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THE WORLD AROUND US
Mountain Views News Saturday, January 30, 2016
1 TRILLION KILOMETERS APART: A LONELY PLANET AND ITS DISTANT STAR
A team of astronomers in the UK, USA, and
Australia have found a planet, until now thought
to be a free-floating or lonely planet, in a huge
orbit around its star. Incredibly the object,
designated as 2MASS J2126, is about 1 trillion
kilometers from the star, or about 7,000 times the
distance from the Earth to the Sun.
In the last five years a number of free-
floating planets have been found. These are
gas-giant worlds like Jupiter that lack the mass
for the nuclear reactions that make stars shine.
Measuring the temperatures of these objects is
relatively straightforward, but it depends on both
mass and age. This means astronomers need to
find out how old these objects are, before they
can find out if they are lightweight enough to be
planets or if they are heavier “failed stars” known
as brown dwarfs.
US-based researchers found 2MASS J2126 in
an infrared sky survey, flagging it as a possible
young and hence low-mass object. In 2014
Canadian researchers identified 2MASS J2126 as
a possible member of a 45 million year old group
of stars and brown dwarfs known as the Tucana
Horologium Association. This made it young
and low enough in mass to be classified as a free-
floating planet.
In the same region of the sky, TYC 9486-927-1
is a star that had been identified as being young,
but not as a member of any known group of
young stars. Until now no one had suggested that
TYC 9486-927-1 and 2MASS J2126 were in some
way linked.
Lead author Dr. Niall Deacon of the University
of Hertfordshire has spent the last few years
searching for young stars with companions in
wide orbits. As part of the work, his team looked
through lists of known young stars, brown dwarfs
and free-floating planets to see if any of them
could be related. They found that TYC 9486-927-
1 and 2MASS J2126 are moving through space
together and are both about 104 light-years from
the Sun, implying that they are associated.
“This is the widest planet system found so far
and both the members of it have been known
for eight years,” said Dr. Deacon, “but nobody
had made the link between the objects before.
The planet is not quite as lonely as we first
thought, but it’s certainly in a very long-distance
relationship.”
Planet 2MASS J2126 is estimated to have
between 11.6 and 15 times the mass of Jupiter.
This placed it on the boundary between planets
and brown dwarfs.
2MASS J2126 is around 7,000 Earth-Sun
distances or 1 trillion kilometers away from
its parent star, giving it the widest orbit of any
planet found around another star. At such an
enormous distance it takes roughly 900,000 years
to complete one orbit, meaning it has completed
less than fifty orbits over its lifetime. There is
little prospect of any life on an exotic world like
this, but any inhabitants would see their ‘Sun’ as
no more than a bright star, and might not even
imagine they were connected to it at all.
You can contact Bob Eklund at: b.eklund@
MtnViewsNews.com.
[An artist’s impression of 2MASS J2126. Credit: University of Hertfordshire / Neil Cook]
OUT TO PASTOR
A Weekly Religion Column by Rev. James Snyder
CHRISTOPHER Nyerges
WE LEARN FROM OUR FAILURES
A friend of mine has a saying,
"I'm going to get as old as I possibly can get."
From what I can tell, he has. I must agree with
his sentiment. Of course, the alternative is… well
you know. Another friend of mine likes to tell
me, "Brother, you're only as old as you feel." I am
not sure how old feels or if wrinkles are involved.
But, I am feeling quite fine, thank you.
Just the other day the Gracious Mistress of the
Parsonage came in from her workshop, sat
down on the couch and said, "Whew, I feel like
a hundred."
At the time, I did not know if she was talking
about dollars, pounds or years. Being the old fogey
that I am, I know there are times when silence
is golden and this was one of those golden
moments. But, what does a hundred feel like?
Is there some special sensation that pulsates
through the body when a person reaches that age
level? Or, is it the absence of anything pulsating
through your body?
Just this morning I got up with a sore knee and
could hardly walk to the bathroom. I complained
about it to my wife, who has no compunction
about expressing her opinions, said, "Well, you
are older than when you went to bed last night."
I did not know I was aging so rapidly. If this
keeps up, I will change from an old fogey into
an old geezer before I know it. The difference between
an old fogey and an old geezer is, an old
fogey walks around in a fog while the old geezer
cannot get up from his chair and wheezes a lot.
I was musing on the idea that getting old was a
lot of trouble with a lot of pain involved. Then
I remembered what a lot of trouble and pain it
was to be young. As a youngster, I thought many
times, "Oh, I can't wait to get old." I thought getting
older was the panacea for all of my problems.
I remember thinking that when I got older nobody
would boss me around. I would do whatever
I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it. I
could not wait for that time to come. I dreamed
of that mystical land. No parents to boss me
around; no teachers to tell me what to do and
when to do it; no siblings interfering with my
plans for the day. What a life I would lead when
I got older. I lived each day hoping to get older
which, in my thinking, was the door into that
area.
Just as I was
entering that
mysterious
realm of being
my own
boss, I got
married. Not
only that,
but several
years into
that marital bliss came the pitter-patter of little
feet in the hallway. I did not figure that getting
older would involve so many people in my life.
Just going to the bathroom, for example, was a
three-day wait. And, guess who is at the bottom
of the list?
I guess you know you have gotten old when you
give up the idyllic idea of being your own boss,
doing whatever you want to do, whenever you
want to do it.
Now that I think of it, it was a lot more painful
and a lot more troublesome to be young than it
is to be old. In fact, there are some marvelous
advantages of getting older.
For example, when my wife sends me to the
grocery store to get a few things I usually forget
something. Now, that I am getting older, I can
tell her that I do not remember things as I used
to, after all, I'm getting older.
Also, when someone invites me to go out and
play what they call senior softball, I can always
say, "I would love to, but my knees are acting up
now that I'm getting older."
This process of getting older has drastically improved
my social life. Every joke I hear is as if I
am hearing it for the very first time. It is amazing.
My wife and I were at a social function not too
long ago, and I was having a marvelous time.
When we got home, my wife said to me, "You
put on a good act tonight."
"What you mean I put on a good act?"
"You laughed at every joke tonight as if it was the
first time you ever heard it."
I did not have the heart to tell her that it was the
first time I heard those jokes. That is what is so
marvelous about getting old. You do not have to
burden your brain, and all the little gray cells in
it, with remembering things. My brain is now
free to enjoy the moment. It is wonderful getting
older.
When I was younger, it would embarrass me if I
forgot something. Of course, I blame that on my
parents and teachers who tried to pound into my
little head that I needed to remember everything.
Now that I am older, I do not have that burden.
It is good to remember some things. I remembered
one of my favorite Bible passages. "Trust
in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not
unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways
acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths"
(Proverbs 3:5-6 KJV).
I will never get too old to trust the Lord with all
my heart.
Rev. James L. Snyder
EVERYTHING OLD IS GETTING OLDER STILL
[Nyerges is the author
of over a dozen books
on self-reliance and
ethno-botany. He also
regularly conducts classes
and field trips. For more
information, go to www.
SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com, or Box 41834, Eagle
Rock, CA 90041]
Failure is not necessarily a bad thing.
Sometimes it is a necessary thing because it
teaches us (hopefully) what we do not want
to do. As someone once said, failures are
the cobblestones in the road to success. You
cannot avoid all failure. In fact, some failure
is a necessary part of the learning experience.
You attempt something, and you fail because
you did not know what you did not know.
You try again, you made modifications,
you do better, you achieve some success. You
would never have discovered what you did not
know if you hadn’t taken any action in the first
place.
In my field of teaching ethnobotany, I
am constantly learning new things, and I
constantly humbled by just how much there is
to know. I realized long ago that I will probably
never know all that can be known, and for that
reason, I have acquired books to simply look
up the information I may need. I have also
cultivated friendships in this field so that I can
simply ask someone else who knows what I do
not know. There is no disgrace in realizing the
gaps in what you know. If there is any disgrace,
it is the self-deception of pretending you have
no gaps in your knowledge.
I once had a teacher who refused to say he
didn’t know, even when it was clear that he
didn’t know. I was too young to realize he was
being tactful, or somehow trying to “save face.”
I just kept trying to find the answer and it took
other people to tell me that the man didn’t
know what I was trying to find out and that I
should seek answers elsewhere. Would it have
been a disgrace to just say “I don’t know”?
One of my mentors along the way shared
with me a simple tactic for dealing with this.
It’s a tactic that teachers of any field can and
should utilize. When I first began teaching,
people asked me all manner of questions. Some
I knew the answers, some I did not. My mentor
suggested that I substitute “I don’t know” for
“I’ll find out.” I carried postcards at the time
(this was way before everyone had email), and
each time I received a query to which I didn’t
know the answer, I had the person quickly
write the question on the postcard, and also
write his or her mailing address on the reverse
side.
I would then find the answer, write the
answer on the card, and mail it back to the
person. Yes, it was extra work, but, in part,
this enabled me to learn more by trying to find
an answer to something I didn’t know. Very
rarely was I unable to find a proper answer.
This tactic has allowed me to feel good about
myself, learn more, and not have to worry
about pretending that I know what I do not.
Over the years, I have often felt overwhelmed
by the amount of knowledge that is “out there”
to be learned. I have even had periods where
I worried that someone would come to my
classes, and “expose” me for not knowing
much at all! This has never happened, but
resulted in my constantly researching and
testing and making sure I was abreast of new
developments in botany, ethnobotany, and
even archaeology to some extent.
Besides, I always have to remind myself
that I got involved in the study of the uses
of plants for food and medicine because I
felt it was something valuable that everyone
should know on a daily basis. Initially, it was
something personal, something that I felt I
should know to protect my body if lost, or if
I experienced an emergency. And when I had
the opportunity to teach, I realized that the
practical application of botany in one’s daily
life can totally transform the individual’s life
and their relationship to their environment.
Imagine, food is everywhere! Imagine, all the
pointless work that urban people do for a front
lawn that produces nothing! Little by little, I
realized that there are countless lessons from
the past where people healed their bodies and
respected their environment, because they
knew their environment, they were close to
their environment, and they depended upon
their environment.
We all still do that to some degree today, but
we are far from our roots.
When I remind myself of the roots of my own
interest in ethno-botany, the idea that someone
someday might “expose” me for not knowing
enough seems all too much like a child’s
sandbox battle, like the various “celebrities”
and “stars” who vie for top of the heap.
When I consider my own failures along the way,
I see that most have been learning experiences,
not things to be avoided. I think that is the
attitude that we all should have towards life,
rather than pretending to get somewhere
quickly, but inwardly going nowhere.
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
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