There is No PLANet B

That's right folks, there is no plan......et B.  The nearest possibly inhabitable planet is 12 light years away.  for those of you that do not understand what a light year is, it is the distance that light travels in one of our years.  And just to give you a better feel for how long it would take to get to this planet that might be inhabitable by our species, light travels at 186,282 miles per second.  There are 60 seconds per minute, 60 minutes per hour, 24 hours per day and 365 days per year.  This equals 5,874,589,152,000 miles (5.875 trillion). The fastest spacecraft speed ever recorded is 36,373 per hour which is the equivalent of 318,627,480 miles per year (if that speed could be sustained over long periods of time).  In order for us, with current technology, to travel one light year it would take 18,437.17 years.  Now multiply that by 12 and it would take us             221,246.04 earth years to reach this possibly, maybe, inhabitable planet.  As of right now..........there is no plan B.

I saw this this sign, many times over, at Philadelphia's March for Science today.  I also heard that there were 500 Marches for Science in our country and marches in other countries as well.  Driving home from the march, this afternoon, I heard there were 17 such marches in Germany and the same sign was referenced as being at the march in Berlin.  It only took me a few minutes to come up with the results presented above, which by the way was me applying science to a question raised by a placard at an event.  I wonder if Scott Pruitt or Betsy Devos could have figured that out (I won't even ask about trump, the answer is obvious)?

As with other protests and marches I have attended, it was difficult, if not impossible to estimate the crowd size, but my guess is that the Philly march had about 5,000 participants.  I'll check in with media reports.  I will certainly be interested in how many marched in our country when all 500 events are added together.  Also, as with other protests and marches I've been to, I have come away with renewed energy to continue resisting an administration that is dangerous to all of us in so many ways.

Some of the signs we brought were funny, some thought provoking, some decrying our current administration.  At the gathering point, I saw two great geological signs, which I will share below.  One pointed out the three different types of rocks, with the last one being igneous.  I noted to the woman holding the sign that I first read the word as "ignorant" (you'll see).  Another one is a little hard to see, but it reads "eat my schist" a type of metamorphic rock.  Loved it.

We marched from City Hall down to Penn's Landing, about a fifteen block walk, straight down Market Street (the main east / west thoroughfare in Philadelphia).  I saw all kinds of inspiring scenes.  A woman with a green 'pussy' knit hat, children who were carrying signs and knew why they were there, a little bit of impromptu street theater involving trumpzilla beating down the earth with his small hands.  One great sign that I didn't get a picture of said 'put the nuclear code in a science text book, trump et. al. will never find it'

When we got to Penn's landing, we listened to various speakers. One of those that spoke was a man that I have admired for years, from afar, on our local public radio stations, WHYY and WXPN, Derrick Pitts. Derrick is the Chief Astronomer and Planetarium Director for the Franklin Institute in Philly. He did not speak about anything technical, but rather, spoke to those of us that were gathered about the importance of science in our everyday lives.  Our country's founders recognized the importance of science and therefore charged Congress with funding scientific research in Article I, section 8, line 8.  As I noted a few days ago, I believe that many of our elected officials need to brush up on what is in our Constitution.  Just as an aside, I want to point out that one of the public radio stations I mentioned, WXPN,  broadcasts from one of those dangerous places where science is taught and performed, the University of Pennsylvania (U of P, U Penn or just plain old Penn).

There were many other speakers including the head of a group by the name of The Freethought Society.  They were one of the main sponsors of today's march in Philadelphia.  I am looking into their website at www.FtSociety.org .  There were a couple of local politicians, a pediatrician / immunologist, a professor from Princeton.  All in all, an inspirational day.