God of wonders...

Truly he is! 
Many, O Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered. Psalm 40:5

The Glory of thy Creation

Boxing day at Hoggies we went sightseeing, showing the new visitors some of the sights of this enchanting village... as we left the Chapel on the Hill this greeted us!








What is amazing to me is the way the sun fell on the tree.. which has a resemblance to a Cross. Coincidence? I do not believe that for one instance.
God is always with us and has given us the greatest gift of all.







Plaque at the Chapel...
The words say it all...



















I believe this is the message we should take with us in the coming year...
Here the rest are amazed by the sight of sun on trees...

Inside the chapel... each one with their own thoughts...

G&A in a stolen moment...


Before the Chapel we took a walk around the Labyrinth and then took a peek over the Edge...
The Labrynth

The Edge

A looking very pensive as she sits on the Edge.

On the Edge...

More edgy stuff...

G&A on the edge...

MD and M on the edge...


G&MD admiring the vista


Of course I could not resit taking some pictures of the flowers that crossed our paths...
Pelargoniums... all at the Chapel, these are new to me.

Another pelargonium.

Pelargonium in pink

Budding Aloe at the Labrynth.

Fittingly this came to mind as we drove back to the house in Hoggies.
"Genesis Chapter 2
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.
2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.
3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,"

Elemental Creation

The Iron Sun Credit: SOHO - EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA
Explanation: The ultraviolet light emitted by eleven times ionized iron at temperatures over 2 million degrees Fahrenheit was used to record the above picture of the Sun on September 22, 2001, the date of that year's autumnal equinox. The image was made by the EIT camera on board the SOHO spacecraft, a space observatory which can continuously observe the Sun. Eleven times ionized iron is atomic iron with eleven of its electrons stripped away. Here the electrons are stripped by the frantic collisions with other atoms and electrons which occur at the extreme temperatures in the Solar Corona. Since electrons are negatively charged, the resulting ionized iron atom is highly positively charged. Astronomer's "shorthand" for eleven times ionized iron is written "Fe XII", the chemical symbol for iron followed by a Roman numeral 12 (Fe I is neutral iron).
After reading the above article it struck me as being a great title for a blog about science, as I am interested in Science I have decided to make this my science blog... not a daily one but as I find something worth writing or commenting about. So here goes the first for FeXII...
Update 4/12/2007: Moved back to RfaBD!

Free State Dino

Cool, I never new we had these roaming around as well, I thought all that was found in our ancient sediments were the more crocodile like critters.
"Scientists have described a new primitive dinosaur species, Eocursor parvus, which lived in the Late Triassic - about 210 million years ago.
Unearthed in South Africa's Free State, the creature appears to have been a small, agile plant-eater."

Barred Spiral Milky Way

From APOD: 2005 August 25, The Milky Way, if this is what our home Galaxy looks like, we live in an amazingly beautiful Galaxy. This site has some more info and our solar systems approximate location. One can but only speculate as to the extreme conditions at Galactic Centre where a super massive Black Hole probably resides.
This makes me come to the conclusion that spiral systems are a feature of our universe, from atomic level to galactic level and maybe even beyond. Everything spins around something that in turn spins around some more massive thing. Amazing...

Latest Supernovae

Latest Supernovae This is now a permanent link on my bookmarks/favourites. Some more more images here, I like the one from Michael Howell image best and it is the one posted. So now I will be able to keep track of the latest Supernovae and maybe even get to see one soon.

Life... Beating the cosmic odds

Is there life out there... yes I believe so... Is there Intelligent life? Not likely... Seems like I am not alone in this view, I think the chances on this is much more slender and that we live on a Privileged Planet... I will detail some reasons why I believe so. Bear with me as this page will be expanded upon from time to time.
The points I will cover will make things clearer. This has also been debated on Space.com.

The Cosmos is inherently hostile to life
Consider the creation of our universe, it was an extremely violent thing and early stars did not have planets at all, planet forming elements just did not exist. If one considers that stars run out of drive so to speak at the Iron stage it was many billions of years before the first protoplanet may have formed.
When one looks at most Galaxies we also see violent environments that to my mind preclude any existence of life. Supernovae and galactic centres beam out massive doses of cosmic radiation that sanitize the surrounding cosmos for thousands of light years.

The green band
Astronomers discover where to find ET
It seems that any life has only a 10% region of possible habitation in most galaxies, the outer regions are poor in elements for life and the central regions are just too hostile for life to exist let alone form.

Two is not company
Recent studies have shown that around more than 50 % of observed stars are Binary Systems and in some cases Quadruple systems. The turmoil in such systems to my logic would just be too much for any lifeforms. We are thus an exception to the rule.

DisaStars
Possible Hyper nova Could Affect Earth
Coming back to Supernovae, there is a class of Nova that spews out such radiation that even being 3000 light years away is no guarantee of safety.

How far is a light year
Then there is the distance factor, even at faster than light speeds it would take years to traverse the galaxy, at sub light speeds it is an insurmountable obstacle to my mind.

Physics or the lack thereof
If there is intelligent life they will have to overcome the laws of physics to travel from one star to another to even make it worth their while.

Do they need us
Any civilization capable of faster than light travel would to my mind find us as interesting as an elephant would an ant.

Do we need them
Here the plight of the Inca springs to mind... when they were conquered by the Conquistadors they had no answer for the technological capability of the Spaniards as well as the biological impact that European illnesses also had on them. What would happen if we were to be invaded by space traveling aliens?

Rare Earth
This is where I come back to my basic argument, when one looks at all the factors that have made this blue dot such a special planet one has to believe that we are rather unique in the Galaxy if not the Universe...
Our Solar system is in a quite backwater of the Milky Way, no big star fields or star forming areas with stars threatening to go nova or other galactic bullies.
Our planet is in the sweet spot... not too close or too far from the single sun, protected by 3 gas Giants from incoming strays.
It has a moon that contributed to setting up geologic conditions for life to evolve.
It has water in the right proportion, not so much to drown the continents and not so little that things have gone into deep freeze like Mars.
In fact the chances are so astronomical that to my mind it is not chance but very much by forethought that we are where we are in the universe. Truly we live on a Rare Earth...
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