the Andromeda Galaxy at about 2.4 million light years, and M33 at 2.9 million light years. I suspect that there have been supernova explosions in farther galaxies visible to the human eye, but so far as I know there are no records.

I had the great honor to have met Sir Arthur and to have spent a few hours with him at his home in Sri Lanka some 22 years ago. We corresponded, sporadically, for years. He even included my name in 2061: Space Odyssey Three, an unexpected honor I will always remember.

I propose that henceforth we refer to the March 19 gamma ray blast, officially designated GRB 080319B, as the “Clarke event” in honor of Sir Arthur. Was it the Universe reacting to the loss of this great man? No, as he himself would have told you, although likely not without prefacing it with a mischievous grin and an allusion to the gods being angry with him. No it wasn’t the Universe mourning Sir Arthur. Instead, at its enormous distance, the light from this event formed and left on its journey long before Earth was born, presumably also making it the oldest event ever directly witnessed by human eyes. But what more fitting an honor for Sir Arthur?

Living in Paris in April 1784, Benjamin Franklin wrote an article — fully tongue in cheek, that suggested a way that Parisians might save money on candle wax and lamp oil. (Read it here: Ben Franklin’s Essay on Daylight Saving.) Though meant as a joke, Americans and much of the western world now have made Franklin’s idea into law in the form of Daylight Saving Time (also known as Summer Time).

But can we really “save” daylight? Yes, certainly, in terms of storing sunlight in various ways it is a great idea. The Earth itself stores the energy of sunlight and releases it slowly over months. That’s why there is a lag in seasons from the astronomical dates that set them. (For example, the hottest part of summer is usually in July or August, not June when the Sun is highest.)

Fossil fuels and even the crops we grow for food and fuel are in essence stored sunlight.

But the value of shifting the clock forward and back through the year is debatable at best. If it ameliorates some problems, it exacerbates others. It’s like the situation of someone who deliberately sets their watch ahead by a half hour to avoid being late for appointments. More often than not, the person then adjusts their mental machinery to process this — knowing that the watch is fast — and still pushes things to the last possible moment and ends up late anyway. (Check out this article: “Saving daylight increases energy use.”)

Ben Franklin’s original idea was clever and humorous, not practical. But the institution of setting clocks forward and back by the season in the major economies of the world is not, in my opinion, the result of clear thinking. It is an example of politicians looking for a “quick fix” that should be dealt with in more sober and intelligent fashion.

I’m no Ben Franklin, but I know when to laugh at a joke, not set it as national and international policy.

I spoke of this months ago in “Starry, starry night. Where are you?” You can make a positive impact on this problem by doing everything you can to reduce your pollution and excessive energy consumption (which of course also contributes to pollution). In this case of course it is important to reduce unnecessary lighting. For more ideas on what you can do to reduce your impact, there are tons of sites online offering suggestions. I recommend for ideas on cutting light pollution, and the Nature Conservancy’s Everyday Environmentalist site for general ideas.

But you can not only help reduce light pollution, you also can contribute to the study of global light pollution while enjoying a family activity under the stars. Between February 25 and March 8, thousands of people around the world will participate in the “Globe at Night” program. The concept is simple. On a clear evening during this period, go out about an hour after sunset and observe Orion. The constellation is conveniently located in the southern sky at that time, and quite easy to find. You don’t need — or want — telescopes or binoculars. This observation needs to be done with just your eyes. Basically you just compare what you see to several graphics available on the Globe at Night website, then report your findings online.

The Globe at Night program is suitable for all ages and abilities, individuals, families and classes. In fact I am assigning it to my college-level students as homework. It should be a lot of fun as well as providing useful research.

And if you enjoy the nighttime version, there is information on the Globe at Night website for daytime observations of clouds and contrails. Not enough for you? There are more activities at The Globe Program. Then check out NASA’s Sun-Earth Day website for more Make and Take Activities. (Sun-Earth Day this year is March 20).

The stars are disappearing and it’s your fault (and mine, of course). But you can do something about it and have fun at the same time!