Looking for a Job

For the first time in my life, I'm going to try to get a job that I can actually use my degrees in! Sure, teaching college I had to use my degree, but this will be a job that I'm applying something I learned to something physical, and not to impart knowledge of astronomy to students that will probably forget most of it the minute they take the final exam. It will be different to get paid as an engineer. Sure, it will only be an internship (for now), but it won't be bartending or working in a restaurant. I wouldn't mind teaching college astronomy again, though when I have more time. Right now, I don't think I could handle being an instructor as well as taking 15 or 16 credits. Maybe when I'm done.

Well, I just finished dinner (leftover lemon chicken, rice and vegetables - no, not from scratch, but I did make them myself) and I probably should get back to doing homework...on a Friday night... Man, I think I need to get a life.

Jealous

I'm jealous of Kate and Maggie (and for that matter, Tom, Mimi, and Joanne). I really want to have kids. All of you have great stories, funny and cute, about your children. I cannot wait to have children (though I don't want them before I get married). Everyone has adorable children and all of them have great personalities that are beginning to come out. I really miss seeing everyone all the time. Kate's stories about Lucas and his Hunt Hunt clan are just too darn funny and the pictures of Maggie's kids just show how good looking they really are. That pic of Katrina is classic. For some reason, it reminds me of Maggie. I wonder why...

Okay, I've babbled long enough. I'm getting hungry and the chicken is in the oven. I can't wait to share stories of the funny and adorable stuff my children are doing with everyone.

Today's Game

Just got home from work. Long day. The place I work was broken into this morning. Lovely.

Watched today's AFC Division Playoff game. That game was very nerve racking near the end. The Steelers looked like they had the game in hand as they went up 21-3. But the Colts came back to within 3 with about 5 minutes left in the 4th quarter. The Steelers were able to hold the Colts with about 1:20 left in the game and had the ball at the Colts 2-yard line. Figure this game was over, right? Nopers. Bettis tried to push the ball into the endzone and fumbled the ball. Picked up by the Colts defender who was stabbed in the knee by his wife on Saturday who took it down field. Only an amazing tackle by big Ben Roethlisberger kept the guy from rumbling into the endzone. I was getting so nervous, and the Steelers aren't even my favorite team. I like them enough, but they aren't the Chiefs. Well, next thing I know, the Colts have the ball in field goal range with time winding down and their clutch kicker ready to knock it through the uprights. I wasn't watching the play at the time, as I was either getting something to eat or getting ready for work or something. Anyway, I hear the announcers saying the ball is up so I rushed into the living room to see the kick. Wide right. Steeler fans (and myself, too) all breathe a sigh of relief. Next week, the Steelers are going to Denver for the right to go to Detroit and beat the NFC Champion in the SuperBowl. Great game, and even better that the Steelers came out on top.

Not only did the Steelers win, but the Pitt Panthers kept their undefeated season alive by beating the Louisville Cardinals in Louisville. If they are not in the top ten Monday, there is something seriously long with the voting process.

Alright, I've rambled long enough. Time to go to bed. But I leave you this one thought. Five weeks till Pitchers and Catchers report to spring training. Go Royals!!!!!

I Hate Winter

I really hate winter. It was 70 degrees here yesterday and sunny. Beautiful day to be outside. Today, it's in the 30s and snowing. I really want to get a job in Arizona or Texas.

My "Kids"

Since I don't have any human children, here are pictures of my two cats.

ReganAshley

Creation vs. Evolution

This is just something I wrote a while ago. It's probably babbling, but what the hey!

Are the Theory of Evolution and the Story of Creation Mutually Exclusive?

I grew up in the state of Kansas and the things that are going on there now with the system of education are beginning to gnaw at me. A lot of Christian conservatives are saying that evolutionary theory goes against the teachings of the Bible. While it is true that the literal interpretation of the story of Creation in Genesis is incompatible with what science teaches us today, one must look beyond the story. The Bible itself was written by fallible human beings who either interpreted the words of God to their own benefit or wrote what they felt the way the Earth worked. Let’s explore the second part of this statement first.

One must remember that the science of astronomy has changed a lot since the time of the ancients. Up until the 1500s, it was believed that the Earth was stationary and that the Sun and all the planets revolved around a central Earth. The Renaissance was not only a rebirth of culture; it was also a rebirth of science. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton all came along and turned astronomy on its ear. First, Copernicus was able to show that it was possible and much more likely that the Earth was moving around a central Sun. It was able to explain the position of the planets in the sky much more accurately and with a much simpler model than the previous geocentric model devised by Ptolemy in the 2^nd Century CE. Even then, astronomy kept evolving. Kepler was able to derive his three laws of planetary motion from observations made by Tycho Brahe to give us much more complete model of the solar system. It wasn’t even until Galileo turned his telescope to the sky that these models were shown to be more or less accurate and correct. Even today, astronomy is still evolving. The model of how our solar system formed may not even be correct. The formation of the solar system was only based on one example of a planetary system, our own. Since 1995, there have been over 150 other planets discovered outside our own solar system, and the majority of them look nothing like ours.

Planetary astronomy does not even delve into other astronomy disciplines. For example, cosmology studies the evolution of our universe as a whole. Cosmologists have been able to estimate that the universe is around 15 billion years old (give or take a couple of billion years). They also believe that the universe started in a giant explosion of space and matter into nothing in what is called the Big Bang. Galactic astronomy also can tell us a lot about how wrong the ancient astronomers were. They believed that all of the entire universe encompassed nothing larger than what is just found in the Oort Cloud, a spherical structure 100,000 AU in diameter (an AU is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun, around 93 million miles) containing millions of comet-like bodies. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way is 30,000 times larger than that, and the Milky Way is an average galaxy. This shows us how much we have learned in just the last 500 years, much more than was learned in the 1500+ years prior.

By no means does this mean that I do not believe in God. If we go back to the Big Bang, there are a lot of questions that cannot be answered by science. For example, the Universe is thought to be flat, which means that the Universe is expanding in such a way, that in the distant future, which we can think of as being an infinite time from now, the expansion of the Universe will stop. This model of the Universe was based on two things: the critical density of the Universe and the actual density of the Universe. The critical density of the Universe is the required density of matter and energy contained in the Universe that makes the Universe flat. The actual density is the actual amount of matter and energy in the Universe. Cosmologists have found that the actual density is very close to the critical density. They found that if the density of the Universe was just a tad higher that it actually is, the Universe would have been over dense, and instead of expanding, it would have collapsed too fast. On the other hand, if the density was just a little bit smaller than the actual density, the Universe would have expanding too fast and nothing could have formed from the matter and energy as they would not be able to collapse into stars and galaxies and all the celestial objects we see today. This question cannot be answered easily by science, if at all. There must be some otherworldly force, or even some force outside our own Universe, making the density it is. Other physical constants in the Universe must be what they are as well, or the Universe would not be here either. For example, the strength of gravity, or the gravitational constant, has to be its current value, or the Universe would have collapsed or expanded too fast depending on how it was different. The magnitude of the electron charge, the magnetic moment of the electron, the Bohr radius, and the speed of light must also be what they are or we would not be here. These types of things can only be explained by a supernatural being, which we call God.

There is also the question of dinosaurs. Anthropologists have shown that dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago. They disappeared from the face of the Earth before mankind became the dominant life form almost 50,000 years ago. Yet, there is no mention of dinosaurs in the Bible and we know they exist.

How about geology? Geology has shown that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and life first appeared about a billion years later.

Lastly, what about biology? DNA comparisons between different species have shown that those wide varieties of species have similar segments of DNA. Humans and chimpanzees have a 97.8% similarity between their DNA strands. Even animals as different from humans as frogs have DNA that is more similar than it is different. If you compare the forelimbs of humans, birds, and frogs, the bone structure is remarkably similar as well. This is compelling evidence that somehow, these four different species, and in general, all species, seemed to have come from the same ancestor.

All this boils down to the Bible being the literal word of God. I feel that the majority of the Old Testament if not the whole Bible is probably one of the best works of fiction ever written. It is a nice moral story and a great code to live by. Science has shown that the Bible cannot be literal. It was calculated, based on the story of Creation in Genesis, that the Earth was created around 6000 years ago, and hence, the entire Universe was also created at that time. I have just stated that the Universe is around 15 billion years old, Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, and dinosaurs disappeared around 65 million years ago. All these numbers show that the literal interpretation of the Bible is the incorrect interpretation. Now, it is possible that God set in motion the mechanisms that created our Universe and brought forth life to the Earth. Another argument that we can make is the definition of a human being. It has been argued that humans are the only species to have souls. Who are we to say that God choose one of our ancestors, some Australopithecus Africanus, to have a soul and make him Adam? How about the wives of Cain and Seth as well? Adam and Eve didn’t have any daughters, or at least, none are mentioned in the Bible. They had wives, and we know that they had children. They each must have mated with someone. It seems highly unlikely that two people, Adam and Eve, populated the whole world.

We can also argue that God’s day is not the same day as a human day. What do we mean by a day? In astronomical terms, it is just the time it takes for the Earth to rotate on its axis once. The Earth day is very different from days on other planets. Mars has a 26 hour day; Jupiter’s day is 10 hours, and so on. How do we know that God didn’t have days that lasted millions or billions of years? We don’t.

So can the Theory of Evolution and the Story of Creation coexist in modern society? The short answer is yes, they can. However, one must be able to separate the Story of Creation and not take the Bible’s version as literal.

My First Blog

I saw Kate starting blogging. Figured that I should as well. You know how much I e-mail everyone.

I think a lot of you know that I went *back* to school for another degree. I know it's not really going back since I've basically been in school since I was 4. I'm studying for a degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering with an emphasis in Structural Engineering. Hopefully, this will be the last formal degree I'll be getting...that is at a university. I think that I may go for an MBA later on, probably an online MBA. I started this current educational trip last semester. I should be done by next April, as it is nice to already have a Bachelor's Degree and a Master's Degree in Physics.

Between school and work, I don't have a lot of free time. Currently, I'm bartending three times a week at a bar in my neighborhood. I'm also still working at the observatory, looking at the stars. Still love astronomy even though I'm not studying it at the moment. This summer, I hope to have an internship so I can have some real-world experience.

Well, I should probably get back to doing homework. I want to be the best student I can be, even better than I was in undergraduate.