HOT-HOT-HOT

Summer has officially arrived in Illinois. Yesterday we went out to paint our deck before 8:00 a.m. thinking we could get done before the heat got too oppressive. We finished at noon. I was pretty sure at one point after 11 I was going to pass out. You get that light headed feeling first so I decided to sit down on the steps. As luck would have it  a cloud passed between me and the sun and a little bit of a breeze started to blow. It wasn't much but it was enough to allow me to finish the 20 square feet I had left to paint. I went out again today (7-17-2013) to take the steps off the deck Lily Lu had basically destroyed and put on the new ones.

She is quite the  chewer at times.

 

I am done working outside today. If you are interested it is currently 10:04 am, the temperature is 85 degrees, humidity 64%, wind from the southwest at 3 mph so it feels like 93 degrees outside. The prediction for later today is a heat index of 104 and an actual temp of 90. It is one of those days where it is so hot fat guys are making their own gravy. It is dripping ball sack hot. You get the idea. The heat got me to thinking? Could it be worse? If you read this you know from time to time I comment on things going on elsewhere in the universe. It is a big place and there are strange and wonderous things out there waiting for us to find them.

 

Earth is a blue ball hanging in a sea of blackness when viewed from space. We tend to think of blue as a "cool" color and not a warm color like red. A blue exoplanet was recently discovered. The exoplanets don't get cool names like Mars or Venus it is simply known as HD189733b. A mere 63 light years from Earth if I left now and traveled at the speed of light I could be there for my 122nd birthday. The good news is due to the theory of relativity I would not have aged so I would be a young looking 122 year old. In this case blue is not a cool color. The blue color is from all the  silicate particles in the planet's atmosphere. It is a bit warm there, about 1832 degrees fahrenheit so it is raining glass. It gets better. It is raining glass sideways because the wind is blowing 4,350 miles per hour. So the molten glass particles are blowing sideways reflecting a blue light. Sounds lovely. The planet is hot because it is the size of Jupiter but much closer to its sun. Using Jupiter as an equivalent on HD189733b I would weigh about 617 pounds. I feel better about my current weight now. Of course that weight would fall quickly to almost nothing as I was reduced to ash. So having done all that thinking I now feel cooler and lighter. Thanks science!

 

If you would like to learn more about exoplanets please visit: exoplanets.org.