Ryan Mercer's thoughts, mostly random musings, spanning form 2001 to present. Freemason, geek, nutter, Whovian, 8-bit Atari enthusiast, SciFi fan.
Wow, so that's an approximately 250k light year tail on CGCG254-021. So beautiful! I could get lost looking at images of far away galaxies, stars, you name it. Maybe some day, in my life, we will get a distributed optical telescope in space that allows us to image extrasolar planets! How exciting would that be?!
Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/University of Bonn/G. Schellenberger et al; Optical: INT
So the other day the article 'No extraterrestrial laser pulses detected from KIC 8462852, SETI reports' came out and I got a little curious about how wide a laser's beam would be by the time it got here.
First we need to figure out how quickly a laser spreads as it travels a distance, fortunately someone else already did this work. The Lunar Laser Ranging experiment let's me know that a laser shined from earth is about 6.5 kilometers wide.
So a beam from a laser similar to the on used for the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment, sent at us from something 454 parsecs away would be something like 236,839,818,885 km wide/147,165,440,629.8467 miles wide. Or 1 parsec away would be 521,673,609.879 km wide/324,152,952.929.
That means the beam from that a hypothetical laser from KIC 8462852 would be 1583.1x wider than the distance from the earth to the sun by the time it got to us!
Ahem. But wait, there's more!
Let's take something from my problem with time travel, the fact that the Earth is moving through the solar system, the solar system through the galaxy and the galaxy through the universe, essentially in different directions.
Ok so 1 parsec is 3.26156 light years, and that system is about 454 parsecs away meaning that light has been traveling about 1481 years to get to us which means our solar system has moved 557,863,080,000 miles through our galaxy in the 1481 years since the hypothetical laser left KIC 8462852, which means if it was truly aimed at us they'd have to be thinking where we'd be in 1481 years as light travels straight (ignoring very large gravity sources curving it) and wouldn't be rotating around the galaxy. There's likely also some variation in speed of our star and KIC 8462852 traveling through our galaxy.
My wallet of almost 15 years went to the Great Pocket in the sky just now. Oh well time to use an identical replacement, and yes I have several more in waiting.
So I'm up a few hours early due to some heart burn and thought I'd try and be somewhat productive since I can't go to work for three and a half more hours.
As some of you know I'm a huge fan of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. When the first book Wizard's First Rule came out I got it through the Science Fiction Book Club and I fell in love with Richard, Kahlan, Zed etc. When the second book, Stone of Tears, came out dad had been diagnosed with cancer. Richard, Kahlan and crew got me through dad's decline in health and his death through the first four books. When the fifth book, Soul of the Fire, came out in 1999 I was lost. My father was dead, I'd withdrawn into myself, I hated the world etc. These books got me through a lot, then one day Goodkind announced he was writing the last. I remember crying every page for the last 100 pages or so of that alleged 'last' book because here my friends were going away, they wouldn't be around to share their stories with me anymore. Again, I was bitter and angry with the world. I was losing my best friends that got me through dad's death!
Apparently Goodkind decided he liked making money, ending the series was a lie, he authored 1 more book in the series called Confessor. Again, I got sad but not as bad because I'd already grieved losing my friends. OH guess what, psych! Still not done writing! So he takes a stab at a spin off series called the Law of Nines and it fails after just the first book. OH wait, there's more! Enter the second Richard and Kahlan series a four book series that ends with Warheart which I'm finishing up now and a prequel novel a few year ago called The First Confessor: The Legend of Magda Searus.
I'm not really feeling Warheart. I'm 70-80% of the way through it and to be honest it just feels like a lot of filler. It just doesn't live up to the original series. Instead of Richard and Kahlan telling me their story, it feels as if some beggar alongside the road on the way to the People's Palace in D'Hara is trying to tell me a story he once heard in a tavern about the former ruler. It is what it is I suppose.
Don't forget, my Masonic Brothers, join us over at http://www.themasonicbookclub.com/ every month for discussing a different Masonic book!
So the other day we learned that the new Star Trek series premiers in January 2017 and this really really excites me. You see, I've spent the past few weeks re-watching Star Trek: Enterprise via Amazon Prime on my Fire TV
So I got to thinking yesterday on what I'd like to see in this 2017 series.
Flo from Progressive is the angel of death.
1. Flo works in a white room, wearing mostly white
2. Flo seems to have the ability to teleport anywhere at will
3. Flo has been spotted at the scene of many an accident.
4. Flo is downright Christopher Walken creepy, Christopher Walken having played an angel.
5. Flo often has confused people in her white room, clearly she just took their lives and transported them to processing.
6. Arch nemesis is Abaddon A.K.A Allstate’s Mayhem!
So, some more adventures in dating... I saw this girl and her profile screamed "message me for fun Ryan!". After finding this girl on facebook I'll say her profile is 100% real and she is in fact just a very very very very confused and/or disturbed girl. This is absolutely not a troll account.
“I am a very religious person and attend multiple services on the weekend. Despite the looks I am not a muslim. Although, I’ve considered becoming one. I attend a Catholic church, a Messianic Jewish church, and a Eastern Orthodox church.”
”
She then quotes scripture as a justification for her head covering, turns out she just has a fetish for head coverings and is using religion to justify it.
"Orientation: Bisexual"
Well that goes against all THREE of your religions.
"Religion: Christianity"
Nuh uh! You're a Christian Jew Muslim!
“I honestly believe that Allah/God guides me and right now all I know is that I have this desire to dig deep into MIddle Eastern/Slavic religion. I want to work in the Middle East or Russia so I want to choose a religion where I can express my views on head covering”
Chick, look, you don't choose a religion because you want to wear a scarf on your head. You choose a religion because it's what you BELIEVE. Oh you poor poor child.
It's been a year now and I've consistently seen her on every site/app I've used the past year. This morning I found her on Tinder for example, here she is with her mother
I think I've found some books that would be a good starting point for her...
To my Masonic Brothers, join us over at The Masonic Book Club for discussion of a different Masonic book/book on the Craft each month!
For October we are reading The Mason's Words: The History and Evolution of the American Masonic Ritual by Robert G. Davis
So as I'm sure you are all aware, Star Wars is back with a new film (Episode VII) coming December 18th, 2015. So of course Star Wars is on EVERYTHING. Smartphone games, jewelry, food, toys, apparel... *sigh* tone it down people, it's not even out yet and my excitement is over and now I just find the prospect of a new Star Wars film to be unpleasant at best because we have many more to come after this one which means we will see Star Wars on everything for the next decade or two.
