Wonders of Nature

Van Gogh’s The Starry Night.  wikipedia W hat is it about Van Gogh's portrayal of the night sky from his east facing window of the the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole lunatic asylum that draws the eye and makes us wonder?  For me it is how the stylized and abstract dynamic swirls and flows capture the patterns found in nature. Was he imagining the recently discovered spiral nature of galaxies depicted in the science literature of the times, or remembering the way water swirled in a pond near his childhood home? T hese words I am typing and seeing on the screen, they puzzle me, just like "The Starry Night." I mean, I get the ones and zeros, the electrical aspect of it. I understand the photons eminating from the screen to my eyes. Somehow my brain processes it and that turns to meaning, as does Van Gogh's painting. What is it about meaning? In this post I wonder about the nature of meaning.  I wonder about wonder, and that takes me back to the phenomenon of informat...

     T here is a diffuse and disk-shaped region of our immediate neighborhood filled with trillions of icy bodies, a few approach the size of our moon. The most famous, of course, is the once the ninth planet, Pluto. We have only known about this heavenly realm for a few dozen years and there is so much more to discover... Source: Nasa Space Place      T he Kuiper belt is a resting place for comets, but change is everpresent in the universe, and so objects from it occasionally wonder off. Some have fundamentally shaped life here on earth. You see, all of the heavenly bodies around Sol are bound to each other through the wonder of gravity. The icy bodies speak to each other through fundamental forces, and we humans on this tiny rock are left to imagine the outcomes of their conversation.       T here is something worthwhile about contemplating ourselves as living on a tiny rock floating in the unknow ether of the cosmos. From our minut...

The Orion Nebula T he vastness of space belies human experience. In comparsion, we are tiny, ephmeral creatures living on a speck of dust. It is not truly possible, I believe, to grasp the grandeur of the cosmos, to hold the whole of it in our imagination, but we can see enough to wonder, to feel our place in it. Most of us, as we peruse through social media, will scroll by images like The Pillars of Creation and marvel at their beauty, even if for a moment. Perhaps some may consider all the scientific and technological achievement required to take such an image. Most common elements in Nebulas N ebulas are where stars and solar systems are born out of the interstellar medium, a dance of radiation, magnetism and matter that exists among the stars. The Orion Nebula , owing to its largeness in the sky, may be the most famous. We see it because the gases within have ignited in color. Hydrogen is the main ingredient.  As it transitions form one state of energy to...

S tanding on a glacier is a geographer’s dream. It is rather like stepping through a time portal... not like a door that takes you to another age, but one that allows you to observe the scale of geologic time. The earth is constantly in motion, the landscape churns with activity, but we humans cannot see it, not until you stand on atop a melting ice river, and you know what to look for. Terminal end of Sólheimajökulsvegur Glacier, Iceland T he terminal end of a glacier is much like I imagined it to be, perhaps not much different that the surface of a comet. There is a lot of grit, in this case, black and grey ground from lava and basalt. Moving ice is eroding the sides of this volcaninc range quite effectively. Streaks and splotches interrupt the deep, dull grey with minerals from broken veins, rusty red, vibrant ocre, and turquoise in color. A n iceberg floats along the far end of a small lake. By the glacier, mounds of till merge with geometric ice forms. Glaciers l...

   W ith Facebook memes, smartphone cameras, blogs and 24/7 instant news, we are now fully witness to the folly, the craziness and the cruelty that underlies our economics and our politics. We are all the more aware of the problems facing us. Our world seems to be at a critical stage, some of us are disillusioned and some feel an urgency to move in a new direction.      I have seen a lot of political posts regarding what’s best for society, be it capitalism, socialism, or some combination thereof.  For some, it is about salvation and God’s mercy, while others place their faith in new technologies.      A ll of these human models have been tried before, in multiple means and ways, and yet we are left wondering if we have reached a precipice, an ending. Many simply want change, to throw out the old and corrupt without much thought about what comes next.  Yet, there are some who believe we should shape our politics and eco...

        T hank you all for reading my posts these past few years. I hope I have conveyed my love of the natural world and the cosmos to you.  If you've enjoy my writing please see my latest novel on  joeocchipinti.net .  I would appreciate it if you take a moment to look:                      A lone in the ashen plains, a girl searches for the enigmatic nomads of Od-Siing, but the atmosphere proves too harsh for the young seafarer. Krynna is unconscious and dying when found by the twins, Durai and Quan. Durai falls in love with the girl from a distant ocean world but believes she is a star spirit and shies away. While recovering, the young emissary is shown writings that could help free the nomads from a brutal occupation. A surprise raid separates Durai from Krynna and his sister who then flee to distant asteroid station, where a young prospector has seen the same ancient script. A ho...