How fragile are we?

Very.

There is a very, very tiny corner of the Universe in which we humans can live in comfort. Or live at all, really.

So let's talk about the Universe a little bit. The Universe, my daughter, is a big place. Tremendous, stupefying, mind-numbing big. Just how big it is, is a topic for another time, but trust me that it is bigger than anything you've seen. It's bigger than that elephant we saw at the zoo, it's bigger than our house, it's bigger than Deeda's car, it's bigger than even Deeda. It was pretty close for a while, but then the Universe had a late growth spurt, and I didn't. [If we were to split hairs, that is actually quite true; at one point, the Universe wasn't just smaller than Deeda, it was smaller than even you...all compressed into an infinitely dense point that we, rather weakly I think, call a "singularity".]

But to get things rolling, here's a sense of scale. Look at the picture below.

That is a picture of Earth taken by the Voyager space probe from within our own solar system, just beyond the orbit of Pluto. There floating on a beam of sunlight, you see our home, the size of a pixel in that photograph. The radio signals that carried that photograph back to Earth traveled for five and a half hours at the speed of light to give us that perspective of our place in the cosmos.

One more picture.

See that blue glow around our planet? That is our atmosphere. That thin skin around our planet is what gives us life and protects us from deep space. And even within that layer, we cannot live comfortably everywhere. We need a very narrow range of temperature and pressure. Too much sunlight and radiation and we are...toast. We are like Goldilocks; things have to just right. Deserts and tall mountains won't cut it. Deep sea, nuh-uh. Too far to the right or left of California weather, and our numbers dwindle rapidly. You wouldn't think like that when cooling off by the A/C or soaking in the July sun, but when it comes to livable conditions, clemency is the exception. Hostility is the norm.

That is why I say we are so very fragile. And perhaps astronomically lucky to be here, walking around in that thin layer of breathable gases on a bit of space-dust that we call Earth. Surrounded literally everywhere by an incredibly inhospitable Universe. So remember that and try to be nice to everybody who shares this bit of luck with you.

So we are a bit of a wuss-out, for sure, when it comes to being a species. Who's tough? What animal on this planet do you think is better suited than us to tackle all this sucktitude the Universe is chucking at us?

Meet Mr. Tardigrade. Or more cutely known as the water bear. Believe me, this is the least scary picture I could find of him on the Internet.

That little guy--grows to about a millimeter--is tough. Super tough. If we were a tenth as tough as him, we would get our swag on and give the Universe the smackdown it so deserves. He is what is conversationally called an extremeophile ("loves extreme conditions"). Try using that in a conversation next time.

If you check out his eHarmony profile (or wikipedia entry), you would notice that he says:

1. Athletic build.
2. Agnostic.
3. Willing to live in almost absolute zero temperature to well above boiling point of water.
4. Can survive pressures six times higher than the deepest ocean trenches.
5. Can go for over 10 years without food or water (but loves a good mug of stout).
6. Can suck down hundreds time more radiation than would kill a human. (eat your heart out, Dr. Bruce Banner).
7. Smokes: Socially.

So there you have it. The original Quiet Man, the John Wayne of Nature. Beware his tiny fists.

And in the end on dreams we will depend

The Blue Angels is the US Navy's show-flying team. The video is incredible; what it takes to fly like that. The job has a 10% fatality rate. You have a better chance of surviving an average war.

I am teaching my five-year old to say "please" and "thank you". I don't want her being perceived as rude. The culture that surrounds her puts great stock in those words and we simply bend to the environment.

I grew up in a culture that did not say "please" or "thank you". There isn't a word for "please" in Bangla. The word for "thank you" is stiff and formal and I barely recall anyone using it in casual conversation. This doesn't mean that we were taught to be impolite or ungrateful. Politeness was expressed with tone and body language. Gratitude was implied and everybody understood this; nobody felt taken advantage of.

I remember hearing someone express this quite well, "When someone is very close to you, you consider that person to be a part of yourself. Do you thank yourself for doing something nice for yourself?"

This is also the case with the words "I love you." My parents had...have, the most wonderful and solid relationship I have ever seen. I have never heard my mother tell my father that she loved him because I guess she didn't have to. He knew.

Here's a little story. My mother was a ballsy woman who went against the wishes of her family to marry my father. This was not as easy it sounds, today. This was a different and unforgiving generation. She had to leave home, with no income, and trust that my father would do the right thing. Her family, including two brothers, were very traditional and put up every roadblock they could manage and she was but a wee young woman.

So one day, many many years later, my youngest sister was in a listening mood and asked my mother what that was like. "Tell me the gory details, Mom. What was it like? How did you manage it? Weren't you afraid?"

I will always remember my mother's reply. She said, "Yes, I was very afraid. But I loved your father more than I was scared of my father."

Ka-zing.

End of story.

Even very clever guys can be very wrong about things until hindsight catches up to them.

[Aside: This, by the way, is a great source of comfort to guys like me, who are not so clever. It allows us to go, "Nyah". Schadenfreude.]

Ptolemy was an ancient astronomer. And a geographer. And a mathematician. And a poet. He was smart. He was one of the smartest men of his time. Many who came later stood on his shoulders.

He also believed that the sun and the planets went around the earth.

Today we call this the geocentric theory and laugh at it. Those days, they simply called it the truth.

To those bearded astronomers of yore, Earth was the Kanye West of planets. Standing in the middle, refusing to give up the mike, while the others planets hovered.

But, like I said, hindsight catches up. The first glitch that had people scratching their heads is the retrograde motion of the planets that supposedly revolved around the earth.

What is retrograde motion? OK, so grab a friend. And ask her to start walking around you in a circle. Tell her it is for science. As long as she keeps walking, she will always appear (to you) to be going in the same direction.

The same thing should happen to, say, Jupiter, If Jupiter revolves around Earth, then Jupiter should always appear--to someone on earth--to move in one single direction. Like any well-behaved planet should. But strangely enough to the ancient astronomers, Jupiter sometimes seemed to back up suddenly and start moving in the opposite direction in the night sky. This is retrograde motion.

And they couldn't explain it. The theory didn't fit.

Did Jupiter, like, suddenly go, "Oh wait, I think I left the gas on." and start scooting backwards? Well, planets are pretty darn big and look like a determined lot who don't change their minds often. So there had to be another explanation.

So quick, grab your friend again. Explain to her that, yes, the medications are still working and this is still a science experiment, and then both you and her starting walking around the kitchen table in the same direction.

A few steps into the lap, look over at your friend. She will appear to be moving in the same direction as you, as agreed. Now let's say that you are slightly faster than your friend. Eventually, you will "lap" her. At the moment that you pass her, she will appear to be moving backwards. This is retrograde motion.

That kitchen table is, of course, the sun. And Earth and Jupiter both revolve around the sun. Earth goes around the sun quicker, because of the smaller orbit. Jupiter loses this "race" sometimes and gets lapped and appears to move backwards.

The heliocentric theory explained retrograde motion. The geocentric theory was ditched.

This is science. Clever men proposing clever ideas that other clever men overturn.

Fact: Ptolemy's geocentric theory was dominant for 1400 years. You read that right. One and a half centuries before it got a proper burial, when Nicolaus Copernicus proposed the heliocentric theory.

Tamaso ma Jyotir gamayo (From darkness, lead us to light)
Asad ma Sad gamayo (From ignorance, lead us to truth)