On this day in 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred. During the mission (STS-107), a small bit of foam had broken off and damaged the left wing. On re-entry, the wings broke off, causing the entire shuttle to break apart — killing all seven astronauts.

Funny thing, when I was a teen, I read, The World According to Garp. Garp was not exactly a character I connected with except in the sense that he was a writer and I kind of liked to write at that point in my life. But time goes on and Garp gets married and has children.

What does this have to do with the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster? I’m getting to it!

At one point, John Irving writes that if there was one thing that Garp cared about, it was keeping people safe. It seemed odd to me on two accounts. It didn’t seem to go along with the character that Irving had developed. And I really didn’t know what he was talking about.

As I got older, I understood. I worry about everyone. I don’t even have kids, but I worry. And this really is why I’m not so keen on the manned space program. I understand: these are pioneers. We’ve got to do this if we are going to make progress. But I’m still not over George Clooney dying in Gravity. And let’s face it, Sandra Bullock wouldn’t have survived either.

But I have great respect for brave people that push the limits of our existence. But they worry me. Constantly. And I hope they know that!

On this day in 2004, an exploding whale event took place on its way to the Sutsao Wild Life Reservation Area in Taiwan where scientists were going to perform an autopsy on it. This was not an intentional explosion. When organic material decays, without the presence of oxygen, it creates hydrocarbons — most notably methane. This is what happened inside the whale. The methane built up and eventually: boom!

Although many people were present to watch the transport, no one was harmed. They did get covered with blubber and blood, however. The whale was eventually transported to its destination. And the autopsy was performed. It seems that the whale was hit by a ship, crushing part of its spine, and subsequently killing it. It’s very sad. I always find it hard to believe that ships can do this kind of damage. But they are moving very fast, and there is a great deal of inertia in the water.

Dead whales explode reasonably often. But when most people think of an exploding whale, they are thinking of something rather different. Back in 1970, a dead sperm whale had washed up on the cost of Florence, Oregon. As humorist Dave Barry noted at the time, “The responsibility for getting rid of the carcass was placed upon the Oregon State Highway Division, apparently on the theory that highways and whales are very similar in the sense of being large objects.” But things didn’t go that well. The officers loaded the whale with a half ton of dynamite, which blew large pieces of blubber very far away. One car over a quarter mile away was crushed. But luckily, no one was injured.

Clearly, care must be taken when dealing with dead whales. Although in the case of Taiwan, I give them credit for being interested in what had happened to this poor creature.

Exactly ten years ago, the Huygens space probe landed on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan. It is the only probe to have successfully landed on an outer solar system object. Titan was a great choice, because it is the only moon in the solar system with a notable atmosphere. It’s surface pressure is about 40% greater than the Earth’s. And it’s atmosphere is made up mostly of nitrogen. Now you may wonder why all that nitrogen doesn’t just escape off into space. It is because it doesn’t have enough energy. Titan might not have much gravitational pull, but its surface temperature is 94 K — roughly -290 °F. Still, overall, it is a lot like the Earth with wind, rain, and seas. It is just that instead of water, Titan has liquids of simple hydrocarbons like methane and ethane.

In 1997, the European Space Agency launched Cassini—Huygens. It was an incredibly ambitious mission, flying by many planets and moons before going into orbit around Saturn in 2004. On 25 December 2004, Cassini released the Huygens probe, which reached Titan’s atmosphere on 14 January 2005. It descended to the surface two and a half hours later. Not a great deal was known about Titan until this mission, because (like with Venus), it’s think atmosphere obscured its surface details. In fact, it was long thought that Titan was the largest moon in the solar system, because its large atmosphere was counted as part of the solid moon.

One of the most interesting things about Titan is how much water it has. It’s density is less than double the density of water — and about half the density of the moon and one-third that of the Earth. On the surface are “rocks” of frozen water. But amazingly, Titan appears to have a thick subsurface layer of liquid water. Overall, it is about the most fascinating object in our solar system — other than the Earth itself.

After about an hour and a half on the surface of Titan, Huygens ran out of battery power and now just sits there on Titan. It is interesting to think, however, that it seems to have landed in a dry flood plane. So by now, it might have been carried off somewhere else. Titan really is very Earth like. So you can imagine what might happen to a similar probe that was just abandoned in the Mississippi delta.

On this night in 1787, William Herschel discovered the two largest moons of Uranus: Titania and Oberon. He had also discovered the planet six years earlier. Of course, “discovered” is a strange word, because Hipparchos recorded it as early as 128 BC. But he thought it was a star. Herschel himself originally thought it a comet. This is one of the reasons that I think everyone really owes it to themselves to go visit some amateur astronomers. Spend a night in the cold and see with our advanced technologies, just how hard it is to tell a star from a comet from a planet. And also note just how many stars are in the sky. And how vast it all is. It is a spiritual experience.

But the issue at hand today is the discovery of these first two moons. They’re tiny. Well, a bit more than half the radius of Pluto, and a quarter its mass. Larger, but comparable in size to Pluto’s biggest moon Charon. I still find it amazing. Our Moon is the fifth largest moon in the solar system; it’s very large compared to the Earth. And Charon is huge compared to Pluto. But Uranus has these tiny moons. Of course, that makes the detection of them all the more amazing.

Titania and Oberon are very similar: size, mass, inclination, eccentricity. They have the same composition: about half and half rock and ice. In fact, they are so much alike, it’s kind of creepy. The main difference between them is that Oberon has a whole lot more craters. It is assumed that Titania experienced some recent major event that covered over the old surface. If you look at the image above, you can see an enormous impact in the upper right-hand corner. Could it be that a huge impact temporarily liquefied the surface? I’ve never heard anyone argue that, and I do know that our Moon has bigger impacts. But it isn’t half made of ice!

It’s interesting that Herschel named the moons after the two most boring characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Okay. Not the most boring, but I’ve always found that subplot very lame and kind of misogynistic. Anyway, I don’t know what to think of objects like these in space. The solar system is a bizarre place. And our solar system is really boring. Thank God! If I gave it more thought, I’d spend all my time hiding under the bed. But it’s great that people like William Herschel are around looking at the skies. And like I said: you really should go out. I’ve put in my time. Although I still gaze at the night sky every chance I get — just not huddled around a telescope for hours at a time.

On this day in 1904, CQD was adopted by the Marconi Company as the official distress symbol for radio use. For those who do not know Morse Code, it is: — · — ·   — — · —   — · ·. The reason for its use was that CQ was short for sécu, which was in turn short for sécurité, which means “security” but became short for “all stations.” It was an alert to everyone. They added the D for “distress,” so that CQD meant: “all stations: distress.”

It wasn’t a good distress signal. The CQ signal was quite common. And B was very similar to D: — · · ·. So it was easy enough for a non-distress signal to be mistaken for a distress signal. Two years later, the international standard became SOS. It’s a much better choice between it is a very clear signal. Even for me (and I find Morse Code very difficult to hear intuitively), it stands out: · · ·   — — —   · · ·.

One interesting thing is that at least CQD did mean something. But it wasn’t exactly memorable. People took to coming up with different phrases for it. For example: “Come Quick, Danger” and the charming “Come Quick — Drowning!” SOS, on the other hand, means absolutely nothing. It is just a distinctive sounding pattern. But it to was later given phrases like “Save Our Ship.”

Of course, all of this is just kind of weird. The first rescue that was accomplished via wireless communication was simply, “HELP.” I’m sure that with much more radio traffic having something clear and simple was helpful. But ultimately, seconds don’t matter — or if they do, you are out of luck. SOS did not help the Titanic. Although interestingly, they also transmitted CQD.

On this day in 2005, Eris was discovered. It is the largest dwarf planet known to exist in our solar system. But who knows; with objects so small, so far away, it is hard to say that we won’t find something larger. As it was, it took just under 75 years to discover a dwarf planet larger than Pluto. Of course, “larger” is a vague word. Pluto is very slightly more voluminous than Eris; but it is more than 25% more massive than Pluto.

Now I don’t want to start a fight. If you want to call Pluto a planet, fine. And everyone I talk to who wants to do so is fine with calling Eris a planet too. But let’s be clear. If we hadn’t all been raised with Pluto being called a planet, no one would be running around saying that Eris ought to be called a planet. I mean, it only has a quarter the mass of our Moon. It has a volume of one-third. It would rightly be called some misbehaving moon. And it may well be just that: a moon that got dislodged from some planet. It certainly does have an amazingly strange orbit that is more befitting a comet than a planet.

Will we visit Eris? Frankly, I don’t much care. I think we are going to find that it is a lot like Pluto. But calculations have been made. If we launch in 2032 or 2044, it would take a bit less than 25 years to reach the dwarf planet. It would be roughly 90 AU (distance from Earth to Sun) at that point. I’m not sure if there are any plans to do it, but I’ll be dead by then anyway.