BLOOD MOON ECLIPSE

Day 86 of the Lower Puna Eruption, with the usual 5+ earthquake at the summit, the 60th since May 3.

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To my surprise, day 2 of neutrinos turned out to draw three times more viewers than part one.  So let me end in space, for tonight will be the longest lunar eclipse this century, which won't be matched until 2123 when I'm 143 years old.  You will be able to see this phenomenon just about everywhere, except North America and Hawaii.  But, as this blog site is visited by 221 countries, let me alert the rest of the world that this Blood Moon Eclipse will happen tonight (all local times):

• Brazil:  the Moon will be in the umbral shadow of Earth as it rises at 5:27PM.
• London:  the 8:51PM rising time will already show a total eclipse, with the maximum eclipse occurring at 9:21PM.
• Capetown:  maximum eclipse at 10:21PM.
• Greece:  rising at 9:24PM with peak at 11:21PM.
• New Delhi:  eclipse will start at 10:44PM, and will turn red after 1AM on July 28.
• Melbourne:  maximum eclipse will be at 6:21AM on July 28.

Why Blood Moon?  The color, but also:

• 2000BC:    Babylonian seers were convinced that the Blood Eclipse foretold the fate of kings.
• 1059 BC:   Shang overlord was eclipsed by Wen Zhou.
• 413BC:      Athenian army was spooked by the red moon, panicked, and was captured by the Syracusan army.

• 1504:         Christopher Columbus pulled off his eclipse trick, which if he failed, might well have changed the nature of what became history.
• 2018:  coming of Jesus Christ or end of times (who knows, what if they're right).   John Hagee was wrong, the apocalypse predicted by his youngest son, Matt Hagge, never materialized, and no similar predicted monumental termination has ever happened, yet.
• 2018:  confusing, but some Evangelicals consider Donald Trump as the modern-day version of King Cyrus, first Persian ruler a couple of millennia ago, whose death occurred during an eclipse.  Much of this is hearsay.  On the other hand...

My night photography technique needs some work, but at 2:30 this morning I took these photos of the Moon and Mars:

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There are two tropical storms east of Hawaii, but neither one seems particularly threatening at this time:

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NEUTRINOS: Part 2

Day 85 of the Lower Puna Eruption, starting the 12th week of this activity, and the primary volcano headline was:  Activity in Kilauea Volcano summit area continues to build.  Down to Puna, the flow is within 500 yards of the Pohoiki ramp.

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Yesterday, my posting on neutrinos attracted the fewest readers in recent times.  I guess arcane science about fundamental particles is not in the scope of their interest.

Well, sorry, but today I continue with neutrinos, but for a different reason.  I've been carrying two books in my car and golf bag for a decade, and earlier this year, finally finished both of them.  Let's see how you will enjoy my series of blogs reviewing those publications.  I predict an all-time low.  Also in that photo are two recent Scientific American magazines, where came an article responsible for this posting today.

Most of the reading I do occurs between the first and second holes at the Ala Wai Golf Course because sometimes there could be five groups waiting to tee off.  I could easily spend more than half an hour here.  So, long ago I decided to read something.  Thus the photo above.  Those were the two books and, yesterday the May issue of Sci Am.  To my surprise, the article was Messenger from the Sky, by Ann Finkbeiner (left).

A NEUTRINO HIT ON SEPTEMBER 22, 2017, AT 4:54 P.M. EASTERN TIME. THE NEARLY MASSLESS ELEMENTARY particle barreled through the sensors of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, an experiment buried in the Antarctic ice. This neutrino was rare, carrying an energy of more than 100 tera electron volts, about 10 times the energy reachable by particles inside the most powerful accelerators on Earth. Thirty seconds later IceCube’s computers sent out an alert with the neutrino’s energy, the time and date, and roughly where it came from in the sky. 

My interest was piqued, for yesterday morning I had posted on neutrinos and showed a photo of IceCube (scroll down to that article).  Why I'm continuing with this subject is the train of events that reveals the excitement and intrigue of astrophysics research:

• Said Erik Blaufuss (right) of the finding, It's a pretty event--let's send it out there.  This was then 8:09 PM their time at the University of Maryland.  This was a public notice over one of astronomy's heads-up networks about this particle, now called Ice Cube-170922A.  The hope was that some astronomer would see this info and look at the same area of the sky from where came the neutrino.  Maybe they'll find the galaxy or whatever responsible for this neutrino.

• Mind you, not only are there these neutrinos, but since 2015, other sensitive instruments which can detect rolling waves of gravity were also built.  Finding both neutrinos and gravity waves at the same time is a very recent development called multimessage astronomy.

• Keep in mind that astronomers heretofore have only looked at light, which is an electromagnetic wave, terrible, because it can get reflected, absorbed and misdirected, obscuring source information.  Now, with neutrinos and gravitational waves they have two different kinds of pure messages coming at the speed of light.  Nothing stops them or gets in the way.  And they specifically come from colliding black holes or  collapsing supernovae or neutron stars that  previously were largely invisible.

• So, four days after Blaufuss sent out the IceCube notice,

scientists at the Swift Observatory’s x-ray space telescope reported that since the alert they had counted nine things emitting x-rays in the area of the sky that IceCube-170922A came from. 

• Two days later, on September 28, at 6:10 AM:

the Fermi orbiting telescope (right), sensitive to gamma wavelengths, reported gamma rays at the same position as both IceCube-170922A and Swift’s second x-ray source.

•  Sarah Buson of the Fermi team from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said it was very exciting:

The neutrino was exactly on top of the gamma, the first time we had such a nice coincidence. 

• That same day, scientists on a survey called ASAS-SN (yes, pronounced assassin), operating at optical wavelengths (which we can see with our own eyes), announced that this spot had been brightening over the past 50 days and the brightest it had seen in several years.

• On September 29, the next day, at 9 AM, another optical telescope found that spot to be a blazar, a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, where matter falling into it results in jets of ionized matter aimed straight at us.
• On October 17, the Very Large Array in New Mexico, operating at radio wavelengths confirmed the light was coming from a blazar's jet.

• This spot, now known as the Texas source, was the first where a high-energy neutrino coincided in space and time with a high-energy gamma ray photon.
• Francis Halzen (right), principle investigator for IceCube made the observation that over the whole sky, the number of high-energy neutrinos and the number of gamma-ray photos are roughly the same, so the obvious thing is that they are coming from the same sources.

• As an aside, the first non-light messenger, in February of 1987, came from Supernova 1987A, a dying star whose core collapsed and exploded, for 25 neutrinos in Japan, the U.S. and Russia were detected.  Three hours later, optical light came from that shock wave.  By November x- and gamma- rays arrived from new heavy elements created in the explosion.  The Texas source, thirty years later, was only the second such event.

Above is supernova Cassiopeia A.  Here, from that Scientific American article is this beautiful play-by-play graphic:

Astronomers long ago determined that colors can evoke public support.  You might need to click on the above to actually read it.  Whether you understand or appreciate any of this neutrino stuff, isn't science wonderful?

For some, if not many, what a waste of tax dollars.  No food is being placed on their table.

But life should be more than just surviving.  We have imagination.  Educate or befuddle your friends by sending them this posting.

I started with golf at Ala Wai, so let me end here.  This past week on the 17th hole I had my longest drive in a quarter century.  My longest ever occurred at the final hole of the Kapalua Golf Course, which went more than 300 yards.  How?  Well, its all downhill with a following wind.  I might add that Tiger Woods' blasted a drive here in 2002 that went 498 yards.  But back to my 17th, I should add that the wind helped, and, so too, perhaps, the concrete cart path.  That white spec next to my golf cart is my ball just short of the 100 yard marker.  At tee-off, my golf watch read 356 yards.

I can't end with golf.  Let me finish with something celestial.  Good for part of the world, terrible for Hawaii and the USA.  Tomorrow night, our Moon will be full and there will be a lunar eclipse, turning the moon blood-orange. 

However, when this occurs, beginning 7:15AM in Honolulu, the Moon will be below the horizon.  This will take place over a five-hour period, with totality for 103 minutes, the longest of the 21st century.  On this day, the Moon will be the farthest from Earth for the year, and will look smaller than normal.  However, Mars will be close to the Moon and even in Hawaii at night you can see this planet, and it will be about the closest to Earth for the 26-month cycle of Mars, meaning that Mars will be at its brightest.

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WHY NEUTRINOS MATTER

Day 84 of the Lower Puna Eruption and ole Lady Pele keeps flowing along.

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Today, neutrinos, a particle that long ago drew my interest because I thought here might be the answer to dark matter.  Well, in 2014 it was believed that there were more neutrinos matter than visible ordinary matter in space, but much less than invisible ordinary matter, which in combination was still a fraction of dark matter/energy.

Or looking at this another way, 95-6% dark stuff, something no one has seen or measured, and 4-5%, which regularly is adjusted, what we once thought was all that was of the Universe.

If that was confusing, you'll absolutely get lost with neutrinos:

• Denoted as the Greek letter v.
• Is a fermion, as are electrons, quarks and leptons.
• Let's say that our observable Universe is a sphere 92 billion light-years across.  There are 1.2 x 10 to the 89th power neutrinos in that space.
• Has a mass, with the sum of three masses less than one millionth that of the electron, whatever that means.

• Is electronically neutral.
• Is a particle that passes through normal matter unimpeded and undetected.
• There are three flavors of different masses.
• They change flavor in flight, which is about the speed of light.
• Is accompanied by an antineutrino.

• Created by radioactive decays, as in nuclear reactors/bombs, from particle accelerators, during a supernova (spin-down of a neutron star) and when cosmic rays strike atoms.
• Here is where it becomes downright puzzling.  Each banana produces a million neutrinos/day.  Did you know they contain radioactive potassium?

• Most around us come from the Sun, 65 billion/second through every square centimeter.
• But they are hard to detect.
• When Supernova 1987A exploded, it released 100 times more neutrinos than our Sun will in its whole lifetime of 10 billion years or so, but we detected only 11 of this supernova's neutrons.

• The idea came in 1930 from Wolfgang Pauli, gained momentum in 1932, entered the scientific vocabulary mostly through Enrico Fermi, and has mystified physicists since then.
• But it was not actually detected until 1959.

• Is so potentially significant that numerous Nobel prizes have been awarded through the study of neutrinos, including in 2015 to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald, and, in the same year, 1370 physicists shared $3 million for the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics provided by Yuri Milner.

• But why is so much money being spent on neutrino research?  In this tiny particle is said to be the clue to how the Universe was created and being held together.  Neutrinos could be the key to dark matter.  For the more practical, there is also some hope that neutrinos will speed up global communications, find oil/gas and detect the presence of nuclear weapons.  My particular attraction was to use neutrinos to communicate with other intelligent life in the Universe.

• Want to participate in a neutrino conference?  There are more of them than solar energy gatherings.  Check out this page.  Heidelberg hosted in June, and hundreds came.  The future biggies are in Chicago (2020), Seoul (2022) and Milan (2024).

You know what particularly intrigues me?  Can't find how much money is being spent/year on neutrino research, nor how many scientists are full time on this pursuit.  This info is out there in virtual space, but some obfuscation is occurring.  

There are 16 massive scientific facilities (and I actually worked at one, the National Ingnition Facility at Livermore) and more than 50 major experiments worldwide.  Take a look at this list!  This photo to the right is of Ice Cube.

Anyway, the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment began construction last year in Batavia, Illinois, involving, appropriate enough, Fermilab, and the Sanford Lab in South Dakota, 810 miles away, wishing for some answers in a decade or so.  Cost today?  Half a billion dollars.  Whoops...make that $2 billion.

Cost ultimately?  It almost doesn't matter.  Don't you want to know about the reality of Dark Energy or something more concrete regarding the Big Bang?  At least scientists are trying, although with your tax dollars.  No one will ever prove the existence of God or an Afterlife, even though perhaps 90% of humanity believe.  That is the beauty and fatal flaw of religion.

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MY MEMORABLE MOMENTS IN GOLF

Day 83 of the Lower Puna Eruption, and the USGS says this activity could last for months and years more.  Basically, they're guessing.  No one predicted that 3January1983 initial eruption at Puu Oo would still be continuing today.  In summary:

• 700 homes destroyed.
• This current phase is five days short of the 1955's 88 days.
• There is a 5+ earthquake at the summit approximately every 30 hours.
• The lava delta into Kapoho Bay now is up to 740 acres, extending half a mile past the coastline.
• There is uncertainty exactly where breaches could occur in the fissure 8 river of lava.

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This is one of those days when I wake-up and have no particular subject in mind:  

• I was leaning towards the Blue Revolution, mentioned a couple of days ago in my posting on Our Best Hope for a Progressive Humanity of Planet Earth, which is looming more and more as my next book.  
• Then, I thought about neutrinos, for there are a billion times more of them than all the protons and electrons making up what we are and see.  100 trillion of them pass through your body every second.
• But that 106 F heat wave in Japan where 65 have already died caught my attention, for in exactly two years, 24 July 2020, the Tokyo Summer Olympics begin.  With global warming, it could get worse.

However, this is the middle of summer, and I had retired from my ten-year run of this blog site on May 1, when the Lower Puna Eruption began, and I felt compelled to report on this disaster.  So today I'll focus on golf.  Yes, golf.

I try to walk 18 holes at the Ala Wai Golf Course two or three times/week.  It's agonizing, and I hate it.  But I do this so that I can eat and drink whatever I want.

By my rough estimation, I have golfed a thousand times, 75% of them at Ala Wai.  I pay $90/month for a seniors' card, which gets me ten rounds.  Thus my weight control cost is $10/18-holes.

Where do I begin?  What about Scotland and Japan, and Tadashi Matsunaga and Grant Burgess?  Golf is hardly about playing the game itself.  It is all about who you're with and where...or my diet.    If you clicked on that link just above, you would have learned that Edinburgh has the largest arts festival in the world, scotch, Royal Dublin and the 2018 World Cruise, which has now been delayed until 2020.  Tells of our back-to-back rounds at St. Andrews and Carnoustie.  Best of all, you would have read about the funniest golf experience I had, mostly written by Grant.  We were planning to submit this bit to a golf magazine, but never got around to it.  So I borrowed the story in my SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Humanity.  

I should mention that Tadashi has paid for a lot my golf in Japan, so much so that I had membership at the original Koolau and Royal Hawaiian Golf Courses, just to return the favor to visiting colleagues.  Both courses (had??...they're now owned by a church and a charitable organization) an onsen in the clubhouse.  Took Matsunaga and his father to Koolau once and they each lost a dozen balls...on the first hole.  So recently, Tadashi and I golfed at Ala Wai and went to dinner at Vintage Cave.

Also at the international level, there would be no Pacific International Center for High Technology Research (PICHTR) if not for golf.  It broke the ice, opening the way to $8 million from the Japanese government, and success with the open cycle OTEC experiment at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority.  This is primarily why I am contemplating a book on the Blue Revolution, which could well be the breakthrough for a cornucopia of marine products, while remediating global warming and preventing the formation of hurricanes.

I took the head of a Japanese consortium golfing at Koolau, and he got a hole in one.  That led to my joining his board which managed the government funds to build Kansai Airport.  Not only was there a monthly stipend, but our team developed the mass transit plan for Osaka Bay, which could have made this region the next world center.  Unfortunately, the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995 destroyed this plan.  I tried to sell this concept to Oahu, and if I had succeeded, this now troubled $10 billion system would have long been in operation for almost no cost to the state, and Honolulu would have become this extraordinary world headquarters.

These golf friendships also led to Rainbow Pearls International, a company I reported on a decade ago to culture and market colored pearls.  Chinese Red, Kelly Green...you name it, and we could, theoretically, create it.  My talk to MENSA a year ago stimulated some interest, but if you would like to take the lead to do this, let me know.

Pacific Geospas is a company started by golf partners, Donald Okahara (president of his engineering consultant company), Ronald Kunimitsu (head of his architectural firm) and Harry Olsen, the Spark Matsunaga Scholar at the University of Hawaii.  We got very close, but came the bursting of the Japanese economic bubble in 1992 and financial interest evaporated.  With what is happening in Lower Puna, I'm glad we failed, for our operations, which included a golf course, would have been overrun by lava.

I can go on and on, but I'll end with a golf outing that continues from my anecdote about Kee Hyong Kim of South Korea.  As I indicated, this fiasco of a dinner turned out well, for Kee and I became close friends.  He arranged a lunch with the billionaire head of a Korean company--who seemed proud of stealing the formula of those Japanese energy drinks--at his golf club in Seoul.  At this meal was Ron Hays, who was the former commander in chief of the Pacific, and then-president of PICHTR (story above), Kenji Sumida (who went on to become president of the East-West Center) and Kee.  I should mention the name of this billionaire, but that's not important.  He asked if we wanted to join him for golf that afternoon?  We said we didn't have any clothing for that.  So he said go to the golf shop and buy whatever we needed and he would pay for it.  We did, and this is one of those plush courses with women caddies, where you stop every three holes in a fancy teahouse, with a range of drinks and eats.  After the 18 holes, we had dinner.  What came of this golf interaction?  Well, nothing.  But a good story, anyway.

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