the beginning. (what else do you call the first post?)

I'm partial to Earth's moon, particularly since I got my contact lense prescription "sharpened," so to speak, last summer. The moon is rather unimpressive to the slightly unfocused eye-- to those of us here on planet Earth who have grown accustomed to seeing a large orb of some variety hanging over us, at any rate. Generally people don't really pay much attention to the moon (formally named Luna) unless it happens to be perfectly round, partly hidden by the sun, a strange orangey color, or garnishing an otherwise beautiful scene like still ocean water or a mountain top. I developed a sudden love affair with the moon, however, when I finally saw it clearly for the first time in about ten years. Isn't medical science something! I had learned about the maria (MARR-e-uh, as I was told; the dark "oceans" on the moon) and could even name some of them after half an undergrad Astronomy course, so I won't lie, it was pretty cool to finally see them and go, "... OH. Neat!"



Okay, fine, I won't lie. I have a sort of pagan side as well, and I think the moon is a pretty cool representation of the female-goddess-chick-with-huge-knockers-and-long-hair sort of thing you see in a lot of fantasy art. Although I do place some spirituality in the earth and galaxy and universe, and after living on the ocean for a few summers I won't deny the huge impact of the tidal shifts on both the earth and my moods.



Well, technically speaking, our glamorous grey glowing moon is all we've got, which according to the rest of the solar system is kinda slumming it.



The planet Saturn has nineteen moons at last count, the largest of which is named Titan. Someone had the great idea to name all these moons and planets after Greco-Roman gods and goddesses, and I'm a little irritated there aren't any Italian moons out there (Vinnie? Luciano? Fonzarelli?), but Titan's my favorite moon aside from my loyalty to the one I spend most of my time with. It's second in size only to Ganymede, one of Jupiter's, in the solar system. Jupiter's moons are pretty cool all on their own, very nice colors and patterns from afar, but Titan has oceans. Actual oceans! From far away it just looks like a smooth orangey marble, but were you able to make it through the thick layers of smog (yes, smog), crushing pressure, and extreme cold temperatures and land on the surface, it would look something like this:

http://www.arcadiastreet.com/cgvistas/saturn_220.htm

Obviously, that's a computer-generated image based on the information scientists currently have.

"The clouds are probably composed of liquid nitrogen and methane drops, and it is speculated that Titan may be coverered with hydrocarbon lakes or oceans (specifically, methane and ethane). Although many of the organic chemicals thought to have been the precursors to life on Earth are present on Titan, it appears to be too cold for life as we know it to have evolved there."

The's an equation called The Drake Equation that calculates out the probability of extraterrestrial life in the galaxy. It factors in how many stars there are in the galaxy, the probability of planets capable of sustaining life based on the number of stars, the fraction of planets that might go on to actually develop that life... you get the picture. So how amazing is it that somewhere, close enough for us to see it with a telescope, there is a moon containing many of the same chemicals that were a factor in life beginning on this planet. In oceans... oceans that, when you really think about it, don't really look all that different from ours.

I remember learning about this in Astronomy. Do you ever have those "oh my god!" moments where you've learned something and for a second it blows your mind? The first time that happened to me was in fourth grade, when I held a meter stick and suddenly realized that there were a million millimeter marks on it. Of course, I was disappointed when I found out that "milli-" doesn't mean "million," but rather "thousand," but for that moment I was thrown by the sheer gravity of how much I thought I was seeing-- of how big things could be. And now, looking up at that picture above... it blows my mind to be presented with something so very similar to us-- different enough, of course, that it looks unfamiliar at first, but similar in its basic nature-- which is so alien at the same time.

I named this blog "ethane oceans" because I'm always examining and grasping at things and trying to piece this world together. Mostly I'm looking for connections-- the things that make us the same, no matter how different we appear, and the things that reach out like branches and connect us to the universe around us even when we don't understand how or why.