Steemit Vision Quest 18: The Dance
Lost in scale. We humans imagine we understand that an atom is small and a star is huge but we are lost in scale.
We are a blip in a fractal and we have no way of knowing how long the pattern has been playing out or over what expanses of time and space. There is a grand dance of energy and we are surely a part of it, but we are not the entire show. Our lives mean nothing on the scale of the Cosmos and everything to our children. We are the dancer and the dance, the matter and the motion, twirling into eternity in the arms of The Divine.
I built the little model in the top photo. It is, in an odd way, a representation of our solar system made with my grandkids in mind. I want them to understand their connection to everything very young. I do not want them to have their head filled with the same misunderstandings I have labored so hard to be free of. It is whimsical and bears no resemblance to the actual solar system but it will be a wonderful conversation starter, and visual aid to the chat once it gets going.
I tried using the wire to run my holes through, but it was too weak. I used the screw and then threaded pipe cleaners through. I left part of the stems straight and taped them to the light. I twirled the other ends around my finger.
These are the points I will use this "sculpture" to illustrate:
The sun is connected to the planets by a dynamic electromagnetic filament. As the sun revolves and the planets orbit, the connection point will dance across the sun. On our planet, the connections are what we call the "magnetic poles" and they are designated as "north" or "south." These are strong tethers to our star and as we all go hurtling through space together this connection allows constant energetic contact between the sun and EVERYTHING in the solar system. Planets to moons, all the way down to humans and atoms. Here is a great article about some of these connections if you wish to delve a little deeper. Even planets without poles are subject to "solar winds" that wash them in energy from the sun. Everything within the heliosphere is energetically connected to our star.
I wanted to make the concept of this strong connection between planets and sun first because that is missing from the video at the bottom. If you have never seen this, prepare to have your mind blown.
Remember this thing from school?
image source
They were wonderful! Fun to play with and so helpful at visualizing how the solar system ran... and WRONG. To be fair, I cannot imagine how you could make a desk top version of what is in this video and even this video, as noted, does not tell the entire story. We remain adrift in cosmic scale but it does an exquisite job of illustrating
The Dance.
Thank you to @cabelindsay for hosting Steemit Vision Quest and bringing a little sacred space to the blockchain!
Nice post @fishyculture! In the grand scheme of things we humans are really insignificant and it arrogant of us to think otherwise. It boggles the mind when you think of just how complex the universe is. I don't know about you, but I remember talking about the solar system in the early years of my education when Jupiter had 7 moons, wait, is that 9 or 11? Pluto was but a small frozen planet and now the poor thing has been demoted to a planetoid! My how things change the more we learn and explore...
My mother once made a comment that had an incredible impact on me... Humanity struggled at a meager survival level for generation after generation. What happens in one lifetime now would appear to be magic to any of our ancestors from the past 2000 years. My grandmother rode in a horse and buggy, and flew in an airplane. My mother herself was told men could never reach the moon because they would die of old age before they got there, then watched men walk on the moon. (Or not, a topic for another day... lol!) My personal one is in 9th grade I got to work on one of the first computers to go into a public school for the students to use. It was MONSTROUS, took up a full room. You had to fill out these little cards that took three marks for each symbol. It was tedious to get the most simple equation ready for the computer. "2+2=x" would require I take a card, fill a bubble box in, write a "2" up top for my reference and "1" in the page box to keep the cards in order. Same for the plus sign, the next 2, the equal sign, the x, then one for "run." If I had a stray mark or incompletely filled a box, the computer just spit it out with an "error" message. No hint where or what kind of error. Understand I was in advanced math classes, I was filling out long algebraic formulae, not 2+2... I HATED that machine! I would listen to the math teachers gush about how fortunate we were while wishing the whole thing would just melt down every time I used it. And now, look at this world, look at me... I carry a computer in my pocket that is unimaginably more powerful than that old beast. And I still have many years to watch it unfold, I think... I hope... lol!
Really neat to be educating the next generation. An active role from family is wonderful. Cool stuff but my juvenile brain immediately went to the scene in Animal House where they are getting stoned with a professor.
Lol! I had forgotten that scene... musta been stoned... it was the 70's!