My kind of email- Autistics talk.

Aloha All,

I have been up for hours on an intellectual show binge watch. Okay, some of the things aren’t intellectual, but they are thought provoking. I have followed a young couple on YouTube - who travelled for five years in an RV- then sold that to buy a boat, and now they have lived on the boat for five years too. Their last name is Wynn. So they call their adventures: Gone with the Wynns. LOL. So far, ten years and counting. And most of that time they have made videos of their travels. I can recommend both their RV travels, and their Sailing travels. But this next part happened on their Sailing trip around the world.

Currently they are in French Polynesia sailing around remote atolls.

On one of them they did a night dive with a couple they met. The other couple were both Dive Masters with a few thousand dives under their belt. So they went at night when more than seven hundred sharks were hunting. The first night was no problem - and the videos were amazing. (Here is the link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgU4bCZN0vg )

The second night, well, three times the number of sharks were around. And…they got aggressive, biting the cameras, and one of the Dive Master’s Fins. So they decided to vacate the water- as they thought the sharks were getting too aggressive. Then they quoted statistics that are meaningless- shark attacks are rare…more rare than dying of a jelly fish sting.

In the comment section the Surfer’s brought up the fact that in shallow water with no sharks- attacks are rare. But in open water where sharks are abundant…well, it is a different story. One guy brought up the Indianapolis…where sharks ate most of the crew as they floated in the water when the ship was sunk in the Pacific. Believe me, you watch that video - and you can tell on that second night they were just moments away from being part of a feeding frenzy.

Those safety from sharks stats - are completely misleading. On the other hand, they survived the two dives and have an experience so vivid and memorable that it made their life (and those of us watching) a bit more exciting, thrilling, and beautiful. Such a fine line between bold and foolish. A line you only get to cross once, mostly in hindsight. People sitting on a couch who have never done anything more than go to a strange restaurant - seem to really trash folks who at least took some risks.

As we all know…security is another myth we carry around. You can’t always stay safe…heck, you can die at home doing nothing more exciting than eating peanuts. On the other hand, purposely diving with hundreds of sharks on their terms…pass the peanuts please. LOL


On an unrelated, unless you consider the fact that it is yet another fascinating part of our Universe- as pretty and weird as anything that lives under the sea- is my three day dive into Neutron Stars. (Like how I merged the two stories? Or submerged them…oh, I am killing me. LOL) So here is how this brief foray out into the fringes of Cosmology and Physics came about.

Neutron Stars can become Black Holes- they think. But they don’t know when the shift from being a super dense Neutron Star to becoming a Black Hole takes place. They can’t quite get the math and physics down to the exact tipping point. Just last year they found the most dense Neutron Star Ever. And it is darn close to tipping into a Black Hole- an object that (for all practical purposes) isn’t in our Universe anymore. Wrap your mind around that…if you can. LOL

This most recent most massive Neutron Star has the mass of almost 2 and half of our suns- crammed into a space 30 KM across; about 18 miles. So picture a couple of our suns in NYC- and you would be close. Yikes. They don’t know when the exact point where Gravity finally wins out and not even light can escape anymore. But they think this is about as close as you can get without skipping over into a Black Hole.

A teaspoon of that Neutron Star would weight more than 20 Earths. What does that even mean? And where do they get the spoons? (That was a joke in case you didn’t get it.) They think that at that level of crushing atoms together so tightly that the matter actually become liquid. So you need a ladle not a spoon.

And if that wasn’t weird enough, the darn thing is rotating so fast that it creates beams of energy outwards- which is why they are also called “Pulsars”. When I say rotate quickly, I mean thousands of revolutions a minute. The outer edge of a Neutron Star is revolving at almost a quarter of the speed of light- some seven hundred times a second! You would be dizzy as all get out if you could stand on one of these things…or even from watching it spin.

Some create such strong magnetic fields that they have their own nomenclature- Magnetostars. Sheesh. We don’t have any physics that hold up under those extreme conditions-and I find it interesting that these Neutron Stars are not studied just by Cosmologists, Astronomers, and Physicists, but by Engineers too. Specifically Materials Science Engineers and Fluid Dynamic Engineers.

How interesting are their jobs?

Okay, there you go. A glimpse into the beauty of the depths of our planet, to the depths of outer space. So close, yet so far.

And Statistics can lie. LOL

As Mark Twain once said: “There are lies, damn lies, and statistics.”

And as many of us older folks know: People who haven't tried will tell you why you shouldn't try.

And this tidbit too (I don't know who said it, or where I first heard it, but I agree with it completely!): Most of what you remember about your life will have been free, or very nearly free: a kiss, a sunset, a walk by the sea, a painting, a song, whatever.

Smiles, Kevin