Wondering about distances and Easter eggs.

Yesterday I talked a little bit about black holes and in a comment that Ben in Texas left, he said he gets dizzy thinking about the distances.  I would think that no one could actually comprehend the distances.  Any planet that could possibly support life would be hundreds of thousands or millions or billions of light years away,  Why just our own back yard, our galaxy is up to a couple of hundred thousand light years across.

Now, just to help explain just how far a light year is, get your calculators out and make sure I am doing the calculations correctly.  Fist, we have to know the speed of light; which is 186282.397 miles per second.  (I use the speed of light, which is also the speed of radio waves in space, to calculate the length of antennae for different ham band radio frequencies.  Of course the radio waves travel slightly slower in different materials)

186282.397 miles per second is a big number, but that is only how far it travels in a second.  Above, we are talking in light years, how far it travels in a year.  OK Ben, let me put it in perspective by easing up on the light year:

In one second:  186282.4 miles

In one minute:   11176944.0 miles

In on hour:         670616640 miles

In one day:          16,094,799,360 miles

And in on year - - I don’t have room for all the zeros.

I hope this gives you an idea of the vastness of space is and so far, everything (except some neutrinos) has the speed of light as a speed limit.  Therefore, I don’t think the probability of being visited by aliens is very high.  But you never can tell.

Now, a little on the bright side; Easter is coming up a week from tomorrow and I want to be among the first to give you an Easter card.  Just click the link below:

http://www.terrisfp1.com/holidays/chick.html

You all have a great day now, slow down and watch you speed, you hear?

Wandering about black holes.

First an update on the tires.  The tire place made record time getting the six large 22.5 inch tires replaced with new ones.  I made it there just before another RV pulled up.  Most of the bays were full of 18 wheelers so he had to wait behind me to get in.  We struck up a conversation and he said that he had retired and his wife was going to retire this coming week.  They had sold their house and had been living in the RV for almost a year now.  Already being full timers and after his wife retires in a few days, they have nothing to hold them any where and plan to hit the road and enjoy their retirements.  There you go folks, another full time RVing couple joining your ranks.

I got wondering about black holes and I keep coming up with questions.  Do you know that as early as the late 18^th century a couple of scientists separately figured that a star could be so massive that not even light could escape?  A couple of hundred years later, Einstein’s theories showed this to be possible.  How do you study something you can not see?  Well, by the way things around it are acting.  In a binary system where two stars are locked together, one can be a neutron star or a black hole.  Both are strange creatures, but how the heck can you tell a large neutron star from a small stellar mass black hole?  Well, when the unknown object feeds off its partner, the gasses heat up and put off X-rays and when the material hits the surface of a neutron star, there is an X-ray burst.  If it were a black hole, there would be no burst since the gas would enter the event horizon after which nothing would escape.  Another way is to calculate the mass of the unseen object by the way it affects its partner star.

These small stellar mass black holes are tiny babies compared to the monsters that live at the center of galaxies.  They can be millions to billions of solar masses in size.  They are detected by X-rays, gamma ray bursts, etc. but the easy way is to observe the action of any stars in close proximity to the suspected object.  I am not going any deeper into black holes because up until recently, it was hard to prove their existence.  I, however, question their name.  Yes, they are black, but I don’t think of them as holes.  They have to be the densest object imaginable, so how could they be called “holes”.  Granted, no one knows what lurks behind the event horizon or what really goes on in there.  I, for one, don’t think the answer will ever be discovered, at least not by us humans.

Now I don’t want your day to be black, so you all have a good, bright day now, you hear?

Wandering to tire place and tooth update.

I got a call yesterday afternoon that the six tires for my RV are in, so will be heading up there this morning to get them installed.  It is raining some and if the ground gets too wet, I will not be able to get back in here the way I usually come in by swinging wide in the field off the driveway.  My drive way comes straight back from the road a hundred yards or so to my gate.  At the gate there is a choice.  You can either make a ninety degree turn to the left or go through the gate then make a sweeping turn to the left.  Since I have to back the RV in beside the house for the electric cable to reach the pole with the 50 amp box, I usually swing wide in the front field and make that ninety degree turn which wraps around and the loop inside the gate.  I pull around like I am heading back out and then just back in.  I don’t know if I come in the other direction if I would have room to turn around.  Either way, it will be back home, whether it is hooked up to 120 power or not.

My tooth (or rather where my tooth was) bled all day yesterday and is seeping a little this morning.  My cheek is swollen.  You see, a small end of one root broke off and it had attached itself to the bone.  It took the dentist a long, long time trying to get it out.  He was just about to give up and was telling me that I would probably have to come back Monday for surgery when, thank goodness, it finally started to loosen up.  Another few minutes and he got it all.  It was the top molar at the very rear of my top jaw.  I am glad it is gone.  I am planning on having a better day today than I did yesterday, so I want you all to have a great day, too, you hear?

Wondering about a portable wifi.

I have had a Verizon USB air card for many, many years.  Got it a long time ago when I got my first laptop and wanted to travel with my travel trailer but still be able to get email and send and receive engineering drawings so that I could, if necessary, do some work while away.  It sure came in handy many times.  As you know, the last short trip I took, my blog didn’t get posted because I couldn’t get my air card to work with Windows 7.  Last week I went to the Verizon store and they told me to go to their web-site and download the latest programs, which I did.  That did not work either, because Windows 7 kept telling me that it could not find any device.  So, yesterday, I took both our laptops up to the Verizon store along with my air card to see if they could get it to work.  They said that they could but why not get one of their portable wifi units instead.  The big advantage was that you could run four or five units off the same little device that could fit in my shirt pocket.  Now, since both my wife and I have Toshiba tablets that we both prefer to use over a computer, that sounded like a good idea.  They were having a special on them and I purchased one along with some insurance that would replace it if it got damaged.  Last night my wife and I tried it out.  We turned our main wifi off and turned on this new little gadget, laid it on a table and we both used our tablets and computers.  Love it!!  It will work great while traveling and my wife can be on her tablet while we are going down the road.  Also makes a great back-up in case the DSL line goes out.

I guess you would like to see what I am talking about, so here are a couple of pictures:

I put a quarter next to it to give you a perspective of the size.  Here is another view showing that it is thin enough to fit in my shirt pocket:

Not sure how long the battery lasts, but it was only half charged when we purchased it and it ran a lot of hours last night and it still has lots of life in it.  For all you RVers out there, you may want to consider one of these.  Of course you all probably have one and I am just now discovering them.

I have to get ready to go to the dentist.  I may get some teeth pulled.  I don’t believe in root canals, since that leaves a dead object (a tooth) in you and the body will try to reject it causing all kinds of trouble.  We know from experience!!  You all have a great day now, you hear?

Wondering if I can get everything done.

This week is going to be a very busy one.  I have so much to take care of.  I have another bad tooth or two and have a dentist’s appointment.  I ordered tires for the motor-home.  It takes 275/70 R 22.5 tires and six of them cost more than my first brand new car which was an Oldsmobile 88 convertible.  But that was a long, long time ago; back in the ‘60s.  I also have been having trouble with our two laptops, the new one which has Windows 7 and the old one which I put Windows 7 on.  The problem is that neither of them will recognize my air card.  I went to the Verizon store and they told me to go to their web-site and download the updated programs, which I did and it still does not recognize the USB air card.  I am going to take both laptops to the Verizon store and I’m going to sit there until they figure it out.

I am also going to replace both front tires on the Jeep, since I did some damage to the one when the steering wheel got locked while I was towing it.  I have a lot of other important things on my calendar for this week, all need done soon.  I think I will also try to get my big scope back in the house today.  I sure do enjoy it when it is set up outside, but dread taking it out and bringing it in.

Have you all been following the fishing expeditions of Billy Bob and Barney?  They have both have been having way too much fun.  Wish I were there with them.  But for now, you all have a great day now, you hear?

Wondering about wild flowers and the night sky.

I have a post office box at our local post office and usually six days a week my wife and I go get the mail.  We always come back home the “back way”.  Each time for the last few weeks, we have seen a fellow’s front field just filled with blue bonnets and Indian paint brushes.  For some reason I never have my camera.  Saturday, when coming back from the flea market we stopped at the post office and came home the usual route via the back way.  I had my camera in my pocket and was ready to get some pictures.  This field is on a corner and when I pulled up to the stop sign, I saw that some people had climbed through the fence and were walking through this “private” field.  Anyway, I rolled the passenger side window down, handed the camera to my wife and said take a couple of pictures, which she did.  Here are those pictures:

Saturday, I lugged all the pieces to my big telescope out and got it all assembled.  Spent the last of Saturday and the last of Sunday looking at the sky.  Since I sat it up on the deck on the east side of my house and with all the tall trees all around, I had a very limited patch of sky to see.  I took a pair of binoculars and walked around to the front yard (looking west) and looked at the beautiful naked eye trio that was on display.  The beautiful thin crescent moon, along with extremely bright Venus and spectacular Jupiter were putting on a great show.  Back on east side, Mars was gleaming with a reddish glow at about a magnitude of -1.1.  Mars must have been blushing about something.  In respect to each other, Jupiter was twice as bright as Mars at -2.1 and Venus was trice as bright as Jupiter with a -4.4.

I put the scope on Mars, almost too bright to view.  Used a oxygen-2 filter and that helped some.  I also swung the scope over to Orion before I looked at Mars.  The Orion Nebula never ceases to amaze me, I can look at it for a long time without getting tired of the view.  It was beautiful with and without the O2 filter.  I watched it again last night until it disappeared behind the roof of my house.  If that scope wasn’t so heavy, I would move it to the front of the house, there is a lot more going on to the west, but my back is still hurting from putting it outside.  I believe the manufacturer said it was 265 pounds and of course the three major parts are not the same weight so some are a little lighter than a third and some heavier.

Please, if you haven’t gone out after dark the last few evenings, just take a few minutes, let your eyes adjust to the dark, take a pair of binoculars if you have them, and go out just after it gets dark and look at the beauty in the night sky at this time.  Now, you all have a great day, you hear?

Wandering to Huntsville SP, more pictures.

As I promised yesterday, I am posting a few more picture from are quick couple of hours visit to Huntsville State Park.  We took a walk out toward the west end of Raven Lake and we spotted some wildlife.  Here is a picture of the west end:

I saw one large object swimming a few inches below the surface, but couldn’t make out what it was.  It could have been a small alligator or a big, long fish.  I don’t know if they have gar in there, but it could have been an Alligator Gar.  They are a quite common fish in this area.  Here is picture that I found on the internet that shows an example of an Alligator Gar:

We didn’t walk the whole way to the end of the lake where most of the lily pads are, but there are some small ones scattered all along the shore:

Of course any pond, lake, or river in this area has a lot turtles:

There were a lot of small, diving ducks.  I decided to get a picture of one:

Oops!!  Just missed him,  He dove so quick I didn’t realize that I had missed him.  I snapped the picture of it swimming by and looked up and it was gone.  So I looked back at the picture and saw I was just a little late pulling the trigger.  OK, I would just wait him or her out.  Wow, I didn’t know that they could hold their breath that long and go that far under water.  But when he popped up I was ready for him:

I suppose if that had not worked, I could have gone and knocked on his door:

Although we didn’t see any other wildlife other than some ravens and other birds, we did see signs of some past activity.  

I am not sure what started this weaving job.  I have heard that some birds weave their nests.  But this was mighty big stuff for a bird to handle, so the only possible conclusion that I could come up with is that it was one of those Big Foot creatures that wonder the big thicket and the piney woods of East Texas.  I probably should have picked it up and brought it home as a trophy, but I felt like I was being watched and decided that maybe what ever it was that was weaving that palmetto didn’t just quit, but we disturbed it and it was just off in the thicket watching and waiting.  Or maybe it was a trap set to catch some curious invader for their supper.  Just can never tell, so left it untouched.  That was probably the right choice, seeing that I still able to write a blog about it. (grin).

Hey, you all have a great day now you hear?