HAPPY EARTH DAY =]

Just follow Speedy =]

BALBOA PARK — Contrary to conventional wisdom, even a 100-year-old tortoise will move pretty fast — if there’s a yam in front of him.

The San Diego Zoo in Balboa Park wrangled its entire herd of 17 endangered Galápagos tortoises into a trailer yesterday morning for relocation to temporary quarters while their longtime home gets a $1 million makeover.

Moving the 400- to 600-pound reptiles — including some that have lived in the exhibit since 1928 — required coaxing, prodding and, occasionally, a well-placed shove on a shell.

“They can be stubborn,” said zookeeper Jorge Chavez.

But mostly, the yams worked. Keepers tossed the chopped treats in front of the tortoises, which hustled forward with their bent-legged crawl to gobble the chunks in toothless, beaklike mouths.

Using this method, and a lot of thumping on shells with sticks, the zoo staff was able to load the tortoises onto a trailer and haul them to the facility’s hospital compound. The reptiles will stay there until summer.

“Because of their size, you don’t just pick up one of these,” said zoo herpetology curator Donal Boyer, adding that the sticks don’t hurt the tortoises.

“It’s more of an acoustic thing,” he said. “They are sensitive. They can feel, and they can definitely hear something tapping on their shell.”

Renovation of the exhibit will bring a new heated barn for the coldblooded creatures, a shallow pond for baths and a “contact zone” where zoo-goers can touch the tortoises amid supervision. Completion is expected around July.

Note to future visitors: The ancient-looking creatures may appear scary, but they like to get their leathery necks scratched. Some varieties of tortoises have longer necks, which they can extend more than a foot from their shells.

“They definitely all have their own kind of personalities,” Boyers said. “Some are more shy than the others.”

They also have quirky names. The oldest is called Speedy.

San Diego’s tortoise herd grew out of a 1920s expedition to the Galápagos Islands off Ecuador, the zoo’s officials said.

Four American zoos received tortoises from that trip to launch breeding programs for the species, which has become endangered due to habitat loss and the introduction of non-native predators in the tortoises original environment.

The San Diego Zoo program has produced more than 90 babies since then. The height of breeding was the 1960s, when herd members were more spry. With the new exhibit, zoo officials hope to bring in younger tortoises to reinvigorate the birthrate.

Now, back to the conventional-wisdom thing. The short, squat tortoises can surprise visitors with their relatively quick movements.

“The only thing is you don’t want to get trapped between them, or against the wall,” Boyer said as he jumped out of the way of an oncoming tortoise.

http://www.moonlightsys.com/themoon/more_lyrics.html#CallingTheMoon

FROM NORTH AMERICAN SKIES May 1997
copyright 1997 by Final Copy, Inc.
re-distribution with credit is permitted and encouraged. By iain

On the Shores of the Cosmic Ocean

In my astronomy classes I have often used the claim that there are “more stars in the heavens than all the grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth.” The claim is certainly not original with me, but I had always accepted it without question. Then one day began to wonder if it is really true. After all, there must be a really big number of sand grains on all the planet’s beaches!

So I decided to find out. Obviously I couldn’t count all the sand grains, but I could do an order of magnitude calculation. Of course, sand comes in a variety of sizes. One standard definition is that medium sand is 0.25 to 0.5 millimeters in diameter, and fine sand is 0.25 to 0.125 millimeters. I chose, arbitrarily, to consider sand grains of 0.25 millimeters as an average. To further simplify matters I considered that each sand grain is a perfect cube, which allows for efficient packing.

Now all I had left to do was determine the volume of all the Earth’s beaches! Simple, right?

Whoa, not really! First off, the best estimate I could find is that there are about a million and a half kilometers of shorelines on Earth. Not all of them have beaches per se, and some that do, have only very short beaches. Rather than stack the deck against the stars, I estimated that all the Earth’s shorelines had a beach 50 meters back from the water. On the average, this may be an exaggeration. Next, how deep do you consider the beach to be? What is the definition? Who knows? A meter is about as deep as any summer beachcomber would ever dig, so I finally decided on that figure as the depth.

So, what is the number of sand grains, 0.25 millimeters cubed, that will fit in 1.5 million kilometers of beach, 50 meters broad and a meter deep? You can do the math yourself, or just accept my answer:

4.8 x 10²¹
That’s 4,800,000,000,000,000,000,000!

Thus there is likely to be something less than 5 thousand billion billion grains of sand on the Earth’s beaches! If I had just a penny for every billion grains of sand, I would be the world’s richest person with nearly 50 billion dollars!

OK, this must be far more than all the stars in the sky, right? Let’s see.

Until recently, the total number of galaxies in the Universe was estimated to be about 10 billion. However, the Hubble Space Telescope has provided a much clearer view of the Cosmos, and today’s estimate is that there are 50 billion galaxies. Generally speaking, our Milky Way can be considered fairly average with the mass equivalent to 100 billion stars. There certainly can be some argument here that not all of a galaxy’s mass is in the form of stars. There may be super-massive black holes in their cores, as well as other unseen matter. Nevertheless I think it is legitimate to consider the Milky Way our yardstick here.

So 50 billion galaxies all roughly equivalent to the Milky Way (100 billion stars) amount to how many stars altogether?

5 X 10²¹

That’s still slightly more than all the grains of sand on Earth’s beaches (even considering my rather generous assessment of shoreline fill). How many more? Oh, about 200 billion billion more stars than grains of sand. But of course, this is just an estimate. Still the old cliché seems vindicated. All of a sudden I’m really beginning to feel small and very insignificant!

Ring out the old year with a blue moon and eclipse…. 2009/2010… New Year’s revelers will see a second full moon in a month!!

Eclipses of the moon occur twice a year, on average. Each eclipse is visible only on the half of the Earth turned towards the moon at the time the Earth’s shadow falls on the moon.

There will be a partial eclipse of the moon on New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31, 2009. Because of its timing, it will not be visible in North and South America, but will be visible over most of Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Tortoise totems have a strong psychic connection to mother earth. In myth and folklore the tortoise represents determination and longevity. Tortoises have high domed shells and heavy elephant like hind legs. The weight of its shell keeps it from moving too fast. The heaviness of its hind legs gives it the strength to carry heavy loads. Those with this totem often carry the loads of others as well as the burdens of self. They make good therapists but must be careful not to take on the problems of other people. The tortoise is a land bound creature and is exclusively terrestrial. One of the most ancient and adaptable creatures, the tortoise holds the energy of patience and perseverance. They are very sensitive to the environment in which they live and have a strong psychic connection to mother earth. Extreme changes in climatic conditions can affect their overall disposition.

A song about the seasons of the moon to sing the tortoises into hibernation… until next Spring… sleep well through five full moons my dear ones =]

Water, water, water!!! Rocket motor to smash into lunar south pole Friday to find hidden water ice.

“When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator” ~Mahatma Gandhi

I’ll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day through.

In that small cafe;
The park across the way;
The children’s carousel;
The chestnut trees;
The wishin’ well.

I’ll be seeing you
In every lovely summer’s day;
In every thing that’s light and gay.
I’ll always think of you that way.

I’ll find you
In the morning sun
And when the night is new.
I’ll be looking at the moon,
But I’ll be seeing you.

NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), slated for launch this week, will map the moon’s surface from orbit with unprecedented detail, capable even of imaging the tracks that lunar rovers left behind.

Also heading moonward is the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), which will slam into the Shackleton Crater on the south pole of the moon in a few months and kick up material that could have been in shadow for 2 billion years. Another probe will slam into the moon a few minutes later at a different location.

It’s all an effort to learn more about what the moon is made of, whether there is water ice in the crater, and therefore where to send U.S. astronauts in a planned return by 2020.

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The call of the tortoise…