Pictures in the Sky

Pictures in the Sky

I have wondered about the possibility of life elsewhere. What would it be? Of what would it be made?

If we were randomly inserted into the Cosmos, the chance that we would find ourselves on or near a planet would be less than one in a billion trillion trillion, a one followed by 33 zeroes. In everyday life such odds are called compelling. Worlds are really precious.

Form an intergalactic vantage point we would see, strewn like sea froth on the waves of space, innumerable faint, wispy tendrils of light. These are the galaxies. Some are solitary wanderers; most inhabit communal clusters, huddling together, drifting endlessly in the great cosmic dark. Before us is the Cosmos on the grandest scale we know. We are in the realm of the nebulae, eight billion light-years from Earth, halfway to the edge of the known universe.

Like the Sun and the Moon, stars always rise in the east and set in the west, taking the whole night to cross the sky if they pass overhead. There are different constellations in different seasons. The same constellations always rise at the beginning of autumn, say. It never happens that a new constellation suddenly rises out of the east. There is an order, a predictability, a permanence about the stars. In a way, they are almost comforting.

If the constellations had been named in the 20th century, I suppose we would see bicycles and refrigerators in the sky, rock-and-roll stars and perhaps even mushroom clouds – a new set of human hopes and fears placed among the stars. Image © Elena

Occasionally our ancestors would see a very bright star with a tail, glimpsed for just a moment, hurtling across the sky. They called it a falling star, but it is not a good name: the old stars are still there after the falling star falls. In some seasons there are many falling stars; in others very few. There is a kind of regularity here as well.

There are constellations. They are like pictures in the sky. These pictures are not, of course, really in the night sky; we put them there ourselves. We were hunter folk, and we saw hunters and dogs, bears and young women, all manner of thing of interest to us.

When 17th Century European sailors first saw the southern skies, they put objects of 17th century interest in the heavens: toucans and peacocks, telescopes and microscopes, compasses and the sterns of ships.

Business Communication

Business Communication

In today’s world communication is an indispensable asset for any successful business leader. Guffey et al. (2006) asserts that the customized CV (curriculum vitae or resume) is most likely the most significant message a businessperson will ever write. While that statement does not include documents, one may still disagree, but doubtless that piece of paper is an important one to draft.

Introductory business communication courses teach how to write a customized CV, cover letter and follow-up correspondence (after an interview and even post rejection for a job position) while remaining to appear confident, competent, requisite for the company and without becoming a pest.

A lovely Portuguese lady once said that what makes one powerful is the ability to write well. In all honesty she was an English literature and creative composition teacher so one may take that with a grain of salt, but with the ever-augmenting reliance on text and instant messaging as well as e-mail, one can easily see her point.

The methods of communication have changed. Instead of paying for long-distance calls, people use voice and video conferencing such as Skype. In addition to landlines, cell phones are increasingly relied on since the 1990s. Class or trade presentations are done using Power Point or other similar software. Also, in today’s high impact and fast paced world, one expects dramatic visual aids such as colorful slides and embedded videos.

Teapot. Conflict to resolve in Erickson’s psychosocial stages: 1) Trust against Mistrust 2) Autonomy against Shame and Doubt 3) Initiative against Guilt 4) Industry against Inferiority 5) Identity against Role Confusion 6) Intimacy against Isolation 7) Generativity against Stagnation 8) Ego Integrity against Despair. Photo : © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Further, intergenerational communication is an interesting phenomenon since. The decade following the advent of the new millennium has seen “for the first time in history members of four generations working together”. Moreover, cross-cultural communication is gaining in significance with globalization, outsourcing, migration and multiculturalism. Both are important to understand if one wants to communicate effectively in the workplace and elsewhere.

About cross-cultural misunderstanding, the HSBC bank has made a funny commercial. The advertisement portrays a meeting of businessmen that, presumably, takes place in the People’s Republic of China. On the one hand, Chinese custom dictates that one must leave a bit of food in one’s plate so as not to question the host’s generosity. On the other hand, English tradition states the reverse; if one fails to clean up one’s dish, then perhaps one is dissatisfied with the cooking that has been served. The ad shows the English businessman being brought delicacies (ever-bigger sea snakes) over and over, while the vicious circle of misunderstandings continues.

Reliance on teamwork, cooperation and collaborative projects is ubiquitous in the business world. Surely, that is the reason why in most undergraduate and graduate business oriented programs, such as Bcom (Bachelor of Commerce) and MBA (Master of Business Administration) group assignments are mandatory. In the modern era, employers seek reliable employees proficient in communication as well as good team players. To sum up, computer literacy, writing, interpersonal and interaction skills are crucial to secure financially rewarding and psychologically fulfilling employment.

Victoria Park II

Victoria Park Pictures

Some emotional responses

You may find some benefit through admiring these pictures and through reading the comments under them. They may assist you in coping during your difficult time...

The death of someone we love can be one of the most difficult experiences of life.

Friends try to comfort us by saying, "you mustn't cry", or, "you must be strong."

Some may even suggest that what has happened is "for the best" for the deceased.

People mean well, but they do not fully understand our feelings.

More than likely, we feel that the worst has happened in our life.

We are struggling to come to terms with everything around us.

We feel as if the world has come to an end, and our life is over.

There is a sense of unreality about the situation, it just can't be.

People would be present, talking with me, but I don't feel anything.

Very few people understand what is normal after a heavy loss.

Some expect us to get over it, over our grief, relatively quickly.

People confuse shock we experience with strength inside us.

We have not learned what to expect after a sudden loss.

We are caught unaware by the avalanche of strong emotions.

Emotions may occur weeks or even months after a funeral.

Very few people understand what is normal after a loss.

Grief is a human response to a significant loss in life.

Grief you are experiencing is not unusual, it's natural.

Grief is the first step on the journey that can lead you back to life.

After your loss, you feel numb, as if your emotions had died forever.

From the beginning, you hardly have any feeling at all, nothing at all.

After a death, our emotions react in a very bizarre way.

You seem to be going through all the motions like a robot.

Numbness can be one way to protect yourself from the pain.

Numbness protects us from the pain until we are ready to deal with the loss.

The sense of shock - everything seems unreal, our emotions react in this way.

It is difficult to accept what's happening, but soon, hopefully, it wears off.

Our grief is nature's way of cushioning the blow.

Nature deadens the pain a little to help us in grief.

Numbness gives us time to absorb the facts, the loss.

Travelers’ Tales

Travelers’ Tales

This is the time when humans have begun to sail the sea of space. The modern ships that ply the Keplerain trajectories to the planets are unmanned. They are beautifully constructed, semi-intelligent robots exploring unknown worlds. Voyages to the outer solar system are controlled from a single place on the planet Earth, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the National Aeronatics and Space Administration in Pasadena, California.

On July 9, 1979, a spacecraft called Voyager 2 encountered the Jupiter system. It had been almost two years sailing through interplanetary space. The ship is made of millions of separate parts assembled redundantly, so that if some component fails, others will take over its responsibilities. The spacecraft weighs 0,9 tons and would fill a large living room. It mission takes it so far from the sun that it cannot be powered by solar energy, as other spacecraft are. Instead, Voyager relies on a small nuclear power plant, drawing hundreds of watts from the radioactive decay of a pellet of plutonium. Its three integrated computers and most of its house-keeping functions – for example, its temperature-control system – are localized in its middle. It receives commands from Earth and radios its findings back to Earth through a large antenna, 3,7 meters in diameter. Most of its scientific instruments are on a scan platform, which tracks Jupiter or one of its moons as the spacecraft hurtles past. There are many scientific instruments – ultraviolet …

Do there exist many worlds, or is there but a single world? This is one of the most noble and exalted questions in the study of Nature (Albertus Magnus, thirteenth century). Image : Elena

Understanding the Interstellar Message

Because we will share scientific and mathematical insights with any other civilization, I believe that understanding the interstellar message will be the easiest part of the problem. Convincing the governments to fund a search for extraterrestrial intelligence is the hard part.

In fact, it may be that civilizations can be divided into two great categories: one in which the scientists are unable to convince non-scientists no authorize a search for extraplanetary intelligence, in which energies are directed exclusively inward, in which conventional perceptions remain unchallenged and society falters and retreats from the stars; and another category in which the grand vision of contact with other civilizations is shared widely, and a major search us undertaken.

This is one of the few human endeavors where even a failure is a success. If we were to carry out a rigorous search for extraterrestrial radio signals encompassing millions of stars and heard nothing, we would conclude that galactic civilizations were at best extremely rare, a calibration of our place in the universe. It would speak eloquently of how rare are the living things of our planet, and would underscore, as nothing else in human history has, the individual worth of every human being. If we were to succeed, the history of our species and our planet would be change forever.

It would be easy for extraterrestrials to make and unambiguously artificial interstellar message. For example, the first ten prime numbers – numbers divisible only by themselves and by one – are 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 19, 23. It is extremely unlikely that any natural physical process could transmit radio messages containing prime numbers only. If we received such a message we would deduce a civilization out there that was at least fond of prime numbers. But the most likely case is that interstellar communication will be a kind of palimpsest, like the palimpsests of ancient writers short of papyrus or stone who superimposed their messages on top of pre-existing messages.

Another World. Artwork by Elena

Perhaps at an adjacent frequency or a faster timing, there would be another message, which would turn out to be a primer, an introduction to the language of interstellar discourse. The primer would be repeated again and again because the transmitting civilization would have no way to know when we tuned in on the message. And then, deeper in the palimpsest, underneath the announcement signal and the primer, would be the real message. Radio technology permits that message to be inconceivably rich. Perhaps when we tuned in, we would find ourselves in the midst of Volume 3,267 of the Encyclopaedia Galactica.

Any messages transmitted from outer space are the responsibility of the BBC and the Post office. It is their responsibility to track down illegal broadcasts (pronouncement from a British Defense Department, the London Observer, February 26, 1978).

(Carl Sagan, Cosmos)

Motive for Scientific Research

Motive for Scientific Research

We’ve only achieved the capacity for radio astronomy in the last few decades, in a Galaxy where the average star is billions of years old. The chance of receiving a signal from a civilisation exactly as advanced as we are should be minuscule. If they were even a little behind us, they would lack the technological capability to communicate with us at all. So the most likely signal would come from a civilization much more advanced. May be they would be able to write full and melodic backwards. In fact, it is a tiny extrapolation from what human beings could do. Bach and Mozart had made at least respectable stabs at it.

We can’t get into the others’ minds; we can’t imagine what thinking would be like if you were much more capable than an average human being. It is like trying to visualize a new primary color or a world in which you could recognize several hundred acquaintances individually only by their smells.

By definition, it has to be mighty hard to understand the behaviour of a being much smarter than you are. Image © by Megan Jorgensen

What else could they tell? From the blueness of the sky, they could make a rough estimate of Loschmidt’s Number, how many molecules there were in a cubic centimetre at see level. About three times ten to the nineteenth. They could easily tell the altitudes of the clouds from the length of their shadows on the ground.

If they knew that the clouds were condensed water, they could roughly calculate the temperature lapse rate of the atmosphere, because the temperature had to fall to about minus forty degrees Centigrade at the altitude of the highest clouds.

Albert Einstein said once (in his Ideas and Opinions, published in 1954): I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.