• Oceans and salt lakes account for 97.41% of the Earth’s water.
• Ice and snow takes up another 1.984%.
• Groundwater is the small guy at the party, at a mere 0.592%.

So where do lakes and rivers, along with the atmospheric water, rank? Not very high, that’s for sure. Lakes and rivers account for 0.0071% of the water in the Earth’s system; atmospheric water only accounts for 0.001%.

To put things into a little perspective, the prof. presented us with an analogy. Say you take all of the water in the Earth’s system, and shrink it down to 26 gallons¹. Freshwater – all of the fresh water – would add up to about 0.7 gallons, 2.59% of the 26 gallons. However, readily available freshwater would come in at a miniscule half teaspoon, or 0.003%.

That is still, however, a lot of water. The total amount of water floating around (awful pun!) on Earth totals 1,357,870,000 cubic kilometers. Try wrapping your head around that…

And now, I’m dying for a glass of water. Off to the tap!

1. There’s a reason the analogy uses the, admittedly, strange value of 26 gallons. 26 gallons is equivalent to the nice, round 100 liters. However, being an American, I use the highly illogical ounce, pint, quart, gallon, etc. system. My apologies!

1969 – Neil Armstrong sets foot on Earth’s Moon.

1990 – Series of treaties between United States and Soviet Union creates the CoDiminium.

2008 – First successful interstellar drive tested. Alderson Drive perfected.

First interstellar drive in 2008? Afraid not, Larry and Jerry. We don’t even have hovercraft yet!

I’d honestly never really thought abht the feasibility of space colonization, though. I always assumed that while we’re not close to doing it yet, we’d eventually get to the point where we were capable of doing it. However, this fine essay by Charles Stross, a science fiction writer, has dashed my hopes terribly.

His main point is this: There are quite a few reasons space colonization is a bad idea. For one, we just don’t have the technology to do it. If we had absolutely amazing technology, on par with essentially a magic wand (as Charlie puts it), it would still take us decades to reach the nearest habitable planet. Assuming our kickass technology could then set up shop for us, after we’d poured vast amounts of money and energy into the project, what would we gain from it here on Earth? Not a whole hell of a lot. In fact, the new settlement wouldn’t affect us at all, other than having successfully been a huge money and time sink (not to mention a really long, boring ride through space for one astronaut).

He likened the idea of space colonization to that of colonizing the Arctic, or perhaps the Gobi Desert. Both the Arctic and the Gobi Desert are infinitely closer to us than any habitable planet, and yet we haven’t colonized in either place. Why? Because there’s no point. If we want resources from such areas, we send out a work crew who does their work for a long shift, then go home on leave. We don’t drag our family out onto the northern seas just because there’s an oil patch.

Reading Charlie’s essay was a real eye opener for me, particularly in regards to the sheer distances involved in space colonization (if we were to ever pull it off). If you’re interested in science fiction, science, astronomy – hell, even if you’re not – go read it. It’s worth your time.

It’s a pity we’ve not found a working Stargate. That’d turn his argument upside down.

First, I want you to imagine an ostrich. Got it? Alright, now, imagine that it is roughly 16 feet tall, and weighs 1.5 tons. To help you visualize, here’s what you should be aiming for, size-wise:

That’s the size attributed to the newly found Gigantoraptor erlianensis, which was discovered in a desert in northern China. The new find probably represents the largest feathered animal that’s ever lived. It’s a creature I would not want to run into. Ostriches are supposed to be mean bastards; I don’t want to meet a 16 foot tall one. Here’s the news article about it from National Geographic.

Next up, we have a news story that sounds so strange that you might be tempted to think it fiction. Apparently a squirrel went a bit crazy in the German town of Passau:

The squirrel first ran into a house in the southern town of Passau, leapt from behind on a 70-year-old woman, and sank its teeth into her hand, a local police spokesman said on Thursday.

With the squirrel still hanging from her hand, the woman ran onto the street in panic, where she managed to shake it off.

The animal then entered a building site and jumped on a construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm, before he managed to fight it off with a measuring pole.

“After that, the squirrel went into the 72-year-old man’s garden and massively attacked him on the arms, hand and thigh,” the spokesman said. “Then he killed it with his crutch.”

Heh. It bit a woman, then attacked a construction worker, and then finally assaulted a man before being killed by a crutch. That’s one badass squirrel.

The last animal-related story that caught my attention was about a chap (Dr. Brady Barr) dressing up in a crocodile suit so he could get up close and personal with the beasties. Under the suit, he was inside a cage covered in Kevlar armor:

He’s a braver man than me, that’s for sure. I wonder if he would’ve tried a trick like that with the 16 foot tall ostrich dinosaur.

Click for the full size screenshot. I don’t know why – I certainly wouldn’t find a failed space mission funny – but “access to space: catastrophic failure” struck me as hilarious.

* The new feature that I’m thinking of is similar to the Eager Beaver at Jay’s Headspace and the Sunday Roast at Bright Meadow. They’re basically weekly (usually, anyway) posts with links to interesting stuff around the web, along with commentary for the links. I was kind of doing this with the del.icio.us link posts, but I stopped for a couple of reasons. One, I didn’t like having link posts appear every single day (and they usually did, if I had the time to browse the web), and two, I didn’t like the irritating 255 character limit on the description area of links. The 255 character limit is okay when I’m just describing a link for my personal use, but it can be frustrating when I’m wanting to babble on and on about the link. Not to imply that I’m, ahem, verbose or anything.

Now all I need to do is come up with a spiffy science / science fiction-y title for the “feature” (as is quite often on my blog, I’m using the term loosely ). Suggestions are welcome if you’d like to drop one (or many) in the comment bucket.

Considering what he had said, I was curious as to where he stood, ‘faith-wise’, seeing as that would certainly impact his opinion. He said that he essentially believes in a creator of some sort, but beyond that, it starts to get sketchy. In particular, he said he has trouble believing that Jesus rose from the dead; his science-leaning brain really struggles with that.

We got to talking about why some people get so upset over the whole idea of evolution. The usual thing that evolution seems to clash with is the idea that god created man. But, evolution doesn’t really go against religion or the concept of a creator, unless you read the Bible or other religious texts literally. Who’s to say there isn’t a creator of some sort who helped things evolve? Maybe it was in this god’s ultimate plan to start out with a table full of ingredients, and end up with a 4 course dinner. Who says he / she / it / whatever would automatically say, “eh, let’s just get the frozen dinner out and be done with it”?

My professor said something that really clicked with me, something that had never really occurred to me: science isn’t trying to disprove the idea of a god or gods. If you think about it, it’s not even within the sphere of science. How would you devise an experiment to test the theory of no god? Put a lightning pole up and say, “hey, you up there, if you hear me, strike that pole with lightning”? It can’t really be done. You run into the same problem with trying to prove what happens to people when they die. How would you ever test such a thing? I suppose you could round up some test subjects and kill them, but you’re going to have a hard time asking them about their experience beyond that point.

Scientists are just trying to figure out how stuff works. How fire works; how the solar system works; how (X) works. Try plugging ‘god’ into the X. How does god work? Who knows? How would you find out? How would you figure out such a thing?

After talking to him, I can see why my professor can get rather riled over the matter. It’s really easy to get stuck in a rut of thought, of viewing the world through tinted glasses (and I don’t just mean religious glasses). It’s difficult (maybe impossible) to see the world without any tinting in your glasses; so the next best thing is to view the world with lots and lots of different tints.

Another thing he said which I liked is, “Scientists really need to get a giant piece of chalk and mark off their territory. This is what we’re working on. We don’t care about questions of god or faith. The priests, ministers, philosophers, whatever can deal with that stuff. People need to understand this; science and faith are not automatically opposed.”

There are 1001 ways to view god or the lack thereof, but one of my favorite ones is the way the Buddha talked about it, when followers asked him if there was a god or gods:

“I’m not concerned with such questions. If there is, I’m still right where I’m at, facing the same problems. If there isn’t, I’m still right in the same place, facing the same problems. Instead of worrying about whether there is or isn’t, you should be facing the problems at hand.”

This morning I looked into my question briefly. All I’ve done thus far is take a look at the Wikipedia page on the universe. However, just from a cursory read over it, the answer I’ve got thus far, in one sentence is: It’s complicated. The first bit that makes it complicated is this:

There is disagreement over whether the universe is indeed finite or infinite in spatial extent.

Obviously if the universe is spatially infinite, it would be physically impossible to reach an ‘endpoint’, because no endpoint exists. The next bit that could cause problems is that the fact that the universe is expanding:

The most important result of physical cosmology, the understanding that the universe is expanding, is derived from redshift observations and quantified by Hubble’s Law.

So, if the universe is finite, but is expanding constantly, you’d have to have some way of traveling that’s faster than the rate of expansion that the universe is experiencing. But, if the universe is finite and you could find a way of traveling that fast, again, what would you hit at the endpoint, if there’s an endpoint?

The complexity doesn’t end there, though:

Secondly, whether the universe is multiply connected, is unknown. The universe has no spatial boundary according to the standard Big Bang model, but nevertheless may be spatially finite ( compact). This can be understood using a two-dimensional analogy: the surface of a sphere has no edge, but nonetheless has a finite area. It is a two-dimensional surface with constant curvature in a third dimension. The 3-sphere is a three-dimensional equivalent in which all three dimensions are constantly curved in a fourth.

If the universe is indeed spatially finite, as described, then traveling in a “straight” line, in any given direction, would theoretically cause one to eventually arrive back at the starting point.

So, even if the universe is finite in size, and you could get a really, really fast ship… you may still never reach the end, but instead, basically go in a big circle over and over.

Me head hurts, aye…

By the way, before posting this, LearningNerd responded to my first post about this, recommending I check out The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. After reading the little blurb on amazon, I’m wondering whether it will truly answer my questions, but it sounds like a great read regardless.

Hrm…

When I created my first blog at WordPress.com, I used netJosh as the title for a while, but I didn’t care much for it. I wanted my blog to have a title that held at least a bit of interesting-ness to it, so “Josh’s Blog” or “The Life and Times of Josh” just wasn’t going to cut it.

Shortly after I created my blog, I started getting more interested in science fiction, which would explain why, when I wanted to have a more interesting blog title, I turned to science and science fiction. I started digging around on Wikipedia, looking for science / space terms that could be converted to a blog title. Galaxy? Nah. Universe? Too big, and I didn’t like the ring of it. Star system? Now hey, that could be interesting. The definition for a star system, according to the almighty Google ‘define’ command:

A star system or stellar system is a group of stars (and possibly smaller bodies such as planets or asteroids) that orbit one another (systems with planetary bodies orbiting stars, are referred to as solar systems or planetary systems). Although this is similar to the definition of a star cluster, the term is generally used to describe a group of a small number of stars, often two or three, emphasizing the gravitational influence they have upon one another.

I figured I could play that to fit my blog: my thoughts, ideas, and opinions could be likened to a star system, with lots and lots of different things orbiting each other, interacting in interesting ways. Certainly a long shot, and I’m sure the science is shoddy at best, but hey. I liked the idea, so I ran with it.

The next question that might follow then, is, “what’s the meaning behind the 13?” I’d love to have an explanation, but I don’t. I wanted a number after ‘System’ to kind of mimic how stars and planets are initially named, and 13 sounded good. I wanted a simple number, one that would have a decent ring to it. For an example of what I didn’t want, here’s a snippet from a Stargate episode:

Gentlemen, these planets designated P3575 and P3A577 have been submitted by Captain Carter’s team as possible destinations for your next mission.

Hmmm. Check out my blog, it’s called System P3A577… ?
Nah, I’ll stick with System 13.

I’m going to be blogging a bit more about this. The next entry in this ‘set’ will be about making my theme to match the title of my blog, and second thoughts on doing so.