Mountain Views News     Logo: MVNews     Saturday, January 23, 2016

MVNews this week:  Page 14

14

THE WORLD AROUND US

 Mountain Views News Saturday, January 23, 2016 


CALTECH RESEARCHERS FIND EVIDENCE OF A REAL NINTH PLANET

Caltech researchers have found evidence of a 
giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated 
orbit in the distant solar system. The object, which 
the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has 
a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits 
about 20 times farther from the Sun on average 
than does Neptune (which orbits the Sun at an 
average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it 
would take this new planet between 10,000 and 
20,000 years to make just one full orbit around 
the Sun.

 The researchers, Konstantin Batygin and 
Mike Brown, discovered the planet’s existence 
through mathematical modeling and computer 
simulations but have not yet observed the object 
directly.

 “This would be a real ninth planet,” says 
Brown, Caltech’s Richard and Barbara Rosenberg 
Professor of Planetary Astronomy. “There have 
only been two true planets discovered since 
ancient times, and this would be a third. It’s 
a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system 
that’s still out there to be found, which is pretty 
exciting.”

 Brown notes that the putative ninth planet—at 
5,000 times the mass of Pluto—is sufficiently large 
that there should be no debate about whether 
it is a true planet. Unlike the class of smaller 
objects now known as dwarf planets, Planet Nine 
gravitationally dominates its neighborhood of the 
solar system. In fact, it dominates a region larger 
than any of the other known planets -- a fact that 
Brown says makes it “the most planet-y of the 
planets in the whole solar system.”

 Batygin and Brown describe their work in the 
current issue of the Astronomical Journal and 
show how Planet Nine helps explain a number 
of mysterious features of the field of icy objects 
and debris beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper 
Belt.

 “Although we were initially quite skeptical 
that this planet could exist, as we continued to 
investigate its orbit and what it would mean for 
the outer solar system, we become increasingly 
convinced that it is out there,” says Batygin, an 
assistant professor of planetary science. “For 
the first time in over 150 years, there is solid 
evidence that the solar system’s planetary census 
is incomplete.”

 The road to the theoretical discovery was not 
straightforward. In 2014, a former postdoc of 
Brown’s, Chad Trujillo, and his colleague Scott 
Shepherd published a paper noting that 13 of the 
most distant objects in the Kuiper Belt are similar 
with respect to an obscure orbital feature. To 
explain that similarity, they suggested the possible 
presence of a small planet. Brown thought the 
planet solution was unlikely, but his interest was 
piqued.

 He took the problem down the hall to Batygin, 
and the two started what became a year-and-a-
half-long collaboration to investigate the distant 
objects. As an observer and a theorist, respectively, 
the researchers approached the work from very 
different perspectives—Brown as someone who 
looks at the sky and tries to anchor everything 
in the context of what can be seen, and Batygin 
as someone who puts himself within the context 
of dynamics, considering how things might work 
from a physics standpoint. Those differences 
allowed the researchers to challenge each other’s 
ideas and to consider new possibilities.

 “I would bring in some of these observational 
aspects; he would come back with arguments 
from theory, and we would push each other. I 
don’t think the discovery would have happened 
without that back-and-forth,” says Brown. “It 
was perhaps the most fun year of working on a 
problem in the solar system that I’ve ever had.”

 You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@
MtnViewsNews.com.


OUT TO PASTOR 

A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder


CHRISTOPHER Nyerges

DYLAN VS. BEETHOVEN: A LESSON 
IN FAMILY COMMUNICATION

NOW I LAY ME DOWN TO COUNT SHEEP

 

All my life, sleep has been a 
most trusted companion. I 
never leave home without it. It does not matter 
where I am or what I am doing, I can sleep at the 
drop of a hat.

For years, I have heard of people who had 
problems sleeping at night. I have never been one 
of those people. I can sit down in a chair and in a 
few winks, the snoring machine begins.

I can never understand people who could not 
sleep. I always thought they were kind of joking 
about the whole scenario.

Then it happened to me this week.

Whatever led up to this occasion, I am not sure, 
but all of a sudden, I found myself in bed at night 
and my eyes would not close. Every time I closed 
my eyes, they snapped open almost violently.

I tossed. I turned. I did everything I could think 
of but nothing seemed to help me go to sleep. 
This is the first time something like this has ever 
happened to me. No matter what I did, I could 
not go to sleep.

I lay quietly staring up at the ceiling. Nothing 
seemed to work.

Thinking if I got up and walked around a little 
bit, maybe get a drink of water, it would help me 
relax and I could lie down and go to sleep. It did 
not help. I was just as wide-awake when I got 
back to my bed, as I was when I left it.

When I got into bed, a thought struck me. 
Out in the kitchen were some fresh chocolate 
chip cookies that the Gracious Mistress of the 
Parsonage had baked that day. Of course, she 
gave me the usual warning that I was not allowed 
to touch them. This, however, was an emergency.

What if eating one of those chocolate chip cookies 
made me relax enough to fall asleep? I think the 
proof is in the eating.

Slowly I extricated myself from bed and my wife 
muttered, “You’re not getting up are you?”

“I forgot something out in the kitchen that I need 
to go get now.”

“Remember,” she said in somewhat of a stupor, 
“do not touch those cookies.”

Thinking to myself as I shuffled off into the 
kitchen, “What if eating one of those chocolate 
chip cookies made me fall asleep?”

I must confess that I have a curiosity streak in me. 
I like to explore things and find out if something 
is true or not. Moreover, this cookie-sleeping 
solution was intriguing me so much that I really 
did not hear what she was mumbling.

Tiptoeing out into the kitchen, I turned on the 
light as carefully as possible and walked over to 
where the cookies were. They looked so delicious. 
They looked so inviting. In fact, I think one of 
them winked at me.

“She won’t miss one cookie,” I thought to myself. 
After all, there were dozens of cookies there on 
the cookie sheet.

Very carefully, I lifted one from the cookie sheet 
and took one luxurious sniff. Wow!

I have not smelled anything like this for a long 
time. Nothing quite compares to the smell of a 
freshly baked chocolate chip cookie.

Before I knew it, that cookie was in my mouth 
and quickly melted into a delicious sauce of 
warm delight and it was gone. It tasted so good. 
In fact, it tasted like another one.

I am not sure how many cookies I ate that night, 
but they were delicious. After this eating frenzy, 
I thought it was about time to slip back into the 
bedroom and go to sleep. I should be ready to 
sleep now.

I laid myself down and tucked myself in hoping 
that sleep would invade my body.

Unfortunately, sleep was nowhere to be found for 
me.

I once heard somebody say that if you cannot 
sleep at night, start counting sheep and within no 
time you would fall fast asleep. At this point in my 
sleepless night, I would try just about anything.

So, I started counting sheep. One, two, three, four 
and I kept counting until I hit 197. At this point, 
I could not fall asleep because all of the bleating 
of the sheep in my room kept me awake. They 
simply would not quiet down.

I laid there quietly waiting for the sheep to leave 
and for the dawn to arrive.

I heard my clock click on the hour every hour. 
Then a light began to glow through my window. 
It was the sun. The night was over and the day 
had begun.

About this time, I fell asleep.

“Wake up,” someone was saying as they were 
violently shaking me. “You’re not going to sleep 
all day are you?”

I got up, drug myself to the bathroom, then went 
out to the kitchen to sit down for my morning 
coffee.

The night is over and another day has come.

I was reminded of a special verse in the Bible that 
says, “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up 
late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth 
his beloved sleep” (Psalms 127:2).

As I meditated upon this verse, the thought came 
to me; the more I try to do something, like sleep, 
the less successful I am. What I need to learn to 
do is to give everything over to God and trust 
Him.

[Nyerges is the authorof 
10 books, conducts 
survival skills classes, 
and has a weekly 
podcast at Preparedness 
Radio Network. He can be contacted at www.
ChristopherNyerges.com, or Box 41834, Eagle 
Rock, CA 90041]

 One Saturday, with no warning, Paul Martinez 
engaged my father in the relative value of pop vs. 
classical music. This was probably around 1964 
when Bob Dylan was the king of pop, and seemed 
to be the messenger of the “secret messages” to 
the younger generation. All my older brothers 
could fairly accurately be called Dylan fans, if 
not Dylan worshippers. We all seemed to regard 
listening to Dylan as a more meaningful spiritual 
experience than sitting through Mass at Saint 
Elizabeth’s.

 No one remembers how it began, but it was a 
legendary conversation that lasted for hours. My 
father’s argument was that the music and lyrics of 
Bob Dylan were of no lasting value and the young 
people were simply too ignorant to realize it yet. 
Frank, my father, said that Dylan would be forgotten 
in a few years. He compared Dylan to Beethoven 
and Bach, and other classical musicians, and 
explained that Dylan was not in any way at the level 
of the classical composers. Paul wholeheartedly 
disagreed.

 Their conversation began in the living room 
where Frank would sit in his easy reclining chair 
and watch TV. Paul sat near him on the couch. 
Everyone in the household only became aware of 
their conversation wAhen we realized they were 
still at it after about an hour. As the conversation’s 
volume level would rise from time to time, we could 
all hear what they were saying: “Of course you can 
put Dylan in Beethoven’s category,” said Paul in 
his deep and sincere voice. “Have you actually ever 
listened to what he’s saying in his songs?”

 “He just cackles,” said Frank, “and you really 
can’t even make out his words most of the time. 
And I’m not even talking about the words. And it’s 
only important, as you call it, if you take an hour to 
explain it all to me. I don’t need any explanation 
to know that Bach’s music really is good,” said 
Frank as Paul patiently waited his turn in this lively 
exchange.

 Well, I’m not saying that Dylan and Bach and the 
other classicals can be compared directly. Obviously, 
they can’t,” said Paul, giving some ground to Frank. 
“But there is obviously something that millions of 
people are responding to that you aren’t seeing – 
or hearing. Dylan is not just music; he is also the 
message. So we’ve got to examine some of the words 
and see what he’s really saying.”

 This went on, back and forth, quiet and loud, 
for another hour. They opened up the record player 
and began playing select songs for the other to listen 
to.

 We prepared the usual Saturday night dinner – 
something like hotdogs and baked beans and salad 
and some other vegetables. We took a plate into 
Frank and Paul, and we didn’t expect them to come 
into the kitchen as their debate entered the third 
hour.

 We heard silence and then the lyrics of Dylan. Sad 
Eyed Lady of the Low lands. Hey Mr. Tambourine 
Man. Blowing in the Wind. The Times They Are A 
Changing. After each short selection, there would 
be a brief silence, presumably as Paul removed 
the needle, and then they would talk about it. We 
couldn’t hear all the details. Then there would be 
a round of some of the classical musicians’ work, a 
silence, and commentary by Frank. 

 We cleared the table and washed the dishes, and 
I set up the chess board and began a game with a 
neighbor who dropped by. Our game lasted nearly 
an hour, and Robert won. The Dylan-Classical 
debate continued.

 And then, all of a sudden, Frank and Paul were 
standing in the kitchen doorway, shaking hands as 
Paul had to depart. My brother David hadn’t said 
much the whole night, but he never did. 

 It was late and Paul had to go home and so it was 
over. A stalemate, we presumed. No clear winner, 
each side having done their best to promote their 
own arguments to win over the other. But both Paul 
and Frank were unbudgeable and they each stuck to 
their guns.For the rest of us, the conversation about 
the conversation had just begun. 

 “Why doesn’t he ever have meaningful 
conversations with us,” David asked to no one 
in particular. “He engaged with Paul when Paul 
challenged, but shouldn’t he take it upon himself to 
engage us,” asked David. No one really cared, but it 
was clear in the conversation about the conversation 
that David didn’t really care about whose music was 
best. To David, the conversation was an example of 
a father that didn’t take adequate interest in his own 
children, but would take extra time and supreme 
effort in a very engaging discussion – but not with 
David. 

 I inwardly agreed with David, but I didn’t say 
anything. In some very primal way, I am sure that 
I longed to have a father who took an interest in 
me, who talked to me, who taught me things, who 
engaged me in his activities for our mutual benefit. 
I am sure that David had a good point that Frank 
should do these sorts of things, but I was not bitter 
about the fact that he did not do so.

 The rest of us had probably long ago accepted 
Frank for what and who he was. To me, Frank was 
neither good nor bad, right nor wrong – he simply 
was my father, doing what he did in his patterns 
of somewhat predictable behavior. But to David, 
Frank’s conversation was like a slap in the face, 
saying that he can take the time with a friend of the 
family, but would not take the time with his own 
children. At least that’s how I took David’s reaction.

 Depending on who you asked during the various 
conversations about the conversation in the weeks 
and months that followed, the entire event was 
amusing, meaningless, interesting, a waste of time, 
insightful, and/or demonstrated that Frank was 
capable of in-depth abstract thought and could 
maintain an intellectual conversation and hold his 
own for hours. 

Though I generally disagreed with Frank’s premise, 
his performance definitely boosted my image of 
him. And likewise my image of Paul was greatly 
enlarged. Here was a peer of my brother who 
could debate with intensity and authority, and try 
to convince my father of a point of view which I 
held, but felt totally unable to communicate in any 
meaningful way.

Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com