Mars/Earth Comparison Table

 

October 16, 2021

Mars is only about half the diameter of Earth, but both planets have roughly the same amount of dry land surface area. This is because over two-thirds of Earth’s surface is covered by oceans, whereas Mars currently has no liquid water on its surface.

While Mars and Earth differ greatly in temperature, size, and atmosphere, their geologic processes are surprisingly similar. On Mars, we observe volcanoes, canyons, and impact basins that resemble those found on Earth.

Many physical land features on Earth also exist on Mars. However, some Martian landforms are far larger than their Earthly counterparts. The table below compares several conditions, specifications, and features of Mars and Earth:

Feature	Mars	Earth
Atmosphere (composition)	Carbon dioxide (95.32%) Nitrogen (2.7%) Argon (1.6%) Oxygen (0.13%) Water vapor (0.03%) Nitric oxide (0.01%)	Nitrogen (77%) Oxygen (21%) Argon (1%) Carbon dioxide (0.038%)
Atmosphere (pressure)	7.5 millibars (average)	1,013 millibars (at sea level)
Deepest Canyon	Valles Marineris 7 km (4.35 miles) deep 4,000 km (2,485 miles) long	Grand Canyon 1.8 km (1.1 miles) deep 400 km (248.5 miles) long
Distance from Sun (average)	227,936,637 km (142,633,260 miles)	149,597,891 km (92,955,820 miles)
Equatorial Radius	3,397 km (2,111 miles)	6,378 km (3,963 miles)
Gravity	0.375 that of Earth	1 g (2.66 times that of Mars)
Largest Volcano	Olympus Mons 26 km (16 miles) high 602 km (374 miles) in diameter	Mauna Loa (Hawaii) 6.3 miles high 121 km (75 miles) in diameter
Length of Day (rotation period)	24 hours, 37 minutes	Just under 24 hours
Length of Year (orbital period)	687 Earth days	365 days
Polar Caps	Carbon dioxide ice mixed with water ice	Permanently covered with water ice
Surface Temperature (average)	–81°F (–63°C)	57°F (14°C)
Tilt of Axis	25 degrees	23.45 degrees
Number of Satellites	2 (Phobos and Deimos)	1 (Moon)

Eugenics: What a Child Does Not Understand

 November 26, 2021

This whole topic of eugenics — it’s big, and it’s ugly. As a society, we have lived with its warped, terribly bad science for the last 138 years. It has come to infect the planetary population as a whole. Francis Galton, who in 1883 coined the term eugenics — meaning “good living” — gave us what is arguably the worst translation of a term in human history. Good living, my ass. Eugenics has brought nothing but misery to untold millions.

In our articles “What If,” parts 1 and 2, we give a primary example of eugenics in practice: the Canadian Indian Act. Canada’s first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald (January 11, 1815 – June 6, 1891), was born in Scotland and, in early Canadian politics, was known as “the sly fox.” He led our government with a firm and discerning hand, serving as Prime Minister from 1867 to 1873. It was the men — and women, too — of Macdonald’s generation who made eugenics what it came to be, taking the principles of the philosophy and making them real.

Lost in the Barrens. As a youth I must have read this book 10 or more times. Mowat has a library of both adult, and children's books, most of which I've read. He's written extensively about the north, and its peoples. His writings more than any other writer, provided the desire for me to go north, and see the beauty of both its people, and the land

For me, discovering the effects of eugenics began in grade five with the events surrounding our article “Someone Is Going to Be Offended.” As I have related elsewhere, that year — and for the following sixty months — was a period of extraordinary isolation. To help combat those feelings of loneliness, I lost myself in books. My interests were broad. I read many of the classics — Moby Dick, Catcher in the Rye, a lot of Poe’s work.

An author whose work I particularly enjoyed was a Canadian, by the name of Farley Mowat. I especially loved his children’s novel Lost in the Barrens,  a story about two teenagers — one white, the other a Chipewyan Native American — who became separated from a hunting party and had to rely on each other for survival as the brutal winter in the Canadian sub-Arctic set in. It’s truly a story of bravery and resilience in the face of long odds. In addition, it is a beautiful example of what cooperation and respect for each other’s culture should be.

As is the case for most of us, when we find an author we like, we tend to read all their work. This was definitely the case with Mr. Mowat and me. Most of his library was very adult-oriented, dealing with the Inuit of Canada’s North and the horrors of their lives. The reasons the Canadian government treated the people the way it did were, of course, way above the head of the twelve-year-old I was — I only knew that they were suffering and needed help.

Reading Mowat’s material had a profound effect on me. I was both incredibly impressed and inspired by the bravery and toughness shown by the explorers of our northern territories, and I developed great sorrow and respect for the peoples of the North. Because of this, I tried to read anything I could get my hands on regarding the North.

For my 13th birthday, my father bought me a copy of Across the Sub-Arctic of Canada: A Journey of 3,200 Miles by Canoe and Snowshoe Through the Barren Lands (1898) by James Williams Tyrrell. The book fascinated me 

Most of Mowat's work is about the Inuit, and being a child when I'd read them, I hadn't been able to connect the dots. That the conditions that he described, would be universal throughout the north. Tyrell's work then, was an eye opener for me, an unpleasant one. In the years after I'd read it, I wondered if it might be possible to actually travel their route, and what it might cost. Maybe if I'd been more serious about it, I might have tried harder to find those answers, but right then, it seemed tht I couldn't find anyone to help. I held on to this dream/hope until well after my marriage ended, and anytime that I'd brought it up with my wife, the whore, she'd scoffed at it.

both because it was filled with information about the actual routes they took and the difficulties they endured. Since I was intensely interested in geology — and the whole effort they were engaged in was on behalf of the Canadian Geological Survey — it matched my interests perfectly. Rare 10/10 score, Dad! As I have said elsewhere, sometimes he understood me very well indeed.

So, what does this have to do with eugenics, you may be asking?

The Tyrrell brothers were educated men. They would have willingly partaken in the “latest” scientific and societal “changes for the better.” When we look at the date of Tyrrell’s journey — 1898 — it would have been right during the upward curve of eugenics becoming intensely popular. Throughout the book, it is liberally peppered with racist slurs — not only toward the voyageurs (the licensed canoe workers transporting furs and trade goods across the interior) and the laborers hauling samples, but also toward the Indigenous populations they encountered over those 3,200 miles.

I was raised to believe that “Indians” were untrustworthy, savage low-lives. The savagery I understood — they had been fighting for their homes and families. The “low-life” part, I began to question as I came to appreciate their socio-economic situation. For far too many years, I could not understand why they simply didn’t assimilate into Canadian-Western culture. I was very wrong in thinking that way, and I offer here a very public apology for that.

We have much to learn from our Indigenous peoples. They are one avenue back to our reintegration with Source.

  

There Is Hope

 

November 7, 2021

Footage shows the 18-year-old at Festival Park in Govan chanting:
"You can shove your climate crisis up your ae, you can shove your climate crisis up your ae!"

The young activist has quickly acquainted herself with the Glaswegian sense of humour as she joins one of the many protests calling out political inaction during the COP26 climate summit in the city. As you can probably tell, Thunberg isn't exactly convinced that politicians are doing enough to protect the planet.

Addressing the crowds gathered across the River Clyde from the COP26 venue, she declared:
"Change is not going to come from inside there — that is not leadership. This is leadership. We say no more blah blah blah, no more exploitation of people and nature and the planet.
No more exploitation. No more blah blah blah. No more whatever the fk they are doing inside there."**

In September, Thunberg mocked Boris Johnson by quoting parts of his speeches on climate change and adding, “blah, blah, blah.”

The Prime Minister himself referenced her remarks during his speech at the COP26 opening session earlier that day (Monday, November 1). He said:
"I was there in Paris six years ago when we agreed to net zero and to try to restrain the rise in the temperature of the planet to 1.5°C. And all those promises will be nothing but blah blah blah — to coin a phrase — and the anger and impatience of the world will be uncontainable unless we make this COP26 in Glasgow the moment when we get real about climate change."

Thunberg arrived in Glasgow the previous day (Sunday, October 31) by train and is expected to take part in two large protests through the city later in the week.

Speaking at Festival Park, she added: "This COP26 is so far just like the previous COPs — and they have led us nowhere.Inside COP, they are just politicians and people in power pretending to take our future seriously. Pretending to take the present seriously — the present of people already being affected today by the climate crisis." 

The above comes from LAD Bible, a British news source I trust.

As much as I admire Greta Thunberg and her fiery, angry spirit — and I do believe that she and every following generation has a right to be angry — I also consider her to be something of a twit. She seems to be very strong in judgment, and very weak in offering solutions. Sure, she is still young, and like most young people, she’s highly reactive.

Speaking as a concerned Canadian citizen, I am appalled at my government’s track record on climate change. I, too, am deeply concerned that we are approaching the point of no return at break-neck speed — and may have already passed it. Back in the late 1990s, I was trucking through South Dakota and had stopped on an exit ramp to relieve myself. Another truck pulled up behind me to do the same. The other driver and I chatted briefly about the thick layer of bugs on our windshields — it was awful, bugs on top of bugs. He commented that he’d never seen them so bad, and neither had I. At that time, I was starting to become aware of climate change, and beginning to wonder about the phenomenon of the sixth extinction, though I hadn’t yet connected the two.

Now, some 25 years later, I can't help but notice the die-back of insect life I warned that driver about. In Canada, during the summer months from about 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., driving becomes extremely annoying due to the swarms of bugs coating your windshield. But over the last decade, there’s been a notable drop in insect populations. What disturbs me most is the impact on pollinators — particularly bees.

The group of chemicals known as neonicotinoids is devastating to bees, as are many herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides. The obvious solution is to stop using them. However, simply halting their use won’t fix the problem. There is hope, though. In Britain, researchers at the University of York have developed a variety of switch-grass that can detoxify residues of the military explosive RDX. 

This innovation has the potential to be further engineered to neutralize other toxic substances.

Recently, the UN published a report stating that planting trees will not save us. This hit me like a gut punch. The problem is twofold:

1. Newly planted forests cannot absorb the excess CO₂ already in the atmosphere, and

2. The trees themselves are dying due to climate change.Normally, winter freezes protect trees from rot. But as winters warm, trees are no longer freezing properly and are starting to rot from the inside out during the coldest months.

   Although forests are not the "lungs of the planet" as once believed, our oceans are — and they, too, are in serious decline. The overall picture is grim, as Miss Thunberg rightly points out, yet there is still more reason for hope than despair.

   We know the planet’s two ice caps are vital to regulating global temperature because they serve two functions:

   1. They reflect sunlight and heat back into space, and

   2. Sea ice expels salt when it freezes, which creates a churning motion that helps circulate ocean currents and redistribute heat from the equator.

These ocean currents are slowing. Whether the consequences resemble those in the film, The Day After Tomorrow or unfold more gradually remains to be seen. CO² capture and sequestration — combined with some planetary engineering — may buy us enough time to redesign our economies. All three strategies are achievable with today’s technology.

In April 2021, a researcher at Purdue University developed the whitest shade of white ever created — it reflects 95.5% of all light. Originally designed as a passive cooling material, what if we repurposed it to simulate artificial ice caps? What if every balcony, rooftop, and car roof in every city, town, and village worldwide were painted with it? What if tens of thousands of square kilometers of breathable canvas, coated in this paint were laid across the Arctic tundra? Instant ice caps.

Unsurprisingly, the oil industry has tainted the idea of carbon capture. They’re using the technology to trap their emissions and store carbon underground — often in the very wells they’ve been drilling, many of which are neither sealed, nor maintained properly. This approach feels cynical and flawed. On a more hopeful note, a Swedish company, Climeworks AG, operating in Iceland, has developed a method to extract CO² directly from the air, and store it in the island’s porous volcanic basalt. This type of rock is ideal for permanent storage. Though they currently manage only 4,000 tons annually, they are scaling up rapidly.

In my view, Greta Thunberg and today's youth have every right to be angry. But rather than mourning what may have been taken from them, they should fight like hell for what remains. They must channel their passion into advocating for the technologies and solutions that can turn hope into reality.

Pitfalls

August 16, 2021

With 80 articles written, most of them dealing with information about The Holy Grail, and a few about the conditions that led to my grail quest, the one subject that I have not touched on is, the pitfalls of a spiritual awakening.

When I began this quest back in the late 1990s, I was a wreck of epic proportions. I knew that I had to find a way to change, what that entailed, or how to go about it, I could not have known. Part of the recovery process involved finding A.A. (Alcoholic Anonymous), though I was not an addict, I had been trained since birth to think and act like an addict. While in those rooms, I learned exactly how and why my thinking differed from a "normal person's." What occurred too, was that I was able to better understand what I needed in terms of my spiritual life.

• We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

• Came to believe and to accept that we needed strengths beyond our awareness and resources to restore us to sanity.

• Made a decision to entrust our will and our lives to the care of the collective wisdom and resources of those who have searched before us.

• Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

• Admitted to ourselves without reservation, and to another human being, the exact nature of our wrongs.

• Were ready to accept help in letting go of all our defects of character.

• With humility and openness sought to eliminate our shortcomings.

• Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

• Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

• Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

• Sought through meditation to improve our spiritual awareness and our understanding of the AA way of life and to discover the power to carry out that way of life.

• Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

  If you are an alcoholic, these 12 steps may seem daunting, they're really not, and when taken one at a time, can change your life.

As I examined my spirituality, I discovered that I was indeed an empty space. The belief system that I had tried so desperately to attach myself to in my mid-teens, was entirely incapable of filling the void that existed in my soul. In too many ways, the damage done to me by my mother completely incapacitated me.

My mother was absolutely ruthless in how she had taught me to suppress any and all of my emotions. This was so she did not have to acknowledge me as a person.

What my soul needed, was to find a place where there was infinite love, beauty, and, purpose. Unfortunately, that sounds a bit like the biblical heaven, a concept that I rejected entirely. So where did this leave me? For quite some time, I thought that I was completely fucked. I could not and did not believe in god, and because I did not, that meant that I was going to hell and I would spend eternity splashing around in a lake of fire or some such.

The problem with that was, the concept of hell to me was overblown. I mean the fire, demons, betrayal, mean evil things that fly, and then there is the guy in charge who has a tail and horns. Really? Think about it though, if god was all that powerful, why had he not put this evil ass down? And, why does he need all the geo-political crap to happen to have the final round at Mt Megiddo in Israel?

Sorry, but a lot of people, including my father, have spent too much time on trying to make current events match up with an almost imaginary time line found in the Book of Revelation. The time line exists, but the only people that it mattered to was, Jesus and his rebellious Essenes. The battle at Mt Megiddo was supposed to have been between a united Israel and the Roman Empire. This final great battle is not the Russians against Americans or Israel vs the world nor even god against the purple polka dot monster.

As I wandered somewhat aimlessly through the following months with my head full of the above, it seemed that there was no other option except to try to realign my belief system with the accepted Christian tradition. Not out of fear of going to hell, I figured that I would take my chances with that; I mean with all of Jesus's parables, their meanings could be twisted just enough to let me squeak through the pearly gates. The problem here was that I was neither an atheist, or an agnostic, nor a Christian believer.

While in those A.A. rooms, I had learned the importance of having a higher power. Not because they proscribe to one, (they do not) but because it became obvious to me that, without some kind of spiritual connection, my soul would continue to feel glacially cold and empty. But still the questions remained, where and what was the connection?

The connection of course was The Holy Grail. When I first discovered that Jesus Christ was a mortal man, who had children, and had been married, this was mind blowing. And it stopped me in my tracks for months. Nowhere in the New Testament is there even a hint of this. This then for me, was the hardest hurdle for me to get over, could I accept that Jesus was an average mortal man, and not a deity? This went against everything that I had been taught or tried to believe.

 That said, accepting the above led to finding answers that were real. Much of it at first seemed intellectual, and I was not sure how it affected me spiritually. It was not easy to discuss with others, they were too afraid of "evil influences" leading them astray. This is funny because, there is nothing about the Holy Grail that is evil. The only thing that could be considered "evil", is that we learn about the occult and the true meanings behind the symbolism, which has been twisted by the church to look evil as they worked incredibly hard to suppress Jesus's Grail bloodline heritage and, supplement it with the lie of the Pauline church.

So again,  how does this intellectual information better me spiritually? The answer was something that my former, now late,  life partner could not understand.  It was something that we would argue about nastily, and she would say that it was impossible for it to help my growth.  What she failed to realize was that it takes time for anyone to heal.  I was in exceptionally poor shape, and it took a long time for the serenity of the Grail to raise my inner vibrational frequencies.  After 20 years of study,  I do not claim to be a master of anything, there is still a lifetime of study in front of me, but the thing that I know for sure is,  she needed to work far harder on her inner self than she ever did; as opposed to trying to criticize and control my spiritual journey. 

This article is about the pitfalls of a spiritual awakening,  and some of the things that could/can and will be part of it. There is no "right" path,  the information that I present here is meant to open doors,  answer questions that may lead to revelations about things that you need to know about for your own journey.  No one's journey is the same,  and we have the multiverse to thank for that. 

When I first began this journey,  and was introduced to the idea of the silver cord,  and how it descended from what I termed "heaven", I could not begin to comprehend how it was that the things did not get impossibly tangled up in a gargantuan knot. The answer was a long time coming and was,  insanely complicated and yet,  oh so simple.  We are beings of light and energy,  and each of us vibrates on our own frequencies, and it is the differing frequencies that allow these cords of energy that are connected to the kundalini, to pass harmlessly through those who are around us.

String Theory and the multiverse that is hard science.  You may not think that science and spirituality would have a whole lot to do with each other,  but believe it or not,  these three things may be the answer to each other.  To over simplify,  string theory posits that, anything, anytime, anywhere can, does, and will happen.  The multiverse suggests that there is more than one universe.  Spirituality says that we are beings of light and energy and that we are immortal and we will live in limitless dimensions and planes of existence.  (I hate the word AND). What if these differing planes of existence are other universes where physics and evolution work just a little differently? What if the multiverse where science believes that each dimension gets exponentially smaller, is where we live now? Not one life here on earth is the same as another,  which essentially allows string theory to be fact. Science and spirituality are two peas in the same pod,  we just have to learn how they communicate. 

Us, That Pale Blue Dot

 

August 7, 2021

Us from Voyager 1's perspective.

The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken on February 14, 1990, by the Voyager 1 space probe from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles, 40.5 AU), as part of that day's Family Portrait series of images of the Solar System.

In the photograph, Earth's apparent size is less than a pixel; the planet appears as a tiny dot against the vastness of space, among bands of sunlight reflected by the camera.

Voyager 1, which had completed its primary mission, was leaving the Solar System. It was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and take one last photograph of Earth. Across the great expanse of space, at the request of astronomer and author Carl Sagan, (the phrase "Pale Blue Dot" was coined by Sagan) in his reflections on the photograph's significance, documented in his 1994 book of the same name

In September 1977, NASA launched Voyager 1, a 722-kilogram (1,592 lb.) robotic spacecraft on a mission to study the outer Solar System and eventually interstellar space after the encounter with the Jovian System in 1979 and the Saturian System in 1980, the primary mission was declared complete in November of the same year. Voyager 1 was the first space probe to provide detailed images of the two largest planets and their major moons.

The spacecraft, still travelling at 64,000 km/h (40,000 mph), is the most distant human-made object from Earth and the first one to leave the Solar System. Its mission has been extended and continues to this day, with the aim of investigating the boundaries of The Solar System, including the Kuiper Belt, the Heliosphere and Interstellar Space. Operating for 43 years, 10 months and 28 days as of 2 August 2021, it receives routine commands and transmits data back to the Deep Space Network. Voyager 1 was expected to work only through the Saturn encounter. When the spacecraft passed the planet in 1980, Sagan proposed the idea of the space probe taking one last picture of Earth.^[8] He acknowledged that such a picture would not have had much scientific value, as the Earth would appear too small for Voyager's cameras to make out any detail, but it would be meaningful as a perspective on humanity's place in the universe.

Although many in NASA's Voyager Program were supportive of the idea, there were concerns that taking a picture of Earth so close to the Sun risked damaging the spacecraft's imaging system irreparably. It was not until 1989 that Sagan's idea was put into practice, but then instrument calibrations delayed the operation further, and the personnel who devised and transmitted the radio commands to Voyager 1 were also being laid off or transferred to other projects. Finally, NASA Administrator Richard Trudy interceded to ensure that the photograph was taken. A proposal to continue to photograph Earth as it orbited the Sun was rejected.

Voyager 1's Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) consists of two cameras: a 200 mm focal length, low-resolution wide-angle camera (WA), used for spatially extended imaging, and a 1500 mm high-resolution narrow-angle camera (NA) – the one that took Pale Blue Dot – intended for detailed imaging of specific targets. Both cameras are of the slow-scan vidicon tube type and were fitted with eight colored filters, mounted on a filter wheel placed in front of the tube.

The challenge was that, as the mission progressed, the objects to be photographed would increasingly be farther away and would appear fainter, requiring longer exposures and slewing (panning) of the cameras to achieve acceptable quality. The telecommunication capability also diminished with distance, limiting the number of data modes that could be used by the imaging system.

After taking the Family Portrait series of images, which included Pale Blue Dot, NASA mission managers commanded Voyager 1 to power its cameras down, as the spacecraft was not going to fly near anything else of significance for the rest of its mission, while other instruments that were still collecting data needed power for the long journey to interstellar space

The design of the command sequence to be relayed to the spacecraft and the calculations for each photograph's exposure time were developed by space scientists Candy Hanson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Carolyn Porco of the University of Arizona. The command sequence was then compiled and sent to Voyager 1, with the images taken at 04:48 GMT on February 14, 1990.

The data from the camera was stored initially in an on-board tape recorder. Transmission to Earth was also delayed by the Magellan and Galileo missions being given priority use of the Deep Space Network. Then, between March and May 1990, Voyager 1 returned 60 frames back to Earth, with the radio signal travelling at the speed of light for nearly five and a half hours to cover the distance.

Three of the frames received showed the Earth as a tiny point of light in empty space. Each frame had been taken using a different color filter: blue, green and violet, with exposure times of 0.72, 0.48 and 0.72 seconds respectively. The three frames were then recombined to produce the image that became Pale Blue Dot.

 Of the 640,000 individual pixels that compose each frame, Earth takes up less than one (0.12 of a pixel, according to NASA). The light bands across the photograph are an artifact, the result of sunlight reflecting off parts of the camera and its sunshade, due to the relative proximity between the Sun and the Earth. Voyager's point of view was approximately 32° above the ecliptic. Detailed analysis suggested that the camera also detected the Moon, although it is too faint to be visible without special processing.

Pale Blue Dot, which was taken with the narrow-angle camera, was also published as part of a composite picture created from a wide-angle camera photograph showing the Sun and the region of space containing the Earth and Venus. The wide-angle image was inset with two narrow-angle pictures: Pale Blue Dot and a similar photograph of Venus. The wide-angle photograph was taken with the darkest filter (a methane absorption band) and the shortest possible exposure (5 milliseconds), to avoid saturating the camera's vidicon tube with scattered sunlight. Even so, the result was a bright burned-out image with multiple reflections from the optics in the camera and the Sun that appears far larger than the actual dimension of the solar disk. The rays around the Sun are a diffraction pattern of the calibration lamp, which is mounted in front of the wide-angle lens.

Pale blue color

Earth appears as a blue dot in the photograph primarily because of Rayleigh scattering of sunlight in its atmosphere. In Earth's air, short-wavelength visible light such as blue light is scattered to a greater extent than longer wavelength light such as red light, which is the reason why the sky appears blue from Earth. (The ocean also contributes to Earth's blueness, but to a lesser degree than scattering.) Earth is a pale blue dot, rather than dark blue, because white light reflected by clouds combines with the scattered blue light.

Earth's reflectance spectrum from the far ultraviolet, to the near infrared, is unlike that of any other observed planet. And is partially due to the presence of life on Earth Rayleigh scattering, which causes Earth's blueness, is enhanced in an atmosphere that does not substantially absorb visible light, unlike, for example, the orange-brown color of Titan, where organic haze particles absorb strongly at blue visible wavelengths.  Earth's plentiful atmospheric oxygen, which is produced by photosynthetic life forms, causes the atmosphere to be transparent to visible light, which allows for substantial Rayleigh scattering and hence stronger reflectance of blue light.

UAD Voyager is how far away! Position of Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. The vertical bars are spaced one year apart and indicate the probe's distance above the ecliptic.

According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s HORIZONS tool, the distances between Voyager 1 and the Earth on February 14 and May 15, 1990, were as follows:

Distance of Voyager 1 from Earth
Unit of measurement		February 14, 1990
Astronomical Units		40.472229
Kilometers		6,054,587,000
Miles		3,762,146,000

Reflections

In his 1994 book, Pale Blue Dot, Carl Sagan comments on what he sees as the greater significance of the photograph, writes:

Look again at that dot. That is here. That's home. That is us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, human beings who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy, and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines. Every hunter, and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization. Every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturing, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we have ever known.

In 2015, NASA acknowledged the 25th anniversary of the photograph. Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist, commented: "Twenty-five years ago, Voyager 1 looked back toward Earth and saw a "pale blue dot", an image that continues to inspire wonderment about the spot we call home."

In 2020, for the image's 30th anniversary, NASA published a new version of the original Voyager photo: Pale Blue Dot Revisited obtained using modern image processing techniques "while attempting to respect the original data and intent of those who planned the images." Brightness levels and colors were rebalanced to enhance the area containing the Earth, and the image was enlarged, appearing brighter and less grainy than the original. The direction of the Sun is toward the bottom, where the image is brightest.

To celebrate the same occasion, the Carl Sagan Institute released a video with several noted astronomers reciting Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" speech.

What is Voyager 1's distance from earth today?

As of early 2026, Voyager 1 is about 162–163 astronomical units (AU) from Earth.

Here’s what that means in more human terms:

• ~24.3 billion kilometers

• ~15.1 billion miles

• ~22.5 light-hours away (radio signals take almost a full day to get back)

Voyager 1 is moving away from the Sun at roughly 17 km/s (~61,000 km/h), so it gains about 3.6 AU per year. That’s why any quoted number is always an approximation—it’s drifting farther every hour.

Context that makes the number hit harder:

• It’s well beyond the heliopause, the boundary where the Sun’s influence gives way to interstellar space.

• No human-made object has ever been farther from Earth.

• The “Pale Blue Dot” image was taken at ~40 AU. Voyager is now 4× farther away than it was then.

Where was this God?

 

June 8 2021

My paternal grandfather, I knew him as Pappy, he was a hard cold man. Trying to get love and affection out of him, was like using a toothpick and thread to try to pull the island of Newfoundland closer to mainland Canada. I did not know him very well. All I really knew about his and my father's relationship was that Pappy and my father's mother Helen, had been on vacation down in North Carolina U.S.A. where Helen had been killed in a car accident and for months after, Pappy had not informed my father of his mother's death.

This sad state of affairs was brought about by Pappy having thrown my father out of his house at the age of sixteen; due to my father's alcohol and drug use. As we know, drug addiction is usually brought on by trauma either real or imagined. My father's trauma was real in that he suffered emotionally at the hands of Pappy who truly was an ass.

But what about Pappy, how had he become the way that he was? He had spent his childhood in Winnipeg in a lower middle class home. His father had thrown him out at the very young age of twelve when the financial crisis of 1929 hit. Pappy spent the years of the great depression tramping the rails of western Canada, where he was forced in to the position where he had to sell sex for both food and protection. He was sexually assaulted innumerable times. Now remember that this took place during the 1930s, and after world war 2 and during the 1950s, while dad was growing up in Pappy's home, counseling was almost unknown. So there was my grandfather ruined even before he had a chance to start his life.

Most people raise their children in similar ways as we were taught by our parents, sometimes that works out very well, and other times not so much so. I find it interesting that Pappy at the end of his life, gave the majority of his life savings to the Salvation Army. Not because he was religious, but because he would have died if not for the charitable work that they do.

Pappy was an atheist (had no belief system) through and through. And really, considering all that he had been through, you can not blame him. His question to me was, how can I believe in a god that allows the kind of suffering that I have seen? It is a good question, how could the dewy eyed

sap that Christ is portrayed as, allow his creation, us, to live the nightmares that we do?

I once had it explained to me that god allowed shit to happen to us because, he was incredibly busy looking after six billion people. Perhaps so but, you would think that he would catch stuff like the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 or the tsunami of 2004. Or maybe the Fukushima earthquake and its resultant nuclear disaster. My particular question is, where the fuck was he/her, during WWII when six million Jews were exterminated? He supposedly had a covenant with them, and during that period, not to mention the previous 1,935 years, he had allowed his "chosen" people to be treated pretty shabbily.

So when we look at the micro (individual), the intermediate (large scale human suffering), and the macro level, E.L.E. (Extinction Level Event), I think that instead of asking where was god, we should be asking who is this unreliable prick that we call "god"?

WWG Pappy needed to know who the unreliable prick was. The ass never bothered with us kids, and barely dealt with dad. He had been thrown out of his home as 12 year old child, in many ways it makes sense that he couldn't be a parent, or really, a functioning adult. His story makes my father easier to understand, and his lack of compassion, and utter selfishness. He like so many others, needed to be led away from anger, taught that his/her suffering has a point. He died alone more or less, giving a small fortune to his care giver, instead of his family. Bought the fucker a fully paid for house out in Victoria BC , while my brother was homeless after his divorce. When he died back in 97 or 8, he was yet another family member of who I didn't care if he did, I'd never known the man. 

Pontific Arrogance

 

May 11, 2021

PA Locks with No Security. This image in a nut shell, perfectly describes the Christian Church. The church presents an odd story about a god, whose life we're not told a lot about about. At least not the new god. The god from the first part of the book, a thing they call the bible, is a mean bastard. The first part of the book is supposed to be about prophesying the arrival of the god in the second part of the book. Strangely, not a lot of that actually happens. But what is described is, the shape of an important bloodline develops, which is almost entirely ignored in the new book. So there's a real continuity issue there.

 The god in the second part of the book is supposed to be about saving people's souls. He does this apparently by, allowing himself to be murdered painfully by being hung on a tree. But you're not saved yet by him doing that, your part of the deal is, you have to believe 110% that he did that for you, and only at that point are you saved. But don't count on that completely, if there's any doubt in you, Jesus will see it, and not let you into heaven claiming that you're not in something called the Book of Life.

I do not like conjecture; throughout the course of these articles, I have tried to faithfully report the truth, a truth that to many is blasphemous. Indeed, before the pandemic, I have had people very rudely get up and walk away from me as if I were the devil himself as we discussed different aspects of the Grail. There are of course many diverse topics here to get bent out of shape about, we’ve got space aliens, evolution instead of creationism, and most frighteningly, Jesus Christ as a mortal married man who had, yup you guessed it, sex.

One of the many things that Christians do that drives me bug shit is their close-mindedness. They have this limitless capacity to close their eyes to the very fact that their church holds out hope to them, propping the whole thing up on a bed of sand, and then they withhold the keys of true understanding from them. During the Satya Yuga, men and the “gods” too were obsessed with clean spiritual behaviour. During the following three Yugas, especially during the Kali Yuga (now), those behaviours would fall off markedly in favour of secularism. I find it incredibly ironic that the church, the very vehicle that espouses holiness and that we should live in love with the Holy Spirit of Christ, is too very much a product of our time.

The Four Yugas, of which we are in the 4^th now.

he church during its short 1,700-year history has lied, cheated, and committed genocide to maintain its power over us; all the while telling us to believe in a schizophrenic god with multiple personality disorder. 

Schizophrenic with Multiple Personality Disorder. The Bible's Old Testament begins with a grand council of 12 “gods” of which, the Jews eventually amalgamate into one. This is why El Shaddai/Enlil appears so psychotic.

 The unfortunate part about this is, they want us to believe in a man, a real human being who they deified, and who would not recognize his teachings because he taught Hermetics, not the drivel that the church hands out. Pope Leo X (December 11, 1475 – December 1, 1521) is quoted saying, “this myth of Christ has served us well.” Papal infallibility is a dogma of the Catholic Church, which states that, in virtue of the promise of Jesus to Peter, the Pope, when appealing to his highest authority, is preserved from the possibility of error on doctrine “initially given to the apostolic Church and handed down in scripture and tradition.”

This doctrine was defined dogmatically at the First Vatican Council of 1869–1870 in the document Pastor Aeternus but had been defended before that, existing already in medieval theology, and being the majority opinion at the time of the Counter-Reformation.

Conditions for teachings being declared infallible

According to the teaching of the First Vatican Council and Catholic tradition, the conditions required for ex cathedral papal teaching are as follows:

The Roman Pontiff (the Pope alone or with the college of bishops)

1. Speaks ex cathedral, that is, when, in the discharge of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, and by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine:

   1. Concerning faith or morals

   2. To be held by the whole Church.

The terminology of a definitive decree usually makes clear that this last condition is fulfilled, as through a formula such as, "By the authority of Our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by Our own authority, We declare, pronounce, and define the doctrine . . . to be revealed by God and as such to be firmly and immutably held by all the faithful," or through an accompanying anathema stating that anyone who deliberately dissents is outside the Catholic Church.

For example, in 1950, with Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Pius XII's infallible definition regarding the Assumption of Mary, there are attached these words: "Hence if anyone, which God forbid, should dare wilfully to deny or to call into doubt that which we have defined, let him know that he has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith."

As with all char-isms, the Church teaches that the char-ism of papal infallibility must be properly discerned, though only by the Church's leaders. The way to know if something a pope says is infallible or not is to discern if they are ex cathedral teachings. Also considered infallible are the teachings of the whole body of bishops of the Church, especially but not only in an ecumenical manner. Limits Pastor Aeternus does not allow any infallibility for the Church or Pope for new doctrines. Any doctrines defined must be "conformable with Sacred Scripture and Apostolic Traditions":

For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles.

It gives examples of the kinds of consultations that are appropriate, including assembling Ecumenical Councils, asking for the mind of the Church scattered around the world, synods, and so on.

Not all Catholic teaching is infallible. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith differentiates three kinds of doctrine:

• To be believed as divinely revealed

  • To be held definitely

    • Following a solemn defining act by a Pope or Ecumenical Council

    • Following a non-defining act by a Pope, confirming or reaffirming a thing taught by the ordinary and universal teaching authority of bishops worldwide

  • Otherwise, to be respected or submitted to (in the case of priests and religious) as part of the ordinary teaching authority of bishops, but without any claim of infallibility.

  • 

Examples of doctrines to be believed as divinely revealed include the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels. Since the Gospels are part of the Bible, which is part of the deposit of divine revelation, as well as the Immaculate Conception of Mary and the Assumption of Mary, since the documents defining these doctrines state clearly that they are part of the divinely revealed truths. Examples of doctrines to be held definitely include transubstantiation, the Sacramental Seal, women not being allowed to be ordained as priests, and papal infallibility itself.

In July 2005, Pope Benedict XVI stated during an impromptu address to priests in Aosta that: "The Pope is not an oracle; he is infallible in very rare situations, as we know." Pope John XXIII once remarked: "I am only infallible if I speak infallibly but I shall never do that, so I am not infallible." A doctrine proposed by a pope, as his own opinion, not solemnly proclaimed as a doctrine of the Church, may be rejected as false, even if it is on a matter of faith and morals. In addition, even more any view he expresses on other matters. A well-known example of a personal opinion on a matter of faith and morals as taught by a pope, but rejected by the Church, is the view that Pope John XXII expressed on when the dead can reach the beatific vision. The limitation on the pope's infallibility "on other matters" is frequently illustrated by Cardinal James Gibbons' recounting how the pope mistakenly called him Jibbons.

Brian Tierney argued that the 13th-century Franciscan priest Peter Olivi was the first person to attribute infallibility to the pope. Tierney's idea was accepted by August Bernhard Hasler and by Gregory Lee Jackson. It was rejected by James Heft and by John V. Kruse. Klaus Schatz says Olivi by no means played the key role assigned to him by Tierney, who failed to acknowledge the work of earlier canonists and theologians. The crucial advance in the teaching came only in the 15th century, two centuries after Olivi. He declares that, "It is impossible to fix a single author or era as the starting point." Ulrich Horst criticized the Tierney view for the same reasons. In his Protestant evaluation of the ecumenical issue of papal infallibility, Mark E. Powell rejects Tierney's theory about 13th-century Olivi, saying that the doctrine of papal infallibility defined at Vatican I had its origins in the 14th century – he refers in particular to Bishop Guido Terreni – and was itself part of a long development of papal claims. Busted Nun

Schatz points to "... the special esteem given to the Roman church community [that] was always associated with fidelity in the faith and preservation of the paradosis (the faith as handed down)." Schatz differentiates between the later doctrine of "infallibility of the papal magisterium" and the Hormisdas formula in 519, which asserted that, "The Roman church has never erred (and will never err)." He emphasizes that the Hormisdas formula was not meant to apply so much to "... individual dogmatic definitions but to the whole of the faith as handed down and the tradition of Peter preserved intact by the Roman Church." Specifically, Schatz argues that the Hormisdas formula does not exclude the possibility that individual popes become heretics because the formula refers "... primarily to the Roman tradition as such and not exclusively to the person of the pope."