Twists & Turns: Putting Our Existence in Perspective

TWISTS & TURNS: PUTTING OUR EXISTENCE IN PERSPECTIVE BY JUDY CAUSEY LOVE, SOUTHEAST ALABAMA CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

In case you are not aware of it, the end of February and the month of March have really been a ‘hot’ time for celestial happenings. There have been planetary lineups and eclipses and all sorts of activity in the solar system.

If you have a strong interest in science or astronomy, this has been an exciting time for you. We have been given an opportunity to experience some amazing sights in the skies above us. And what I’m going to share with you in this column will not even scratch the surface of the facts about ‘Space’ and what is in it.

I have come across some truly eyeopening facts about our planets that will have you looking up at the night sky and asking, “Who am I and who or what else might really be out there?”

I had a great view of the crescent moon and Venus one night and I later read that Mercury was there too.

I don’t have a telescope, and my eyes aren’t that good, so

I don’t know for sure that Mercury was visible right then. Perhaps I should have just reached for the binoculars.

In any case, there have been events in my life that I didn’t see clearly until they jumped out and scared me. Think big spiders or gigantic turtles…certainly not little Mercury.

Why did I call it little? Because you can fit over 24,000 planets the size of Mercury into Jupiter. In fact, Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, is larger than Mercury. Whoa!

A bit of history… many objects in ‘Space’ as we know it, including planets, asteroids and their moons, were named after Greek or Roman entities. Even Hawaiian as well. For example,

Mercury was named after the Roman God Mercury. In Greek terms he was known as Hermes.

Venus was named after the Roman Goddess Venus, or in Greek terms, Aphrodite.

Mars in Roman mythology was named after the God Mars and in Greek the name was Ares. Both Mars and Ares were considered to be very warlike.

In Roman mythology, Jupiter was named after the Roman God Jupiter and Zeus in the Greek.

Saturn is named after the Roman God Saturn and the Greek God Cronus.

Uranus was named after the Greek God Uranus, God of the sky, and the Roman equivalent was Caelus.

Neptune is named after the Roman God of the sea and the counterpart in Greek would be Poseidon. Dwarf planet, Pluto, is named after Pluto, the Roman God of the underworld and its Greek name would be Hades.

The first interstellar “Space” rock was named Oumuamua. The Hawaiian name meant scout or first messenger. How appropriate. By the way, those who name these scientific discoveries out in the ‘multiverse’ have been inundated by Hawaiians to include more names that represent their heritage. Not a bad idea, even if we might have trouble pronouncing them. I n t e r e s t i n g l y enough, the IAU, the International Asteroid Union still uses heroes in Greek mythology for naming asteroids.

Now some real mind-blowing facts: The cosmos, as we know it at this time, contains over 50 Billion galaxies. That’s 50 Billion of our Milky Ways.

If you were to fly across our own galaxy at the speed of light it would take 100,000 years. Not exactly a trip to the grocery store.

Our amazing space telescopes such as the Hubble, named for astronomer Edwin Hubble, have shown us stars and galaxies that we would otherwise know nothing about. Other more recent interstellar telescopes such as the James Webb, have broadened our understanding of how the universe is expanding.

So, let’s look at what we know about distance and then I think you’ll need an aspirin.

A light year is a measurement of distance in space. 1 is equal to 6 trillion miles.

The moon is 238,855 miles from Earth. In comparison, the dwarf planet Pluto is 3.1billion miles from Earth.

Andromeda, the nearest major galaxy is 5.88 trillion miles from Earth or almost only 1 light year away.

I don’t know about you, but I kind of feel like an unseen drop of dew on a microscopic parasite on the butt of a little baby ant at the foot of Mt. Everest and that is probably not even enough of a comparison.

Yet, here I am, here we are, on a medium-sized planet in perhaps a medium sized solar system, in a medium-sized galaxy with, think about it, a staggering amount of knowledge, capabilities and personal power.

If this fact doesn’t humble us, show us our real place in the universe and beg the question “How can people not believe in God?”

I don’t know what does.