Category: Science

The higher you look, the less you see

You see the lights and you might hear the engine or the sound of the tyres on the road surface. But there’s no way you could tell the make and model of the car. The details are hidden.

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Image of the day – 183

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click images to enlarge

Sometimes it’s foggy in Cirencester. The Cotswolds is in the south-west of England and the prevailing winds come from the south-west and are laden with water vapour after crossing the Atlantic. As the air rises over the Cotswolds and other hilly country, some of that water vapour condenses as rain and some as fog. Once the sun appears, any mist or fog clears away with the rising temperature.

It’s all in the detail

As you look at the scene in the photo, you’ll notice right away that the fog obscures details on the church tower while the details on the nearer, and much less tall buildings in the foreground are quite sharp. This is always the way of things in foggy conditions. Nearby objects reveal more detail than those further away. If you stood near the base of the tower and looked towards the top you’d see the same thing. Stonework at the same level as your head would be clear, but raise your gaze to the top of the tower and you’d see few details. In heavy fog you might not see the top of the tower at all.

This is a great illustrative parallel of our ability to see spiritual details too. Look at the people around you and you see a lot of detail – hair colour, eye colour, style of hair, details of clothing , now look up and the detail seems to vanish. The Bible tells us that the Creator is hidden in dark clouds. The English words dark and darkness didn’t traditionally mean an absence of light, the sense was of something hidden from view. When you look into the headlights of a car coming towards you at night you see the lights and you might hear the engine or the sound of the tyres on the road surface. But there’s no way you could tell the make and model of the car. The details are hidden although (or even because) there’s so much light.

Yahweh (God) is like that too, as you get to know him the first thing you’ll understand is the simplest thing of all – he is there! Just an indistinct outline in the distance. As you draw closer, gradually you’ll begin to see how brightly he shines, but spend some time with him and more detail will appear, not what he looks like because he’s not a physical object in our universe, but you’ll start to see that he consists of a pure love, you’ll notice that he cares deeply about everyone, not just his followers, that he is the source of such things as peace, and grace, and joy, and that he knows you better than you know yourself. This experience feels very like walking towards an object almost invisible in the fog and discovering it to be a beautiful tree or an an amazing building. And the closer you get, the more detail you can distinguish – the veins on the leaves or the surface details in the stone.

Making a start

But how can you begin to know him? Where do you start? The answer is simple, begin right where you are right now. Start by noticing that the people you know (and you yourself) have a threefold nature. You are physical, like a stone or a puddle of water, but you also have a mind – utterly unlike a stone or a puddle! Is it so surprising, then, that there’s a third dimension to your existence and nature? These dimensions overlap yet they are distinct.

Your physical presence can be measured just like that of a stone, you have a certain size, shape, and mass, if you’re in motion you have measurable velocity, direction of movement, momentum and so forth. You possess colour and reflectivity. But overlapping with this physical presence are your senses of touch, sight, hearing and the rest.

The stone lacks these abilities. You have a brain that constantly evaluates the information coming from your senses and combines them into knowledge of your environment. This makes you aware of other objects (don’t trip over that stone, don’t step in that puddle), other lifeforms (chase away the fly that has landed on your arm, don’t step on that frog on the footpath), other people (talk to your neighbour, pay for the item you just bought, wave to your friend across the road, ask for directions).

Pushing through the fog

And that third dimension? Most of the overlap here is with your emotions, the love you feel for family and close friends, the fears you entertain (fear of death, fear of injury, fear of loss). There’s a spiritual element to your nature that overlaps mere emotion and goes way beyond feelings. This is another dimension that you can explore and it’s part of our nature that we sometimes fail to consider and rarely, if ever, visit.

So go there, move towards that somewhat foggy zone and the further you go, the more you will see. And I can assure you, the more you see the more you’ll be drawn along to explore further because what you find will be delightful, encouraging and fulfilling. And remember, in the fog, the further and higher you look the less you will see. But go closer and the details will become clearer. Drawing close is the only way to deal with fog.

And there’s a huge additional advantage, the physical and the mental aspects of your existence will pass away, the atoms of your body will be recycled, dispersed, and used to construct other things. But the overlapping spiritual aspects remain, because they are not dependent on the physical world in any way, they remain.

See also:

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Fog…
Fine weather if you have fine kit!

Life, death, resurrection

Unlike life, death is stable. It’s not often that you see a dead body come alive again. That would be resurrection, it’s not something that we expect to see happening regularly (or at all)!

Snowdrops, new every year

ad hoc post – 5

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Snowdrops

I’m writing about these three topics in obedience to a prompting from the Holy Spirit. I need to say that at the outset. And I think I’m going to need to create two versions, one for people who are following Jesus, and another for people who have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m going get stuck right in, please bear with me; my hope and prayer is that there’ll be something here for everyone.

For those who have no idea

We all know what life is, or at least, we think we do. Life is a metastable state. Let’s define ‘metastable’ – Imagine a pencil lying near the centre of a table; if you push it a little it will move across the surface but it won’t fall over. It can’t! (unless you push it so far that it reaches beyond the edge of the table it is always fully supported on the table’s surface. That pencil is a stable object.

Now take the pencil and stand it up on it’s point. Let it go and it will fall over. A pencil standing on its point is unstable.

Now take the pencil and stand it on the table with its point uppermost. If the pencil has a good, flat end and the table surface is even and horizontal, you will be able to do this with a little care. Now push the pencil point sideways a tiny amount and then release it, it’ll wobble a bit but then remain standing and settle down. But push it beyond a certain amount and it will fall over. That’s metastable, the pencil can cope with a tiny movement, but push it too far and it’ll fall over.

Life is like that, it’s a metastable condition. Most of the time we live day after day as the weather changes, sometimes warmer, sometimes cooler, sometimes wet, sometimes dry. Put us in a place too hot, too cold, too dry (a desert), or too wet (an ocean) and we will die. Not immediately, perhaps, but push us too far, and like the point-up pencil, we’ll fall. Life is metastable. All of us will die eventually, if not of overheating or drowning, then eventually of old age. It’s not normal to live for ever.

Unlike life, death is stable. It’s not often that you see a dead body come alive again. That would be resurrection, it’s not something that we expect to see happening regularly (or at all)!

That’s about all there is to say to the ‘No idea’ group.

For those following Jesus (or might like to)

Jesus had some really interesting things to say about life. He reminded people that life is metastable, but without using that term. He claimed that there is a different kind of life, a spiritual life parallel to biological life, a life that is stable rather than metastable, a life that has the potential to be stable as either permanent life or permanent death. And he further explained that we can choose either permanent condition.

These claims don’t make sense, do they? I’ve stated them as simply and straightforwardly as I can. I should add that these deep truths cannot be grasped by intellect or understood by logic. They are, I suspect, completely distinct from the physical world and from the rationality of mind and brain. These things are unmeasurable and indescribable, available only through faith, hope, and love.

So if you want to explore further, faith, hope and love are the tools you will need to do so. Faith is a mysterious idea, quite hard to pin down or explain. Hope is something we all have, though perhaps we all hope for slightly different things. But love is the most important and the strongest of the three, it’s the one key you truly need to unlock resurrection (a return to life) and to grasp the enormous benefit of permanent life and the desperate state of permanent death. So take love as the starting point. If you are new to all this, Henry Drummond is a good guide and companion on the exciting journey that lies ahead.

See also:

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Umbellifers
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Tree shading

Put an upturned bucket over a patch of grass in your garden. Lift the bucket every day and take a look, then re-cover the patch… How long does it take for the grass to die?

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Image of the day – 178

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click to enlarge

Trees provide shade, most welcome on a hot day, and they provide shelter when it rains (though this may be unwise during thunderstorms).

But notice the absence of grass beneath these conifers. Shade and shelter are exactly what other plants don’t need; they depend on plenty of light and water to enable them to grow. Light is essential as it provides the energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and water is essential as the raw material for this process. The oxygen is released into the atmosphere, while the hydrogen is bonded with carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make energy-storing sugars for use at night and to build cellulose, the main support molecule that gives stems, branches and tree trunks their strength.

The lack of light and water under tree canopies creates a kind of local desert. You can see this clearly in the photo from the presence and absence of grass. So how do the trees survive? That’s a great question! Their roots spread out widely and deep, far enough to reach moist soil and deep ground water. In persistent rain, water drips from the drenched leaves above. And root, trunk and branch all contain stores of water so a tree can cope with a long, dry summer far better than the grass can.

Light

Here’s an experiment anyone can do. Put an upturned bucket over a patch of grass in your garden. Lift the bucket every day and take a look, then re-cover the patch. See how long it takes for the grass to turn yellow. How long does it take for the grass to die?

For plants, light is essential. There are some animals that live in dark caves or underground, with no light. Earthworms are a good example, but like all animals they get their food by consuming plants and other animals. But for most creatures, including us humans, light is essential nonetheless. Whether we are plant eaters (like cows and sheep) or meat eaters (like lions and wolves) or omnivores eating either or both (like humans and rats) we still need light to see in order to find and identify the things we must eat to stay alive.

Water

For plants, water is part of their ‘food’, it’s needed to make sugars. For animals water is of no value as food, but it’s essential to prevent dangerous dehydration. All animals know when they’re thirsty and they’ll find water and drink to keep themselves alive. Think of a man lost in a desert, the cartoons have him croaking out, ‘Water.. Water..’ Imagine someone unable to find water, they’d die of thirst long, long before they died of hunger. Most of us would be in danger after a few days without drinking, but we could live for several weeks with nothing to eat. And of course, if you are a fish too little water would mean you couldn’t breathe, and if you were a land animal too much would mean you would drown.

Spiritual (not religious)

The idea of essentials has been carried over into spiritual ideas too. Light and water (and food) are so clearly necessary for life that they make good analogies and illustrations. What did Jesus mean when he said, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’? Or when he explained to the Samaritan woman at the well that he would provide water that never runs out, or when he told his followers, ‘I am the bread of life’ or ‘I am the light of the world’?

He was simply saying, I am essential, you can’t live without me. I’m necessary for life. Just as in the physical world, how would it feel to live in the dark, without water and without sustenance? How long would you last? How long would I last?

Many people today feel sure there is no spiritual aspect to life at all, it’s just about living your life in the here and now and then dying from accident, illness, or just old age. Others think there’s much more to life than that. At the very least there are moral and philosophical truths to consider. We should care for one another, help one another, and cooperate in helpful and kind ways.

Food for thought. Let me know below how you think about the essentials of life. Do you have any thoughts to share on this?

See also:

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Image of the day – 20
Churn flooding
Image of the day – 38

Cloud reflection

Just from this image the brain understands there are ripples on the surface of the water and from past experience will also know that these ripples will be moving.

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Image of the day – 176

What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every few days.

Click to enlarge

Sometimes we see things indirectly, and our brains are capable of retrieving far more information than you might at first think. It’s true of all our senses – hearing, touch, taste, smell and all the rest. The senses provide information but the brain makes much more of it all.

What do we see in this image? It’s just a pattern of coloured patches reflected from a water surface. That’s what the eye sees. But the brain tells us there are clouds in the sky above and there are ripples on the water. Then the brain compares this basic information with what it recalls from past experience and it can construct two narratives, one for the clouds and another for the water.

The clouds

There is a dark cloud and it’s the closest one to us, it threatens a shower of rain. A second image taken a few seconds later would be enough for the brain to decide the direction of movement of the cloud and predict whether the rain might fall here or somewhere else. Paler clouds, white clouds and blue sky suggest there’s some sunshine around as well so although there might be a brief shower, it won’t turn into ongoing steady rain. All of that from from a few colour patches.

The water

Because of the way the cloud reflections are distorted, the brain can infer the water is neither heavily disturbed not completely calm. Just from this image the brain understands there are ripples on the surface of the water and from past experience will also know that these ripples will be moving. The same brain will realise that there are two likely causes; either there is a light breeze blowing or perhaps a boat has passed recently. Once again, past knowledge in memory is necessary to arrive at these conclusions. There are some large ripples and, near the top of the image, some much smaller ones too. There was a small disturbance in the water further away as these small ripples seem to form an expanding circle of which we see only a small part.

Here and there things are floating on the water, small leaves, perhaps? If so, there must be trees nearby, perhaps with branches overhead. What a lot the brain can reconstruct on the basis of prior knowledge! And all of these conclusions come from some patches of colour in a still image. And what about the little sticks emerging from the water on the left-hand side? It’s the remains of vegetation of some kind. Was there a plant growing in the water? Did a strong wind break twigs off an overhead tree branch?

And one last point – it was not raining at the moment the photo was taken. The water would have been covered with dozens of circular disturbances if rain was falling. That’s a lot of information that your eyes and brain can glean from a single fragment of time trapped by my camera!

We are, as the Bible expresses it, fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14).

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If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

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Image of the day – 72
Churn flooding
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Reflections from way back when

The Lake District

We cannot know exactly what this area would have been like when it was full of active volcanoes, but we can get a rough idea from modern subduction regions on Earth today. Under the Mediterranean, for example, the African plate is being subducted underneath the plate carrying Europe.

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Image of the day – 173

A force on Stock Ghyll

This is one of the waterfalls along Stock Ghyll just north-east of Ambleside, Cumbria in the English Lake District. It’s beautiful countryside, and the nearby Force Cafe and Terrace served us a wonderful ‘Full Force’ breakfast. In the local dialect, a waterfall is known as a ‘force’, and there’s a whole string of them along this stretch of Stock Ghyll. A ghyll or gill is a narrow, deep, wooded ravine with a stream running though it. The term can also be used for the stream itself. Donna and I made our way carefully along this muddy, stony footpath, and it was well worth the effort.

Stock Ghyll runs right down into the town of Ambleside where it once powered a series of watermills, and finally flows into the nearby lake of Windermere.

Bobbin mills

Bobbin mills were common in Ambleside in the 19th century. Coppiced timber was cut to length and shaped on a lathe, then wooden discs were attached to both ends and the completed bobbins sold to the textile spinning and weaving businesses in the industrial cities south of the Lake District where they were used to store thread after spinning and before weaving. They contributed to the rapid growth of spinning and weaving factories in northern England. Wooden bobbin manufacturing died out with the 20th century introduction of plastics.

Formation of the Lake District

Skiddaw in the distance

The granite structures of the fells and mountains of the Lake District erupted from volcanoes during the Ordovician period some 460 million years ago.

Much more recently, repeated glaciations ground out U-shaped valleys arranged more or less radially and when the glaciers melted during warmer periods, lakes remained in the valley bottoms. Rivers flowing into the lakes or sometimes from one lake to another, have silted up some of the lakes at one end, and these flat, silted zones are now rich areas of pasture and crop land as well as places where urban construction has become possible. The photo above shows the mountain of Skiddaw in the distance and farmland in the foreground. The town of Keswick, out of the frame to the right, is also built on this flatter land laid down as sediment in the northern part of Derwent Water.

What else can we learn

One thing is very clear, what happens in one time period may be changed drastically at another, later time.

We cannot know exactly what this area would have been like when it was full of active volcanoes, but we can get a rough idea from modern subduction regions on Earth today. Under the Mediterranean, for example, the African plate is being subducted underneath the plate carrying Europe. The Alps and the Pyrenees have risen as a result, and volcanoes like Etna and Vesuvius are still actively pumping out magma or ash. The Mediterranean region is also prone to earthquakes. Now imagine (if you can) a mile or more depth of ice resting on top of the Alps grinding down the rocks to form U-shaped valleys as they slide due to gravity across the rock surface far below.

In Roman times, the areas of river sediment like that in the photo above would have been smaller than they are today and the lakes would have been correspondingly longer.

It’s very much a dynamic process. It’s a bit like the life of a person, we start as a new born infant and learn to talk and walk, then run. We learn to eat, and we learn to reason. at school we learn a lot more about the world we live in, politics, science, other languages, geography, history; we fall in love, we marry and raise a family; we have a career and learn how to manage the work environment, run a business, serve customers, manage bank accounts and so forth. The world is our playground, we travel on business or just for fun, we become grandparents as we grow older and retire from work. There are many beginnings and endings along the rich tapestry that is a human life. And lives intertwine in so many ways – friends, family, work colleagues, neighbours. Just like the Lake District, at any point it’s impossible to know what the future might hold.

Life is the same. What happened in my life when I was young is very different from what is happening in my life today. Change and unpredictabilty are the only things that are consistent throughout. If the ice hadn’t melted when it did, the Lake District would be far different from the place we know and love.

How do we deal with this built-in uncertainty? One way that many have found is faith, following a guide that we trust in ways that stretch us and help to shape our characters. Faith can be like an anchor in a choppy sea or even a full-blown storm, holding us safely in the right place until calmer conditions return. I recommend having an anchor in this experience we call life. But if you choose an anchor, choose carefully, there are some pointers elsewhere on this website. Hunt around and see if there’s anything here that you find attractive or compelling.

I’m always fascinated by links and similarities between one thing and another, life is full of them and sometimes they help to broaden our vision and understanding in ways that are quite unexpected.

See also:

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If you enjoyed this or found it useful, please like, comment, and share below. (If you don’t see those links, click the article’s title above the main photo and they will appear.) Send a link to friends who might enjoy the article or benefit from it – Thanks! My material is free to reuse (see conditions), but a coffee is always welcome and encourages me to write more often!

You might also like:

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