Dust is a very interesting phenomenon of physics.
On the one hand, dust is the leftovers of destruction. Saw a board or drill a hole and you will produce dust equal to the width of your saw blade or drill bit. Common house dust results primarily from the destruction of skin cells shed by your body. Other dust on the floor may be what was scraped from the topsoil and transferred to your shoes.
On the other hand, dust is the beginning of a remarkable reconstruction process. Just about everything in the universe was at one time mere dust floating about.
The universe is full of dust particles in the process of accreting themselves back together. Over millions of years, dust particles attract each other to create planets, stars, and all celestial bodies in between.
That’s why it was so important to study the surface of the moon. The gravity of our moon is a virtual vacuum, sucking to its surface trillions of tons of celestial dust — the virgin building blocks of the solar system of the future.
Eons from now, the dust on your front lawn will be compacted into layers of solid rock, pressed down from the accumulation of centuries of dust piling on top of it. Evidence of that can be seen in the layers of the Grand Canyon — even in outcroppings along a highway ramp construction.
And the dust bunnies under your bed? That’s just the first attempt of your dead skin cells trying to clump together to form something even more grandiose.
It’s no wonder that “dust to dust” has become a metaphor for the cycle of life. Not only was Man created from the dust of the Earth, the Earth itself was created from the dust of the cosmos. Pretty impressive.
Showing posts with label earth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label earth. Show all posts
Monday, January 09, 2017
Friday, October 05, 2007
That Dreaded Season
The Earth revolves around the sun once a year. And it rotates on its axis once a day. I’ve always had a problem with people who never can remember the difference between a “revolution” and a “rotation”. But that’s the subject for a different day.
The Earth’s axis is tilted at a 23.439281 degree angle. And therein lies my problem for today.
I live almost exactly half-way between the Equator and the North Pole. Around 40 degrees north latitude.
That means that here in the Kansas City area we have four seasons. Go a couple hundred miles north and they only have two. Go a couple hundred miles south and they only have one. But we have four.
And since it’s the first part of October, that means we’re coming up to the saddest season of all. It’s fall. Or autumn. It’s miserable enough that they thought it deserved two different names.
In my mind, “crisp” is just a euphemism for “cold”. There’s nothing “crisp” about this air. I like my crackers “crisp”. I like my air breathable.
It’s not that I don’t like autumn (or fall, whatever). I just think it’s sad. Summer is the time to get everything done. The yard gets mowed. The house gets painted. They play baseball. We go on vacation. Stuff happens. I like it.
Fall (or autumn, whatever) comes around and ruins everything. Suddenly I’m painfully aware of everything I didn’t get done over the summer. It’s a weird combination of a mad dash to get everything done and a sinking realization that it’s not going to happen.
The sun used to stay up until 8:30. I know it did. That’s about the time I have to flip on the headlights on my lawn tractor in July. And I still had a good hour of mowing time left. Now I can’t even get started mowing when I get home from work.
And don’t even get me started on the fact that we revert from Daylight Saving Time around this time of year. You lose a couple of minutes of daylight each day and then suddenly — BAM — a whole hour gets wiped out in one weekend. Depressing.
Holidays? Nope, just Halloween, that dreaded, stupid excuse for making your kids look ugly and cute at the same time so they can mooch candy from their neighbors. Each year I turn off my porch light and hang around the wholesale club until it’s all over. Pushing around a shopping cart full of five-gallon tubs of corn flakes was never so much fun. (Actually, there’s nothing as amusing as those institutional-size jars of mayonnaise.)
The only good thing about autumn (or fall, whatever) is that it’s only two seasons away from spring. Wake me up in time for Christmas. Then I’ll hibernate some more until March.
The Earth’s axis is tilted at a 23.439281 degree angle. And therein lies my problem for today.
I live almost exactly half-way between the Equator and the North Pole. Around 40 degrees north latitude.
That means that here in the Kansas City area we have four seasons. Go a couple hundred miles north and they only have two. Go a couple hundred miles south and they only have one. But we have four.
And since it’s the first part of October, that means we’re coming up to the saddest season of all. It’s fall. Or autumn. It’s miserable enough that they thought it deserved two different names.
In my mind, “crisp” is just a euphemism for “cold”. There’s nothing “crisp” about this air. I like my crackers “crisp”. I like my air breathable.
It’s not that I don’t like autumn (or fall, whatever). I just think it’s sad. Summer is the time to get everything done. The yard gets mowed. The house gets painted. They play baseball. We go on vacation. Stuff happens. I like it.
Fall (or autumn, whatever) comes around and ruins everything. Suddenly I’m painfully aware of everything I didn’t get done over the summer. It’s a weird combination of a mad dash to get everything done and a sinking realization that it’s not going to happen.
The sun used to stay up until 8:30. I know it did. That’s about the time I have to flip on the headlights on my lawn tractor in July. And I still had a good hour of mowing time left. Now I can’t even get started mowing when I get home from work.
And don’t even get me started on the fact that we revert from Daylight Saving Time around this time of year. You lose a couple of minutes of daylight each day and then suddenly — BAM — a whole hour gets wiped out in one weekend. Depressing.
Holidays? Nope, just Halloween, that dreaded, stupid excuse for making your kids look ugly and cute at the same time so they can mooch candy from their neighbors. Each year I turn off my porch light and hang around the wholesale club until it’s all over. Pushing around a shopping cart full of five-gallon tubs of corn flakes was never so much fun. (Actually, there’s nothing as amusing as those institutional-size jars of mayonnaise.)
The only good thing about autumn (or fall, whatever) is that it’s only two seasons away from spring. Wake me up in time for Christmas. Then I’ll hibernate some more until March.
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