Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Yule Blog Prompt #11: 3 Good Things from 2020
3. A Nine-Month Calendar Reform for 2020
4. Sports and Christian Holidays on the Eleven Calendar
5. Calculating the Cosmos Chapter 13: Alien Worlds
6. Links to Other Challenge Participants
7. Conclusion
Introduction
Tonight is the full moon. The full moon at this time of year is often referred to as the "Cold Moon" or the "Long Nights Moon," named for its proximity to the winter solstice.
Two months ago, there was a Blue Moon on Halloween -- the second full moon of October. On lunar calendars such as the Islamic, Jewish, or Chinese Calendars, every month contains exactly one full moon and so there are no Blue Moons. On solar calendars such as our Gregorian Calendar, blue moons can and do occur.
That's enough about full moons. It's time to continue the Yule Blog Challenge. And since today is the eleventh day of winter break, let's proceed with the eleventh prompt.
Yule Blog Prompt #11: 3 Good Things from 2020
This one is tricky -- the task is to find good things that happened during a pandemic. To find three things from 2020, let's divide the year into three equal parts and find something good from each part. The three parts of the year, after all, correspond to different stages of the pandemic:
January-April: The coronavirus is a little problem.
May-August: The coronavirus is a big problem.
September-December: The coronavirus is a problem with a solution.
So let's dive in. One good thing that happened to me from January-April concerns subbing in one of my districts -- specifically the one in LA County. Even though I've worked for this district for several years, I rarely received calls from that district.
That changed in the 2019-2020 school year. I started getting calls at least once a week -- and sometimes several calls in a week. This started in September 2019 and continued into early 2020. Indeed, it marked the most calls I've received from this district in a school year, despite the virus closure.
As it turned out, most of these calls were for English classes. But on March 9th, I subbed in a high school math class. It was a Monday, and so all classes met that day. One of the classes was Calculus BC and another class was Statistics. The other three classes were all Algebra I.
I definitely enjoyed subbing that day. I've never taken high school Stats (though I do remember some things I learned in a college Stats course at UCLA), and while I passed Calculus BC with a score of 5, I don't remember studying parametric equations much at all. Thus during those classes, I was learning almost as much as the students were. In the Algebra I classes, I gave the students some tricks to help them graph quadratic functions. And so this day of subbing -- along with all the assignments I had in my old district this year -- comprise the first good thing of 2020.
The next day, I also subbed in my old district, in an English class I'd covered a few times before. Then I had a multi-day assignment in another English class in my main Orange County district, which lasted from March 11th-13th. And we all know what happened next.
One good thing that happened to me from May-August concerns what I did instead of subbing while all the schools were closed. I took the time to learn a new computer language -- Java, the language of the AP Computer Science exam.
I began my study of Java at the start of May. My textbook was an online text by Laura Lemay, and I even kept track of my progress right here on the blog. The highlight of my study was on July 6th, when I reached the graphics lesson. After I read this chapter, I even wrote a short applet using the graphics I learned -- a Monte Carlo simulation to estimate the value of pi.
I proceeded very slowly through Lemay's text, so I didn't get very far past the graphics lesson. And I did read other books during the long break, including Ian Stewart's Calculating the Cosmos. And so all the books I read this summer -- especially Lemay's Java text -- comprise the second good thing of 2020.
One good thing that happened to me from September-December is obvious -- the schools reopened, and I landed a long-term assignment in a middle school math class. I've written extensively about this long-term several times during the Yule Blog Challenge.
I began the long-term assignment with APEX Unit 2 in both seventh and eighth grades. The Math 7 unit was on adding/subtracting signed numbers and the Math 8 unit was an introduction to functions. Most students in both grades seemed to understand the information well. My long-term overall comprises the third good thing of 2020.
A Nine-Month Calendar Reform for 2020
Let's get back to Calendar Reform. Earlier, I suggested a nine-month calendar with the months April, May, and June removed, since there were no sports played in spring 2020 during the pandemic. It was during those months when it was easy for me to lose track of "COVID-19 time." March seemed to drag on forever until finally it was July and sports resumed.
Here's a link to a possible nine-month Calendar Reform: the Modern Calendar:
https://calendars.wikia.org/wiki/Modern_Calendar
On this calendar, the nine months have 40 days each. Here February, June, and December are the months that are dropped. Actually, since 40 * 9 is only 360, a five- or six-day period called December is placed at the end of the year.
Since 40 is a multiple of eight, the Modern Calendar has eight-day weeks. The extra day is placed between Friday and Saturday and is called "Remday." All weekends are three-day weekends, and so all holidays are placed on Remdays.
On my COVID-19 version of the Modern Calendar, the extra day of the week should be the Muslim Sabbath, and so there would be two Fridays ("Thank God It's Friday," the last day of the workweek, and "Thank Allah It's Friday," the Muslim Sabbath and first day of the weekend) instead of Remday. We might even wish to let Monday be the first day of the week, so that TAI Friday becomes the sixth day, Saturday the seventh day, and Sunday the eighth day of the week.
As for the months, we wish to skip April, May, June, so that the nine 40-day months are named from January-March and July-December. But what should we name the final five or six days, if December is already taken as one of the 40-day months?
Moreover, by dropping February and June, the Modern Calendar linked to above restores the original Latin names of September-November as the 7th-9th months, as well as December as a (miniature) tenth month of sorts. But if we skip April-June, then September becomes the sixth month. It's desirable, if we have to change September so that it's no longer the ninth month, at least to let it be the seventh month to match its Latin name.
One way to solve both problems is to place the extra five-six days between March and July. This short month becomes the new fourth month, so that July is the fifth month and September the seventh, as suggested by Latin, and December is a full 40 days. A good name for this new month is "May," since it actually lines up with the first five days of Gregorian May, assuming January 1st is the same in both calendars. (In years with a February 29th, such as 2020, the mini-month of May spans April 30th-May 5th, so they don't exactly line up in 2020, even though the stated goal of this calendar is to match the 2020 sports calendar.)
In the original Modern Calendar with December as the short month, it's stated that this December becomes a special holiday period, with Christmas on December 1st. On my version of the calendar with May as the short month, this May can also be a special holiday period. May 1st can remain May Day (or International Labour Day), and May 5th can remain Cinco de Mayo. This is the same as Children's Day in Japan -- and indeed, this mini-month of May lines up very nicely with Japanese Golden Week.
OK, but our goal is to place sports on this calendar. And the original idea is to place the sports in the same named months as they occurred in 2020. Using this rule, here are when the regular seasons of the four major sports take place:
NFL: September-December (we won't use exact dates here, but focus mainly on Sundays)
MLB: July 23rd-September 27th
NBA: December 22nd (2020 start date)-August 15th (2020 play-in game)
NHL: January 13th (2021 start date)-August 9th (2020 last qualifying game)
But note what impact these changes have. The NFL season is expanded from its original pre-pandemic length -- even though it remains at four months, these four months now have 40 days each, which includes 20 Sundays. The NFL was already eying lengthening the season to 17-18 games anyway -- with 20 Sundays, there's enough time for 18 games with two bye weeks. And there's even more rest built in since consecutive Sundays are now eight days apart instead of seven.
The NBA and NHL remain close to their usual lengths. Before the pandemic, their seasons spanned about six months or half the year. On this new calendar, the NBA, starting in December, is slightly longer at about five (out of nine, not counting short May) months and the NHL, starting in January, is slightly shorter at four months.
But it's baseball that gets the short end of the stick. In 2020, baseball played only 60 games -- the only major sport not to play even half of its usual season. Even with July, August, and September having 40 days instead of 30-31, the season is still much shorter than usual. It might be better to let baseball have the entire months of July, August, and September rather than wait until July 23rd. With 15 weeks in these three months and assuming baseball is played 6-7 out of eight days per week, there is enough time for around 100 games.
One concern in the NBA and NHL in 2020 is that football is the most popular spectator sport by far -- any other sport scheduled against an NFL game ends up suffering in the ratings. This has always been a problem for baseball, since unlike the other sports, MLB's biggest games -- the September division races and October playoff games -- are played during football season. In 2020, the NBA and NHL had to suffer this as well, with their playoff games scheduled during football season -- and indeed, both sports had their lowest ever postseason ratings. A few years ago, baseball changed its World Series schedule to avoid the big football nights of Thursday and Monday, and this year, the NBA and NHL had to do the same with their respective Finals.
One reason for football's popularity is that it has the shortest season, and so even a single regular season game matters more than a playoff game in MLB, NBA, or NHL, unless it's Game 7. (Another reason for NFL's dominance is fantasy football -- it causes fans to be interested in teams other than their favorite team, whereas with the other sports, fans don't watch unless their team is playing.) In other words, football has the perfect season length, while the other sports' seasons are too long.
And so not only would baseball object to my calendar due to its shorter season, but so would basketball and hockey, if I permanently set their playoffs against the NFL's regular season. Again, when I first came up with this idea, I thought that sports would resume in May. Then baseball would have had just a slightly shorter season, and the NBA and NHL playoffs would still end before football begins.
If I really wanted a sports schedule that fits the nine-month calendar, I'd instead accept that football -- at four Gregorian months, or one-third of the year -- has the perfect season length. Then I'd shorten all other sports so that all seasons are one-third of the year (that is, three of the nine full-length months):
NBA/NHL: January-March
MLB: July-September
NFL: October-December
The month before the regular season starts is the preseason, and the month after is the postseason. This allows fans' eyeballs to move on to the next sport based on their team's position in the standings. In September, fans of baseball teams still in contention can watch baseball while fans of last place teams move on to the NFL preseason. In October, fans of playoff teams watch baseball while fans of teams not in the playoffs watch the NFL regular season. In November, all fans watch football. In December, fans start looking ahead to preseason NBA/NHL if their football teams are out of contention, and so on.
But while football season is still one-third of the year, there are now only 15 Sundays in this range, so there aren't enough weeks to play 16 games. One solution is that, as Thursdays are already established as a football night, more games can be played on Thursdays. We wouldn't want to make players play Sunday-Thursday-Sunday with just three days off in between the games, so instead, teams play several Thursday games in a row. Then only twice in a season do they have just three off days -- from Sunday to the first Thursday game, and from the last Thursday game to Sunday. All other weeks they have seven off days between games -- an extra day, to compensate for the lack of a bye week.
As I mentioned earlier, there will be about 100 baseball games per regular season. Basketball and hockey, if they play 3-4 times per eight-day week, will end up with a 50-game season.
On the original Modern Calendar with a short December, basketball can start on that December 1st, since Christmas is always a big NBA day. Hockey might wish to wait until January 1st -- New Year's Day (with the Winter Classic) is the bigger holiday in the NHL. In my version of the calendar with a short May, this might be baseball's opening week.
OK, that's all I wish to say about the nine-month, eight-day calendar. It's not my favorite calendar -- again, when I first came up with this sports idea, I was hoping sports would resume in May so that the resulting virus-inspired calendar would be the Eleven Calendar. So now I must ask, what would the sports schedule look like on the Eleven Calendar?
Sports and Christian Holidays on the Eleven Calendar
I still like the idea of dividing the calendar into three parts. Notice that I already divided the year into thirds when I responded to the Yule Blog challenge, and I did the same with the nine-month calendar. I point out that we can also do the same with the 12-month Gregorian Calendar -- football season can remain September-December, but now NBA/NHL is January-April and baseball is May-August.
In the Eleven Calendar, we can't easily divide the eleven months into thirds. But recall that I already defined three holidays that indeed trisect the year -- Christmas, Easter, and Assumption. So we have:
NBA/NHL: Christmas-Easter
MLB: Easter-Assumption
NFL: Assumption-Christmas
The NBA, of course, would be thrilled to start on Christmas, while the NHL might prefer to start a few days later. Once again, I expect there to be 50 NBA/NHL games each and 100 MLB games.
But the NFL will have the most problems with this schedule. The week is eleven days long, and each third of the year has eleven weeks. So there are only 11 Sundays available for football.
Once again, the solution will be to have more midweek games. Since Sunday is the third day of the week, we might choose Eightday or Nineday. Recall that Eightday was an alternate day for the Christian Sabbath, while Nineday might have more of a "Thursday" feel to it (as Tenday is the last day of the workweek).
Perhaps Sevenday, as the midweek day off, might be a suitable day for football. There would be three days off if a team plays both Sunday and the following Sevenday (similar to Sunday-Thursday in the Gregorian Calendar), while there are six days off between Sevenday and the following Sunday (like Sunday-Sunday in the Gregorian Calendar). So playing Sunday-Sevenday-Sunday isn't impossible -- and after all, a team wouldn't need to play every Sevenday. If this is still too tough, then teams can be scheduled on two Sevendays in a row without playing on the intervening Sunday. There will be less need for bye weeks since the majority of the time, there would be ten days off between games.
By the way, I was also thinking about placing other religious holidays on the Eleven Calendar. For example, if there's an Easter on my calendar (April 25th), then when does Lent begin? Lent usually begins on Ash Wednesday, but there is no Wednesday in the Eleven Calendar. It's also said to begin 40 days before Easter, but Ash Wednesday is actually 46 days before Easter. The usual explanation is that when counting the days of Lent, Sundays don't actually count.
We could count Lent the same way in my calendar -- 40 non-Sundays. Notice that in my calendar, this is easy -- there is one Sunday and ten non-Sundays per week, so 40 non-Sundays is four weeks. This takes us back to March 14th. We might start Lent on that Sunday itself, or perhaps the next day, which is a Fourday, March 15th. (The Orthodox start Lent on a Monday as well -- Clean Monday -- but they count the 40 days differently.)
Indeed, we might count backwards from Christmas to Advent the same way -- 40 weekdays plus four Sundays before Christmas, which takes us to October 25th. This is Veteran's Day on my calendar (and reminds us of Martinmas -- an old definition for the start of Advent). Or if we prefer, we might start Advent just two Sundays before Christmas, on November 14th. (This is December 3rd Gregorian -- the latest possible start of Advent.)
It's convenient to use this same method to other holidays before Easter as well. Before Lent, we have Quinquagesima, Sexagesima, Septuagesima Sunday. These names are Latin for 50, 60, 70, but as usual they are misnomers -- Septuagesima is only nine weeks (or 63 days) before Easter. We can use exclusive counting (weekdays only, no Sundays) and count back five, six, seven weeks before Easter so that all of these are Sundays. So we reach March 3rd, January 25th, January 14th for these days. (Notice that moving back into January also means skipping over the blank days -- so my Septuagesima ends up being 79-80 days before Easter. Maybe I shouldn't complain about the real Septuagesima being only 63 days before Easter after all.)
After Easter, we have Pentecost Sunday, so-named because it's 50 days after Easter. So we count five weeks after Easter to obtain June 14th. Ascension is said to be 40 days after Easter -- usually it's a Thursday, but if we count four weeks after Easter, we can force Ascension to be on Sunday, June 3rd.
When are the Twelve Days of Christmas (you know, the twelve days which inspired the 12-Day Twitter and Blogger challenges)? Sometimes they are said to be December 25th-January 5th, and other times they are said to be December 26th-January 6th (excluding Christmas Day but including Epiphany).
Well, on our calendar, let's place Epiphany on another Sunday, December 14th. Then our Twelve Days of Christmas can include both Sundays and the ten days in between, December 3rd-14th. But for Candlemas, which is 40 days after Christmas, we'll return to excluding Sundays and count it as four weeks after Christmas, January 14th.
(Hey -- so we're including Sundays to count Epiphany but excluding them to count Candlemas. But compare that to how Christians actually count these holidays -- exclusive counting is used to mark January 6th as 12 days after Christmas, but inclusive counting is used to mark February 2nd as 40 days after Christmas!)
Also, notice that Candlemas (the last day counting forward from Christmas) and Septugesima (the first day counting backward from Easter) fall on the same day, January 14th. This can sometimes happen on the current calendar -- in 2021, Septuagesima is on January 31st, two days before Candlemas. (Hey, that allows me to avoid the 79-80 day problem with Septuagesima -- just call it Candlemas and drop the name Septuagesima altogether.)
Calculating the Cosmos Chapter 13: Alien Worlds
Earlier in this post, I mentioned reading Ian Stewart's book as one of the "good things" I did during this past summer. I started summarizing his book here on the blog, but then abruptly stopped when the schools reopened and my long-term subbing began. I even typed up a summary for Chapter 13, but then left it in drafts and never posted it.
I also watched Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Cosmos on National Geographic last spring, but I missed an episode and didn't watch it until just two weeks ago when it aired on FOX. Both the missing episode and the chapter I summarized in drafts are on the same topic -- life outside the solar system.
Since I finally summarized the last Tyson episode on December 15th, I'll finally post the chapter that's been stuck in drafts all these months. (I'll still wait until next summer to continue with Chapter 14.)
Chapter 13 of Ian Stewart's Calculating the Cosmos is called "Alien Worlds." As usual, it begins with a quote:
"Alien astronomers could have scrutinized Earth for more than a billion years without detecting any radio signals, despite the fact that our world is the poster child for habitability."
-- Seth Shostak, Klingon Worlds
And the proper chapter begins:
"It's long been an article of faith among science fiction writers that the universe is littered with planets."
Today's chapter is all about planets -- and more specifically, the possibility that life exists on planets outside our solar system. After all, the universe contains countless stars and dust particles:
"It would be strange if there were some forbidden intermediate size range, and even stranger if it happened to coincide with the typical sizes of planets. Indirect arguments are all very well, but the elephant in the room was notable by its absence."
In other worlds, if there are so many planets teeming with life out there, where are they? A Russian-American astronomer, Otto Struve, noticed that the motion of the sun is influenced by the gravity of the planets that orbit it.
Here Stewart includes his first picture -- the motion of the sun relative to the center of mass of the solar system, 1960-2025. Indeed, during these 65 years the sun moves around the center at least two or three times:
"The overall movement is about three times the Sun's radius. Struve's technique of Doppler spectroscopy led to the first confirmed exoplanet sighting in 1992, by Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail."
At this point the author writes about some possible exoplanets orbiting Alpha Centauri, one of the closest stars to the sun -- but the findings are mostly likely false. Since the book has been published, two exoplanets orbiting Proxima Centauri have been discovered and confirmed.
"Initially the only worlds that could be observed were 'hot Jupiters': massive planets very close to their stars."
Another way to spot exoplanets is to observe how the star gets dimmer as a planet crosses it:
"As the planet begins its transit, it starts to block some of the light from the star. Once the entire disc of the planet lies within that of the star, the light output levels off, and remains roughly constant until the planet approaches the other edge of the star."
Now Stewart includes two diagrams. The first is a simple model of how the star's light output becomes dimmer when a planet transits. Assuming the star emits the same amount of light at each point, and that planet blocks all of it, the light curve remains flat while the whole of the planet blocks the light. In practice these assumptions are not quite correct, and more realistic models are used.
In his second diagram, the author shows a graph of the actual light curve of the 1 June 2006 exoplanet transit of the 10x8 R-magnitude star XO-1 by the Jupiter-sized planet XO-1b. Solid dots are 5-point averages of magnitudes from images shown by small dots. The line is a fitted model.
Scientists learn much information about the planet using this transit method:
"It sometimes tells us about the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere, by comparing the star's spectrum with light reflected from the planet. NASA chose the transit method for its Kepler telescope -- a photometer that measures light levels with exquisite accuracy."
With this telescope, over a thousand exoplanets have been discovered:
"For example, the star systems Kepler-25, Kepler-27, Kepler-30, Kepler-31 and Kepler-33 all have at least two planets in 2:1 resonance."
Two German-Swiss astronomers, Michael Hippke and Daniel Angerhausen, have been searching for exoasteroids, but not by using a simple transit method:
"Instead, Hippke and Angerhausen use a statistical approach, like wandering through a game reserve counting lion tracks."
And this is shown in two of Stewart's next graphs. On the left are the combined light curves for a million transits, showing small dips at the Trojan points L4 and L5 (marked). These are not statistically significant. On the right, "folded" data show a statistically significant dip, indicating the existence of Trojan asteroids there.
Of course, even if many planets exist, do any of them have intelligent life? The most famous astronomer who considered this question was Frank Drake. (By the way, Frank Drake is still alive -- he celebrated his 90th birthday a few months ago.)
"He was trying to isolate the important factors that scientists should focus on. His equation has flaws, if you take it literally, but thinking about them provides insight into the likelihood of alien civilizations and the possibility that we could detect their signals."
It helps that life is known to adapt to the prevailing conditions:
"Even on Earth, living creatures occupy an astonishing variety of habitats: deep in the oceans, high in the atmosphere, in swamps, in deserts, in boiling springs, beneath the Antarctic ice, and even three kilometres underground."
Still, the hunt for habitable planets focuses on those where liquid water can exist -- planets that are neither too close nor too far from its star, where it is neither too hot nor too cold:
"In between, the temperature is 'just right,' and inevitably this region has acquired the nickname 'Goldilocks zone.'"
Actually, in our solar system Mars is in the Goldilocks zone, and indeed the red planet may once have had liquid water billions of years ago, before it froze:
"Mostly, it stays that way. Distance from the primary, then, isn't the only criterion. The concept of a habitable zone provides a simple, comprehensible guideline, but guidelines aren't rigid."
There is a picture of the red planet here. Dark streaks in Garni crater, on Mars, are caused by liquid water that melts and refreezes every year.
The Kepler telescope has discovered at least one potentially habitable planet -- Kepler 62f, orbiting the star Kepler-62:
"Other confirmed exoplanets that resemble Earth include Gliese 667Cc and 832c, and Kepler 62e, 452b, and 283c."
Proxima Centauri b, discovered a few months after this book was published, would also be included on this list. It's also possible that life can exist elsewhere in our our solar system:
"If life exists elsewhere in the solar system, where is it most likely to be? As far as we know, the only inhabited planet in the Sun's habitable zone is the Earth, so at first sight the answer has to be 'nowhere.'"
But there's an outside chance that life may exist on moons such as Titan, a satellite of Saturn:
"Its diameter is half again as big as the Moon's, and unlike any other moon in the solar system it has a dense atmosphere."
But our water-based biology won't work on Titan, which is too cold for liquid water:
"Our cells are surrounded by a membrane formed from phospholipids -- compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus."
Instead, Titanian biology would be completely different from terrestrial biology. Here on our planet, there are several "universals" that many species have:
"One sign of a universal is that it has evolved several times independently on Earth. For example, flight has evolved in insects, birds, and bats, by independent routes."
On the other hand, a trait specific to the conditions of our planet is called a "parochial." For example, DNA is probably a parochial:
"If we encountered aliens who had developed a spacefaring civilization, but didn't have DNA, it would be daft to insist that they're not alive. I said 'specify' rather than 'define' because it's not clear that defining life makes sense."
And indeed, the author has come up with his own thought experiment -- Nimbus is a moon similar to Titan and harbors life:
"The original description had much more detail, such as evolutionary history and social structure. Nimbus, as we envisaged it, is an exomoon with a dense atmosphere of methane and ammonia."
In this story, silicon-based life forms developed on Nimbus. These organisms are similar to our computers (or robots) and reproduce like a cellular automaton, similar to the mathematical games created by John von Neumann (and later on by John Conway). Each automaton have three parents:
"One parent stamps a copy of its builder circuit on to bare rock. Later, another passes, notices the stamped circuit, and adds a copy of its copier. Finally, a third parent contributes a copy of its data."
Admitting that such alien organisms are unlikely, Stewart concludes the chapter as follows:
"But they illustrate the rich variety of new possibilities that might evolve on worlds very different from ours."
Links to Other Challenge Participants
I link to Kim Charlton, a middle school teacher who also responds to the "3 Good Things" prompt:
One of her "3 Good Things" also started before the pandemic:
We got a puppy! We got her back in February and she has been absolutely amazing during the pandemic. I am NOT a dog person, I was attacked by a Rottweiler at a very young age and have a lot of anxiety around dogs. But my husband did a lot of research and got us a corgi. She's small dog who doesn't jump on us or drool too much. She's super cute and snuggles with me all the time.
I always enjoy reading middle school blogs since I'm working in one now, and so Charlton's blog is one I'll be watching for in the near future.
Conclusion
I have one more calendar to discuss, and I will in my next post. I usually don't post this often during Calendar Reform week (the week between Christmas and New Year's) -- but then again, I haven't had a Yule Blog Challenge to inspire me to post this off.
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