Michael C. Goodwin's Blog, page 23

Bones

Last year I wrote a blog on how great it was that we had gone 70 years since we last used the atomic bomb and how wonderful it would be if we avoided using it again for another seventy years. This naive statement was written, of course, before the national elections pulled fully into its current focus. Sadly and recently, one of our presidential candidates reportedly asked in a security briefing, not once, but several times, that if we have nuclear weapons, why don’t we use them? This faux human being asked why we shouldn’t just kill everyone who doesn’t agree with us instead of talking to them to see if they might actually have some real grievance. And speaking from his high and mighty privileged and white authoritarian outlook, he could see no reason why we shouldn’t just bully and blast everyone in our path to get our way. In 1941 the highly authoritarian military government of Japan felt very much the same way. The U.S. had halted oil and metal imports to Japan and the leaders there were afraid that their expansionistic plans would have to stop. Concerned for their ideas of racial purity and the belief of their superiority, Japan had, for years, been expanding their control over the other ‘inferior’ Asian races and had vowed to create a vast Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, (for themselves only), and now the U.S. was in the way, (and yes, it was a very provocative move by the U.S.). But now the only thing to do was to blast them. (Fortunately they did not have atomic bombs to attack us). But it did take four years of an appallingly horrific war and the development and use of nuclear weapons to finally bring down the Japanese military and their centralist world view. I have walked the paths that lead to the last remaining building from the atomic bombing 71 years ago in Hiroshima. I have stared at the bare bones of that pitiful and decaying wreck. I have hoped that we would never again visit such death and destruction on anyone else. But the alleged comments of a presidential nominee have chilled me to the bone and given me a sense of deepest foreboding. Darkness creeps ever closer to our lives again and I am greatly afraid for all of us. (This photo of the Genbaku Dome was taken in Hiroshima during our visit to Japan in 2007).

All the color that moves

“Starry, starry night, paint your palette blue and gray, look out on a summer’s day, with eyes that know the darkness in my soul. Shadows on the hills, sketch the trees and the daffodils, catch the breeze and the winter chills, in colors on the snowy linen land.

Vincent van Gogh was born on this day, March 30, 1853. I have heard him described as mad, a genius, confused, brilliant and mentally ill. Perhaps he was all of this. Vincent came from an upper middle class, religious family. He worked at many things in his short life but didn’t settle down to become a full-time painter until his late twenties

“Starry, starry night, flaming flowers that brightly blaze, swirling clouds in violet haze, reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue. Colors changing hue, morning fields of amber grain, weathered faces lined in pain, are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand.”

Many impressionist painters of that time worked outside in nature trying to capture the moment. I think that Vincent was trying to do this too. But outside, things are always in motion, the light changes, the clouds move and the trees sway. The color and the textures flow and swirl around the canvas, there is always the sense of movement in Vincent’s paintings and it seems like he is always trying to keep up with it all. It is never ‘still life.’

“Starry, starry night, portraits hung in empty halls, frame-less heads on nameless walls, with eyes that watch the world and can’t forget. Like the strangers that you’ve met, the ragged men in ragged clothes, the silver thorn of bloody rose, lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.”

Like any creative person, there is a great deal of frustration in trying to achieve your vision. The song that does not play just right, the novel that doesn’t quite read the way you wanted, the painting that doesn’t match that inner vision of your mind’s eye.

“For they could not love you, but still your love was true, and when no hope was left in sight, on that starry, starry night, you took your life, as lovers often do. But I could’ve told you Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”

As an artist myself, I have sometimes had to deal with the mental frustration of trying to get things right and achieve a more perfect vision of my ideas. It can be quite emotionally debilitating, it can easily wear you down and it can really mess with your mind if you are not careful.

“Now I understand what you tried to say to me, and how you suffered for your sanity and how you tried to set them free. They would not listen, they did not know how, perhaps they’ll listen now.”

Vincent took his own life in July, 1890. In just over 10 years, he created more then 2,100 pieces of art, 860 of those were paintings that are now some of the most sought-after art in the world.

(Don Mclean wrote this wonderful tribute song about Vincent van Gogh in 1971 that never fails to move me. This portrait of Vincent was taken during my visit to the National Gallery in Washington DC last spring. It is another one of his paintings that the colors simply will not hold still.)

The Great Filter

The danger of looking for answers to the big questions in life is that you might not like the answers. In my last blog I listed ‘filters’ that could prevent life from developing into higher levels and intelligence itself. The problem with higher intelligence is that it makes any creature incredibly selfish. We are all aware of our unique specialness in the universe. We all want to keep our selves happy and comfortable and we will go to any lengths to do so. And some of us are better able to do just that. The people with financial interests who continue to sell coal, gas and oil that will increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The people who make fortunes creating chemicals that pollute and degrade our ecosystem. Others who continue to exploit the planets shrinking resources for profit despite the harm it does to animals and humans alike. And those who seek to keep the masses poor and uniformed to benefit themselves. I think I have found the Great Filter, it is intelligence itself. The knowledge of rich and poor, happy or sad, hot or cold, content or discontented. This is why we are having problems with finding other intelligences in the universe, there are none, they do not survive themselves, their selfishness as a species is always going to be their downfall. The Great Filter is a useful tool, could you see the human race out in space? Exploiting the universe, destroying countless worlds as we are now destroying ours. No, not really, and it is probably a good thing. Look at how we have treated others on our own planet that were not like us, who do not believe like we do, behave like we do, think like we do. It is diversity that has made life so successful on our world, diversity that has led finally to intelligence. It will be the destruction of that diversity in life and in thought that will be the end of us. It is hard to deny the reality of this, just a mornings glance at your Facebook page reveals all these forces at work in our planetary society. We know what to do, we can do it, and we can survive ourselves. We must, everything depends on it.

This will be the last of my blogs for some time. I find that I have spent too much time reading, researching and writing these. I need to get back to my novels and finish up some work there. I have gotten a lot of things off my mind in writing these but it is time to get back to some real work. (Below, one of my own favorite paintings of life on our planet.)

Intelligent life

In an earlier blog I talked about the discovery of many planets in our local neighborhood of space and the possibility of life being on them. The chemicals for the development of life exist everywhere in space, all you need are the proper conditions for it to come together and start developing simple life. But as the Kepler Space Telescope has shown, true earth-like worlds have not been discovered yet. Larger worlds, yes, but nothing like Earth and its solar system so far. Granted, the search has looked at a very tiny area of space, so things may change in the future. Still there should be an enormous number of places where intelligence can develop. So where does that leave us now. The universe is old and there has been plenty of time for other intelligences to develop, some that could be millions of years in advance of us. So, the question is, where are they? (The Fermi Paradox). There could be several problems with this. One possible bottleneck could be the development of single-celled life into multiple-celled life. Some scientists estimate it may haven taken a billion years for life to make that jump on Earth. So unless you have a stable ecosystem on a planet for a very long time that step might never take place. On Earth early life forms created an atmosphere with oxygen in it through photosynthesis. Apparently oxygen then killed off most of the earlier life forms and made the world safe for these later and more advanced multiple-celled creatures. Another bottleneck may be when plants and animals move from the ocean to colonize the land. Many planets may have atmospheres that would not protect these creatures from dangerous ultraviolet, gamma or cosmic rays which could make life on land impossible. There could be planets with too much water, too much land, too much heat or cold and too many asteroids or comets hitting the planet and destroying life. It almost happened several times on Earth. Most of these points can be called, The Great Filter. The Great Filter is that one thing that prevents all life from going further and reaching a higher intelligence. Maybe it is atomic energy, do we all blow each other up at some point? Does our technology eventually destroy the planet we live on? Have we passed the Great Filter? Or is it still in the future for us? (Below, my painting of generation ships built inside asteroids in order to survive the long voyage to another planetary system.)

Veteran

I recently had the opportunity to travel to San Diego with my wife, Lynne. She was going to a museum conference so I had a few days to sightsee things that she would not be interested in. One of those things was the USS Midway. The Midway was commissioned one week after World War II had ended and was the lead ship of a new class of aircraft carrier and the biggest ship in the world until 1955. I can well believe it, the ship is docked in San Diego as a floating museum and it is enormous. It was upgraded several times after the war and was used until 1992. I wanted to get a feel for the ship because my father had been drafted a week after he graduated from high school in 1944. He was then trained to arm bombs, torpedoes, machine guns and was additionally trained as a rear gunner on a TBM Avenger. All of this meant that he would be assigned to an aircraft carrier. Despite being ordered to get ready to ship out to the Pacific theater several times he was never sent and spent the end of the war on the East Coast. After the war he helped in the decommissioning of the USS Bennington until his discharge from the Navy in 1946. The Bennington was one of the 24 Essex-class aircraft carriers built during World War II and was the closest thing to a real ship my father had been assigned to. I prowled around the Midway for quite a while and was very impressed with this floating city and portable airport. I have nothing but respect for the sailors that had to spend many months onboard at a time. Though if you had to be stuck on a ship, an aircraft carrier was probably slightly more comfortable then most. I am very happy that I finally got to see a ship like this and to get a feel for what life was like for the many veterans of that long-distant war. My father turns 90 the day after Veterans Day and all I can say is, thank you for being willing to do the things that were necessary to keep us all free and safe those many years ago. (Below, The USS Midway and the flight deck. A TBM Avenger, with wings folded in the hanger deck. The enlisted crew quarters, (can anyone say, cramped).

Operation Downfall

70 years ago, on November 1, 1945, the invasion of Japan was scheduled to take place. The first part of Operation Downfall was the invasion of the southernmost island of Japan, Kyushu, this was called Operation Olympic. It was only intended to occupy the southern part of the island and would serve as a base of operations for Operation Coronet, the invasion of the main island of Honshu near Tokyo, scheduled for spring of 1946. It would have been the largest amphibious operation in the history of war. The possible invasion beaches of the island of Kyushu were well known to the Japanese and they intended to defend them to the death. While there was no possibility of winning the war, Japan’s leaders thought that by making the cost of the war to high for the Allies, they could get better terms of surrender. Japan’s own plans for the defense of Kyushu, Operation Ketsugo, Included thousands of Kamikaze aircraft, hundreds of suicide midget submarines and a good number of their ground forces, leaving little in reserve for the defense of Honshu. In addition they planned to train and arm much of the civilization population to help in the fight. Because of the number of forces facing the Allies and the additional threat of a possible armed civilian army, an investigation was made into the tactical use of atomic bombs to drop behind the beachheads and on Kyushu cities. At least seven ‘Fat Man’ plutonium bombs could be made available by the invasion date. The radiation risk of nuclear fallout was not well known and it was thought that by waiting 48 hours before occupying a bombed area, it would minimize the exposure. The U.S. had been pressuring the Soviet Union to declare war on Japan and had provided them about 100 naval vessels, including amphibious assault ships for them to use in their own invasion of Japan. Based on the number of killed and wounded during the difficult battle for Okinawa, estimates of casualties for the invasion varied widely but a figure of a half-million men, killed, wounded or missing was the generally accepted figure. To this end, 500,000 Purple Heart medals were created for the anticipated wounded. With a war-weary population in the U.S. who would not understand the high casualties necessary to invade and occupy Japan, it was decided to try the newly available atomic bombs on Japan cities first. These, along with the Soviet Union’s declaration of war on Japan on August 8th convinced the Japanese of the futility of their position and on August 15th they surrendered. The use of atomic bombs on the Japanese civilian population is now widely condemned, but the horrific fighting that would have come with a land invasion would have been far more devastating to both sides. I still feel that the incredibly difficult choices at the time did not leave much room for any other decision. (Below, my photograph of the Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, August 6, 1945, on display at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.)

Life!

Beyond the philosophical question of whether we are the sole intelligence in the universe, (a question which greatly offends me personally), how much life is really out there on other planets? As a writer of 3.25 science fiction novels, (so far), I have peopled my written universe with a dozen intelligent alien species within 2,000 light-years of Earth. So how much of is this is really possible? With the Kepler space telescope in place for the last 6 years, observing stars near to us, over 1,030 new planet discoveries have been confirmed to date. Kepler only observes about 0.25% of the sky. It would take around 400 Kepler telescopes to cover the entire sky! So if one Kepler has discovered over 1,000 planets and 3,000 more possible planets, think about how many there might actually be out there, close to us. The question of if there are other planets is firmly settled. That is all well and good, but are those planets hospitable to life? Kepler’s discoveries have been somewhat troubling in this respect, to say the least. There have been only a few signs that other planetary systems are like ours. That is to say, a system with several inner rocky planets and several outer gas giants. Many systems have been observed to have gas giants close to their stars, some so close that they orbit their sun in a matter of days. Of the rocky terrestrial-type planets observed, there has been another disturbing discovery made. Almost all of these have been found to be much larger then the size of our planet. In fact, the recent discovery of a very Earth-like world, Kepler-452b, orbiting well within the habitable zone of its star, is 1.6 times the size of Earth. In all, only a dozen planets have been discovered that are actually near the size of Earth. Perhaps when we have better telescopes in orbit, more smaller planets will be observed. So what kind of life could evolve on a larger-sized Earth? I have been recently scrambling to rewrite some of my yet unpublished novels to account for this observation, so the answer is of some interest to me. Life on these so-called ‘super earths’ many depend on the inner core of the planet. Larger core planets may hold on to hydrogen gas during their formation and become mini-Neptunes with no possibility of life. While planets with smaller cores, may lose much of their hydrogen and form lighter atmospheres and oceans, (the atmosphere of Earth is, after all, 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen and much of the oxygen is thought to have been produced by early life on the planet). Earth has a small metal inner core which may well have been responsible for helping life to evolve and flourish on our world. In our own galaxy there may be many billions of planets, so all kinds of possibilities may exist, including the proper requirements for life. I believe it is a simple thing and all we have to do is look. (My next blog on this subject, in another week or so, will include the problems and possibilities of intelligence life. Below, a small sketch of mine, showing a hot spring, water is essential for the rise of any life forms.)

Death Stars

I was just getting over my concerns about asteroids hitting our planet, (see my last blog) when I chanced upon another news item. A red dwarf star, (no Rimmer jokes here please), is speeding towards us on course for a close encounter of our solar system at 50,400 kilometers per hour. The star is named Gliese 710. So how could this be happening? The stars in our galaxy all revolve around the center of the Milky Way much like the planets in our solar system revolve around the sun. But this is not a freeway where all the cars, (stars), stay in their own lanes and drive basically at the same speed. Some like Gliese 710 and another close star, Barnards Star are moving faster and towards us. Hopefully Gliese 710 will not directly impact the solar system, but a close pass could disturb the Ort Cloud, that area outside our system where billions of large rocky and icy chunks of debris hang about, (think comets). A rain of comets pulled by the gravity of a small star passing close to us could be almost as devastating as a star itself. So when is all this scheduled to take place? In 1.4 million years, so we do have a bit of breathing space. And at 63 light-years away we have time and distance to study the situation and prepare for it. But, another red dwarf star, called Barnard’s Star is also headed towards us at a speed of 504,000 kilometers per hour, ten times that of Gliese 710! Barnard’s Star is the second closest star to us at 5.96 light-years away, (Alpha Centauri is the closest at 4.37 light-years). Its close encounter with us is expected in 11,800 years, not that much further away in the future. The good news is that it will come no closer then 3.8 light years away, so there is not much chance of it disturbing the Ort Cloud. There are any number of articles on the Internet about neutron stars, black holes, giant asteroids or heretofore-unknown dark companions of the sun ready to smash into Earth and destroy us all. But the best information indicates that there may be as many as 14 stars in the next 2 million years that will pass close to our sun. These include our old friend, Gliese 710 and a binary system known as HIP 85605 about 16 light-years away and approaching in about a quarter of a million years. So while nowhere as common as asteroids, these stars will not pose a problem to us until the far-distant future. Still, I intend to keep my tin foil, asteroid, red dwarf star, black hole and unicorn-detecting hat within close reach. (Below, an old painting of mine showing an encounter with a three-star system.)

Asteroids!

“An asteroid that was discovered just two weeks ago is expected to make its nearest pass to Earth on Halloween and will be closer to our planet than any other object since 2006.”

As a recent news item, I found this to be a very odd statement. In any given year there are numerous reports of small asteroids passing close to Earth and within the orbit of the moon, I checked and found 19 so far this year, (Nineteen). The average size of these is of a house and larger, a big enough object to cause some damage if it were to strike the Earth.

“Identified as 2015 TB145, it was first located on October 10. Measuring somewhere between 920 and 2,034 feet in diameter, it’s about the size of a large skyscraper. But don’t worry. This asteroid is not a threat to our planet. It will pass by roughly 1.3 lunar distances from Earth; in other words, it will never come closer to the planet than the Moon. Although no human is known to have been killed directly by an impact, over 1000 people were injured by the Chelyabinsk meteor airburst event over Russia in 2013.”

Yes, don’t worry, be happy. The Chelyabinsk meteor, (an asteroid becomes a meteor when it enters the atmosphere of our planet), is said to be the largest natural object to have hit Earth since the 1908 Tunguska event which destroyed a large, remote forested area in Northern Siberia. I also checked on that as well and found it to be basically true. However, there have been some 556 incidents in the 20 years between 1994 and 2013 that the Earth has been hit by small asteroids from 1 meter to almost 20 meters, (60 feet wide) in size! (Source: NASA). The Chelyabinsk meteor is thought to have been 20 meters wide. So what about all those other hits? And not to mention the near misses, an estimated 30 per year! Okay, I don’t mean to get excited about this, but clearly not too many people are aware of the magnitude of these events. What is also scary about the Chelyabinsk meteor strike is that on the same day, 16 hours later, another asteroid passed close to Earth. This was a 30-meter object in a different orbit. So first the good news, objects this size almost always burn and break up in the atmosphere before hitting the ground. The bad news is that the large ones can create an ‘airburst’ equal to a small atomic bomb. Some 7,200 buildings in six cities were damaged by the shock wave from the Chelyabinsk meteor. It would take a rock a half to a mile wide in size to really do some damage to our planet and these are supposedly easier to see and track in space. There is some effort being made by NASA to keep an eye on these objects, so that is some comfort. But remember, the dinosaurs were wiped out by a large asteroid strike on Earth long ago. What happened then could always happen again. (Below, an old painting of mine, showing an asteroid being explored by spacecraft over Europa.)

Agincourt

On October 25, 1415, six hundred years ago, a battle took place in Northern France. English king, Henry V invaded France with an army of perhaps 10,000 and lay siege to the port of Harlfeur, it took much longer then anticipated. After taking the town, the campaign season was nearly over and many of Henry’s men were sick and 2,000 had already died of various diseases. He decided not to go back to England as it was rather expensive and he had only captured one town. Instead he marched towards the English controlled port of Calais to consolidate his hold on that part of France. After traveling through enemy territory for two and a half weeks, the much larger French army caught up with him and blocked the road to Calais, it was near a small town called Agincourt. Reluctantly, Henry stopped and chose his ground carefully, massing his English and Welsh bowmen to face the inevitable French Calvary charge. The ground had been recently plowed and rains had turned it into a muddy mess. The heavily armed and armored French knights and men-at-arms were bogged down in their attack and then eventually massacred by the rain of arrows from the English bowmen. This battle was immortalized by William Shakespeare in his play, Henry V, which includes the St. Crispin’s day speech containing the much quoted ‘band of brothers’ reference. After the battle, Henry married the king of France’s daughter and their son, Henry VI of England and Henry II of France, became heir to the throne of France as well as the English throne.

I found this battle and the much earlier, battle of Crecy in 1346, also fought in France, to be of great interest. When I wrote my second science fiction novel, ‘Standardized Test’, there was a final, set-piece medieval-style battle as the climax to the book. I based my written battle on those amazing English underdog victories over the French. The following is a small excerpt from my book.

“Lawrence felt the feathers of the arrow slide past his cheek as he released the bow, the thrum of a thousand arrows being loosened was loud in his ears. He could smell the sweat that had formed on his face and fear was a hard knot in his stomach. He grabbed a second arrow and placed it on his bow, he pulled it back to his ear and then set it free. After his third arrow was sent on its way, his arms were already beginning to ache. Down the hill, below them, there was a shutter in the mass of knights as the first flight of arrows struck home, then another as bulls sank to the ground, wounded and several men were knocked back off their mounts. All of a sudden the line of knights surged forward in a rush, the rain of arrows was too much for them and the quicker they could close on the hated archers and kill them, the better off they would be.”

I had a lot of fun writing that part and found that I was fairly competent in describing a battle scene. Of course it was much easier doing that when the English had already wrote the history of their brave fights 600 years earlier. (Below, the current working cover to my next novel, ‘Standardized Test.’)