Les Jones

Science > Another wedding, a brief glimpse of Mars & Jellyfish

(Note: this was a guest post from Chris Range, made on the Blogger system. When the old material was imported to the new Movable Type software, all articles were attributed to lesjones. For the record, this was Chris Range's article.)

Last night the old U.S. Internet / Earthlink / OneMain / SSES / Idelaire crew had another wedding. You've got to understand that since U.S. Internet was founded nearly ten years ago, it's original employees have worked for a succession of the same companies. This is probably one of the most inbred labor forces in history. Les and I met at U.S. Internet incidentally, though obviously he married someone else. Sera Coriell and Scott Saulnier were married last evening in a wonderful ceremony, which marks the 9th marriage where both spouses came from U.S. Internet. Along with my wedding gift and card I included some notes on how Scott could make his name as problematic as Sera's. One way I thought he could spell it would be Czkhat, which is sort of a combination of the slavic "cz" sound and a Welsh "kh" sound. If he could make the "A" one of those thorn A's with the little circle above it, or perhaps with an umlaut that would be really nice. --They're headed off to Jamaica now. Maybe a friendly Jamaican can offer some alternate spellings for their names. Something like Sconja or Seranja mon?

My Melissa and I got home from the wedding about 11PM last night, and after settling the kids to bed talk turned to Les and his Melissa. Certainly hope they're having a good time. Our vacation a couple weeks ago was nice, but I did get a little surprise. I was stung by a jelly fish on the second day but it was no big deal at the moment. I felt a little slimy thing like cold wet spaghetti flip across my leg, and then a feeling like I'd stuck my toe in a light socket. That just lasted a moment. I went up to the lifeguard to get some first aid. Like almost everyone else in South Carolina in July, he was from Quebec; unlike most of them he had some vinegar to spray on the sting.

The perpetrator was probably Chrysaora quinquecirrha, the Atlantic Sea nettle. These are found all along the American Atlantic coast. The biggest populations are from the Chesapeake Bay to Florida. Sea Nettles are responsible for 90% of the harrasment of vacationers by invertibrates. They have two color phases, pink and brown; They once were thought to be separate species. Nettles have no pedalia but have tentacles emanating from the entire outer edge of the circular bell or float. They also have long, frilly, lace-like mesenteric tentacles that fall from the edges of the mouth. The frilly tentacles are used in eating -- they produce a second venom with a different composition from the outer fishing tentacles. This is the slimy stuff I felt on my leg. Nasty business.

Marine envenomation is not well understood and it sometimes produces strange results. For instance nearly 3 weeks after I was first stung, I suddenly found myself "stung" again. Where before there had been no marks whatsoever, after about 17 days I developed long strings of blisters in neat rows along my leg which were very painful. A phonecall to the family doctor prompted the following sage response. "Marine envenomation is not well understood and it sometimes produces strange results. I suggest you take some antihistimines, put a poultice of meat-tenderizer on it, or spray it with some vinegar. Call me if it gets worse or if you experience any paralysis."

If I experience any paralysis? What the?.... Fortunately the swelling and blisters went down again after a couple of days. And I can still walk. (E Gad - paralysis?)

Jellyfish are a bellwether for the health of the ocean. If seasonal fishing has undercut the schooling populations there is less competition for the jellies, which eat the same foods. Being invertibrates, jellyfish breed faster than fish proper. Once begun, an overpopulation of jellies is a self-sustaining cycle. In a year of overfishing the number of stings on the Atlantic coast goes up dramatically. Population recovery doesn't seem to take long though because jellyfish don't have the lifespan of bony fish. One last note of interest - another Atlantic species called the Sea Wasp is a "box jelly" and is considered one of the most venemous creatures on Earth. If one of these stings you, death is almost certain after less than 15 minutes of excruciating pain. ---Don't worry. They live in the deeper colder waters of the Atlantic. You're not likely to ever see one, but if you do, get the H377 out of the way.

Back to last evening. After a good time at the wedding reception I noticed on the way home that Mars was visible for the first time in a couple weeks. It's very close now as I've written earlier, but that danged August haze has kept me from seeing it. I got my telescope set up in the front yard. I leveled it but I didn't even bother trying to do a proper alignment to the arc of the sky. After all, I'm only looking to gaze on one thing. And Mars was very bright. It took me about 5 minutes to get the telescope centered on it. My little Celestron is kinda cheap and the targeting scope doesn't really match the main reflector. But I found it quickly enough.

Lenses, lenses, lenses and more lenses -- 25 MM this and 5X that. With all that blasted haze, it's like the skies over East Tennessee are wrapped in a swaddling gauze. Right now Mars looks like a bright red star to the naked eye. Through my telescope lens it looked like a dust bunny from a flannel shirt. It didn't look much like a planet but I did experience one wierd thing that I'll remember for a long time to come. The polar cap on Mars was much more reflective than the rest of it. As I turned the cables to track it's movement through the sky, Mars' polar cap would glimmer and sometimes twist into a little halo around the edge of my lens that framed the rest of the planet. Mars itself was probably only 1/8th as wide as the viewable area within the eyepiece, but the glare from the cap would stretch out around it, and sometimes gleam brightly like a little circular flourescent light.

I can see clearer pictures of Mars many places. If I really want to learn about its geography I can study its features online or in a good astronomy book. The image that I saw was fuzzy and non-descript. But I had resolved that fuzzy image myself. And I wasn't looking at a picture in a book. I was looking at another planet - in real time as one might say - not in virtual reality, not an online simulation or astronomy CD rom - I was looking at a real planet with my very own squinted eye. For a minute I experienced a happy but deep realization. I'm on a rock, among other little rocks, spinning around in the universe. It's a tiny rock. And except for 12 men who spent no more than a few hours each on the Moon 30 years ago, it's the only rock we've ever known.