The Power of Nine

As far back as I can remember, my favorite number has always been the number 9.  There's something about it that is so complete, self-contained and satisfying.  The number nine always looks like it's smiling - you can't be in a bad mood when you're looking at a number nine.

1's were always so plain and uninteresting.  2's resembled a question mark and looked confused.  3's looked like they were running away from something.  4's seemed dour and humorless.  5's were always smiling, but more like the crazy people on the bus who talk to themselves and laugh at their own jokes.  6's looked apprehensive and fearful.  7's looked stern and unforgiving.  8's appeared smug and self-satisfied.  But with 9's, the best was saved for last, and it was always a great way to end a counting lesson.

But wait, there's a lot more to nines.  Nine is ten minus one-tenth of ten:

9 = 10 - (0.1 x 10) = 10 - 1 = 9

This little numeric twist gives nine all sorts of mathematical powers.  For instance,

One ninth = 1 / 9 = 0.111111....
Two ninths = 2 / 9 = 0.222222...
Three ninths = 3 / 9 = 1 / 3 = 0.3333333....
Four ninths = 4 / 9 = 0.4444444....

and so on.  Also, if you add the digits of multiples of 9, they will add up to nine.  As in:

9 x 1 = 09 ...  0 + 9 = 9
9 x 2 = 18 ...  1 + 8 = 9
9 x 3 = 27 ...  2 + 7 = 9
9 x 4 = 36 ...  3 + 6 = 9
9 x 5 = 45 ...  4 + 5 = 9

From this point, the digits in the product reverse themselves:

9 x 6 = 54 ...  5 + 4 = 9
9 x 7 = 63 ...  6 + 3 = 9
9 x 8 = 72 ...  7 + 2 = 9
9 x 9 = 81 ...  8 + 1 = 9
9 x 10 = 90 ...  9 + 0 = 9

The cautious reader will note that the left digits count up from 0 to 9, while the right digits count down from 9 to 0.

Things even go further, if you skip the strange anomaly of eleven:

9 x 11 = 99 ...  9 + 9 = 18 (wtf?)
9 x 12 = 108 ... 1 + 0 + 8 = 9
9 x 13 = 117 ... 1 + 1 + 7 = 9
9 x 14 = 126 ... 1 + 2 + 6 = 9 ....

Eleven is kind of a mirror-image, bizarro-world version of nine.  It's like the antimatter version of nine.  All manner of ungodliness ensues when you divide by 11:

1 / 11 = 0.09090909...
2 / 11 = 0.18181818...
3 / 11 = 0.27272727...
4 / 11 = 0.36363636...
All the way up to:
10 / 11 = 0.90909090...

If that stuff doesn't give you a headache, nothing will.

Right after the start of the new year, another indication of how awesome nine is came to the rabbit rescue in a litter of NINE baby bunnies!  Just feast your eyes on these pictures, and tell me nine is not an amazing, awesome number!

ECLIPSE!

Sunday 20 May 2012 brought the prospect of a solar eclipse practically to my backyard.  I've seen plenty of partial eclipses in my time; that's when the moon slides across the sun in the sky and blocks part of the solar disk.  While interesting, nothing apparently tops a total solar eclipse, when the moon completely obscures the sun, making a pearly corona visible and plunging lucky viewers into a false, temporary nighttime.  From all accounts it is probably the most awesome thing you can ever hope to see in the sky.

Halfway between a partial and a total eclipse is something called an annular eclipse.  That's when the moon crosses the solar disk but is a bit too far away to cover the sun completely.  What you end up seeing is a "ring of fire," a brilliant circle of sunlight in the sky.  This is the kind of eclipse that happened last Sunday.

Usually eclipses happen in the middle of the Pacific Ocean or Antarctica or the Kamchatka peninsula or some other gawd-awful corner of the world.  So I was completely psyched when I learned months ago that one will be visible from northern Arizona, a mere 200 miles from my home in Phoenix.  Even better, the event was going to happen at 6:30pm, as opposed to sunrise, which would give me plenty of time to get there and set up.

So, after helping out at Brambley Hedge Rabbit Rescue Sunday adoptions, I packed up my camera gear and headed north.  On the way to Flagstaff I drove by the site of the Gladiator wildfire, and could see huge columns of smoke rising in the distance.  The smoke turned the entire sky a dirty beige color, and it was surreal and claustrophobic to see such an angry, damaged sky from an out-of-control fire.

The drive was very pleasant if uneventful, and I haven't been up north of Flagstaff in a very long time.  I had forgotten how beautiful the landscape is up there.  All along Route 89 north I spotted people off the road in little clearing areas, setting up their cameras and their telescopes, getting ready for the event.  After 3 hours of driving I made my turn-off onto Route 64, with the Vermilion mountains a muted magenta color in the distance.  I was planning on going to the Grand Canyon to watch but I was too cheap to pay the $25 entrance fee, and chose instead a speck on the map called the Little Colorado River Gorge Overlook.  The name of the place is bigger than the place itself.  I had an hour before the high point of the eclipse, and I used that time to explore the Gorge Overlook, which was very much bigger and deeper than I had ever imagined, and it turned out to be a marvelous and very impressive thing to see.

The Gorge Overlook site turned out to be pretty popular with astronomy nerds like me, and there were at least 20 other people that had come there to do the same thing I was - observe the eclipse.  We all had a very good time laughing and talking, and everyone was as excited and thrilled as I was at the approaching sky show.

I set my camera up and sat down to wait for the event.  The minutes ticked by and I could see a bite taken out of the right side of the sun.  The bite slowly, inexorably got larger, and by the time the sun was one third covered, the brightness of the sun was noticeably diminished.  The moon slid further across the sun and my anticipation was building with each passing second.  I started furiously snapping pictures, getting more and more excited.  Finally, the moment I had been waiting for happened.  The moon crossed the limb of the sun and the annular phase had started.  A thin, brilliant ring of sunlight surrounded the moon, and the area was plunged into a strange kind of twilight, almost like the sun was being filtered behind some clouds, but there were no clouds in the cerulean blue northern Arizona sky.  This is a composite photo I made of some of my best eclipse shots:

Two minutes later, it was over.  The moon breached the opposite side of the sun and the ring of fire turned back into a thin crescent.  The eclipse was finished, but the memories it left with me I know will last the rest of my lifetime.  It was an awesome and awe-inspiring sight, and it left me absolutely exhilarated and feeling like I had just witnessed something extremely rare and special and magical, which I had.

Even better, it made me feel very excited about something I had never seen before. I was almost giddy with anticipation, and felt that there are still wonderful things to marvel at in the beautiful, complex, sometimes terrifying and always fascinating universe in which we live. It was good to know that I can still be impressed and humbled by nature, and I'm not quite so jaded that I can't be made to feel like a young child again.

Lost In Space?

News came this week that NASA's Constellation program is being stopped. Constellation was supposed to be the next generation of space shuttles. The current shuttle program is scheduled to end after 3 more flights. After that, NASA will have to rely on Russian rockets to get material and personnel back and forth to the International Space Station. It seems that the trend now is toward unmanned, robotic space missions to the moon, Mars and beyond. Manned missions have become too dangerous and expensive.

Actually, it seems to me that space missions have always been dangerous. A couple of days ago was the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 13 mission, which very nearly ended in horrendous disaster as a fuel tank exploded on the command module. It was only through the raw, sheer courage and grit of the onboard team and many more support personnel on the ground that the astronauts were safely returned to Earth. You would think that after 40 years of technological improvements it would be less dangerous to go to the moon now. So, what's changed?

Unfortunately, it's the "expensive" part. Things are so much different now. Everything is much more costly, and the recent recession and the dizzying, catastrophic bail-outs have dried up the supply of ready cash. A manned mission to Mars would cost billions. In fact I remember reading a story a while back which suggested the next mission to Mars would be a one-way mission; that is, astronauts would leave Earth and go to Mars without any intention of returning, since it would be impractical to carry enough fuel for the return voyage. As chilling as that is, Mars remains our next frontier, with the moon and all its recently-discovered water deposits a close second.

Robotic probes certainly have done very well in expanding our scientific horizons. The Cassini probe to Saturn has returned many thousands of astounding photographs of the most beautiful planet in the Solar System. The MESSENGER spacecraft has revealed the sun-blasted surface of Mercury in incredible detail. And most exciting is the New Frontiers mission to the vicinity of the dwarf planet Pluto and its moon Charon, speeding along at over 70,000 mph and set to reach Pluto in 2015. And who can forget the Hubble Space Telescope, which has revolutionized our view of the universe and consequently, our view of ourselves.

But manned missions to space and to the moon have been such a rallying cause, a way for the entire world to unite and experience the wonder of exploration not as a collection of separate nations but as a species, a race, a planet. People who were alive at the time will always remember when Neil Armstrong took his first step onto the surface of the moon in 1969. Even the normally unflappable Walter Cronkite was clearly overcome with emotion and, for a while, speechless. That only happened to him one other time that I recall - when John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

The scientific work behind the space effort was directly responsible for hugely important advances in science, engineering, technology and medicine, to name a few fields that have benefitted. Without manned missions we would not have the surreal and amazing picture of space-suited astronauts jauntily hopping across the lunar surface in gravity one-sixth that of Earth, and raising a pole with a slightly-crumpled American flag, as if it were flapping in the breeze. And the famous photograph of the "big blue marble," taken of the planet Earth as it hung motionless in the infinite blackness of space, all flawless and serene and most of all, small and insignificant. It was the perfect picture for the times, and really changed a lot of minds about the fragility of the planet we inhabit and the grave importance of taking care of it. You could argue that the current "green" movement got its start with that famous picture.

I'm sure that future robotic missions will continue to rewrite the pages of science but somehow, there is not the personal impact of following a number of brave men and women as they take tentative, dangerous steps off our planetary cradle and into the cold and the dark of space. Neil Armstrong took a "giant leap" for us, and it seemed as if we were there with him. We don't get that kind of buy-in with a robot. I don't fault Obama for making the tough call - maybe we should blame the greedy dirtbags in Congress and on Wall Street which have brought misery to so many and nearly plunged the entire world into a deadly serious financial depression. But by "oursourcing" our tradition of exploration to machines, we lose a little bit of the best side of humanity. I hope we get back into space again, soon.

In other news, the level of batshit-craziness in the world took a giant leap with the recent pairing of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann in some ridiculous, stupid Tea Party flatulence festival. It's hard to put up with the hokey, phony folksiness of Palin. It's even harder to understand how anyone could take her seriously, being that she is so far beyond idiotic it's not even funny anymore. But Michelle Bachmann is even more profoundly mentally ill than Palin. Bachmann is truly ignorant and a menace to anyone who has the least interest in saving the tradition of meaningful political discourse in this country. Some women think that having these two dimwits on the national stage is somewhat of a triumph for women's rights but ladies, take it from me, it does the worthy cause of women's liberation a grave disservice. It is not an advancement if women set themselves up to be as stupid, venal, obnoxious and vile as men. It is not raising your gender up to new heights - by emulating and imitating all that is petty, ignorant and loathsome about men, you do nothing but lower yourself to their level. And that is not liberation.

Farewell, Battlestar

Last Friday, March 20, saw the series finale of "Battlestar Galactica" on the Sci-Fi channel. This was an event of seismic proportions for anyone who considers themselves a fan of science fiction on any medium - television, movies, print. Anticipated with a fervor usually reserved for six-year-olds a couple days before Christmas, it was a watershed event for me which still reverberates several days later.

What was it about this series that grabbed the imaginations of myself and several million other normally level-headed (give me a break, okay?) people with a vise-grip for four fragmented seasons? First and foremost, "Galactica" was a great story, expertly told. It was, in all instances, a character-driven drama, and had all the elements of great stories told in other settings: morality, mortality, the meaning and purpose of life, love and loyalty, ambition, delusion, guilt and redemption. The setting, in intra-galactic space, was at the same time, fundamental and irrelevant to the story itself. The story could well have been set in an urban, post-apocalyptic wasteland or the American West of the 1800s. The whole story pivoted around a desperate group of survivors of an overwhelming catastrophe being relentlessly pursued by a race of powerful, seemingly indestructible enemies with nothing short of genocide in mind.

As many writers have pointed out much more skillfully than I can, "Galactica" was the perfect drama for a terrifying, inverted post-9/11 world. How can you battle an enemy that looks exactly like you? Who can you really trust when you view everyone you meet with suspicion and uncertainty, because they could very well be a robot and you would never know it, until it's too late? How can you fight against an enemy when death is meaningless to them? In the "Galactica" universe these enemies simply download their consciousness into another, identical body and they are ready to go again. They are, in effect, the ultimate suicide bombers, who carry out their deadly missions with the complete assurance that they will come back again as good as new, with all their memories intact and ready to pick up again right where they left off.

One of the elements of genius of "Galactica" was that it was constantly keeping us off-balance and putting unexpected twists and turns on their increasingly complex world-view. In the "New Caprica" story arc, which spanned seasons 2 and 3, the parallel with the U.S. occupation of Iraq was uncomfortably obvious: the humans settled on a planet only to be discovered by the Cylons and invaded. The humans then became the insurgents, battling against a superior occupation force and using any means at their disposal, including suicide bombings, to fight back. The occupiers also had no problem using torture and imprisonment to force their rule on the humans. Abu-Ghraib, anyone? The story arc ended with the insurgents fighting a costly war against their oppressors and escaping back into space where their enemies resumed their pursuit. In the end religious beliefs fracture the Cylon nation into two parts, and the humans form a very uneasy, suspicious alliance with some of their former enemies.

Again the question comes up, why do I care so much about a television program? When I was much younger I was obsessed with "Lost in Space", but I was like 14 years old at the time. What is my excuse now, 40-some years later? Maybe it's the appeal of an excellent story, first-rate production values, and incredible actors working at the top of their games all coming together in a finished product that is much more than just the sum of its parts. "Galactica" grew on you, there was something about it that make you think about what you saw days after watching a program. I was not an immediate fan of the miniseries when it debuted in 2003. I watched it and thought, well that was strange, that wasn't anything close to what I expected. I would tune in occasionally through the first season of the show, but did not watch regularly by any means. Slowly but surely, I was pulled into the "Galactica" universe and by the middle of season 2 I was hooked.

The characters were so fully-formed and brilliantly acted, and the writing gave them plenty of opportunities to turn them into people you genuinely cared about. The series was ultra-realistic, with no sleek, designer "bridge" where all the action took place. On "Galactica" there were no phaser-pistols, talking computers, or matter transporters beaming people all over the place. The guns shot regular bullets and people communicated on huge, clunky old phones. While there were a few nods to the science-fiction lexicon we have all come to understand and accept - artificial gravity on all vessels no matter their size, faster-than-light travel, to name a few - the hallmark of "Galactica" was its granular, fundamental realism that made you think, yes this could actually happen, this could be real. And that might be its greatest triumph.

Now that "Galactica" is over, I feel like something meaningful and good has gone. The finale was by no means perfect - some long-sought answers to important questions were provided, but other matters (particularly the true nature of the resurrected Kara Thrace) were glossed over. Series finales must be the most difficult programs to create because you're almost assured to anger and annoy some segment of your loyal viewers. The "Seinfeld" finale was almost universally reviled, and the ending of "The Sopranos" is still being debated as either brilliantly creative or cowardly cop-out. The finale to "Six Feet Under" was in my opinion as close to a perfect end to a series as I have ever seen. But maybe we are to provide some our own answers when a story ends, in ways that are most meaningful to us. "Battlestar Galactica" was a great ride for over 5 years, and it holds up very well on repeated viewings. We will be thinking about some of those questions for years to come. For those of us willing to take the journey, it was a singular, richly rewarding experience that will most likely not be repeated anytime soon.