ON ASTRONOMY: ELIMINATING THE KINKS IN SCIENCE

I usually try to keep my private life separate from my professional life hoping that the mistakes I make in one won't follow me into the other. One of the things I like to do in my private life is gardening.

The rules are simple: plant and pamper the things you want and slash and burn the things you don't. I wish my professional life were so easy!

I was watering my flowers, the other day, when it happened. The water suddenly stopped flowing out of the hose. This could only mean one thing: a kink in the hose. The only thing worse than a cheap hose with a kink in it is an expensive hose with a kink in it. That is why I always buy cheap hoses. (All this time my wife just thought I was tight.)

As I began tracing down the kink, my mind began to wander. Strangely, this also happens in my professional life. As I walked along the hose, my thoughts turned to string theory and the 11 dimensions that, supposedly, make up our universe. In this string theory the sub-atomic particles and the electron are each one of those dimensions curled up on itself. I often tried to visualize a curled up dimension and as I approached the kink in the hose I began to enhance the simile and envisioned the hose as the remaining 10 dimensions and the kink as the electron.

Now the kink in the universe must be strong, otherwise the electron would just disappear someday and there would be no atoms and we would all just fly apart. The same must be true for kinks in hoses. Try as I may, I could not flip, jerk, or twirl the hose into letting go of its kink. I finally had to grab the thing with my bare hands and force it undone. The rush of water made a gushing sound and the universe was once again free to roam in all its dimensions. I just hope the big gardener in the sky uses an expensive hose and doesn't reach down someday and do the same thing to us. Now you see why I really try to keep my private and professional lives separate.

If you have been out at sunset and looked toward the southeast, you could not have missed one of the most intense red lights to shine on us from the heavens for a long time. Mars certainly makes its presence known. Not since 1988 has it shone so brightly.

Normally I rejoice in the constellation Scorpius this time of year and marvel at the red giant star Antares. But compared to Mars, Antares looks pale! Even though Mars is big and bright for this opposition, it still takes a moderate-sized telescope to see much detail.

During a good night, you should be able to see a small white polar icecap and some dark green patches on the otherwise red disk. The thin atmosphere of Mars allows winds to reach speeds of 400 miles per hour.

These winds can lift up the dust and blow it around blanketing the greenish-colored bedrock and give the appearance of vegetation first growing and then dying.

The Milky Way is finally getting high enough in the early evening to be seen in the east. Nearly overhead is the constellation Hercules.

Hercules is famous for a large globular cluster called M13. You need a modest sized telescope to discover that several hundred thousand stars form a giant spherical swarm. This is one of the oldest objects in the galaxy over 8-10 billion years old. All the stars are gravitationally bound to each other and they all orbit about the rest of the galaxy up out of the plane in a region called the halo.

The next great event will be the Perseid meteor shower on August 12.

Let's hope the electrons stay curled up until then.

Dr. Mike Cobb is a professor of physics at Southeast Missouri State University.