Uruguay, Brazil, Namibia and Mexico are the world’s largest geode producers and have developed profitable industries mining for them. They collect geodes, prepare and export them worldwide.

The World’s Largest Geode

Indeed, geodes sell rapidly as items of art and for science. During geode demonstrations at museums, crowds often produce cheers when a geode is opened. There is something special hiding beneath these rocks which look ordinary from the outside. But do you know how geodes are formed and where they come from? Find out more by reading on.

Geodes

A geode is a spherical rock structure with mineral materials lining the cavity. It is made of tiny quartz crystals with gray and white agate. Some of the more common linings in geodes are calcite crystals and amethyst.

The outer wall is built with durable materials that are resistant to weathering versus the host bedrock. With this, the geodes can survive intact even if the surrounding bedrock deteriorates.

Rare geodes can be filled with opal, blue gem silica, or rhodochrosite. Furthermore, geodes can come in different sizes from one centimeter to a few meters.

Formation and Occurrence of Geodes

Geodes are not just formed anywhere. You can find them in clusters where rocks have formed because of a special geochemical environment.

Geodes can form in various ways. Most geode localities are stratified volcanic deposits and stratified sedimentary carbonate deposits:

• Volcanic Geodes: The most sought-after geodes are those which are formed near areas of volcanic activity. The voids are filled with opal, quartz, and agate delivered by groundwater or hydro-thermal water. The voids can be gases that failed to escape the lava. Then, the gas can be trapped in the lava which can produce a cavity when the lava solidifies.
• Sedimentary Geodes: These are usually found in limestone, calcareous shale, and dolomite. The opening of geode formations can be filled with gas. Tree branches, shells, roots, plus other organic materials can decay and leave the void. The cavities can be filled with agate, opal, quartz, and other carbonate materials. Sedimentary geodes are smaller in size than volcanic geodes.

Agate Geode with Quartz crystals

Geodes can be collected easily whenever their host rocks have deteriorated. This occurs because dolomite, limestone, basalt and shale can weather quickly and easily versus quartz. When the host rock whethers away, geodes are left on the surface. They can be washed up by a stream or get stranded in the soil.

Thereafter, geodes can be easily found and collected. But there are some geodes which can be produced by mining the host rock. However, this method is difficult, very expensive and can often damage the geodes.

Coloration

Geode coloration is caused by various impurities. For example, iron oxides can give rust hues to quartz.

Moreover, the color of a geode depends on the type of crystal inside and the agate layer. The majority of geodes have clear quartz crystals while there are those which have purple crystals. Others can have chalcedony, agate or jasper banding.

There is no easy way to know what’s inside the geode until you cut it open. But geodes from one area can have the same appearance and color. If the geode has very bright colors, most likely, it has been artificially dyed.

Conclusion

Geodes look like plain rocks on the outside but they contain treasures. The crystals inside contain calcite, amethyst or clear quartz. These treasures are being sold around the world to be used for jewelry and art.

Geodes are formed in both sedimentary and volcanic rock under various conditions. The most common theory is that geodes are formed inside an already existing rock. Groundwater with minerals fills the hollows in the rocks. Over thousands of years, the minerals precipitate out of the water which leaves a gel on the interior wall which hardens into rock.

There are many areas around the world where geodes are abundant. These deposits can support the activities of collectors while there are some which can support manufacturing industries. During rock shows, geodes will always captivate the public. They never fails to amaze because of their undeniable beauty.

Photo Credits

World’s Largest Geode – FossilEra

Agate Geode with Quartz crystals – Wikimedia Creative Commons

Guest Author Bio
Michael Vinsant

Michael has been passionate about fossils and rocks ever since he was young. As he grew up, Michael spent most of his time digging and studying these minerals. He often travels to different parts of the globe to find the most valuable fossils and rocks.

Michael shares his knowledge and passion with the world by submitting articles online. He believes that through these articles, he can inspire more people to appreciate the beauty and rich history of fossils and rocks.

Whether you previously heard about CRISPR-Cas9 or you’re brand new to the concept, this revolutionary new method of gene editing will blow you away. CRISPR-Cas9 is paving new roads in the science and medical fields, proving that it has major potential to radically change modern society.

Although the technology has been around for about a decade, recent years have brought more and more breakthroughs, and here are some of the highlights.

CRISPR-Cas9 is a customizable tool that lets scientists cut and insert small pieces of DNA at precise areas along a DNA strand. This lets scientists study our genes in a specific, targeted way.

Genetic Engineering

Perhaps the most prevalent buzzword surrounding CRISPR-Cas9 is genetic engineering, but the actual meaning and application of that could mean different things. One of the ways in which this technology is making waves is by allowing scientists to specifically edit sequences in an organism’s DNA. A good example illustrating this is a Crispr Cas9-GFP lentiviral vector, in which a Cas9 nuclease is fused with a GFP cDNA.

The implications of this technology are astounding and include the ability to completely delete a certain gene cell or take away parts of it. There is also the ability to create a mutation inside a specific gene by altering base pairs within the DNA. These breakthroughs in genetic engineering open many other doors, which we will explore below.

Disease Eradication

Another way that scientists are using CRISPR-Cas9 is to cure animals of the HIV virus. Researchers worked with three animal models, including mice with transplanted human immune cells.

Then, they focused on HIV-1 cells. By deactivating HIV-1 in the animal test subjects, scientists were able to shrink the tumors and prevent the disease from spreading. Essentially, they decreased the RNA expression of the viral HIV-1 gene by 60 to 95%.

CRISPR-Cas9 also shows promise in slowing down the growth of cancer cells. Using CRISPR’s gene-editing technology, researchers created a gene that could better fight against liver and prostate cancer cells.

Working with mice, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania targeted mutations that stemmed from two distinct genes coming together to form a cancer-causing gene. Through previous experiments, the scientists were able to recognize the fusion gene MAN2A1-FER, which leads to liver and prostate cancer.

Using the genetic editing of CRISPR-Cas9, the scientists were able to replace the fusion gene with known cancer-fighting genes instead.

Editing Human Embryos

In a practice that tows the line between science and ethics, researchers have been looking at how CRISPR-Cas9 can help them with editing human embryos.

Research out of the Oregon Health and Science University used the genetic engineering possibilities of CRISPR-Cas9 to repair a gene in a human embryo that is known to lead to heart failure. By using CRISPR-Cas9’s “molecular scissors,” scientists were able to cut into the mutated MYBPC3 gene. Since most CRISPR-Cas9 experiments have been done on animal test subjects, this human embryo study shows just how precise this kind of gene editing can be.

In the future, CRISPR-Cas9 could even help scientists create new organisms. One study used E. coli bacteria to create a semi-synthetic organism. E. coli bacteria itself has the innate ability to retain genetic information related to viruses, so scientists bred the bacteria with anomalous mixed letter genetic code, rather than the typical four-letter genetic code, to create semi-synthetic organisms.

In the past, researchers have been able to create yellow mosquitoes and smaller versions of pigs through this kind of CRISPR-Cas9 technology. When it comes to using this science for humans, studies have shown that it’s possible to alter or eliminate the genes responsible for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Another common area of study is finding a way to combat Huntington’s disease and sickle cell disease.

As time goes on, we are sure to see more breakthroughs in CRISPR-Cas9 technology, both for the benefit of animals and humans. That being said, one of the threats to CRISPR-Cas9 includes questions that arise about ethical boundaries.

Photo Credits

CRISPR Cas9 – Ernesto del Aguila III, National Human Genome Research Institute, NIH – public domain on flickr

E. coli bacteria – wikipedia creative commons

Guest Author Bio
Mian Azhar

I began writing on my personal blog and then discovered my true calling, which is writing about technology, News & business. I have been a technical writer, author and blogger since 2010. I’m an industry watcher that stays on top of the latest innovations and I am extremely passionate about juicy news and general blogs.

False: It is water vapour. Good old H2O is by far the major heat sink in our atmosphere.

True or False: We should do our best to get CO2 levels on this planet down to zero percent.

False, unless you are tired of living. If there was no CO2 in the air all plant life on earth would die and so would we. CO2 is crucial for photosynthesis, the process by which plants survive.

First of all let me establish that I am not a climate specialist. I am however a doctor who graduated cum laude from Dalhousie Medical School. I also have a considerable number of undergraduate chemistry, biology and physics courses under my belt.

I am not trying to impress anyone, but just establish that I might be bright enough to figure out when I am being misinformed by those who should know better. I therefore did some of my own research on “global warming.”

I promise not to bore you with minute details and I have no connection with the oil industry or any special interest groups. But there are people out there who are receiving money and grants to say things that just ain’t so:

Fact 1: The earth has been ice-free most of the time over its billions of years existence. No ice caps (except maybe at Tim Horton’s).That’s why there are fossils of tropical plants in Antarctica.

Fact 2: Right now we are in the middle of an ice age (yes, you heard me right) called the Quaternary Glaciation which has been going on for about two-and-a-half million years. During most of that time period Canada had been covered in several kilometers of ice. Fourteen thousand years ago, a blink in geological time, Ontario, including the Niagara Peninsula was covered in solid ice. Even 7000 years ago northern Ontario was covered in ice (I mean all year, not just for ten months.) Look at the maps I snatched from Wikipedia, below (consider yourselves credited, Wiki.)

Fact 3: Generally every 100,000 years during our current ice age there have been brief interglacial periods usually lasting about 10,000 years after which ice moves in for another 90,000 years.
Guess what boys and girls, we are currently 11,700 years into the current interglacial! If your math isn’t that good this means the ice should have come rolling back into the greater Toronto area at about the time of the height of the Roman Empire. Imagine what that will do to real estate values in Etibicoke.

Fact 4: The north polar/Greenland and Antarctic ice masses are not at all typical in earth’s history. They are the result of the current ice age (Quaternary Glaciation) which is still going on and should do so for another few million years. Ice should have already re-expanded to cover most of Canada and Northern Europe and Asia except for, hold on for this, climate change.

Fact 5: Carbon dioxide is only one of several greenhouse gases, a gas that holds heat radiated into our atmosphere. Increased levels of CO2 do seem to make things a bit warmer and for millennia humans have been churning out a fair amount of greenhouse gases (also including methane from our cattle herds and possibly a few humans we know but would prefer not to).

Water vapour is by far the most common greenhouse gas. That’s why it gets cold so quickly at night in dry deserts and not in the humid tropics. Nobody has been stupid enough to try and ban water vapour from going into the atmosphere (at least not yet). That would surely put an end to your afternoon tea, not to mention hot showers. Banning methane emissions would be, let’s just say, painful.

Fact 6: All this carbon dioxide, tea-steeping and flatulence seems to have so far prevented us from going into another full-fledged glacial period. However we don’t know for how long. If the ice does move down again it will likely be the Mexicans building a wall to keep us out, just FYI.

Fact 7: When you look at the fancy charts the so-called global warming experts use remember that these are the equivalent of trying to use the one hour trends in the Toronto Stock Exchange to predict where the market will be in ten years. Totally useless but could be helpful in manipulating people who don’t understand the context, such us poor dumb taxpayers.

During the period 1645–1715, we had what was called the Little Ice Age. That’s why there all those old paintings of the Dutch skating on their canals wearing the European equivalent of parkas. Nowadays they would be swimming if they tried this in the winter. This brief freezing period was triggered by a sunspot cycle called the Maunder Minimum (okay I promised no technical words but this term flows so nicely.) These MM’s come pretty regularly so keep those skates sharp and brush up on our igloo building skills.

The fact is that, yes, global climate change is real. The climate has always been changing and we don’t live long enough to observe anything other than micro-trends which are of little significance. Climate change is likely influenced to some extent by CO2 emissions. If we are overdue for another ice age this may not be a bad thing. To be putting taxes on CO2 makes no sense when we don’t even know if we are hovering on the brink of a new glacial period (global disaster) or a premature return to the usual state of the planet, minus polar caps and with substantially reduced coastlines (also a global disaster.)

In the meantime there are a lot people out there trying to fill governments coffers or make their careers feeding misinformation to the common folk…and precious few who are really informing the public of the truth.

If doubtful, just look up Quaternary Ice age on Wikipedia if you want more information, or maybe ask your high school science teacher if these are indeed facts. Just don’t ask anyone who gets paid for his or her opinion, including tax hungry politicos and people who get big grants to churn out this…hmmm…global warming BS. Climate change is a reality and always has been. I am not a (horrors, burn him or her at the stake), “climate change denier.”

What I am saying is that we don’t know nearly enough about climate change to make any sensible decisions. In a few hundred years our coastlines may be submerged in water or our country buried in 4 kilometers of ice. Nobody really knows.

Take your pick.

Walmart parking lot January, 2019 in Halifax Nova Scotia.

Photo Credit

Glacial Lakes – Wikipedia creative commons

Walmart parking lot January – by Stella Burden-van der Lugt, All Rights Reserved

The article which sparked the debate concerned a very large rock which passed close to the earth in 2017 – not as large as the one which caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, or even the Eltanin impact but larger than the object that damaged Chelyabinsk or than anything that has been confirmed to have struck earth in historic times.

Two characteristics of this object, dubbed Oumuamoua, distinguish it from the many space rocks that come close to the earth every year. First, although there are now more powerful means of detecting objects of this size range than were available even thirty years ago, and a global network of astronomers, professional and amateur, scanning the heavens for them, it was only detected when outward bound. We didn’t see it coming.

Consequently, even if aiming nuclear missiles at an incoming space rock which would otherwise hit us is a viable strategy, it could not have been brought into play in this particular instance. Such a scenario has been seriously proposed by policy makers at NASA, possibly to create the impression in the American public that otherwise esoteric space efforts are worth funding because they have the capacity to protect us from a grave, albeit low probability, threat.

Second, this rock came from an unexpected direction, in an orbit that strongly suggests that it originated outside the solar system. Most meteors, comets, and asteroids come from within the solar system and orbit roughly in the same plane as the planets. The ones that pose a potential danger to earth are believed to originate in the Kuiper belt, beyond the orbit of Neptune, and to be deflected into elliptical orbits by forces that may include a hypothetical planet within the Kuiper belt. They have relatively short lives in cosmological terms as orbiting objects before they crash into Jupiter or the sun, or, if they are predominately icy, melt and evaporate. Whatever forces projected a small asteroid from a more distant star in our direction, they are beyond our current capacity to model or anticipate.

What, you may well ask, is the inconvenient truth here? A subtext in any discussion of anthropogenic global warming is the question of what forces shaped warming and cooling trends in the historic and geologic past, which of them may be contributing to the present warming trend, and which non-human forces might reverse the present warming trend. One inconvenient truth is that a massive volcanic eruption, on the order of the Rinjani eruption which abruptly ended the Medieval warm period in 1257 would dwarf human efforts to stop global warming, especially if it coincided with a solar minimum. Such eruptions occur every few hundred years; the most recent one was Tambora in 1815. Volcanologists have identified a number of candidates for a large eruption in the next 50 or 100 years, but they can’t predict when. What is reasonably certain is that some volcano will inject massive amounts of sulfur dioxide and ash into the atmosphere, far more than emanated from Pinatumbo or even Krakatoa, before the doomsday scenario of global warming runs its course.

Bolide (meteor/asteroid) impacts, the focus of the article, are an even bigger unknown. The possibility that impacts by small asteroids had a profound effect on climate and human history is controversial, but cannot be entirely ruled out. There is a theory, for example, that a bolide impact in the Indian Ocean in Neolithic times caused megatsunamis and climate change giving rise to numerous flood myths, including the Biblical Noah story. Some details supporting the theory are suspect, but others make sense.The role of asteroid impact in geologic time is more firmly established.

One thing is certain, or rather uncertain, and that is, that geologic and cosmic processes are utterly beyond human control. Science gives us increasingly accurate ways to predict them, but the information is of limited use in the case of large-scale events. Since marketing something with reference to a threat requires a belief that humans are in control, the marketplace prefers to bury or marginalize knowledge of uncontrollable events.

Scientific discoveries which reinforce the dominant paradigm become enshrined in the public consciousness, to the exclusion of scientific discoveries which may be as well or nearly as well grounded in rigorous observation and experimentation. Challenges to the orthodox model of anthropogenic climate change – which ascribes all of the current warming trend to human activity, projects a doomsday scenario, and maintains that only expensive coercive actions on the part of a few major industrial powers, actions which incidentally generate wealth for the elites of those countries and may not be very effective, will save the planet – quickly get labelled pseudoscience and climate change denial.

It is easy to find tabloid-style, obviously flawed presentations of the opposing non-mainstream arguments, often framed in rhetoric and a world view (for example Biblical inerrancy) which Americans are taught in school to reject. It tends to be much more difficult to find information of a more sober and rational description, and one is left with the impression that the opposite camp is comprised entirely of illiterate yahoos. Is this a conspiracy? I have seen this phenomenon ascribed to the censorship of the marketplace – to the popularity of tabloid-style sensationalist reporting – but I am not sure this is the whole story. Hence my modest “moderate” conspiracy theory – that there is something about the information channels on which we rely which conspires, not entirely to suppress inconvenient truths which challenge the dominant paradigm and its bottom line, but to present opposing viewpoints in a biased way which leads people, without realizing it, to reject those inconvenient truths and hold them in contempt.

Photo Credit

Photo is from Volcano Cafe

Sustaining happiness and other emotions is linked to neurochemicals in the brain. Research points to the fascinating role of dopamine, the brain chemical, in controlling moods. The best part is that dopamine reaches its zenith when you need it the most. There are other neurochemicals too — such as endorphins, serotonin and oxytocin — involved in the mind-brain connection. They all have a definitive purpose: keeping us happy.

The basic function of endorphins is related to concealing pain. It also plays a pivotal role in manipulating us into feeling cheerful following an exercise session, or after laughing out loud. Oxytocin is connected to elation — after giving birth, holding one’s child, or during orgasm. In like manner, the thought of feeling good increases our serotonin levels. The big downside is that if there is a discrepancy or lack of balance in serotonin levels, it can trigger what we call Depression. This also explains why most conventional anti-depressants are categorised as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

For anyone who finds and maintains happiness, the physical effects of laughter can percolate or envelop one’s entire psyche. This is primarily because a big bout of laughter releases endorphins, leading to more good feelings — more than, perchance, a taxing workout at the gym. It is also a fact that any individual who is less stressed might not experience the impact or damage of stressful states that cortisol causes to our physiology and emotions. It is a given that less-stressed people are relatively more active than people who are stressed out — this also augments one’s happiness quotient.

A study in the US reports that people who ‘emoted’ a positive attitude had a lower risk of heart disease than their peers who were not positive. It is, however, not an agreed scientific plank that happiness creates better heart health or overall wellness. The fact is when you take care of yourself, have less stress in life and ensure that you are happy — whatever the wavering patterns of everyday life — being happy or contented cannot dent your health. Is this asking for too much in our modern chaotic world? Not really, if one is realistic and does not have too much expectation from others.

Smiling has a universal appeal. What is astounding is people from all over the world — whatever one’s ethnicity, colour, or belief — smile the same way. Just think of it. A smile has a communicative element in people who are visually challenged too — they smile even without seeing others smile. This is because smiling is entrenched in what makes us human. Yet, there is a paradox — although smiles can be different and indeed mean different things, many are actually forged. Research suggests that just one form is genuine. This emerges when the corners of the mouth soar; the eyes narrow down marginally while creating ‘crow’s feet;’ and, the upper half of the cheeks rise. Such a smile is known as Duchenne Smile, named after Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne, a French physiologist, who first studied the muscle that surrounds the eye. While the Duchenne smile is a direct result of feeling happy, it does not describe how we all feel glad. Or, how we smile and laugh; how our hearts beat fast and the flow of blood escalates; or, how our skin temperature rises, or our fingers quiver. When we are complimented or praised the accolade triggers a set of changes in the body. It urges the brain to ‘feel’ happy.

Emotions too play a role in the happiness of a smile — they cause our body to react to the signals of our brain. What does this signify? That happiness arises as much from our body intelligence just as much as it does from our thoughts. It is also agreed that the emotions associated with happiness are involuntarily controlled by our autonomic nervous system. While this would only mean that we cannot simply decide to be happy by influencing such involuntary body function, the fascinating aspect is that we are all endowed with the facility to sidestep the autonomic nervous system. All of us have the wherewithal, too, to smile, even in the absence of a trigger. This is because our bodily movements of smiling can make our brains experience feelings of happiness — it is also one reason why the use of a smile provides the prompt for others to smile. This can sway, no less, your happiness, and the feelings of everyone around you. The more you smile and the more you spread the feeling, the better you will be able to expand on the Duchenne smile effect and take it to the next level.

Happiness, to highlight the point, can help one overcome illness and extend life, too. Norman Cousins’ example is a famous case in point. The magazine editor was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a life-threatening autoimmune disease, in 1964, and given a 1 in 500 chance of recovery. Cousins cast off his doctor’s gloomy projection and designed his own agenda of happiness therapy, which included regular doses of Marx Brothers films. He credited his happiness therapy for his dramatic recovery.

Your smile has a positive immunity base too, the true expression of a strong immune system. This is because negative responses affect our immune response — long periods of stress and negativism are evidenced to be a major risk for illness. To cull virologist Ronald Glaser’s words, “In the 1980s, nobody believed what stress could do, including me.” This was before Glaser and his colleagues sampled blood from medical students and found that, during a stressful exam period, they had lower activity from virus-fighting immune cells and higher levels of antibodies for the common virus Epstein–Barr. This, as further research suggests, compromises our immune systems and allows the normally latent virus to become active again.

It is being increasingly accepted that our body’s response to stress can suppress parts of the immune system and, over time, lead to detrimental levels of inflammation. Studies suggest that chronic work stress increases the risk of heart disease and type-2 diabetes — to cull but just two examples. More recently, psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) studies have looked at the levels of individual immune-cell types or molecular messengers — such as the stress hormone cortisol and the immune messenger proteins called cytokines — or, the expression of individual genes. They confirm the unfavourable effect of stress on our mind and body systems.

When researchers studied gene expression in the white blood cells (WBCs) of six chronically lonely people — people who had said consistently over several years that they felt lonely or isolated, and were frightened of other people — and eight people who said that they had great friends and social support, they were in for a revelation. Out of the 25,000 genes in the human genome, the researchers identified 209 that distinguished lonely people from their sociable peers — they were either regulated to produce more of an individual protein or regulated down to produce less. It was reported that a particularly large proportion of the ‘up-regulated’ genes in the lonely group had a predilection for inflammatory response; on the contrary, most of the ‘down-regulated’ genes had antiviral effects. In affable people, the latter was factual. The pioneering, small study has been replicated in larger groups of subjects. The pattern has been similar in the blueprint of gene expression in individuals exposed to various types of social hardship, bereavement, and economic status. 

When mainstream medicine first debunked the avowal that any psychological state, positive or negative, could affect physical wellness, research studies in the late 1980s began to show that the brain was directly wired to the immune system — with immune-related organs. For example, the thymus, bone marrow, and immune cells of the nervous system, connected them to neurotransmitters — the basis for our mind-body interface. The results made (r)evolutionary logic. The early humans, to bring home the point, lived in interdependent, close social groups. They would have apparently faced augmented risk of viral incursions; this probably ‘elevated’ their antiviral genes. People today remain isolated and under incessant stress — a sure ‘soil,’ or perfect ground, for viral and bacterial infection. The spin-off is their sense of response would need a total revamp of their genes associated with inflammation to enable wound healing and fending-off infections. The fact, however, is chronic and disobliging inflammation damages our body’s tissues, while increasing the risk of diseases, such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

According to psychologist-author Daniel Goleman, “Happiness — in terms of biological bustle — is amplified activity in a brain centre that inhibits negative feelings and fosters an increase in available energy and a quietening of those that generate worrisome thought.” He suggests that there is no particular ‘shift’ in physiology, but for quiescence. This, he elaborates, makes the body recover more quickly from the biology of upsetting emotions. The process offers the body general rest, as well as promptness and enthusiasm for whatever task is at hand — also, for the thrust of making every effort towards a great variety of goals. Goleman adds that happiness is, for the most part, established by our genes, not by external reality. No matter the nature of life’s ups and downs, comedies or tragedies, people appear to return inevitably to whatever happiness level is ‘pre-set’ in their constitution. Goleman implies that the idea is analogous to the ‘set-point concept’ in weight control — a premise that suggests that the brain is wired to turn the body’s metabolism up or down to maintain a pre-set weight. This is also reason enough for all of us to take the bumpy with the smooth, and the smooth with the bumpy. It is, perhaps, the only way to happiness.

Photo Credits

Photo 1 courtesy of Nick Youngson — Creative Commons 3. 

Photo 2 courtesy of Pixabay — Public Domain. 

This article was first published in Financial Chronicle. 

Peter’s Dispute with Simon Magus

Many years ago I rashly volunteered to teach a 7th-8th grade Sunday school class at a rural and somewhat fundamentalist church, and, on my first Sunday on the job, was tasked with teaching the first three chapters of Second Samuel, which includes one of three accounts of the future King David presenting 200 Philistine foreskins as the bride price for Saul’s daughter Michal. Fortunately none of the kids had read their Bibles beforehand, so I did not feel compelled to explain the passage. I have since used it in arguments with Christian fundamentalists as an example of a Biblical passage whose relevance to spirituality and salvation is tenuous at best, one that no modern preacher would touch with a ten foot pole.

Perhaps I spoke to soon. Recently, reading a letter of Peter Damian (1007-1072), Benedictine monk, church reformer, and canonized saint, I encountered a commentary on the episode of the Philistine foreskins as an illustration of simony, and it seemed relevant not only to ecclesiastical appointments in the 11th century, but to the process of appointment and advancement in the sciences in American universities. If that seems like to wild a leap of speculation, consider at least that for many people in the West science has become the new religion, and that there are distinct parallels between a medieval bishop, supposed advocate for the spiritual well-being of the masses and defender of ecclesiastical purity, and a modern tenured professor or department head, who becomes the gatekeeper determining who is allowed to pursue a scientific career, what are legitimate objects of scientific inquiry, and what results are disseminated under the imprime of a prestigious peer-reviewed journal.

Simony is defined as the sale of ecclesiastical offices. The term refers to Simon Magus, a first -century figure who fell afoul of Saints Peter and Paul when he attempted to purchase the gift of the Holy Spirit. His downfall is frequently depicted in medieval art. In Damian’s day, the task of appointing bishops fell to secular noblemen, some of whom were quite corrupt and lacked any motivation to further the physical or spiritual well-being of the people they governed. Paying large sums of money and/or serving the lord’s corrupt ends became the only avenue for entry into the higher echelons of the church hierarchy.
Damian used the example of the Philistine foreskins to illustrate the principle by which continued service to a corrupt lord is actually worse, spiritually, than a straight cash payment. In the case of the cash payment, the aspirant could have gotten the wealth by honest means, and once he had bought the office, he was a relatively independent man. The man who had obtained his position by enabling the interests of a corrupt Lord, on the other hand, earned the office through malfeasance and was expected to continue toeing the line. David’s motives for marrying Michal (influence, inclusion in the royal succession) were not inherently bad, but he used his military prowess in the service of a king who had, in the words of scripture, “abandoned God.”

Until well into the nineteenth century, becoming a scientist was pretty much a career objective limited to men of independent means. Academic positions did not pay very well. The purer the science, the less likely it was to produce a saleable product in a reasonable time frame. Although the cost of tuition was not necessarily high, the cost of withdrawing from the labor force for the time required to get an advanced degree discouraged people of modest means. On the plus side, many scientific disciplines did not require a huge amount of capital on an ongoing basis, so independent researchers had a better chance of succeeding.

At present, in the United States at least, entry into a scientific career is in theory open to anyone with the ability and the drive to invest a huge amount of labor into a path that offers no guarantee of success for the laborer. The work that graduate teaching and research fellows, postdoctoral fellows, and people on the lowest rungs of the faculty ladder expend goes disproportionately towards enhancing the power, prestige and wealth of a small number of people at the top. The person on the bottom labors to increase knowledge and to make discoveries that benefit humanity, and hopes someday to gain enough autonomy to realize that vision. That’s how science is supposed to work. That’s how most people seem to assume science works.

Both academic science departments and government laboratories have become heavily dependent upon government grants for their continued existence. The ability to bring in money has become the main criterion for hiring into tenure-track positions and promotion in academic ranks. The granting agencies are under strong pressure from corporate interests to favor lines of inquiry that strengthen the corporate bottom line, and, conversely, to suppress anything that calls into question a lucrative paradigm. The dependence upon grant funding also favors costly, technology-intensive branches of science over more traditional method of observation.

A result of the very long unpaid or inadequately paid period of apprenticeship, during which survival is dependent on adhering closely to programs established at the higher levels of the hierarchy, is training in avoiding independent thought, especially avoiding noticing when the results of research are not serving the general public. It would be remarkable indeed if any great proportion of people who succeeded in such a system, upon finally achieving a position of relative security, miraculously recovered the idealism they were forced to shelve two decades previously.

I was three years into a PhD program in ecology at Cornell University when I dodged the request to teach seventh graders about Philistine foreskins, and I was still excited about the prospect of finding solutions to pressing dilemmas through observation of the natural world. More than forty years later, I can still get excited, at least momentarily, by a fleeting glimpse of synergy between that experience and the writings of an eleventh-century theologian who is currently under an even deeper shadow in academia than his contemporaries, because of his attacks on sodomy. I have given up all hope that it is anything but an armchair exercise.

Image Credit

“Peter’s conflict with Simon Magus,” by Avanzino Nucci, 1620. Public domain.

Giotto: Adoration of the Magi

People react in a variety of ways when some piece of information, apparently reliable, contradicts a long-held belief.  Changing beliefs, especially core beliefs, is rather rare, and tends to occur only after a long process of accumulation of contrary evidence until critical mass is reached.

When I was in grade school, I had an interest in astronomy and read popular books on the subject aimed at adults. I was taught that the periodicity of this celestial body was discovered by Edmund Halley, England’s Astronomer Royal, in the early 18^th century, and confirmed in 1758. This story is still the dominant textbook account on sites like this one:  http://www.space.com/19878-halleys-comet.html. Years later, researching something called the Astronomy wars, I learned  that the actual discoverer was John Flamsteed, Astronomer Royal before Halley, whose painstaking observations on two comets visible in 1682 led to the conclusion that they were one body and allowed orbital calculations that confirmed a pattern of recurrence already long suspected.  Halley used his clout with Sir Isaac Newton, president of the Royal Academy, to obtain Flamsteed’s notes and publish them under his own name. So it’s not really Halley ’s Comet after all, and the pedestal on which that icon of the enlightenment stands has a few cracks in it.

But is the discovery Flamsteed’s? Textbooks will mention a reference by Chinese astronomers in 239 BC, the notable appearance in 1066, and perhaps the visit in 1301, which was depicted by Giotto di Bandoni in a fresco of the Nativity. In a review of historical records he compiled for writing a novel about Dante (who also witnessed and recorded the 1301 appearance) the novelist Christopher Cervasco noted that Eilmer of Malmesbury, writing in 1066, assumed that the comets of 1066 and 989 were the same comet. The scribe Eadwine, commenting on the appearance in 1145, also mentioned it as a recurring phenomenon.  (http://christophermcevasco.com/2011/07/22/halleys-comet-part-3-12th-15th-centuries/) According to Cervasco, the earliest possible mention of periodicity is from the Talmud, of a star that appeared in 66AD and appears every seventy years. The recurring nature, then, was common knowledge in the Middle Ages.

What follows now is speculative in the extreme, but is based on Dante’s explicit mention in Paradiso of the Catholic Church’s reaction to Mesopotamian charts of solar eclipses, produced in the 13^th century and vindicated by a total eclipse of the sun crossing Spain and Italy in 1297. At the time, the church taught that the darkness that occurred during Christ’s crucifixion in 33 AD was a solar eclipse; the Arab charts showed no eclipse in Palestine near that date. The discrepancy caused great consternation because people placed great stock both in the accuracy of the Bible and in the reliability of the heavens. Some church apologists claimed the passion was so momentous an event that it affected the movements of the sun and the moon; Dante concluded that the darkness was not an eclipse, and suggested what we now know as volcanic veiling as an alternative.

The astronomers who produced the eclipse tables had the capacity to use observations from the 989, 1066 and 1145 appearances of a comet to model its movement in the heavens and accurately pinpoint its return in 1301. However, to produce anything like a tidy model of a body with the observed characteristics is impossible in the Ptolemaic earth-centered cosmos. That model already required a great deal of fudging, but Halley’s comet clinched it. The earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around. This was a much more serious discrepancy than the lack of coincidence between celestial phenomena and specific biblical events, for it required rethinking an entire world view. The world in 1301 simply wasn’t ready for that, either in Europe or in Mesopotamia, where the most radical astronomy was also labelled as heretical.  It would take another 150 years before Copernicus found currency for his heliocentric theory, which did not find immediate acceptance and was indeed still the subject of learned debate when Flamsteed began his researches in the 17^th century.

Have we made significant progress in dealing with cognitive dissonance in scientific thought since the beginning of the fourteenth century? I wonder.  Models of the primordial earth have been rewritten at least three times in my adult life to preserve the organic soup theory of the origins of life in the light of the discovery of increasingly ancient fossils. Philosophically, at least, our models of the cosmos still reflect a geocentric perspective.

Image Credit

Giotto, Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1305. Lucas. Creative Commons Flickr. Some rights reserved

Although Hawking isn’t listed among the leadership of the Breakthrough Listen project, it’s likely that his role will be hands-off and will largely entail liaising with the public. His colleagues, Frank Drake (an early pioneer in SETI), and Martin Rees (the current Astronomer Royal in the United Kingdom), along with other astronomy professors and scientists, will be directing the endeavor’s operations.

Previous attempts at detecting messages from extraterrestrials, loosely grouped under the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project, have been funded at a much lower rate through government programs and independent visionaries. Many attempts to actually send a message to ETs have been one-off events, with almost zero chance of success, including the golden phonograph records launched aboard NASA’s Voyager spacecraft, and the three-minute-long Arecibo Message. Not to mention the highly-publicized Wow! signal, a strong, narrowband radio signal detected in August 1977, which just recently garnered a response from humanity in the form of Twitter messages beamed out in the direction of the message origin.

Efforts to find extraterrestrial life began as early as 1896, when the use of radio waves to detect foreign signals was proposed. From scanning the cosmos for natural radio signals, to searches with omnidirectional antennas, the utilization of various radio telescopes and satellites to monitor for signals from outer space has continued to this day. While this technology is most commonly thought of in reference to weather satellites, satellite TV and mobile wireless communication, there are a number of powerful telescopes around the world that are capable of listening for such signals.

With the funds bestowed by Milner, Breakthrough Listen will be able to buy time on two such telescopes to conduct the search, with an additional third telescope used to try to identify signals sent via optical laser transmission. Unlike the kind of telescope that you take outside with you to stargaze, which is of the optical variety, this project will be utilizing radio telescopes consisting of a large dish—much like a satellite TV dish—that can detect radio waves coming from the far reaches of the cosmos.

Previous SETI projects have used similar methods, but the extent to which they could successfully function was limited by their funding. Breakthrough Listen will have the resources to observe ten times more of the sky and to scan at least five times more of the radio spectrum than ever before. After making their observations, astronomers will then be able to sift through the data to try to separate natural phenomena from those that may have been created by alien life.

Even with this new funding commitment, searching for the transmissions of extraterrestrial beings is like finding a needle in a haystack. We have no idea what their languages might be like, on what frequencies they would broadcast or the purposes for which they might use radio or laser communications. Whistle-blower Edward Snowden recently made the point that encryption processes have a goal of making messages seem indistinguishable from random noise, and so, if ‘aliens’ are using sufficiently advanced cryptography, we may have no way of differentiating their communications from radio static.

In 1950, physicist Enrico Fermi did some calculations and realized that, given the age of the universe and the number of stars that it contains, we should see signs of alien life all around us. The fact that we don’t observe any reliable indications of life outside the earth has been called “The Fermi Paradox.” Over the years, a number of hypotheses have been put forward to explain this paradox, with Snowden’s being the latest, but the simplest explanation might just be the correct one: perhaps there exists no intelligent life in star systems besides our own.

Even if we are able to find and decode a message from an alien civilization, we might not be able to communicate effectively. The vastness of interstellar space means that a message sent to even the closest stars would take years to be received. Milner is funding a related scheme, called Breakthrough Message, which will hold a contest with $1 million in prizes for composing the best message to send into space, but there are no plans to actually send them.

If, despite the odds, we actually do encounter and converse with an extraterrestrial species, it would probably be the biggest news in the history of humankind. People would have to revisit their religious beliefs, ideas about the significance of homo sapiens in the universe and views on morality and ethics. When we consider what has happened here on earth whenever two hitherto distant civilizations have encountered each other, perhaps extraterrestrial contact may be more trouble than it’s worth.

Photo Credits

Stars hatching in Orion – Wikimedia Public Domain

Golden Record – NASA Public Domain

The Arecibo Radio Telescope  – Wikimedia Public Domain

Guest Author Bio
Kate Voss

Kate Voss is a writer and blogger based in the Windy City. Fuelled by coffee and chocolate, she’s an MSU alum with a passion for recycling and refurbishing old furniture. Her favorite Girl Scout Cookie is the trefoil.

As an ultimate test of this technology, MX3D is poised to print an intricate and ornate metal bridge at a special location in Amsterdam.

“The bridge will be designed by Joris Laarman. That process using new Autodesk software will be a research project in itself. It will sync with the technical development and take into account the location. The project is a collaboration between MX3D, design software company Autodesk, construction company Heijmans and many others.” ~ MX3D

This technology and others like it are about to change a great many things and open up construction and design possibilities never before possible.

Watch this short amazing video and try to imagine what the future holds!

Photo Credit

Featured Image – Screen capture from video

On January 19, 2006, the New Horizons spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral. After visiting asteroid 132524 APL, New Horizons proceeded to Jupiter and made it’s closest approach on February 28, 2007. The Jupiter flyby provided a gravity assist that increased New Horizons‍ ’​ speed.

After it’s encounter with Jupiter, New Horizons spent most of it’s time in hibernation mode to preserve on-board systems. On December 6, 2014, New Horizons was brought back online for the Pluto encounter and on January 15, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft began its final approach phase to Pluto.

Discovered in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, Pluto was originally considered the ninth planet from the Sun. After 1992, its status as a planet fell into question following the discovery of several objects of similar size in the Kuiper belt. In 2005, Eris, which is 27% more massive than Pluto, was discovered, which led the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to define the term “planet” formally for the first time the following year. This definition excluded Pluto and reclassified it as a member of the new “dwarf planet” category (and specifically as a plutoid). ~ Wikipedia

New Horizons has now given us incredible views of Pluto with amazing surface detail. It is yet another amazing scientific / engineering accomplishment by our species. Imagine… when NASA sends instructions to New Horizons, it takes 5.5 hours to reach it and then another 5.5 hours for NASA to receive a reply!

These images are amazing and the mountains of data New Horizons is capturing will keep scientists busy for years enabling them to learn much more about our place in the universe.

Pluto – New Horizons Image

It turns out that Pluto has blue skies. Just like Earth!

For more great images, be sure to check out the New Horizons website!

Photo Credits

Pluto Hubble Image – Public Domain

Artist’s concept of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft – Public Domain

New Horizons Pluto image – Public Domain

Blue skies on Pluto – Public Domain