Solar System - Asteroids

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Things you don't know about the Solar System

I've always found space fascinating, and among my first books was a book about astronomy. It was just a small, general guide that had a number of interesting facts about the solar system and the stars and galaxies. This was 1980 or before, and we've made a LOT of discoveries since then, and I've kept up on it, partly thanks to Ars Technica, the Science Channel, and NASA.

Today's topic: Asteroids! No, not the video game, not the movies, but real asteroids.
 
Howdy, pardner! Welcome to the wild world of asteroid belting! We'll be mining those big chunks of rock and making money hand over fist in no time!

I'll bet you thought our next stop after the red planet would be the big planet, Jupiter, but you're wrong, buddy boy. Our next step away from the Sun is to the asteroid belt, where valuable minerals are just sitting there, waiting for us to grab them and use them.

The popular picture of the asteroid belt is that it's a huge collection of rocks just floating around, waiting to smash a passing spacecraft. This image comes from the movies, most notably The Empire Strikes Back, where the Millennium Falcon has to dodge through these crazily hurting masses and TIE fighters get smashed up for not being better pilots.

The reality is much more pedestrian. Much more like the asteroid encounter scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sure, there's a lot of rocks, and sure, they do collide with each other, but that's over the course of millions of years, not on a minute-by-minute basis. And what's more, we've sent about a dozen spacecraft through it and, except when we intentionally crashed on one, never came within a million miles of one.

One other persistent myth is that there's enough mass out there to make a good-sized planet, which has been named Phaeton. The reality is that all the asteroids in the belt wouldn't add up to something the size of Pluto, which isn't even considered a planet any more.

But that doesn't mean the asteroids aren't valuable. As tiny planet-like objects, some of them will have a lot of useful minerals, like iron and titanium. Some will have oxygen or water. Most will be almost worthless piles of dirt and dust, but there's a good chance of finding a few that will pay for the trouble of going up there.

Ceres, the largest of the asteroids, is now considered to be a dwarf planet, just like Pluto now is. There are quite a few of these dwarf planets in our solar system, and Ceres isn't the largest, but it's the closest to us, and it's likely to be the most important object in that area. Because it's so big, it's very likely to have a lot of good minerals to recover.

As a dwarf planet, Ceres is so large that it has enough gravity to be roughly spherical in shape, but not enough to clear out its orbit of most other debris, and so form Phaeton.

One more thing about asteroids: there are a lot more of them than the ones in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. They're all over the Solar system, and many of them orbit near Earth. In fact, many of them cross Earth's orbit every year, and one of them might crash into us in a few years. Many are discovered right after passing close by - some closer than the moon is to us. Should one of these impact the Earth, it would be a very bad day, and no one would see it coming.

I don't know about you, but I'd like it if someone started actively scanning the heavens for all the asteroids that could impact the Earth. Despite what some of the movies would have you believe, there is no such effort, and a bad day can happen with zero warning right now. If you think this is important, start bugging your congress-critter to do something useful instead of trying to destroy the country with health care "reform".

Until next time!
















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Further reading to whet your appetite for knowledge:
Solar System - Sun
To Your Health - Part 4
Solar System - Mars

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To Your Health - Part 2

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Would you like to get your weight at the right level, have more energy, look and feel better, and live longer, without radically changing your lifestyle or going on weird diets and boring exercise routines? Then I've got good news for you: I lost 50 pounds of fat in 1 year without really trying, and I'm going to tell you how I did it so you can try it too! But since I'm not a doctor and not in any way responsible for your actions, reading any part of this article constitutes your agreement not to hold me responsible in any way for anything.

In Part 1, I revealed to you a miraculous, cheap chemical that, if you add more of it to your life, you'll feel a lot better. By itself, this one chemical can boost your energy, improve your health, soften your skin, keep your weight under control, and it even tastes great! And if you started drinking more of this amazing stuff called water - drinking it during meals and replacing some of your sugary drinks with it, then you probably started feeling the difference almost immediately - like in just a few days. But you want more than one secret to better health the easy way, don't you? Well that's why I'm here again.

Replacing the majority of what I drink with water was a no-brainer, and it made a huge difference. That, combined with a moderate increase in my daily activity, and the near-elimination of pure-junk food led to a loss of about 30 pounds in only 4 months. To lose the next 20 took a little more time and effort, but not much more.

Getting rid of pure-junk food is a huge way to right-size your weight. Most people are worried about losing weight, but there are some people who need to gain it (and some people who THINK they need to lose weight when they really need to gain it - consult a BMI calculator or better yet, a doctor). Right-sizing your weight will go a long way toward improving the quality of your life. So first I'm going to tell you what some of thee incredibly bad foods are and then I'm going to give you an easy way to get rid of them.

First and worst is, you guessed it, sugar. Sugar is in almost everything we eat because it makes things taste better. However, sugar is what's called "cheap energy". It gives you a rush of energy for a very short time and then it's gone and you feel a crash. I've heard people are giving their kids sugar right before bed so that when the crash comes, the kid feels very tired and goes to sleep quickly. What a great way to ruin your child's life! As any diabetic will tell you, too much sugar isn't good for you at all, and giving these kids sugar rushes before bed teaches their body to crave it, plus it gives them a ton of calories with nowhere to go but fat cells.

Take a look at the ingredients list of the things you eat, and sugar is almost always one of the first 3 ingredients. If you are eating food like that, put it down and pick up something else. Breakfast cereals are especially bad about this. Even some of the "healthy" cereals, like Honey Nut Cheerios and Honey Bunches of Oats are loaded with almost as much sugar as Super Sugar Crisp and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Recently I discovered a cereal called Kashi which is a whole lot better for you simply by virtue of having no added sugar. There are two varieties of it I like, which I now eat almost every morning.

The next really bad food is called MonoSodium Glutamate, or MSG. Near as I can tell, the only use for MSG is to make you feel hungry. It's like nicotine for corn chips. Take a look at the Doritos and other flavored chips you eat, and you'll find they have MSG. Now you know why when you open a bag of Doritos you can't stop until you've eaten half the bag. But look, don't be like smokers and alcoholics and blame a chemical for your addiction, because you can manufacture your own chemical that will counteract that. I'll tell you more about that later.

Instead of picking up chips and candy with MSG and sugar, pick up chips and crackers without them. Pick up fruits like dried apricots and raisins, or try sesame oat bran sticks and cocktail peanuts. There are a lot of great alternatives out there that are much better for you than the junk you eat now, and it's not a radical lifestyle change.

The third bad food to avoid is bleach. Yuck, who eats bleach? White bread has been bleached. It doesn't matter if it's whole grain white, it's still white, and that means it's been bleached. And that includes most hotdog and hamburger buns too. Avoiding bleach is pretty easy, just choose bread that isn't white. I like whole grain honey wheat bread myself, and when I'm at the burger joint, well, they don't give me the option to have healthier bread, so I don't go there that much. But if you're making your own burgers, the store does stock non-bleached buns nowadays, so get these instead. Also, a lot of crackers and pretzels are bleached. And if you're thinking of going on the subway diet, don't get your sub on white bread; they've got a lot of good non-white breads.

The fourth thing you should avoid is artificial sweeteners. These are worse than sugar! That's right, those diet colas and no-sugar health foods that use artificial sweeteners instead of sugar are actually worse for you. And let's face it, they don't taste that good anyway. Many artificial sweeteners break down into things like formaldehyde, which they use to preserve dead creatures against decay, and that's the least of the problems they cause. Sure, they might not spike your blood sugar as bad if you're diabetic, but that doesn't mean they're good for you.

The fifth and final thing that's really bad for you is fried foods. I know, I know, they're so delicious, how can you avoid them? But you should try to eat less of them. Most seafood menus nowadays have an option to have your order broiled, which is better than frying, and you don't have to fry your chicken. Frying foods obliterates any health value they may have had, so don't pat yourself on the back for eating fried chicken strips or fried okra.

Completely eliminating all these bad types of food is almost impossible, but by making better choices and substituting good foods for bad ones, you'll find that you can eat less of the bad foods, and if you want, you can still have them once in a while without having to feel guilty.

Don't reach for a candy bar, reach for raisins, dried apricots, a banana, an apple, a granola bar (not the sugary kind!), sunflower seeds, an onion, a stick of gum, some watermelon, or any of a number of other things that are, if not good for you, at least not as bad. You can have as many green vegetables as you want; try to find ones you'll like. Try eating cucumber halves as a replacement for a candy bar. Or onions. Or broccoli. Broccoli has a lot of good stuff in it. Just be sure you eat these vegetables raw; cooking them ruins their health value.

I understand that you're not going to succeed at this every single time. It's okay, you don't have to. I'm HARDLY the picture of strict dieting. I still eat pizza, candy bars, ice cream, Doritos, and drink pop, but I don't eat them every day. Sometimes I don't even eat them every week. Sometimes not even every month! I'm at the point now where I don't feel like I HAVE TO eat that stuff. I have so many more opportunities to eat interesting things that I simply don't get around to eating the bad stuff so much.

If you can make a deal with yourself to pick something good instead of something bad every other time you have a craving, that's a good start right there. Small steps, not big ones. Remember Secret #1.

Have you, or would you, pay $100 for a diet that was sure to work? If so, then why not spend a lot less than that trying out some new foods to see how you like them? Many people pay thousands of dollars dieting, and it usually doesn't work, but this has worked for a lot of people, and more importantly, it's worked for me. I've found some new foods to eat instead of the junk I used to always eat, and I'm a lot better for it.

If you heard there was a food ingredient that was a poison that was GUARANTEED to kill you, would you start checking your food ingredients to make sure that wasn't in there? So start checking your food labels for the kinds of ingredients I've mentioned, because these things ARE poisons, they DO increase your chances of getting cancer, and the less of them you eat, the better you're going to feel.

So take the small step of buying some new foods that are better for you, and every time you have a craving for something, flip a coin. Heads, you try the new food, tails, you can eat the junk food.

And be sure to drink plenty of water with it.

Until next time,
Be your best!
- Jaycee

Hey, if you feel I've done you a favor with my site, do me a favor in return and take a look at some of these products from Amazon, maybe even buy some of them. Every purchase you make through one of my links goes to support this site, even if it's not exactly what I linked up, and keeping this site running will benefit many more people. Thank you for giving back!

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More articles of interest or amusement: 
To Your Health - Part 1
Christy Brinkley, Terry Bradshaw, and many more - 1999
To Your Health - Part 3

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Happy 21st birthday Tiffany!

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Today, my favorite niece turns 21. She's probably going to spend part of it the way most kids do, but she's got some really interesting things in mind too. Wish I could be there to help her celebrate, but I gotta work. She'll be staying at the Hilton, so if you're there and you witness any young girls acting all drunk, that might be her. But it might not be. But just in case it is, be nice to her and say, "Uncle Jimmy says hi". You don't get to call me that, but she does.

In the past couple days I got to do a lot of exciting things. First, I got to direct traffic in a jammed truckstop. Seems that when the snow starts coming down, truckers forget how to drive and get clogged up in small roadways. I went out there and helped get it cleared up. Now I know how rewarding the job of traffic cop is.

Next, I got to go several places I've never been before. I spent a good two days in unknown territory and loved every moment of it! Well, okay, not the part about being thrown around by crappy roads, and not the part about paying tolls, but other than that, it was great!

First, they sent me to upstate New York. I've never been there before the other day ago. On the way up, I skirted through the eastern side of the Adirondacks until I got to a little town on Lake Champlain. I figured looking at Vermont was the closest I was going to get, since in 4 years I haven't been this way. I took a few pics of the lake - which was frozen, but not nearly enough to walk out on - and counted myself lucky for what I'd gotten: the better part of the day in places I'd never been.

But then they wanted me to go to.... Dun dun DUUUUHH!!

Maine.

Yes, that one.

Overjoyed, even at the prospect of being cheated out of over a hundred miles on this trip (I'm usually cheated out of only about 50), I made my way north until I got to the bridge that goes across the lake. That bridge is within a mile of Quebec, a province I haven't been in, but I have it on film. Digital film, I mean. Microchip. Anyway, next thing I knew, I was in Vermont! Woo hoo! And holy cow, was I happy to discover that Vermont has free wifi in its rest areas! Too bad I couldn't spend the night, as I had to get to Maine by morning.

So I headed cross-country on some bad roads. I was in Vermont about 3 hours, including a couple times I stopped for pictures and potty breaks. And then, before I could go crazy having to drive so slow on these back roads that still had some snow on them, I was in New Hampshire! Woo hoo!

But the roads there were even crummier there, and I was only in the state about an hour or so. I almost forgot to stop and walk on the ground; I remembered just before I got out of the state. I didn't get to drive on more than 5 miles of interstate, so I have no idea what their rest areas are like.

As the sun was getting close to the ground, I crossed in to Maine, that unique state. It's the only state in the Union that borders only 1 other state, AND it's the only one whose name is but one syllable. And the roads were worse still! But at least I found a place to stop that had free wifi. (I update my list of free wifi locations now and then.)

Oops, I forgot. Maine! Woo hoo!

Okay, so here I am, hoping I can find some place that sells cheap lobster. Turns out, I'm a couple months early. You gotta go in late March. Most of the seafood places were closed. But I did manage to find a place to eat. But it didn't look like they ever sold lobster for cheap. But I definitely had fun. I got to drive along the coast and take some really nice pictures. Maine's got some nice beaches, except for all that ice on them.

So I got me a tee-shirt to prove I've been there, and found a coconut for one of my little cousins, and then proceeded down to Massachusetts, until I got to Connecticut, to one of the first places I ever drove my truck, and also the first place anyone ever tried to destroy my truck. But that's a story for another day.

I'll update my travel post when I get the chance.

The third thing I've got for you is a minor update to the site. When I originally wrote the article that you can find at stonehouse.mopjockey.com I wrote it for a less-mature audience at a different site (totally unlike the audience I've got here). Well, that audience has been served, and so now that I have a different (and much better) audience, I revamped the article so it reflects my level of professionalism slightly more accurately. Go ahead and check it out and tell me what you think of it. And if you go see Crissy, tell her where you read about her. I'll be updating other parts of the site here and there, and let you know when I do.

Lastly, I've been extra busy of late. I'm really surprised my trucking company has been keeping me so busy. Usually the first few months of the year are slow, and this company I drive for is rather notorious for making me sit even during the good months, but so far I've been doing a lot of driving, and what little free time I have, I've been using it to work on articles for the site and trying to get other personal business taken care of. But I haven't forgotten, oh no, not by a long shot. In the coming months, I plan to unveil a new business, which I expect to allow me to break the chains of wage-slavery once and for all! Not immediately, but within a few months after I launch it.

Wish me some good luck, and be your best!

(And, as always, buy something from Amazon using one of these links to help keep this site afloat. Thanks!)