EVOLUTION - producing amazing diversity ?

-   2446  -  EVOLUTION  -  producing amazing diversity ?    Homo sapiens is the latest branch in a singular limb of the evolutionary tree. We humans have caused the extinction of many other of our fellow species, and continue to do so, at an alarming rate. 
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-------------------------- 2446  -  EVOLUTION  -  producing amazing diversity ?   
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-  Here are some of the amazing life forms living with us today:
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-  Octopus genes are more advanced than any other order of animals on Earth. One of the groups of genes that they exhibit codes for the development of their amazing distributed nervous system. Octopods possess regenerative and camouflage capabilities, and are among the smartest animals on the planet.
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-  There are species of single-celled organisms called Archaea that survive in environments so harsh they would melt the flesh from your bones in seconds. They live in super-alkaline lakes, in the ultra-high pressure of the Mariana trench, alongside nearly deep-fryer temperature hydrothermal vents, and can even survive high doses of gamma radiation. These are not bacteria, and may be the earliest form of prokaryotic life on Earth.
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-  Tardigrades, or water bears, can survive in the harsh cold and pure vacuum of space, and can put themselves in a dormant state in which their metabolism reduces to 0.01% of normal, allowing them to live to nearly 30 years in more moderate conditions, essentially extending their expected lifespan of only a few months by 300 times.
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-  There are four species of Hyena, that powerful and hardy scavenger that lurks in the African savannah. Though they have physical and behavioral characteristics of both cats and dogs, they are neither. Hyenas belong to their own family, Hyenadae, and they evolved and thrived because they fit a particular niche in their ecosystem.
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-  Marsupials were once the dominant mammalian order on the planet. Like other mammals, they give birth, but the young are undeveloped and spend most of their time outside of the mother’s body suckling and growing in a pouch.
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-  There is a species of jellyfish that, when reaching a point of being too old, injured or sick, reverts back into its “childlike” polyp state and then regrows, creating a cycle of near immortality.
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-  We humans are all descendants of the very first living cells that appeared sometime between 3.8 and 4.3 billion years ago.  Since then, life has been branching out in innumerable different directions, constantly testing the boundaries of its environments to see what forms can thrive and what forms are insufficient. Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” has been at play for billions of years.
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- Scientists estimate that there may be as many as 8,700,000  species currently alive on Earth today. We’re only sure of roughly 1,200,000 of those, which are catalogued. It’s taken the work of many generations of explorers and biologists to find and record them, but that’s where we are now. The work is never-ending.
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-  We discover, on average, about 50 new species every day, based on the 18,000 found in 2016.
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-  150 species go extinct every day in our modern world, which may be 1,000 times the natural rate.
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-  This means that we are losing species 3 times faster than we are finding them.
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-  This means that by this time next year, 36,000 types of living things will have gone extinct before we get a chance to witness their existence.
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-  The fossil record as we know it comes almost entirely from evidence found in sedimentary rock, which generally is only found very near the surface of the planet. Over the huge expanse of geologic time, billions of years, via plate tectonics, volcanism and asteroid impacts, most of those deposits that have ever existed have been subsumed into much deeper layers of the planet. We will, likely, never have teams of paleontologists searching for fossils twenty miles below the surface.
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-  When you consider the countless potential species of microscopic organisms, which multiply so quickly and have such short generations, there have likely existed many billions of species on Earth since the dawn of life.
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-  All of life as we currently know it, everything we see living around us today, represents at most half a billion years of evolution. Every recognizable form of life, from flowers to insects to dinosaurs to deer, evolved in less than 1/8th of the time life has been on Earth.
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-  So much time is unaccounted for, so much evolution, that there may have been enough time for multiple entire other complete evolutionary trees to develop before being totally wiped clean from the face of the planet.
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-  Earth belonged to living things for so long that there may have been advanced, even intelligent, species to come along billions of years ago. It’s just been so long, with so many geologic changes along the way, that any evidence of their time here could never be uncovered.
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-  Neanderthals only existed for a few hundred thousand years before being put out of business by modern humans, Homo sapiens. All of the genus Homo has only been around for roughly 2,500,000 years.
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-  Apes, as whole, have only existed for 15,000,000 years, while modern sharks have managed to thrive for more than ten times that amount of time.
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-  Homo sapiens is the latest branch in a singular limb of the evolutionary tree. We have caused the extinction of many other of our fellow species, and continue to do so, at an alarming rate.
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-  If we make it past our current two minutes to midnight setting on the Doomsday Clock, then we may be the ancestors to numerous other species that progress through oncoming millions, maybe even billions, of years remaining until the Earth is swallowed up when our dear Sun becomes a red giant.
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-  Other Reviews available:
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-  2268  -  Learning from the evolution of plants and animals.
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-  2162  -  Evolution, what has God got to do with it?  How could all this possibly happen by accident?  The most incomprehensible thing is that you and me are here trying to comprehend it.
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-  2106  -  How did I get here?  We are here for a purpose.  One purpose is to try and understand all of this.
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-  2038  -  Evolution and supernovae.
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-  2037  -  Could Dark Matter have been involved with evolution?
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-  1808  -  Calendar of the Universe since the beginning of time.  17 pages long.
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-  September 27, 2019                                                                          2446                                                                                                                                                           
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-----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
---  to:  ------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
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 ---------------------          Friday, September 27, 2019    --------------------
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The Far - Side of the Moon.

-  2445  -  The Far - Side of the Moon.  The first sight of a new face for the world to see.  The Moon’s formation occurred 4.6 billion years ago when two planets occupied the same orbit around the Sun collided in a grazing angle.  The ejected material formed Saturn-like rings around Earth.  Over thousands of years these rings accreted into a huge mass of orbiting particle eventually forming the Moon we have today.
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---------------------  2445  -  The Far - Side of the Moon.
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-  The cow jumped over the far-side of the Moon.  The Moon orbit’s the Earth showing us only one face.  No one saw the far-side until 1959, but, the photo-quality was so poor.  The most that could be concluded is that it was very different than the near-side.
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- The large dark maria were not as numerous.  Maria is Latin for “ seas”.  Instead its surface was mostly bright, rugged highlands, crisscrossed with rays from large, fresh craters.
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-  The Moon was two distinct hemispheres of individual character.  The maria are ancient lava flows which erupted from the surface 3 billion years ago.  The eruptions were caused by the heat from decaying radioactive elements deep under the surface.  The heat melted the magnesium and iron-rich mantle producing liquid rock that covered the surface.
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-  The flowing magma formed giant impact features called “basins”.  Some are more than 620 miles in diameter.  The basins were caused by asteroids impacting the Moon some 4 billion years ago.  The basins created fractures that allowed magma to break through to the surface.
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-  Impact craters and basins cover the entire surface.  Not all basins are filled with lava.  Something must have caused the volcanic flooding of almost all the near- side basins but only a few of the far-side basins.
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-  The Moon’s crust consists of aluminum and calcium rich rocks.  The Moon must have been nearly totally molten covered by an ocean of magma in which these low density minerals floated to the surface.  The denser iron-rich minerals became the “ mantle”.  It was the mantle that slowly re-melted due to the heat from radioactive elements.  This magma erupted as maria basalts.
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-  The Moon’s crust is some 20 miles thick similar to parts of Earth’s crust.  The crust on the far-side is thicker than on the near-side.  Also, the Moon’s center of mass is offset a couple miles in the direction  of Earth.  This is what likely caused the Moon’s rotation to synchronize with its orbit of Earth.
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-  The half-life of the radioactive elements is 4.5 billion years where by it decays to lead.  The internal heat generated explains much of the surface, but, the rest is the result of a complex history of impacts, mare flooding, and other random geological events.  We  only partly understand why the near-side and far-side of the Moon are so different.  Maybe the cow knows.
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-  Another strangeness is the “giant in the room”.  Compared with other rocky planets our Moon is so huge.  It’s crust is also similar the Earth’s rock having the same oxygen isotopes.  Minerals composed of sodium and calcium aluminum silicates are the same as Earth’s curst.
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-  The Moon’s formation occurred 4.6 billion years ago when two planets occupied the same orbit around the Sun collided in a grazing angle.  The ejected material formed Saturn-like rings around Earth.  Over thousands of years these rings accreted into a huge mass of orbiting particle eventually forming the Moon we have today.
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-  The Full Moonlight is 400,000 times dimmer than Sunlight.  This is not intuitive because our eyes protect us from huge brightness changes.  The 6th  magnitude stars mark the lower limits of human visual experience.  The upper limits is 9 trillion times brighter.
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-  We only see dimness in black and white.  With more light intensity we can see colors.  But, these colors only occur in our brains.  The photons are only electromagnetic pulses. They have neither luminosity or color.  Just as magnetism and electricity is not visible, neither are photons.  Instead photos deliver an electromagnetic force that excite the cells in the back of the eye.  The impulses for these cells produce the subjective perception of light and color.  That is why the rainbow of colors occurs strictly inside your head.
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-  Your brain’s 100 billion neurons are what creates the brightness and colors in our visual Universe.  It will be hard to convince you that the visual scene external to your eyes is only an illusion.
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-  The photons originated in the Sun.  The brightness of the Sun is 400 trillion, trillion watts.  What reaches us is only 1,000 watts per square meter.  The photons do not come from the Sun’s disk that we see.  Instead the inner most core , 1/200th of the volume , produces photons in the center compact fusion generator.  The outer edge is the photosphere where these photons are released.  This edge is only a few hundred miles thick.
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-  Eight minutes later the photons show up on Earth.  But, none turn in to colored light until your brain does its trick.  The energy of the photons depends on the frequency of the photon oscillations.  Higher frequencies carry more energy.  The frequency also controls the color the eyes detect and the brain registers.  The frequencies increase from red light to blue light.  The rainbows are only in you head.
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-  Other reviews available on this subject:
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-  2241  -  Some Moon eclipse party trivia.  Happened December 20 , 2019.
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-  1902  -  The Moon and angular momentum.
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-  1901  -  Other moons around the planets.
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-  1900  -   Moons in our Solar System.  Totals 161.
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-  1704  -  There are two sides to get a Full Moon.  The size of the Moon is 27% the size of the Earth.  However, the Moon is only 1.2% the mass of the Earth.  To get a rocket to leave the Moon it needs to accelerate to only 5,400 miles per hour.
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-  1681  -  Enceladus and Europa might support life?  We have 173 moons orbiting our 8 planets.  Over 150 asteroids also have orbiting satellites.
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-  1678  -  Moon history from the beginning.  The Moon has almost  no atmosphere.  You can count cratering yourself on website “NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter”  www.moonzoo.org  The Moon is 250,000 miles away but these images are from only 400 miles away.
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-  1450  -  Full Moon on Doug’s birthday.
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-  1291  -  Two Moons over Miami.  The early Universe was a chaotic place.
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-  1243  -  What is behind the Man in the Moon?  As the Moon cooled it preserved some water in the form of hydroxyl.  The Moon is spiraling away in its orbit 1.5 inches each year.
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-  1651  -  Moon may be the best habitats for life.
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-  64  -  written November 11, 2004.  What you did not know about our Moon.
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-  September 27, 2019                                                        1899    2445
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----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 --------------------   Friday, September 27, 2019  --------------------------------
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Why is the sky blue?

-  1845   -  Why is the sky blue?  Starts with an attempt to explain it by Aristotle in 342 B.C.  Then it took 100 years to get the answer advancing physics and biology along the way.
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-------------------------------------  -  1845   -  Why is the sky blue?
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-  The child may ask you, “ Why is the sky blue?”  You  may have the answer but it took 100 years of science for the answer the first time.  This is a short cut to a century of learning and an introduction to the teachers who gave it to us.
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-  Aristotle wrote a treatise on the answer:  “ The air close at hand is clear and the deep air of the sky is blue in the same way that a thin layer of water is clear, but, a deep well of water looks black.”
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-  Aristotle’s ( 384 - 322 B.C.) parents died when he was a young age and he was raised by a family friend..  At 17 he went to Athens to Plato’s academy.  In 342 B.C. he became the tutor of Alexander the Great.  His writings accumulated to 150 volumes.  He became the founder of the systematic study of logic and the art of reasoning.
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-  Later Johan Kepler said, “the air merely looks colorless because the tint of its color is so faint when it is in a thin layer.  But, the idea of “ blueness” was not mentioned..
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-  Kepler (1571 - 1630)  a German astronomer at the age of 23 he was teaching science in a university in Austria.  Kepler’s book published in 1619 includes his 3rd law that the square of the period of revolution of a planet is proportional to the cube of its distance from the Sun.  He corresponded with Galileo.  He had 13 children and was killed  by a medical bleeding operation designed to reduce his high fever.
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-  Leonardo da Vinci said, “ the blue which is seen in the atmosphere is not its own color, but, is caused by heated moisture having evaporated into the most minute imperceptible particles, which beams of the solar rays attract and cause to seem luminous against the deep, intense darkness of the region of fire that forms a covering above them.”
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-  -  Leonardo de Vinci ( 1452 - 1519)  born of illegitimate birth near Florence, Italy.  He became a military engineer and he drew pictures of tanks, airplanes, parachutes and submarines.  He was a vegetarian due to an aversion to killing animals.  Yet, he studied muscles and bones in order to enhance his drawings including the “ Mona Lisa” and “Last Supper”.
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-Isaac Newton tried to demonstrate the phenomena through painstaking experiments with refraction that white light could be decomposed into its constituent colors of the rainbow. 
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-  Isaac Newton (1642 - 1727) graduated from Cambridge  1665.  He worked out the binomial theorem while on his Mother’s farm where he stayed to avoid the Plague that was in London.  It was on the farm that he saw the apple fall to the ground and wondered why the Moon did not fall as well.
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-  He concluded that the force of gravity fell off as the square of the distance from Earth’s center.  Newton discovered the prism to show that white light was a rainbow of colors combined.  At 27 he became a professor at Cambridge U.  He developed Calculus.  He theorized that light was a series of particles (photons).  In 1668 he invented the reflecting telescope using a parabolic mirror.  His book in 1687 codified Galileo’s 3 laws of motion, F=ma.  Then, the force of gravity F= G*m*M / r^2.  In 1727 he was buried in Westminster Abbey.
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-  In 1760 Leonhard Euler speculated that the wave theory of light might help to explain why the sky is blue
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Lenard Euler (1707 -1783) was a professor of math in St. Petersburg, Russia.  He lost the sight of his right eye observing the Sun.  With one eye and later in 1766 loosing sight in  that eye he published 800 papers on mathematics.
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-  Scientists in 1789 were making countless observations from different locations, altitudes and times, using cyanometers.  A cynanometer is a 53 section tool with varying shades of blue arranged in a circle.  The thinking that something suspended in the air must be responsible for the blue color.
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-  Eventually it was realized that gaseous molecules were that “something” that was making air appear blue.
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-  The blueness of the sky helped science discover the physical reality of atoms.  The color of the sky is deeply connected to atomic theory.
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-  The sky is blue because the incident light interacts with gas molecules in the air.  More of the light is in the blue part of the spectrum and is scattered because the wavelength is the size of the air molecules.  What reaches our eyes is scattered blue light.
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-  All the frequencies of the incident light can be scattered but the high frequency , short wavelength, blue is scattered more than the low-frequency, wide wavelength, red light.  This explanation won a Noble price in 1870.
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-  In 1904 Lord Rayleigh discovered the gas molecule argon when a wavelength of light is on the same order as the size of the molecule the intensity of the scattered light varies inversely with the 4th power of its wavelength.  (That is:  the shorter the wavelength the greater the intensity of scattering ).
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-  Lord Rayleigh (1842 - 1919) was an English physicists credited with mathematically confirming that light scattering accounts for the blueness of the sky.  He showed that all atomic weights are multiples of the hydrogen atom.
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-  But, violet is shorter wavelength then blue.  The sky should appear violet?  Now, we enter biology.  Our eyes are more sensitive to blue light than to violet light.  The ultraviolet light that burns your skin is invisible to your eyes.
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-  To explain “ Why is the sky blue” you need several sciences to understand the colors of the rainbow in the visual spectrum.
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---------------------------  The wave nature of light, being electromagnetic radiation.
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--------------------------  The geometry of which sunlight hit’s the atmosphere.  At the lowest angles of sunset the sky turns orange and red. Because the blue light has been scattered out of the spectrum in the deeper atmosphere viewed at the lower angles.
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--------------------------  The size of nitrogen and oxygen molecules.
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-------------------------  The way the human eyes perceive colors.
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--------------------------  How the curiosity of a child can lead to a century of science.
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-  Keep your curiosity as long and as childish as you can as you grow older and wiser.
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-  Request these Reviews to learn more:
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-  #1795  -  lists 12 reviews about light.  Light travels 1 foot in a nanosecond.  Time stops at the speed of light.  A telescope shows you the oldest thing, a young star that is 12 billion years old today.
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-  #1848  -  That includes a biography of these great scientists listed in this review.
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-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------   Thursday, September 26, 2019  -----
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How did we learn the speed of light?

-  2179 -  -  How did we learn the speed of light?  By 1980 light speed was one of the most accurate constants known.  It became the standard to determine the length of one meter.  A meter became the distance the light travels in a vacuum in 1  / 299,792.458 seconds.  All attempts to date to prove that light is not this constant speed in a vacuum have failed.  Electromagnetic radiation instantly travels at this constant speed, and is usually abbreviated as “c”,            E  =  m * c^2
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-------------------  2179  -  How did we learn the speed of light?
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-  You can make your own measurements.  How you can learn the speed of light by using some astronomy.  You will need some binoculars or a telescope.  Find Jupiter in the night sky high above the Constellation Orion.  With binoculars you can easily see the four moons of Jupiter:
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------------------------  Ganymede
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------------------------  Io
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------------------------  Callisto
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------------------------  Europa
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-  The moons in orbit around Jupiter change positions every night.  Io is the closest and orbits every 42.5 hours.  Pick any monthly astronomy magazine and it will show a chart of the positions of Jupiter’s moons each day of the month.  Viewed through the telescope the south pole of Jupiter is up, not down.  This is because the telescope lens flips the image, north to south.  At that time I was looking the moons are located:
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----------------------  Callisto is far to the left, west
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---------------------  Europa is not as far to the right, east
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---------------------  Ganymede and Io are closer to Jupiter about the same distance, 15 arc seconds to the right, east
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-  I picked this time for the unusual event that you can see Ganymede’s shadow on the face of Jupiter.  It is the black dot at the top near the south pole.  When Io passes behind Jupiter, is eclipsed by Jupiter, it repeats every 42 hours, 30 minutes.  It is like a pendulum in a clock.
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-  If you continue these measurements throughout the course of the year there will be a time delay of 22 minutes, from the shortest time to the longest time.  This represents the point that the Earth orbit is closest to Jupiter, and when it is farthest from Jupiter six months later.
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-  That 6 months  represents one half a complete orbit which spans the distance of the diameter of an Earth orbit.  The distance to the Sun is 93,000,000 miles.  Therefore the diameter is 186,000,000 miles.
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-  The 22 minute delay is the time it takes light to travel that extra distance across the diameter of Earth orbit.  We can calculate the velocity:
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--------------------  Velocity  =  186,000,000  miles  /  22 minutes
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--------------------  Velocity =  8,450,000 miles per minute
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---------------------  Velocity  =  141,000 miles per second.
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-  Well that was with 25% of the right answer.  Close is good for astronomy measurements.  The speed of light is 186,282 miles per second.
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-----------------------  141,000  /  186,282  =  76%
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-  We need to realize that Jupiter is in orbit too.  Io’s eclipses actually appear to follow a 13 month cycle.  So, we need some refinements in our calculations.
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-  In the 17th century when mariners first tried to use Io eclipses as a clock, they found the time to be earlier and later than expected depending on the time of year.  The clock turned out to be not accurate enough to avoid the rocks.  They did not realize that they had to take into account the Earth’s orbit about the Sun.  Astronomers first realized that the time difference was actually the greater distance across the diameter of Earth’s orbit.  They got their answer within about 5% for the speed of light.
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-  To get even better accuracy astronomers started to measure the parallax of distant stars.  In 1728 the astronomers began measuring the parallax shift as the Earth orbited the Sun.  One particular star’s position, that of Gamma Draconis, shifted by an angle of 0.006 degrees. 
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-  Basic trigonometry was used to calculate how fast light traveled between the Sun and the Earth.  The result of 8 minutes and 12 seconds was only 7 seconds shorter than the right answer.  They estimated that light travels 10,210 times faster that Earth’s orbital velocity.  This overestimate of light speed is with 1% correct.
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-  In 1850 an electric motor was used to spin a disk having fine teeth with gaps between.  A mirror was placed 5 miles away.  Returning light pulses with a slow moving disk returned through the same slot.  Spinning the disk faster allowed a tooth to block the returning light pulse.  Spinning still faster and the returning light pulse passes through the adjacent gap.  Using this method the round trip journey for the light pulse could be measured.  The result only overestimated the speed of light by 4%.
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-  In 1920 scientists bounce light beams off a rotating mirror that was located 21 miles away.  The mirror was a spinning octagonal mirror.  It would reflect the light beam back to the source only when the mirror face was exactly perpendicular to beam.  By varying the speed of the rotation they could calculate the time for each reflecting beam.  This measurement put the speed of light at 299,796  +  or  -  4  kilometers per second,
 186, 208 miles per second.
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-  Today’s best measurements put light speed at:
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-----------------------------  299,792.458     kilometers per second
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----------------------------   186,282       miles per second.
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-  When radar was used during World War II precise speeds were needed to calculate accurately incoming planes, missiles, and ships.  To get even more accuracy scientists combined microwaves inside a cavity of precisely known dimensions.  The standing waves produced by the microwaves were known to within 0.8 microns.  Measuring the frequency accurately allowed the calculation of the speed of light multiplying frequency times wavelength:
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-------------------------      c  =  f  *  w
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-  This measurement got the result to within 299,792.5  +  or  -  3 kilometers per second.
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-  By 1980 light speed was one of the most accurate constants known.  It became the standard to determine the length of one meter.  A meter became the distance the light travels in a vacuum in 1  / 299,792.458 seconds.
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-  All attempts to date to prove that light is not this constant speed in a vacuum have failed.  Electromagnetic radiation instantly travels at this constant speed, and is usually abbreviated as “c”.
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------------------  as in:           E  =  m * c^2
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Want to learn more about light?
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Here are some more reviews available upon request:
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-  2005  -  Light’s mysteries.
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-  1904  -  Studying the speed of light
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-  1845  -  Why is the sky blue?
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-  1795  - Light up your Christmas?
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# 1386  Light speed
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# 1389  The power of light
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# 940  Not enough light
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# 934  Light’s mysteries
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# 915  Light - atomic interferometer
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# 1335  Light spectrum
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# 1043 The strangeness of light
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# 1044  Light to matter, stranger still
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# 615  The energy of a quantum of light
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# 912  Wave-particles, anti-matter, and entanglement.
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# 768 The wave-particle duality of light
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# 34 Getting light from electricity and magnetism
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# 589 Light
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# 645  How far away is the Sun.
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-   November 21, 2018          1503
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----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 --------------------------   Tuesday, September 24, 2019  --------------------------
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Index of recent Reviews

-   2426  -  LIFE  -  Exploding stars create life , and destroy life. Our galaxy is big and mostly empty space, but it harbors millions of blackholes that are remnants of supernovas and collapsing stars.  When a giant star burns all it’s fuel, no heat remains to create the pressure withstanding the compression of gravity.  The force of gravity collapses the stars mass into a singularity at the center of a blackhole.   These creators of life are every where. 
-   2427  -  ASTRONOMY  -  A New Astronomy.  -  The new astronomy keeps coming up with new ways to study the Universe using the information in electromagnetic radiation.  Astronomers today are not limited to electromagnetic photons.  Use is being made of neutrinos and gravitons, gravity waves, to make new discoveries in the Universe. 
-   2428  -  COSMOLOGICAL  CONSTANT -  -  The Cosmological Constant was invented by Albert Einstein.  When he was thinking about gravity and the birth of the Universe, he could not see how , if gravity were the only force working over long distances, the Universe would not stop expanding and begin contracting into a “ Big Crunch.
-   2429  -  DRAGONFLIES  -  we have a lot more to learn ?   Wetlands are disappearing fast and biologists are concerned that more than 100 species of dragonflies and damselflies are endangered.
-   2430  -  DARK ENERGY  and Cosmic Inflation.    Something is expanding our Universe at an every faster rate.  Astronomers call it Dark Energy but that is name only, astronomers do not know what it is.  Dark Energy could be a force carrying particle like photons, or gravitons.  It could be an energy field that is some form of anti-gravity.  Or, it could be something else entirely.  We don’t know. 
-   2431  -  COSMIC  LADDER  -   the distance to the stars.  -   How can we possibly measure distances to faraway galaxies?  One technique is to use the redshift of light.  Measuring distances is the most difficult and challenging things that astronomers do.  Astronomers measure distances using stepping stones to reach farther and farther into the Cosmos.   Each step is a step on the distance ladder.
-   2432  -  UNIVERSE  -  expanding space.  If you were born when the Universe was ten times its current age, our local group of galaxies would merge into one and would be the only galaxy you could see in the Universe for trillions of light years.
-   2433  -  DARK  MATTER  and Black Holes.  Astronomy is moving so fast it is hard to keep up.  Satellites and space probes are numerous and going out in space exploration in all directions.  They are making cutting-edge astronomical observations all the time.  At the same time, we are pushing the frontier of atomic physics.
-   2434  -  NUCLEAR ENERGY  -  Nuclear Energy is ready for a comeback in the US after 30 years in dormancy.  The US does not have the money, not the expertise, not the engineers, not the teachers but other nations do and we are teaming up to make a nuclear comeback.
-   2435   -  CONSTANTS  - the constants of nature.  We think there are only 31  Constants of Nature, but 3 are especially important in adding totally new dimensions to our understanding of the Universe.  These are the constants of gravity, the speed of light, and the quantum, as in Quantum Mechanics.
 -   2436  -  GALAXIES  -  what rotating galaxies tell us?  The conclusion is that most of what contributes to the galaxy’s weight does not shine.  We call it “Dark Matter“.  The weight of Dark Matter is 10 times greater than the weight of what we see.  (Do not believe “truth” without evidence.  Is 95% of the Universe really Dark Matter?)
-   2437  -  COFFEE  -  my morning coffee .    Where did your morning coffee come from?  You may be surprised?  It is not just Starbucks.
-   2438  -    GRAVITY  -  traveling at the speed of light?  If the Sun went dark instantaneously we would not know it until 8 minutes later., when the last bit of light reached us. The same delay would occur with gravity.  If the Sun disappeared altogether the Earth would continue to orbit for another 8 minutes before it would shoot off into space in a straight line.
-   2439 -   UNIVERSE  -  discovering the expansion?     One of the biggest scientific surprises in astronomy was the recent discovery that space itself is expanding. And, expanding the Universe at an ever increase rate.  Distant galaxies recede from us and from one another more quickly than the nearby ones, as though the fabric of space itself is being stretched by some dark form of energy.
-   2440   -  BIG BANG  to today?  -  From the Big Bang to today covers a lot territory.  And it covers 13,700,000,000 years of time.  In the beginning, there was nothing. Then, around 13.7 billion years ago, the universe formed. We still don't know the exact conditions under which this happened, but here is the sequence of events as best we believe happened.
-   2441  -  EARTH  -  an Amazing Place?  These are interesting facts about Mother Earth.  Some are so amazing they are hard to comprehend.   You lucked out!
-   2442  -  MICROBES  -  the simplest life on Earth?  The complexity life is not just with us humans.  Many other life forms from the octopus to the microbes show us adaptation far beyond our imagination.  But, we are learning more.  And, not just for our planet only.
-   2443  -  CALENDAR -  since 1941.  A lot has happened in the last 78 years.  Here are a few notes from my diary.  It starts with the Universal calendar at just under 15 billion years since the birth of the Universe.
-   2444  -  COSMOLOGY   -  The History of the Universe?  -   Cosmology is the study of the evolution of the Universe.  It started with the Greeks when their Universe was the Solar System and the stars.  Cosmology changed drastically when Einstein proposed his theory of matter, energy, and gravity in 1905 and Hubble discovered galaxies outside our Milky Way that were speeding away from us.
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 -------------------------   Monday, September 23, 2019   --------------------------------
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CALENDAR - since 1941

-   2443  -  CALENDAR -  since 1941.  A lot has happened in the last 78 years.  Here are a few notes from my diary.  It starts with the Universal calendar at just under 15 billion years since the birth of the Universe.
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-

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-
---------------------  2443  -  CALENDAR -  since 1941
- 
-  This really is the big picture.  It starts with the beginning of time and ends with the end of the Universe.  The beginning is a Planck Second, 10^-43 seconds.
-
-  These numbers are so small and so large they can only be dealt with using exponents.
 So, 10^-43 seconds is the decimal followed by 42 zeros then the 1.
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-  The big picture details the time from the creation of the Universe to the death of the Universe.  Because this time scale is so large, our existence here on Earth is a mere spec of time.  In order to resolve human events in these Universal events the time has been magnified 10,000,000,000 times.
-
-  This the last part of the universe history starting in 1941.  The history of the previous 15 billion years is available upon request.  It is eleven more pages.
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14,999,999,938 1941 Jim was born, with world’s first programmable digital computer the Z-3
-
14,999,999,939 1942
-
14,999,999,940 1943 Britain's Colossus computer breaks German war code.
-
14,999,999,941 1944 Vacuum tube and punched paper tape computer. Interstellar hydrogen emits radio waves at 21.1 centimeters wavelength.
-
14,999,999,942 1945 John von Neumann describes stored program concept.
-
14,999,999,943 1946 ENIAC army's programmable computer. TVs in the home.
-
14,999,999,944 1947 Shockley's transistor

14,999,999,945 1948 Cybernetics published
-
14,999,999,946 1949 George Orwell book "1984" computers enslave the world.
-
14,999,999,947 1950 UNIVAC used in US census, color television
-
14,999,999,948 1951 EDVAC first computer with a stored program
-
14,999,999,949 1952 UNIVAC computer predicts Dwight Eisenhower will be elected, first transistor radios, IBM's first scientific computer.
-
14,999,999,950 1953 Discovered chemical structure of DNA
-
14,999,999,951 1954
-
14,999,999,952 1955 William Shockley's semiconductor lab, Remington Sperry Rand corporation competes with IBM, IBM introduces 2,200 transistor calculator. Space program defines computer needed to launch rocket to the moon.
-
14,999,999,953 1956 IBM invents FORTRAN language, first computer defeats chess champion, first battery watch, Artificial Intelligence first conference.
-
14,999,999,954 1957 Kenneth Olsen found DEC.  Russians launch sputnik
-
14,999,999,955 1958 Jack Kilby, Texas Instruments, integrated circuit, LISP AI language, Semour Cray's first transistorized supercomputer. Americans launch first satellite.
-
14,999,999,956 1959 Jack Kilby and Robvert Noyce develop computer chip, COBOL computer language, Xerox first commercial copier.  Lunik II lands on Moon.
-
14,999,999,957 1960 First ruby laser, 6000 computers in the US
-
14,999,999,958 1961 First time sharing computer, John F Kennedy Apollo program to go to the Moon.  Gagarin first man in space.
-
14,999,999,959 1962 First industrial robots, Jim graduates with Engineering degree  John Glenn first American in orbit.  Quasar is discovered.
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14,999,999,960 1963 DEC PDP-8 first successful minicomputer.
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14,999,999,961 1964 IBM 360 series computers, BASIC software language, Gordon Moore's law IC's will double in complexity each year
-
14,999,999,962 1965 .Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University is founded, prediction that by 1985 machines will be capable of doing any work a man can do. Penzias and Wilson discover remnants of the Big Bang, Microwave Background Radiation.
-
14,999,999,963 1966 Amateur Computer Society is formed.   Luna 9 and Surveyor I land on the Moon
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14,999,999,964 1867 First internal pacemaker, uses integrated circuit, IC.  Pulsars discovered.
-
14,999,999,965 1968 Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce found Intel.  Borman, Lovell and Anders fly around Moon
-
14,999,999,966 1969 Armstrong and Aldrin land on Moon
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14,999,999,967 1970 Per capita GNP is $3,500 in 1958 dollars. Floppy disk introduced for storing data.  Xerox Palo Alto Research Center introduces the first personal computer.
-
14,999,999,968 1971 Intel 4004, first microprocessor.  First pocket calculator.  Russian probe lands on Mars.
-
14,999,999,969 1972 Dreyfus publishes What Computers Can't Do, arguing that symbol manipulation cannot be the basis of human intelligence  Gamma rays first observed.
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14,999,999,970 1973 Genetic engineering, DNA's strands are cut, joined, and then reproduced by inserting them into bacterium. Pioneer 10 transmits images from Jupiter.
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14,999,999,971 1974 Creative Computing magazine for home computer hobbyists.  Intel 8 bit 8080.
-
14,999,999,972 1975 Altair 8800 first PC introduced with 256bytes of memory, 5000 PC's sold in US.   BYTE magazine is published
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14,999,999,973 1976 Apple computer founded.  Print to speech reading machine, optical character recognition, scans and reads aloud printed material
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14,999,999,974 1977 The film Star Wars, fiber optics in the telephone system, Apple II with color graphics ( I had one, serial number 200)
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14,999,999,975 1978 Speak and spell computerized learning for kids, TI's   electronically duplicate of the human vocal tract on a chip Charon, Pluto’s moon discovered
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14,999,999,976 1979 expert system in medicine diagnoses cases of meningitis, Visicalc, the first electronic spreadsheet.
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14,999,999,977 1980 AI annual revenue is 2 million dollars
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14,999,999,978 1981 Xerox introduces the Star computer, Apple The laser printer.
-
14,999,999,979 1982 Compact disk players, Lotus 123 spreadsheet
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14,999,999,980 1983 Fax machines a necessity, musical instrument digital interface
-
14,999,999,981 1984 Apple computer bit mapped graphics, icons, and mouse
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14,999,999,982 1985 116 million jobs in US vs 12 million in 1870, per capita GNP increased 600%
-
14,999,999,983 1986 Electronic keyboards are 55% of US musical keyboard market, life expectancy is 74 years in US, 3% of work force involved in food production, 76% have high school diplomas,7.3 million students in college. Challenger space shuttle disaster.
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14,999,999,984 1987 NYSE stock, greatest loss in single day due to computerized trading, speech systems with large vocabulary.
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14,999,999,985 1988 Computer memory costs 100 millionth of cost in 1950, 4,800,000 computers sold in US, Connection machine capable of 65,536 computations at the same time, notebook computers replacing laptops.  Quasar discovered 17 billion light-years away.
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14,999,999,986 1889 Intel 16 Megahertz 2.5 MIPS microprocessor.  Magellan radar map of Venus.  Voyager 2 at Neptune
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14,999,999,987 1990 http, hypertext markup language developed for www, CD-ROM magazine published, Hubble space telescope.  Keck telescope.
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14,999,999,988 1991 Cell phones and e-mail are popular
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14,999,999,989 1992 First PDA, handheld computer by Apple COBE satellite proves existence of temperature fluctuations in microwave background
-
14,999,999,990 1993 Pentium 32 bit microprocessor with 3.1 million transistors.   Endeavour mission corrects Hubble space telescope. Gamma Ray Bursts discovered. 
-
14,999,999,991 1994 world wide web, America on line has 1 million subscribers.  Comet Shoemaker-Levy crashes into Jupiter.
-
14,999,999,992 1995 America on line has 1 million subscribers. Galileo reaches planet Jupiter.
-
14,999,999,993 1996 Scanners and CD ROMS widely used, Compac , NEC ship handheld computers with Windows CE NEC ships PDA with touch screen interface
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14,999,999,994 1997 DEC introduces 300 MHz CPU at 1 billion instructions / sec Continuous speech dictation software, video phones, face recognition
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14,999,999,995 1998 phone verbal dialogue with humans, evolutionary algorithms and neural nets to make investment decisions, www is ubiquitous, animated faces that speak with realistic mouth movements, virtual retina display projects image on your retina, bluetooth and wireless high bandwidth connection to web
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14,999,999,996 1999 Age of Spiritual Machines, When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
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14,999,999,997 2000 Computer defeats Gary Kasparov, world chess championship
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14,999,999,998 2001
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14,999,999,999 2002
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15,000,000,000           2003 WE ARE HERE, 15 BILLION YEARS AFTER THE BIG BANG.
-
15,000,000,001           2004
-
15,000,000,002           2005
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15,000,000,003           2006
-
15,000,000,004           2007
-
15,000,000,005           2008
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15,000,000,006           2009 A $1000 PC can perform a trillion calculations a second. 
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15,000,000,007        2010 Visual displays imbedded in clothing and jewelry.  Wireless to the web.  Business transactions with virtual personality that looks like a human face.
-
15,000,000,008        2011 reading machines for the blind, listening machines for the deaf
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15,000,000,009        2012 computer controlled paraplegic limbs
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15,000,000,010        2013 translating telephones for many languages
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15,000,000,011        2014 human musicians jam with cybernetic musicians
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15,000,000,012        2015 bioengineered treatment for cancer and heart disease
-
15,000,000,013        2016
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15,000,000,014        2017
-
15,000,000,015      2018
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15,000,000,016        2019 A $1000 ( 1999$) computer is equal to the computational ability of the human brain.
-
15,000,000,017        2020 computers are embedded everywhere, largely invisible
-
15,000,000,018    2021 3D virtual reality displays
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15,000,000,019      2022 nano-engineering in manufacturing
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15,000,000,020        2023 most learning conducted through intelligent, simulated software-based teachers.
-
15,000,000,021      2024 Blind have eyeglass reading, navigation systems.  Deaf read lips through lens displays.  Paraplegic walk and climb with computer controlled nerve stimulation
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15,000,000,022        2025 Business transactions use simulated person
-
15,000,000,023        2026 People begin to have relationships with robots.  Automated driving everywhere
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15,000,000,024        2027
-
15,000,000,025        2028
-
15,000,000,026        2029 A $1000 computer has the computing capacity of 1000 human brains.  Eye implants allow interfacing with www computing.  Neural implants enhance sight, hearing, memory, reasoning.  Most communications does not involve a human
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15,000,000,027 2030 computers are given legal rights
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15,000,000,037 2040 machines claim to be conscious
-
15,000,000,047 2050 nanoproduced food with correct nutritional value
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15,000,000,057 2060
-
15,000,000,067 2070 picoengineering becomes practical
-
15,000,000,077 2080 There is no longer a clear distinction between humans and computers.
-
15,000,000,087 2090 software based humans exceeds neuron cell based computation.  Information can be instantly understood
-
15,000,000,097 3000 femtoengineering. Life expectancy is no longer a viable term in relation to intelligent beings.  While we consider the fate of the Universe.
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?????
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-  September 20, 2019.                                                                         2166                                                                           
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---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
---  to:  ------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
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 ---------------------   Monday, September 23, 2019  -------------------------
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?????
-  September 20, 2019.                                                                         2166                                                                         
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
---  to:  ------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 ---------------------   Friday, September 20, 2019  -------------------------
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UNIVERSE - How to Explain Our Universe?

-   1268    -  UNIVERSE  -  How to Explain Our Universe?   The purpose of this review is to explain the Universe.  It is a big task, I agree.  It spans over 13,700,000,000 years of time and lightyears of distance.  It is the beginning of space and time and those need to be explained as well.  This is difficult.  The Universe is big and complicated and we do not know what we do not know.  This is one shot at it, contrary opinions are welcome.
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---------------------  1268    -  UNIVERSE  -  How to Explain Our Universe?
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-  Let’s start with the town of Santa Rosa that is about 8 miles across.
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-  Multiply by 1,000 and you can view the entire Earth that is about 8,000 miles across.
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-  Multiply, or expand, by 10,000 and you can view the entire Solar System which about 600,000,000 miles from the Sun to the planet Saturn.
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-  Expand by 1,000,000,000 ( 1 billion ) and you can view our Milky Way Galaxy that is about 6,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles across.  (6*10^18 miles)
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-  Expand beyond our Galaxy by 100 and you can view 4*10^20 miles across the Cluster of Galaxies.
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-  Expand by another 100 and the view is a structure of galaxies with filaments and voids nestled  in a sea of Dark Matter.
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-  Now expand by only a factor of 10 and the entire Observable Universe comes into view, 250,000,000,000,000,000,000,000  miles across.  ( 2.5*10^23 miles)
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-  This uniform sphere of the Observable Universe is itself expanding at 47,000 miles per hour per million lightyears distance.  It is been doing this expansion for 13,700,000,000 years.  This is called “Hubble’s constant of expansion“.  The reciprocal of Hubble’s Constant is the age of the Universe. ( time = distance / velocity  and velocity is the speed of light.)
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-  Because the Universe has been expanding during the time light has traveled to reach us the actual Universe today is 90 billion lightyears across.  We can only see about 13 billion lightyears from our point of view because that is the light that has reached us.  The furthest things we can see are Quasars, or Accretion Disks around Blackholes,  at the center of the earliest galaxies formed after the Big Bang.  These beams of light originally left their galaxy some ½ to 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
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-  Everything we see in the Universe comes to us in electromagnetic radiation.  (“see” can have several interpretations.  We can also see” with gravity and gravity waves. ).  The electromagnetic spectrum spreads in a frequency range from radio waves to Gamma Rays. 
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---------------  Wavelengths of the radiation from <0.1 meters to < 10^-11 meters.
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--------------   Frequencies range from <3*10^9 cycles per second to > 3*10^19 cycles per second.  w*f  =  c , wavelength * frequency  =  speed of light.
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-------------  Energy  =  Planck’s Constant * frequency ( E  =  h * f ) ranges from <2*10^-24  Joules to > 2*10^-14 Joules.
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-  A Joule is a unit of energy.  Or, a unit of work that  moves one Newton of force through one meter of distance ( a Newton-meter ).  A Joule is also one watt - second of electrical energy.  It has replaced the calorie as a measure of heat energy.  One calorie  =  4.1868 Joules.  One Joule  =  252 calories.  A calorie is the heat energy needed to raise one gram of water one degree Centigrade.  One Joule is also equal to 16,000,000 Ergs of energy.  A Joule is mass * (velocity)^2.  A joule is a kilogram * meter^2 / second^2.
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-  All the energy in the Universe started at one point in time.  If the Universe rose from nothing there must have been equal amounts of positive energy and negative energy, matter and anti-matter.   Since 1929 we call this event the Big Bang.  Since then energy has been transformed or converted into many different forms, including matter,  but it can never be created nor destroyed.  It is still the same today as it was in the Big Bang.
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-  The four forces rose from the Big Bang as well.  It started out as one force then Gravity froze out, then the Strong Nuclear Force, then the Weak Nuclear Force, then the Electromagnetic Force.  This all happened in the first 10^-35 to 10^-12 seconds and temperatures cooling from 10^29 degrees Kelvin to 10^15 degrees Kelvin.
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-  Because the Universe we see today is uniform in all directions and appears geometrically flat, i.e. not spherical nor saddle shaped, it has to be explained as caused by “Cosmic Inflation“.  In 1981 the idea that the universe went through a brief faster - than - light expansion explains why it appears uniform and flat.  The ever expanding bubble of space and time slowed down to its present pace and is now accelerating again.
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-  Like the Sun is one of a billion stars, the Universe could be one of billions of Universes.  We do not know what we do not know.  Also, it appears that everything we do know and can see is only 5% of the “Observable Universe.” 
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-  A complete mystery exits because gravity and the math of the expansion dictates that there is 95% of the Universe made of Dark Matter and Dark Energy that we can not see and have no concrete clue as to what it is.  It is Dark because it does not interact with electromagnetic energy.  It only interacts with Gravity.  We have to learn to communicate with gravity waves the same way we communicate with electromagnetic waves.
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-  Dark Matter was first observed in 1933 as it affected the rotational velocities of galaxies.  It was confirmed in 1970 as it affected the orbital velocity of stars within a galaxy.  It is most recently confirmed in gravitational lensing and the collision of galaxies.
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-  Dark Energy was first observed in 1917 as it fell out of Albert Einstein’s equations.  Einstein observed that the Universe was static, not expanding, and invented a Cosmological Constant to insert in the equations to get the answer he observed.
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-   In 1929 Edwin Hubble observed that the Universe was not  static, but expanding. The further galaxies were away from us the faster they were receding.  The Cosmological Constant changed signs to allow for expansion. 
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-  In 1998 it was observed that the Universe was not only expanding it was growing at an every increasing acceleration.  This became explained as the effect of Dark Energy.  Science does not have a concrete clue of what this stuff is.  They are just convinced that it does exist in order to explain the space time scenario we observe today.
-
-   However, there are two sciences involved that we have not been successful in uniting.  Relativity explains the very big stuff and Quantum Mechanics explains the very small stuff.  The two math’s do not overlap, yet.
-
-  String Theory is one of the attempted models to get the math to work for everything.  But, it requires 11 dimensions that somehow split apart when you go to 4 dimensions, 3 dimensions plus time.  Einstein’s equations showed that mass and motion warp space and alter the flow of time.  But, our best minds in the 21st Century still can not explain space and time and where it came from.
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-  The theory for Blackholes requires all the information that flows past the Event Horizon lies at the surface in 2 dimensions and gets projected into the  interior of the Blackhole as 3 dimensions. This would be like a hologram where a 3-D image is projected from a 2-D screen.   Maybe space and time emerge in this way.  Space and time may not be fundamental properties. They may emerge from something else.
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-  Space and time may be lumpy, or exist as quantum bundles.  There may be a smallest scale beyond which space does not exist.  Max Planck defined this smallest length to be 1.616*10^-35 meters.  He derived this from Newton’s Gravitational Constant (G) , the speed of light “c“, and his own Constant (h).
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--------------------   (length)^2  =  G * h / 2*pi* c^3       =           1.616 * 10^-35 meters.
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Then he divided by the smallest time to get Planck length / Planck time = the speed of light.
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--------------------  (time)^2  =     G * h / 2*pi * c^5         =         10^-43 seconds.
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-  After all this science over the past 100 years we can not predict whether the Universe will continue to expand, getting thinner and cooler, until it dies as a Big Freeze.  Or, if the expansion decays and gravity becomes dominate reversing the expansion running the Universe backwards into a Big Crunch.  Or, if the vacuum energy continues to expand everywhere in the Universe tearing everything apart into a Big Rip.  Lord only knows.
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-  We do not know what we do not know.  Opinions are like belly buttons everybody has one.  Contrary opinions are welcome.  As we learn more, things will become clear.  Once we understand it, it will be simple.
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-  September 17, 2019.                                                                 1268                                                                                           
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-----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
---  to:  ------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 ---------------------   Tuesday, September 17, 2019  -------------------------
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MICROBES - the simplest life on Earth?

-   2442  -  MICROBES  -  the simplest life on Earth?  The complexity life is not just with us humans.  Many other life forms from the octopus to the microbes show us adaptation far beyond our imagination.  But, we are learning more.  And, not just for our planet only.
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-------------------------- 2442  -  MICROBES  -  the simplest life on Earth? 
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-  Octopus genes are more advanced than any other order of animals on Earth. One of the groups of genes that they exhibit codes for the development of their amazing distributed nervous system. On top of this, octopods possess regenerative and camouflage capabilities, and are among the smartest animals on the planet.
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-  There are species of single celled organisms called Archaea that survive in environments so harsh they would melt the flesh from your bones in seconds. They live in super alkaline lakes, in the ultra-high pressure, alongside high temperature hydro-thermal vents, and can even survive high doses of gamma radiation. These are not bacteria, and may indeed be the earliest form of prokaryotic life on Earth.
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-  Tardigrades,  known as water bears, can survive in the harsh cold and pure vacuum of space, and can put themselves in a dormant state in which their metabolism reduces to 0.01% of normal, allowing them to live to nearly 30 years in more moderate conditions, essentially extending their expected lifespan of only a few months by 300 times.
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-  There are four species of Hyena, that powerful and hardy scavenger that lurks in the African Savannah. Though they have physical and behavioral characteristics of both cats and dogs, they are neither. Hyenas belong to their own family, Hyenadae, and they evolved and thrived because they fit a particular niche in their ecosystem.
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-  Marsupials were once the dominant mammalian order on the planet. Like other mammals, they give birth, but the young are undeveloped and spend most of their time outside of the mother’s body suckling and growing in a pouch. Marsupials boasted gigantic grazing species and terrifying predators the size of lions, but were eventually out competed by other mammals in those particular niches and now only exist in Australia and the Americas in more limited capacities.
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-  There is a species of jellyfish that, when reaching a point of being too old, injured or sick, reverts back into its “childlike” polyp state and then re-grows, creating a cycle of near immortality.
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-  These are a few creatures that live with us now, and they are nearly as different from us as much alien life will be.  But, despite how different these subjects are, the fact remains they evolved on Earth, with us. We are all descendants of the very first living cells that appeared sometime between 3.8 and 4.3 billion years ago.
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-  Since then, life has been branching out in innumerable different directions, constantly testing the boundaries of its environments to see what forms can thrive and what forms are insufficient.  Survival of the fittest has been at play for billions of years.
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-  Scientists estimate that there may be as many as 8.7 million species currently alive on Earth today. We’re only sure of roughly 1.2 million of those, which are catalogued. It’s taken the work of many generations of explorers and biologists to find and record them.
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- They discover, on average, about 50 new species every day, based on the 18,000 found in 2016.  At the same time 150 species go extinct every day in our modern world, which may be 1,000 times the natural rate.  This means that we are losing species 3 times faster than we are finding them.
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-  By this time next year, 36,000 types of living things will have gone extinct before we get a chance to witness their existence.
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-  What about all those species that lived, but we’ll never discover?  Based on the data scientists have currently, most species tend to exist for a period of 3 million years, at most, before they disappear, meaning went extinct.
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-  The fossil record as we know it comes almost entirely from evidence found in sedimentary rock, which generally is only found very near the surface of the planet. Over the huge expanse of geologic time, billions of years, via plate tectonics, volcanism and asteroid impacts, most of those deposits that have ever existed have been subsumed into much deeper layers of the planet.
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-   When you consider the countless potential species of microscopic organisms, which multiply so quickly and have such short generations, there have likely existed many billions of species on Earth since the dawn of life.
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-  All of life as we currently know it, everything we see living around us today, represents at most half a billion years of evolution. Every recognizable form of life, from flowers to insects to dinosaurs to deer, evolved in less than 1/8th of the time life has been on Earth.
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-  So much time is unaccounted for, so much evolution, that there may have been enough time for multiple entire other complete evolutionary trees to develop before being totally wiped clean from the face of the planet.
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-  Earth is not our Earth. It’s belonged to living things for so long that there may have been advanced, even intelligent, species to come along billions of years ago. It’s just been so long, with so many geologic changes along the way, that any evidence of their time here could never be uncovered.
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-   Neanderthals only existed for a few hundred thousand years before being put out of business by modern humans, Homo sapiens. All of the genus Homo has only been around for roughly 2.5 million years.
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-  Apes have only existed for 15 million years, while modern sharks have managed to thrive for more than ten times that amount of time.
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-  Will modern humans manage to survive for millennia more, then we may have a chance to “disappear” like so many other species have: Our species slowly transforming over time into new species, perhaps because we transport populations off-planet.
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-  Homo sapiens is the latest branch in a singular limb of the evolutionary tree. We have caused the extinction of many other of our fellow species, and continue to do so, at an alarming rate.  At the same time we are discovering other species that survive far beyond our expectations.
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-  Stirring in the depths of Canada's Kidd Mine. The zinc and copper mine, 350 miles northwest of Toronto, is the deepest spot ever explored on land and the reservoir of the oldest known water. And yet 7,900 feet below the surface, in perpetual darkness and in waters that have remained undisturbed for up to two billion years, the mine is teeming with life.
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-  Many scientists had doubted that anything could live under such extreme conditions. However the mine’s dark, deep water harbors a population of remarkable living microbes.
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-  The single-celled organisms don’t need oxygen because they breathe sulfur compounds. Nor do they need sunlight. Instead, they live off chemicals in the surrounding rock, the glittery mineral pyrite.
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-  Scientists are starting to find similar microbes in other deep spots, including boreholes, volcanic vents on the bottom of the ocean and buried sediments far beneath the seafloor.
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-  Cut off from light, air, and any connection to the surface, this shadowy realm seems more like an alien world than part of Earth. Exploring it could help us understand how life might have begun on other planets as well as on our own. We might even find alien-like creatures living undetected right beneath our feet.
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-  Geobiologist estimate that some 5 x 10^29 cells live in the Earth.   Collectively, they weigh 300 times as much as all living people combined.
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-  The denizens of the deep are an exotic bunch even beyond their appetite for solid rock. One species can live at temperatures of 250 degrees Fahrenheit, well above the boiling point of water and close to the theoretical limit at which vital organic molecules start to disintegrate.
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-  Separate studies of material drilled near the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean hint that some organisms could be living six miles below the seafloor, limited only by the heat at such tremendous depths.
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-  Laboratory experiments show that some microbes can tolerate pressures 20,000 times higher than the air pressure at sea level, meaning that there are almost certainly more extreme ecosystems out.
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-  We do not really understand the limits of life.  The pace of existence in the deep also seems radically different from that on the surface.  Where food and energy are scarce, to compensate, cellular metabolism slows almost to a standstill.
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-  Many of the microbes may survive for thousands of years or more without dividing, just replacing their broken parts.  There are so many deep microbes that, despite a seemingly lazy existence, they collectively exert a huge impact on their habitats.
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-  For example, a community of cells on the ocean floor consume methane gas that bubbles up from ancient sediment. Deep subsurface microbes eat massive amounts of methane that would otherwise be released helping curb atmospheric levels of a potent greenhouse gas.
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-   Fossils show that surface life has changed enormously over billions of years, but slow-motion deep life may retain much of its primitive characteristics.
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-  Scientists want to sequence the genes of the Kidd Creek microbes and then do a 23andMe analysis to unravel their kinship to other residents of the deep Earth.  We want to learn if they are all still close relatives, or have they diversified and adapted significantly to their local environments?
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-  Sulfur-breathing microbes living beneath thick, protective layers of rock would have been well suited to the brutal conditions on our planet when it was young. 
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-  Another possibility is that life originated more than once, with other forms still surviving somewhere on Earth.  And, maybe somewhere on another planet or another moon.  The more we learn the more complex it gets.  Keep learning.
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-  September 12, 2019                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         
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-----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
---  to:  ------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 ---------------------          Thursday, September 12, 2019    --------------------
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- EARTH - an Amazing Place?

-   2441  -  EARTH  -  an Amazing Place?  These are interesting facts about Mother Earth.  Some are so amazing they are hard to comprehend.   You lucked out!
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-------------------------- 2441   -  EARTH  -  an Amazing Place?
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-  The hottest day in Death Valley, California, occurred July 10, 1913.  It was 134 F.    But, the hottest on Earth occurred September 13, 1922 when it was 136 F in El Azizia, Libya.
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-  The coldest day occurred July 21, 1983 in Vostok, Antartica, where it reached -129 F, without a wind chill.
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-  Rocks can grow.  Iron-manganese rocks in seawater will grow 1 millimeter every 1 million years.  Your fingernails grow 1 millimeter every 2 weeks.
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-  Over 1,000 tons of space dust enters Earth’s atmosphere and makes its way to the surface every year.  Surface winds can pick up dust in China and deposit it in North America.
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-  The Angel Falls waterfall in Venezuela drops 3,212 feet.
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-  In 15 million years Los Angeles will have moved up next to San Francisco.  The San Andreas fault is moving 2 inches per year.
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-  Because of global warming Earth’s glaciers are melting and the spinning Earth is expanding at the equator, giving Earth more of a pumpkin shape.
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-  The Mauna Loa Volcano in Hawaii rises 50,000 feet from the ocean floor.  Olympus Mons on Mars rises 84,400 feet above land surface.
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-  In 1557 an earthquake in China killed 830,000 people.  In 1976 another one in Tangshan, China, killed 250,000 people.
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-  In 1960 a Chilean earthquake measured 9.6 Richter and was over 1,000 miles long.  In 1994 Northridge earthquake was 6.7 Richter, 60 people died.  In 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan was 6.8 Richter, 5,530 people died.

-  The Earth’s curst is 41 miles thick and it is 3,963 miles to the center of the Earth.  The crust is thinner than the skin on an apple by comparison.
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-  A billion years ago an Earth day was only 18 hours.  The Moon was much closer and took only 20 days to orbit us.  The Moon is still moving away at 1.6 inches per year and the Earth’s rotation is still slowing down.
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-  Pumping of underground water reservoirs in California is causing the ground to sink 4 inches per year is some places.  Disneyland  moves up and down 2 centimeters each year with the water table.
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-  The Nile River is 4,160 miles long.
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-  Arica, Chile only receives 0.03 inches of rain each year.  It would take 100 years to fill a coffee cup ( assuming no evaporation ).
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-  Lloro, Columbia averages 523.6 inches of rain each year. My cup runneth over.
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-  The Grand Canyon is Earth’s largest, it is 277 miles long.  But, Snake River Hell’s Canyon is deeper 8,000 feet versus Grand Canyon’s 6,000 feet.
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-  The Earth has 540 volcanoes on land.  We do not know how many are under the oceans.
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-  Yosemite Falls is 2,425 feet.
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-  97% of the Earth’s water is saltwater in the oceans.  Only 3% is fresh water and 70% of that is in the icecaps of Antarctica and Greenland.
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-  The temperature of the Earth increases 36 F for every 0.62 miles you drill down.  When you get to the center it is 7,000 F.
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-  3/4ths of the Earth’s surface is volcanic rock, including my back yard.
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-  The Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean is 6.9 miles deep.
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-  During a tornado in Oklahoma, May 1999, winds were clocked at 318 miles per hour.
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-  Lake Baikal in Siberia is 5,712 feet deep and contains 20% or Earth’s fresh water (not ice).
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-  Earth has a lightning strike 6,000 times every minute.
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-  Antarctica holds 90% of Earth’s ice, and 70% of its fresh water.  If it all melts the oceans would rise 220 feet.
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-  In the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, the tides rise 38.4 feet.
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-  More than 193,000 tons of gold have been mined to date.  That’s a lot of wedding rings.
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-  The creosote bush in the Mojave Desert lives to be over 10,000 years old.

-  Lake Tahoe is 1,600 feet deep.
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-  The Earth broke up into the 5 continents only 225 million years ago.
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-  Alaska has the most northern, most western, and most eastern points in the United States.  Hawaii has the most southern point.  The eastern most point is Semisopochoe, Alaska, in the Aleutian islands.
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-  Other Reviews about our Mother Earth:
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-  2383 -  measurements from ICESat satellite.
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-  2033  -  The Earth is doomed.  Also lists 10 more reviews about the Earth, an amazing place to live.
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-  1785  -  measurements from the Space Station. 
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-  1721  -  the closets stars and more perfect Earths.
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-  1401  -  a satellite sees the loss of ground water.
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-  1295 -  how the Earth was formed?
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-  1256  -  why do I have earthquake insurance?
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-  1190  -  thank your children for all the resource you consume. 
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-  537  -  the Garden of Eden
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-  511  -  the density of the Earth?
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-  September 7, 2019                                                                             643                                                                                                                                                           
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-----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
---  to:  ------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 ---------------------          Saturday, September 7, 2019    --------------------
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