Ride, Sally Ride, Aboard Your Rocket Ship

This evening when I came home from work I opened my laptop to access the internet, my home page is Google, so the ever changing Google-Doodle masthead is the first thing I see. Today’s doodle caught my eye right away because it showed a picture of the Space Shuttle assembling the word Google with its robotic arm.  Running my mouse over the doodle revealed that today (May 26, 2015) was Sally Ride’s 64^th birthday.

When Sally Ride died in 2012, I was deeply saddened by the brief announcement and obituary I discovered on the MSN website and wished that it would say more about who she was and her accomplishments.  The article duly noted that she the first American woman in space and that she had a PhD in astrophysics, both of which were major accomplishments, especially in the United States where women have been perpetually held back by good ol’ American chauvinism.  Sally was preceded in space by two Soviet women, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982.

The fact that the United States was a mere 20 years overdue with its inclusion of women as astronauts is quite telling. With Sally’s trip aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in June 1983, one can only speculate that it was partially (or mostly) a public relations move on NASA’s behalf.  With Cosmonaut Savitskaya’s trip aboard Soyuz T-7 in August of 1982, NASA was under the gun to not be shown up by Russia’s obviously superior egalitarianism. Fortunately for NASA, Sally had a lot more foresight than her Old-school employer and provided the lumbering institution with the perfect Poster Child for their embarrassing belatedness.

 Despite the nearly never mentioned glass ceiling that American businesses and institutions perpetuate, Sally managed to meet the stringent qualifications when NASA put out the call for the new class of astronauts to accompany the next generation technology of the Space Shuttle program. Sally made the final cut along with five other women, but she and her gender faced a multitude of challenges from a conservative organization populated by stuffy executives and former military test pilots. It was due to open-minded individuals like Apollo astronaut Alan Bean and a few insightful others, within the public relations department, that NASA began to recognized that the gender and minority gap within the organization was working against their desired public image of being the leaders of a new generation.

It became obvious that NASA was fast tracking their women candidates in hopes of at least qualifying with the Russians for the second woman in space, but then Russia showed their cards with the launch of Soyuz T-7 which was strangely coincidental with Ride’s trip aboard Space Shuttle STS-7. It seems seven to be a lucky number with astronauts, beginning with the first seven astronauts selected for the Mercury missions, America’s premiere manned space program.

 

      

Aside from the obvious accomplishment of being the first American woman in space (and to date, the youngest person ever to go into space), Sally holds a special place in my heart for another accomplishment and that is being the “mold breaker” of what kind of person would be going into space.  Before Sally and her generation, astronauts were basically pilots, typically test pilots and mostly military pilots.  To me, Sally Ride’s trip into orbit was the turning point that would lead to the democratization of the space program and the promise of spacefaring finally coming of age.  After this people of various backgrounds and professions, and not just pilots, would be finding their way into space and the United States would actually become a spacefaring nation.

This promise was quite heartening for me because of my own experiences with the hopes of being among those who would go into space, not as pilots but as professionals like engineers, scientists and tradesmen.  Adventurers and colonists taking their professions and families into what Gene Rodenberry called (via Captain Kirk);  “The Final Frontier”.  Like Sally Ride, who had been discouraged from pursuing an interest in science as a profession by her teachers, I had been discouraged from pursuing a career in the space program purely on the grounds that I wore glasses, which (at that time) would automatically disqualify me for “test pilot’ style astronaut training. Consequently, she and I each spent our tearful teenage nights cursing those who should have been encouraging instead discouraging our youthful ambitions.

However, Sally’s determination (and lack of eyewear) was stronger than her teacher’s discouraging advice and history attests to her strength, courage and fortitude. Despite the odds she became America’s first woman in space and an inspiration to generations of would be spacefarers. To me Sally Ride is The First Lady of the American space program and a kindred spirit, I grant her all the admiration that anyone can muster for someone who they have actually never met, yet always admired.  When I read of her succumbing to Pancreatic Cancer in July of 2012, it had only been two years since my diagnosis of impending Pancreatic Failure, it seemed to me that she and I were more than just comrades in dreams, but travelers on the same journey.   With our eyes on the stars, we dreamed of a time when space would be open for anyone willing to take the risk that comes with the call of adventure. She taking the high road aboard her space ships and me taking the low road aboard my sailing ships.

Ride, Sally Ride aboard your mystery ship. I look forward to someday meeting up with you; Where the ocean meets the sky, we’ll be sailing.

Miles

 

May 26, 2015

 

Life and Death as Variations in the Quantum Field

People who know me personally, know that I rarely keep things in the tidy boxes that others do.  In fact there is really nothing “tidy” about me.  I have never been one to file things neatly, or compartmentalize my life.  My work, hobbies, family, philosophy, politics, worldview and spirituality are all arranged in my life in the same manner that one arranges shredded lettuce, tomato wedges, cheese chunks, and carrot slices in a tossed salad.

As a consequence of this, I have absolutely no trouble relating seemingly unrelated perspectives, or seeing the commonality in things that seem to others to be polar opposites. Which is why I believe things like the Heart Sutra make perfect sense to me and the Tao te Ching reads like a recipe book. Likewise, I have never really struggled with relating the supposed mysteries of Quantum Mechanics with the workings of the everyday world. I have come to believe that the reason why Quantum Mechanics seem different from the mechanics of the commonly experienced world, is that we are looking at them as being different, rather than seeing the similarities.

A reminder of the similarities between everyday life and Quantum Mechanics, was painfully revealed to me in the recent death of my friend and Dharma brother Thích Tâm Hy (Scott Williams). I had just come in the house after our regular Wednesday evening practice session, to check my e-mail and status of my friends on facebook.  About three postings down the page was a picture of my dear friend as I saw him just this last summer, with a caption that read that he had died in a hiking accident the day before.  Of course, I was both shocked and deeply sorrowed by this sad news, and my heart instantly went out to all his friends and family. I immediately began thinking about him and while doing so came to the realization that, to me, his death and news of his death were one and the same event.  As far as I was concerned, Tâm Hy had been alive right up until the moment that found out that he had died, any time difference between the two events had no relevance to my experience of them. To me he had died at the very moment that I found out that he was dead.

It was while thinking about this, that I was reminded of the Quantum Mechanical paradox known as Schrödinger’s Cat. In this allegorical thought experiment the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, compared the strange nature of quantum superpositions, to the unknown state of a cat in a sealed box. Noting that in quantum systems, particles such as an atoms or photons can exist in a combination of multiple states corresponding to many different possible outcomes. This theory, which is known as the Copenhagen Interpretation, states that a quantum system remains a superposition of all possibilities until interacted with, or witnessed by, an external observer. It is only when the observer witnesses the event that the superposition collapses into a single state.  

In his rather Rube Goldberg description, Schrödinger imagines a cat in a box with a flask of poisonous gas, a radioactive source and a detector that shatters the flask whenever the random timing of a single atom decaying is detected. Since the atom really has no predictable time for this to happen, it could happen at any time, leaving the state of the cat unknown until the box is opened.  Under these conditions, the cat cannot be assumed to be either alive or dead, but must be considered both alive and dead until the moment either state is confirmed by observation.

I had to ask myself; how is this any different than what I had just experienced with my discovery of Tâm Hy’s death? As far as I was concerned, Tâm Hy was alive right up until I knew he wasn’t, so it occurred to me that Schrodinger’s seemingly bizarre scenario is actually an applicable analogy for just about everything we don’t know. All possible conditions (superpositions) can exist right up to the moment that our experience reduces them to one.  In the same way that the Heart Sutra interchanges emptiness with form, Schrödinger envisions a cat that is both alive and dead until proven otherwise. The ramifications of this realization should be obvious, especially to those of us who view the world from a Buddhist perspective.  Unless they are in contact with us at this very moment every living person we know, like Schrödinger’s Cat, is in an unknown state of Quantum Flux. 

Unless we are currently interacting with someone, they exist only in our memories. We cannot assume them to be alive just because we remember them as being alive, or sincerely wish them to still be alive. We must be prepared to know that all suppositions are equally valid until we know otherwise.  While we can have some solace in knowing that the probability of our loved ones being alive is favorable, we can never automatically take that assumption as fact until we hear from them again.   Even recent news of their good health is no guarantee. In the ever flowing evolution of existence everything changes from moment to moment, nothing remains the same, all conditions are impermanent.

So this is where the Scientist Miles meets the Buddhist Miles in the salad bowl, alongside the tomato wedges and carrot slices, are the Heart Sutra and Schrödinger’s Cat.  My world resides in a universe where everything is intricately interconnected and the more I have come understand existence in the physical plane, the more I have come to understand existence in the spiritual plane.  I can make no assumptions that my desires that no ill befall my loved ones will be fulfilled. Nor for that matter, can I ever assume that I really know anything for certain. I must simply live my life as if every moment could be my last and every encounter with a loved one as my last opportunity to let them know how much they mean to me.

While I know there is truly no separation between us, I must always admit that our relative coexistence is an ever evolving state of flux. I must always be aware that what was true just moments ago is not necessarily true now. Knowing this, how can I ever leave any of you without letting you know how much I really care?

With Love,

Miles

Looking into the Eye of God

 

This is a photo of the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a Planetary Nebula in the constellation Aquarius, as photographed though my diminutive 72mm refractor. Planetary Nebulas get their name from the fact that they often look like planets through a small telescopes. The Helix nebula has been given the moniker the “Eye of God” because of its photographic resemblance to a giant eye, looking back at us from space.

Humanity has long gazed into space looking for a connection, something that tells us that all that we see is relevant to our existence.   All primitive cultures developed cosmological stories that attempted to explain how “we” came to be, and nearly all link us to “the heavens.”  Even those stories which place our origins on, or sometimes in, the Earth eventually link us to the stars in one way or another. In our modern Western tradition, we have both the Judeo/Christian religious tradition and ancient practices of Astrology which have historically connected us with the Cosmos.

In our religious traditions, we have the notion of an anthropomorphic construct of (an often all too human) creator deity, who resides in (or beyond) the heavens, looking down on us like a herdsman looking down from a hill top, overseeing his flock.  While those of a more mechanical mind, have construed more of a clockwork universe where the positions of the sun, stars and planets somehow govern our daily actions. While we Moderns now know that both these perspectives are faulty, we can never seem to get over the feeling that somehow that these outdated notions are still correct in some obscure way. I have had many friends and students that have said that when they look up into the night sky, they feel as if someone was looking back at them. While I know many more people who still refer to themselves as being Virgos or Libras when it comes to explaining away one or more of their personality traits.

I have spent my entire life looking into the sky and making connections. My perspectives have sometimes been influenced by popular beliefs, practices and traditions, but without fail, I always return to a more visceral, personal relationship. Not a person to person relationship like that of the Jews, Muslims or Christians, whereby some other entity with its own personality, interacts with mine; nor a physical oppositional relationship, where I am here and the universe is  somewhere “out there”; but rather a relationship whereby I am looking into my own mind, learning how to relate to myself.  

I have long abandoned any notions that I am something separate from the Universe, or somehow something “in” the Universe, like fish in an aquarium. When I look up into the night sky, I am the Universe looking back on myself.  This is not just some abstract metaphysical concept, but rather an actual point of perspective, no different than looking down at my torso and admitting that the body I see is mine. Since my first Near Death Experience at fifteen, I have realized that there is no other place but here, and that I am nothing other than this perspective of Universe looking back onto itself.  Every manifestation of the Cosmos is just another aspect of this inseparable whole, with each and every sentient being, just being another Eye of God, looking back at itself from another perspective.

The Universe is the whole realm of existence, the realm where; men and beasts, planets and stars, energy and atoms, are all just various aspects of the same inseparable continuum. There is no “there and here” nor “them and us”- there is just “here” and there is just “us”...and the sooner we all figure this out, the sooner we will stop trying to kill ourselves because of our ignorance, envy, hatred and greed.  All constructs of God and/or all constructs of the Universe, are simply overarching constructs of ourselves, and we must come to understand that there simply is nothing else.

Every time I look through my telescope, I know I am looking into the Eye of God, because he and I are of the same flesh, and seeing each other eye to eye, and seeing these things exactly as they are, is the only way I will ever understand who really I am.

Miles

 

 

 

 



A Flight to the Far Side of the Moon

 A Tripel Projection of the Moon showing the near side (within yellow lines) the areas of Lunar Liberation (between green and yellow lines) and the Far Side of the Moon (outside green lines)
 

Flight to the Far Side of the Moon

Back in the mid-sixties when the Apollo moon landing program was the end all of space news, the knowledge and technology we take for granted today was no more than science fiction. 

In 1968, NASA announced that the Apollo 8 mission would take three men around the moon and back as a preliminary flight to prepare for the 1969 lunar landing. This mission was going to be a monumental accomplishment that would include humanities first look at the Earth from space and the far side of the Moon, which is never visible from the Earth. 

On hearing this I was instantly fascinated with the question of what the far side of the moon would actually look like.  At fourteen, I had already spent four years at Star Base One (my family’s back yard) with my eyes glued to the eyepiece, examining every detail of the moon that my telescopes would reveal.  Two years earlier, I had upgraded from the Gilbert “toy" telescope that Santa had brought me, to a “real" telescope that I had purchased from Edmund Scientific (through a mail order ad found in the back of the Popular Science magazine).

The Moon I knew (and for that matter, the Moon everyone knew) was really rather one sided and basically flat.  Even though we all know that the moon is a sphere, for all intents and purposes, it is generally portrayed as a disk with surface features somewhat resembling the relief imprint on the face of a coin.  Anything that was beyond the horizons of Moon’s Earth facing side, were basically Terra Incognita (unknown lands). Since the moon does not rotate on its polar axis like the Earth and the other planets, which would otherwise reveal hidden details, the Far Side was still a great mystery. 

Due a force known as Tidal Locking, the Moon is fixed into a synchronous rotation with the Earth, like two twirling skaters facing each other with their hands locked together. Because of this, we are only able to see 59% of the moon through the course of a month; the other 41% is what we refer to as the Far Side of the Moon.  The 9% over the full 50% (the half that we can see) is due to to the moon actually being a sphere and an apparent visual rocking motion known as Lunar Liberation.  Late in the lunar month we can see a little bit more of one side, while early in the lunar month we can see just a bit more of the other.  This is like being able to see more of someone’s ears when they are facing us by slight tipping our heads from one side to the other. 

 

As I began to wonder what the Far Side of the Moon would look like, it was these visual areas of Lunar Liberation that I began to study. I had figured that these “ears” of the moon would give me a glimpse of what the rest of the lunar sphere would look like, and I began to imagine what the Apollo 8 astronauts would actually see. I assumed that if I could see any relative consistency in the lunar terrain in both the liberation extremities, that I could extrapolate some form of overall perspective.   With lunar maps in hand and my eye studying the moon’s surface through the telescope, I strategically planned my observing sessions on either side of the New Moon, the exact times that the liberated areas would be visible.

...and MILES

 

Applying what I would later learn to be a technique used by both Galileo and Einstein (a thought experiment), I imagined myself flying to the moon and circumnavigating its circumference as the Apollo astronauts would in their spacecraft. Before this, I had often imagined myself flying through space, but this was the first time I had actually thought of using this technique as a way of applying science to imagination in order to gain insight.  In this particular flight of the imagination, I actually envisioned myself flying like Superman with no ship or even a space suit. Lying on my back in a reclining lawn chair, I looked at the moon one last time then closed my eyes. I could practically feel myself rising through the air and accelerating into space.  Even at fourteen, I knew enough about space that everything I imagined on this journey was based on my scientific knowledge and personal observations, the only thing I had to “see” in my mind’s eye, that I had not already known, was the Far Side of the Moon.

As I approached lunar orbit, I gazed upon the darkened but familiar terrain of the Near Side, which was now only visible due to the Earthshine.  To the Lunar East, the slim crescent began to expand as I rounded the corner of the Liberated Territory.  Here, I clearly saw the multitude of craters that my maps and observations had shown. As I progressed around to the Far Side, traveling toward the distant horizon, I saw no lava plains, only countless thousands of craters of every imaginable size. From east to west the familiar dark lava plain “Seas” of the Earth facing side were conspicuously absent.  The distant vistas I imagined while flying over the Far Side were an endless landscape of craters and mountains, as far as my mind’s eye could see.    

 

 

Earthrise as seen from Apollo 8

Since my studies of the Moon’s liberated extremities showed only craters, I had intuitively assumed that this was indicative of the entire Far Side. Although it might have been logical to assume that the Far Side of the Moon would have the same general appearance as the Near Side, what little evidence I had available just told me that craters would overwhelmingly dominate.   While much of my certainty came from my knowledge of the moon based on my reading, I really trusted my intuition and what my thought experiment “flight” around the Moon had revealed.  To my thinking; if the moon had acted as a “meteor magnet” that generally protected the Earth from bombardment, as theorized, then the Far Side of the Moon should look as if it had been blasted by a shotgun.

I impatiently waited for collaborative documentation to return with Apollo 8 in photographs and published descriptions, it wasn’t too long before my speculative theory was confirmed. The Far Side of the Moon was indeed predominated by craters and there were no lava plain seas.  Only one or two of the larger craters showed lava flooded basins, leaving the rest of the Far Side looking like the proverbial image of Swiss Cheese.
 

The Far Side of the Moon 

 My flight of the imagination had given me a glimpse of the moon that no one before the Apollo 8 astronauts had ever actually seen. For weeks after seeing the pictures returning from the moon, it was as if I were walking on clouds. I felt that I had developed a sound hypothesis based on research and observation, and that the Apollo 8 mission had substantiated my theory. I figured myself a true scientist and felt that I was beginning to grasp astronomy on a much deeper level. No longer was my “star gazing” simply pastime of admiring the sky, it was developing into an understanding of the universe that virtually went beyond the stars.

Twelve years later (1980) when I watched the premiere episode of Cosmos, I almost leaped out of my seat when Carl Sagan introduce his "Spaceship of the Imagination" as a way of exploring the Universe.  My initial flight around the moon in 1968 had only been the beginning of my adventures in space.  After that maiden voyage around the moon, I repeatedly found myself flying off into the cosmos and diving into the deepest crevasses of the sea. Whenever I discovered places or found things that I didn't fully understand, or as I worked on things such as engines or instruments, I would imagine myself shrinking down and delving into them as if space and solidity had no boundaries.  By combining my understanding with my imagination, I found that I could see things from the inside out, as if I were actually inside them.
 

Sagan's Spaceship of the Imagination



Although I had never bothered to take an imaginary ship with me on these adventures, I soon adopted that perspective when relating my experiences with others. Having also watched Cosmos, other people seemed more comfortable with the idea when I made the correlation between looking into space and going there in a virtual way. Today virtual worlds abound and there are desktop planetarium programs like Celestia, that allow anyone to virtually fly through the Galaxy and see the Universe up close and personal from perspectives out in space.

The Science Fiction world of the 1960’s exists today because of people with imagination, people who were not afraid to take flight in "Spaceships of the Imagination" and trust in what these virtual flights revealed to them.  There is an art to expressing and experiencing what we intuitively understand and if we allow ourselves to be artists as well as scientists, we can freely travel throughout space and time and come to understand this beautiful Universe as our true home.

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am… [but] I would have been surprised if I had been wrong.   I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”  
  
– Albert Einstein

Miles, Star Base One, May 22, 2014