Meeting Aliens

Recently, former president Barack Obama said on a podcast he believes there are aliens but he's never met them.

And that got me thinking about what might happen if we ever meet aliens.

In a universe as big as ours (the observable universe is at least 93 billion light-years in diameter, likely bigger, and maybe infinite), with about 2 trillion galaxies (at least), there almost has to be aliens somewhere. The problem is distance and traveling between star systems or even galaxies. The energy requirements to get a ship up to close to the speed of light are huge. To accelerate a small ship to 99% the speed of light would require all the remaining fossil fuels on Earth (4x10^22 or 40 sextillion joules or 40 zettajoules). And at 99% the speed of light, it would still take a little more than four years (Earth time) to get to the nearest star. Plus you'd have to slow down using the same amount of energy it took you to accelerate. And where is that energy going to come from at the back end of the trip?

If you accelerated your ship at one g (9.2 m/s/s; the acceleration of gravity on Earth), accelerated halfway to the nearest star, then decelerated the rest of the way to have no velocity relative to the star, it would take 5 years and 7 months Earth time to get to the nearest star but only 3 years and 5 and a half months ship time due to time dilation. But more energy than we have to spare.

And, as far as we know, nothing can go faster than the speed of light. As you get closer to the speed of light, the energy requirements asymptotically approaches infinity. 

Why would aliens use all that energy to come to Earth and not say "hello" but kidnap rednecks to probe.

Now maybe the aliens have a warp core or hyperspace shunt or can manipulate wormholes or something we can't even imagine to travel faster than light and the energy requirements aren't brutal or they have technology to produce the energy needed. So maybe they will drop by someday.

Humans (modern humans) have been around on this planet maybe 300,000 years. The earliest human civilizations started just about 6,000 years ago. But the universe is 3.8 billion years old. It would be no trick (and surprising if not) for an alien species to be millions years ahead of us technologically. We might be a bug on the windshield of the universe to them. 

And in human history, when a more technological society meets a less advance society,  the outcome is almost invariably catastrophic for the less advanced group, often resulting in rapid societal collapse, mass mortality, and the destruction of cultural knowledge. And we'd be the less advanced group in this case.

So meeting aliens may not be good for us. Likely they wouldn't be malevolent (likely) and maybe they know how not to destroy other civilizations. Maybe.

But the odds of meeting them at all are vanishingly slim.

What do you think? Have we met aliens already? Or are we likely not to meet them. Let me know in the comments below.

Lily's Day

 Lily is our cat. She's lived with us since September, 2017. In that time she's developed habits in her life here.

Her day (as far as we know) starts about 7am when she scratches on our bedroom door. Sometimes I hear her scratch as early as 5am but I ignore her and go back to sleep because if I let her in, she won't let me go back to sleep by lying on the bed where I sleep.

I get up and let her in the room. She makes this cute almost-purring sound as she comes through the door as if to say "It's about time." She used to jump up on the foot of the bed and curl up. But now she goes and lies down next to my wife's head and scratches the sheet. When my wife wakes up, Lily then goes to the foot of the bed and stays there as long as she wants, which usually ends before we're both out of the shower. Sometimes she hides under the bed where she knows we can't get her. Most the time she leaves on her own. 

She gets her morning meal once we get downstairs in the kitchen. 

She gets her afternoon meal later if she finishes her breakfast. Some days she doesn't seem very interested in eating. Some days she acts as if we starve her.

Then she usually sleeps most of the day. I know cats sleep a lot but I wonder what she does at night. Once recently I got up at 5am for a medical procedure and she was awake and acted surprised to see me.

She has a favorite chair with a blanket on it to sleep in and if not there, she like to sleep on her favorite blanket on the couch. She doesn't seem to like to sleep on leather and most of our furniture is leather. Also, on the couch, she likes to sleep on the crack between cushions on her blanket (see picture above).

Around 6pm she wanders into the family room where I'll be watching the news. She'll jump up beside me on the loveseat and curl up. I'm the only one in the family she'll do that with. 

If she's eaten her afternoon meal, she gets treats. But she has to earn them with nose boops. My finger touches her nose. She wants this and will grab my hand to pull it down to her nose. She probably wants it because she so desperately wants treats. 

She'll do that for a while and then maybe she gets bored. She'll jump down and move to the couch or her bed and sleep some more. 

The last thing in her day is "momma time." This is when, after I go to bed, she and momma sit on the loveseat and momma feeds her snacks. This is very important to Lily. In fact, if I don't go to bed on time (staying up to watch a late football game, perhaps), she'll glare at me.

When I do go to bed (late or not), she'll go upstairs to the bedroom. My wife will get ready for bed, too, even though she goes to bed after I do. Lily will hang around, sometimes wanting scritches on her back from me. But she always leaves with momma for their time. Momma time ends when one of them (usually Lily) falls asleep.

And that is Lily's day.

Do you have an animal that has a routine? Let me know in the comments below.

Simple Suspension Bridge

When I lived in Idaho Falls, Idaho in the 1960s (yes, I'm that old), I remember that there was a simple suspension bridge over the Snake River that led to an island. It looked a little like the one in the photo except there wasn't any netting. The bridge deck was wooden and I remember ropes or cables you could hang on to. There was very little to keep you from falling into the swift, cold river. Sometimes we tried to make it swing back and forth. My mother didn't like that.

Other times, if the river was running high (such as in the spring), the bridge deck would be covered in water. I don't remember if that stopped us. Maybe depending on the depth of the water. 

The last time I was in Idaho Falls (don't ask me when that was; I don't remember), the bridge was replaced by a concrete structure. And I was kind of disappointed because that was denying the children of the city that fun suspension bridge. 

There probably isn't any bridges such as that one anywhere in the United States anymore. I'd be surprised if there were. 

Do you know of any simple suspension bridges in the U.S.? Have you ever been over one? Let me know in the comments below.

Accountants versus Engineers

2006 Chrysler 300C

 The reason for a private company to exist is to create value/wealth for its owners. Those owners might be a mom and pop owning a small store or a huge company with millions of shareholders/owners. 

Car companies are no exception. They want to make as much money as possible to increase shareholder value. They have to do that by making cars people want to buy. But they have to make the cars cheaply enough to make a profit. And there's all sorts of regulations requiring more expense which is passed on to the buyer. 

So the company wants to make the car as cheaply as possible. With cars you get what you pay for. The cheaper the car the less amenities it will have.

I had a 2006 Chrysler 300C. It had the 5.7 liter HEMI V8 making 340 horsepower and 390 pound-feet of torque (looked a lot like the one pictured). It was also a big, heavy car. With that engine I could get going fast very quickly for a car its size. I really enjoyed that car. Except one thing. I think the accountants won over the engineers who designed it on the matter of brakes. For a big, heavy car you need really good brakes and the 300C had barely adequate brakes. Scared myself sometimes trying to stop that car. 

At the time, Chrysler was owned by Mercedes. The 300 was built with some Mercedes components but I doubt even Mercedes engineers would have put such bad brakes on that car. 

Other examples of accountants winning include the latest Corvette. While mechanically it is apparently brilliant, I've read complaints about a "Malibu interior" on a car that can cost close to $200,000 for the top models (base models are still about $70,000). Also, I've seen videos of people showing the dash bubbling on relatively new Corvettes. Not good!

Do you know of any instances where the accountants won over the engineers? It doesn't have to be in cars. Let me know in the comments below.

Time Zones Again

No, not the Time Warp Again. Time zones again.

Just over four years ago I posted a blog about time zones. I mistakenly said that there were 34 times zones in the world. 

Recently I found a list of all time zones. Turns out there are 38.

The earliest time zone (where the day starts) is UTC +14 (14 hours earlier than Universal Coordinated Time or UTC, also called Greenwich Mean Time or GMT). That is Kiritimati, Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. I don't understand why it's the earliest time zone. But Australia (which it is part of) has some weird time zones.

The latest time zone is UTC -12 which is Baker Island. According to Wikipedia, it's uninhabited and in the Pacific Ocean.

I live in the Pacific Time Zone of the US which is eight hours behind of UTC (UTC -8) except during daylight saving time with it's seven hours behind (UTC -7). I would love to go on permanent daylight saving time but that's another subject.

There are some weird time zones. For example, there is an Australian time zone that is UTC +8.75. There are a lot of time zones that are a half hour off everyone else. For example two in Australia (Australia has six time zones if I counted correctly), parts of India, at least parts of Afghanistan, and Iran, and Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. 

There is a border you can walk across and get jet lag because the time zones are 4.5 hours apart (that's China and Afghanistan)(Assuming you could walk across that border). China has one time zone for the entire country, which must be convenient in some ways yet weird in the western parts of the country.

Why is "Universal Coordinated Time" abbreviated "UTC"? That's explained here.

Do you have to deal with time zones? Or are they just boring to you? Or do they confuse you? Let me know in the comments below.

Two Scoops

Here's an example of how my brain works.

For years we had an ice maker in our freezer/fridge combination. I loved it, ice through the door, crushed or "cubed" (they were half-crescents). The guy who repaired my appliances kept telling me he wouldn't have one because of the "liability." I was wondering what he meant by that.

Then one day not long ago, I was sitting in my basement office and I heard water running. I looked in the furnace room and water was coming from the ceiling. I assumed a pipe broke. I ran upstairs to get a bucket and noticed the kitchen floor was flooded. It looked like it was coming from the fridge. I pulled it out but the back was dry. Then I noticed the front of the freezer section was wet. I opened the freezer and water was pouring out of the ice maker. I hit it with my fist and it stopped. I'm assuming a valve was stuck open. I turned off the water to the ice maker and turned it off.

TL;DR: We bought a GE Solo nugget ice maker. If it springs a leak, the worst it could do is spill the three quarts that the side tank holds. It makes a good amount of nugget ice. One problem with it is that it wants to be cleaned about every 12 days which is a twenty-hour process (seriously). The other problem is it likes to howl at times. Or hammer. Not sure what causes that.

The ice maker came with a little scoop to get the ice out of the bin. It takes just over two scoops to fill a 16-ounce glass. And that reminded me of an old marketing campaign for cereal. My mind doing what it does (making weird connections). 

In the 1980s, Kellogg's Raisin Bran was advertised as having "two scoops of raisin in every box." Here's a typical commercial. And it got me thinking, how did they get away with that? Why didn't the FTC call them on it? But "scoop" isn't exactly an SI unit of measure. Those scoops could be whatever size Kellogg's wanted them to be. 

Now, I assume Kellogg's probably precisely measured out the raisins in each box in order to control costs and I'm sure they didn't use "scoops." I think raisins are more expensive than the cereal they put them in.

And that's an example of how my brain works.

Does your brain make weird connections like that? Let me know in the comments below.

Yellow Headlights

A while back I saw a car in the U.S. with yellow headlights. I thought "that's weird." Probably some after-market addition. I wondered if they were legal. I see a lot of illegal after-market changes to cars, mostly LED lights that show red or blue at the front of the car.

In one country in Europe, yellow headlights were not only legal, but required.

Have you ever noticed maybe in old movies set in Europe or maybe you've traveled to Europe and seen it: some older cars in Europe have yellow headlights.

If you do see that, you immediately should know the car is from France. 

In 1937, France mandated yellow headlights to, "filter out violet, blue, and indigo light, which cause glare and dazzle for oncoming motorists" according to Google AI. Also, during World War II, it helped distinguish civilian cars from those of the Germans.

The French required yellow headlights on civilian cars until 1993, when European Union laws superseded French law. And EU law does not allow yellow headlights. If you're French and you want to put yellow headlights on your car, it has to predate 1993. Otherwise, it's illegal.

It would be interesting to see if the yellow headlights achieved their goal of making the road safer in France. Did anyone do a study on that? I don't know. 

I frankly think the yellow headlights are ugly. But that's just me.

What do you think of yellow headlights. Let me know in the comments below.