Faux pas par excellence, “How much do you weigh?” isn’t the question one asks a stranger in polite society, but, really, don’t we all want to know? Without a quantity, we have to imagine. So, to avoid the socially unacceptable question about weight, maybe we should ask, “What’s your mass?” Weight, after all, is just the measurement of your acceleration toward the planet’s center of gravity, less on the moon, more on Jupiter; but mass, now there’s a true definer. Or maybe, we should ask about density.
We can guess weight because we’re familiar with our own. Mass isn’t how we think of the total stuff that makes up a human body. Nor do we think in terms of someone’s density, that is, mass per unit volume. Volume? Well, that’s easy when we think of a closet we overstuff with clothes or a refrigerator we overstock with food. More stuff jammed into the same volume increases density.
The density of many celestial objects is unimaginable, even when we assign numbers. Take, for example, the density of PSR J0030+0451, a “millisecond pulsar” about 1,174 LY away. Its mass has recently been pinned down to something between 1.3 and 1.4 times that of the Sun but in a diameter between 25.4 km and 26 km (15.8 mi and 16.2 mi).* I’m just roughly guessing here, but that’s probably nearly 100 million tons of stuff squeezed into the size of a sugar cube (maybe greater than 10^14 g cm^-3 ). That is 100 million tons (a weight designation) in Earth’s gravity; a very heavy “sugar cube indeed.”**
We meet at a party. You’re thin. You’re fat (I’m sorry, can I say “fat” without being vilified in social media while you run to a “safe space”?) Anyway, you are whatever you are. And as we chat, I wonder, “How much does this person weigh?” Having been around other humans, I have some experience, and I’ve stepped on scales, so I know a little about human weights. With the experience of seeing so many humans, I have a comparative scale from which I can assign some approximate numbers. And you, my new acquaintance, are probably thinking, “This guy should lay off the bread and run some stadium bleachers. I wonder how dense he is—physically, that is, not mentally.” I notice that you seemed to be weighed down by concerns.
Here’s the actual imagined conversation (actual imagined?).
I start: “I just read about the size and density of a pulsar. Yes, I do sometimes dabble in things astronomical. It’s just wonderful that after all the myths about celestial objects told over all the millennia, we finally know what’s out there for the most part. We finally understand what stars and nebulae are, the nature of galaxies, and, of course, pulsars and black holes—especially now that we’ve actually imaged a black hole.”
You answer: “Never really been too interested in that stuff. I’m more a down-to-Earth, practical person concerned with bread, milk, and eggs, the stock market, and life’s finer things—though I do indulge in imagining a little feng shui and practicing a little geomancy when I enter any room. I think astrology is just downright silly since the perspective we have of constellations isn’t the perspective from, say, Betelgeuse. We’ll never go to the stars, so I don’t bother with them. Besides, we don’t even see stars in the city because of all the light pollution. I’m guessing there are urban children who only know about stars because of some classroom poster or visit to a planetarium. But with respect to my practical life, I have a plate piled high with concerns, a room stuffed with problems I have to solve. ”
I respond: “I didn’t say I dabbled in astrology. I said ‘astronomy.’ I understand, however, your attitude toward both astrology and astronomy. The former is, as you say, silly. Signs of the Zodiac aren’t more than imagined connections of dots. And with respect to the latter, astronomy doesn’t’ offer anything applicable to daily life with facts about pulsars, neutron stars, and the Chandrasekar limit. But practicality aside, I escape briefly from concerns about resupplying the house with bread, milk, and eggs, the vicissitudes of the market, or New Age mental snake oils. Sure, we most likely will never reach the stars. But the numbers associated with them are useful in one sense. They make the goings on down here on little Earth seem strangely insignificant in the Big Scheme. The density of that pulsar makes for an interesting comparison. Physically, we’re used to things less dense than a distant pulsar, but from the stress problems give us, we seem to think were squished by too many concerns packed into each day. Some of us must think we’re on the bottom of a pile of elephants. In reality, of course, much of what we spend our time troubling over is so much fluff that the following generation never considers it to have the density of importance worth any attention.
“Just knowing that something out there like a pulsar is squeezed together beyond my imagination makes me think that the density of concerns over which we daily mull is not very great. We really do fuss over lots of stuff with very little mass: Fashion, for example, or New Age stuff, or, dare I say it, the opinions of some self-described Elitists, family and neighborhood ‘problems.’ Sure, there’s more weighty stuff for our concerns. Surely, we can’t be so empty of mass, so amorphous that, were it not for the gravity imposed by social norms, we would float away.”
You say: “So, you think the value in astronomy is that it shows us how little we are physically and how ‘weighty’ our problems aren’t.”
I admit: “Yes. In our throbbing, pulsating lives, we are nowhere near being squished like the stuff in a pulsar, neutron star, or black hole. There’s really a lot of emptiness between our weighty concerns, the mass of our lives isn’t as dense as we make ourselves believe. There’s room to breathe. There’s space between problems. Most people aren’t as squished as they believe they are.”
*SCINEWS. Astronomers Measure Size and Mass of Nearby Pulsar, Create Map of Its Surface Hot Spots. 17 Dec 2019. http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/pulsar-size-mass-map-surface-hot-spots-07921.html Accessed December 18, 2019
See also: T.E. Riley et al. 2019. A NICER View of PSR J0030+0451: Millisecond Pulsar Parameter Estimation. ApJL 887, L21; doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab481c
**Big numbers: 100,000,000 tons equals 200,000,000,000 pounds. Elephants can weigh 7 to 8 tons or 14,000-16,000 pounds. Let’s go on the heavy side. That “sugar cube” of pulsar matter would be equivalent to 12,500,000 elephants, far too heavy for your tea cup. (Do people nowadays still use sugar cubes?)
We can guess weight because we’re familiar with our own. Mass isn’t how we think of the total stuff that makes up a human body. Nor do we think in terms of someone’s density, that is, mass per unit volume. Volume? Well, that’s easy when we think of a closet we overstuff with clothes or a refrigerator we overstock with food. More stuff jammed into the same volume increases density.
The density of many celestial objects is unimaginable, even when we assign numbers. Take, for example, the density of PSR J0030+0451, a “millisecond pulsar” about 1,174 LY away. Its mass has recently been pinned down to something between 1.3 and 1.4 times that of the Sun but in a diameter between 25.4 km and 26 km (15.8 mi and 16.2 mi).* I’m just roughly guessing here, but that’s probably nearly 100 million tons of stuff squeezed into the size of a sugar cube (maybe greater than 10^14 g cm^-3 ). That is 100 million tons (a weight designation) in Earth’s gravity; a very heavy “sugar cube indeed.”**
We meet at a party. You’re thin. You’re fat (I’m sorry, can I say “fat” without being vilified in social media while you run to a “safe space”?) Anyway, you are whatever you are. And as we chat, I wonder, “How much does this person weigh?” Having been around other humans, I have some experience, and I’ve stepped on scales, so I know a little about human weights. With the experience of seeing so many humans, I have a comparative scale from which I can assign some approximate numbers. And you, my new acquaintance, are probably thinking, “This guy should lay off the bread and run some stadium bleachers. I wonder how dense he is—physically, that is, not mentally.” I notice that you seemed to be weighed down by concerns.
Here’s the actual imagined conversation (actual imagined?).
I start: “I just read about the size and density of a pulsar. Yes, I do sometimes dabble in things astronomical. It’s just wonderful that after all the myths about celestial objects told over all the millennia, we finally know what’s out there for the most part. We finally understand what stars and nebulae are, the nature of galaxies, and, of course, pulsars and black holes—especially now that we’ve actually imaged a black hole.”
You answer: “Never really been too interested in that stuff. I’m more a down-to-Earth, practical person concerned with bread, milk, and eggs, the stock market, and life’s finer things—though I do indulge in imagining a little feng shui and practicing a little geomancy when I enter any room. I think astrology is just downright silly since the perspective we have of constellations isn’t the perspective from, say, Betelgeuse. We’ll never go to the stars, so I don’t bother with them. Besides, we don’t even see stars in the city because of all the light pollution. I’m guessing there are urban children who only know about stars because of some classroom poster or visit to a planetarium. But with respect to my practical life, I have a plate piled high with concerns, a room stuffed with problems I have to solve. ”
I respond: “I didn’t say I dabbled in astrology. I said ‘astronomy.’ I understand, however, your attitude toward both astrology and astronomy. The former is, as you say, silly. Signs of the Zodiac aren’t more than imagined connections of dots. And with respect to the latter, astronomy doesn’t’ offer anything applicable to daily life with facts about pulsars, neutron stars, and the Chandrasekar limit. But practicality aside, I escape briefly from concerns about resupplying the house with bread, milk, and eggs, the vicissitudes of the market, or New Age mental snake oils. Sure, we most likely will never reach the stars. But the numbers associated with them are useful in one sense. They make the goings on down here on little Earth seem strangely insignificant in the Big Scheme. The density of that pulsar makes for an interesting comparison. Physically, we’re used to things less dense than a distant pulsar, but from the stress problems give us, we seem to think were squished by too many concerns packed into each day. Some of us must think we’re on the bottom of a pile of elephants. In reality, of course, much of what we spend our time troubling over is so much fluff that the following generation never considers it to have the density of importance worth any attention.
“Just knowing that something out there like a pulsar is squeezed together beyond my imagination makes me think that the density of concerns over which we daily mull is not very great. We really do fuss over lots of stuff with very little mass: Fashion, for example, or New Age stuff, or, dare I say it, the opinions of some self-described Elitists, family and neighborhood ‘problems.’ Sure, there’s more weighty stuff for our concerns. Surely, we can’t be so empty of mass, so amorphous that, were it not for the gravity imposed by social norms, we would float away.”
You say: “So, you think the value in astronomy is that it shows us how little we are physically and how ‘weighty’ our problems aren’t.”
I admit: “Yes. In our throbbing, pulsating lives, we are nowhere near being squished like the stuff in a pulsar, neutron star, or black hole. There’s really a lot of emptiness between our weighty concerns, the mass of our lives isn’t as dense as we make ourselves believe. There’s room to breathe. There’s space between problems. Most people aren’t as squished as they believe they are.”
*SCINEWS. Astronomers Measure Size and Mass of Nearby Pulsar, Create Map of Its Surface Hot Spots. 17 Dec 2019. http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/pulsar-size-mass-map-surface-hot-spots-07921.html Accessed December 18, 2019
See also: T.E. Riley et al. 2019. A NICER View of PSR J0030+0451: Millisecond Pulsar Parameter Estimation. ApJL 887, L21; doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/ab481c
**Big numbers: 100,000,000 tons equals 200,000,000,000 pounds. Elephants can weigh 7 to 8 tons or 14,000-16,000 pounds. Let’s go on the heavy side. That “sugar cube” of pulsar matter would be equivalent to 12,500,000 elephants, far too heavy for your tea cup. (Do people nowadays still use sugar cubes?)
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