During the SARS Covid-19 pandemic all of us have heard the standard advice: Distance yourself, wash your hands, don’t sneeze on others or walk through a sneeze cloud, don’t panic, stop stressing the supply chain, and, for everyone’s sake, stay inside. Staying inside is probably wise, but golly, difficult. Even whales can’t stay inside the ocean, jumping out, or breaching, sometimes frequently. No doubt the young among us will have the most difficult time staying inside. And the old among us will no doubt grow a bit pudgy without those long walks, bicycle rides, or jogs. Surely, there’s a compromise, and, if you’re new to this site, some sort of lesson in breaching, in getting outside.
First off, whales breach only temporarily. Gravity sees to that. So, it takes great energy to breach as an article by Alexander J. Werth and Charles L. Lemon of Hampden-Sydney College reveals. Werth and Lemon report on a study by Paolo Segre et al. on the energy required to breach. “A 15-meter humpback whale…can expend as much energy as a 60-kilogram human would during a marathon…Segre et al. therefore contend that a breach may represent the ‘most expensive burst maneuver’ in all of nature, pushing the boundaries of muscular performance and providing an honest signal of a whale’s general health.”*.
Yeah. Those people you see running through the park and exercising are generally saying, especially if they are young and single, “Hey, look at me. I’m a catch because I’m healthy.” Or as Werth and Lemon report, “One juvenile humpback breached 52 times I just over four hours.” And that’s probably why thousands of spring breakers left the safe confines of their Covid-19-free homes to jump on beaches. Just the young doing what the young do, right? Showing off and simultaneously expressing through some breaching and beaching.
But the young aren’t, as you know, the only ones who have a desire to breach. Admit it, staying in the home waters is difficult. Now you know what your pet fish experience when they run into the aquarium glass and find themselves dependent on the supply chain of fish food flakes. “Oh, if only I could breach.” So, even the most mature of adults can feel the need for some breaching, even some that would require far less energy than running a marathon.
So, if there’s a safe isolated space to breach, by all means breach. But there is one more type of breaching, one that is especially needed during this time of 24/7 yak-yak yada-yada stuff by TV commentators seeking a reason to justify their jobs while others sit idly and when they are not saying “Social distance, and wash your hands” or “It’s Trump’s fault,” as they look for a scapegoat or for political gain. And that other kind of breaching is an intellectual one. Maybe staying in the aquarium gives you a chance to explore your inner world to find that it is larger than you imagined. This pandemic event gives you a time to explore what you might previously have left unobserved or unlearned.
Let me switch from ocean to galaxy to make the point. Seems that we live in a bigger fish bowl than we thought. The Milky Way, according to a new measurement by Alis Deason and colleagues at Durham University, is not a mere 100,000 light-years across as older astronomy texts commonly state. Rather, it is 1.9 million light-years, especially when one takes into account the galaxy’s dark matter.** And its disk of stars, the visible, ordinary matter, is a wide 120,000 light-years in diameter. Imagine, ever since Hubble discovered that we live in an island universe called the Milky Way, subsequent astronomers determined its diameter at 20,000 fewer light-years. Seems, as I wrote above, you have farther to swim till you hit the astronomical aquarium glass. In other words, there is more inside and the inside is bigger than you might have previously thought.
You have more to explore before you need to breach. Your personal ocean and galaxy are big.
*Werth, Alexander J. and Charles L. Lemon. Animal Behavior: Whale breaching says it loud and clear. eLife. 11 Mar 2020. DOI: 10.7554eLife.55722, Online at https://elifesciences.org/articles/55722 Accessed March 23, 2020.
And Segre, Paolo et al. Energetic and physical limitations on the breaching performance of large whales. 11 Mar 2020 same site.
**Croswell, Ken. Astronomers have found the edge of the Milky Way at last. ScienceNews. 23 Mar 2020. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/astronomers-have-found-edge-milky-way-size Accessed 23 Mar 2020.
First off, whales breach only temporarily. Gravity sees to that. So, it takes great energy to breach as an article by Alexander J. Werth and Charles L. Lemon of Hampden-Sydney College reveals. Werth and Lemon report on a study by Paolo Segre et al. on the energy required to breach. “A 15-meter humpback whale…can expend as much energy as a 60-kilogram human would during a marathon…Segre et al. therefore contend that a breach may represent the ‘most expensive burst maneuver’ in all of nature, pushing the boundaries of muscular performance and providing an honest signal of a whale’s general health.”*.
Yeah. Those people you see running through the park and exercising are generally saying, especially if they are young and single, “Hey, look at me. I’m a catch because I’m healthy.” Or as Werth and Lemon report, “One juvenile humpback breached 52 times I just over four hours.” And that’s probably why thousands of spring breakers left the safe confines of their Covid-19-free homes to jump on beaches. Just the young doing what the young do, right? Showing off and simultaneously expressing through some breaching and beaching.
But the young aren’t, as you know, the only ones who have a desire to breach. Admit it, staying in the home waters is difficult. Now you know what your pet fish experience when they run into the aquarium glass and find themselves dependent on the supply chain of fish food flakes. “Oh, if only I could breach.” So, even the most mature of adults can feel the need for some breaching, even some that would require far less energy than running a marathon.
So, if there’s a safe isolated space to breach, by all means breach. But there is one more type of breaching, one that is especially needed during this time of 24/7 yak-yak yada-yada stuff by TV commentators seeking a reason to justify their jobs while others sit idly and when they are not saying “Social distance, and wash your hands” or “It’s Trump’s fault,” as they look for a scapegoat or for political gain. And that other kind of breaching is an intellectual one. Maybe staying in the aquarium gives you a chance to explore your inner world to find that it is larger than you imagined. This pandemic event gives you a time to explore what you might previously have left unobserved or unlearned.
Let me switch from ocean to galaxy to make the point. Seems that we live in a bigger fish bowl than we thought. The Milky Way, according to a new measurement by Alis Deason and colleagues at Durham University, is not a mere 100,000 light-years across as older astronomy texts commonly state. Rather, it is 1.9 million light-years, especially when one takes into account the galaxy’s dark matter.** And its disk of stars, the visible, ordinary matter, is a wide 120,000 light-years in diameter. Imagine, ever since Hubble discovered that we live in an island universe called the Milky Way, subsequent astronomers determined its diameter at 20,000 fewer light-years. Seems, as I wrote above, you have farther to swim till you hit the astronomical aquarium glass. In other words, there is more inside and the inside is bigger than you might have previously thought.
You have more to explore before you need to breach. Your personal ocean and galaxy are big.
*Werth, Alexander J. and Charles L. Lemon. Animal Behavior: Whale breaching says it loud and clear. eLife. 11 Mar 2020. DOI: 10.7554eLife.55722, Online at https://elifesciences.org/articles/55722 Accessed March 23, 2020.
And Segre, Paolo et al. Energetic and physical limitations on the breaching performance of large whales. 11 Mar 2020 same site.
**Croswell, Ken. Astronomers have found the edge of the Milky Way at last. ScienceNews. 23 Mar 2020. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/astronomers-have-found-edge-milky-way-size Accessed 23 Mar 2020.
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