Mountain Views News          Saturday, January 30, 2016

14

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.


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