The Gossamer Cloak

I beg you tp keep reading for just a minute.

This coming week NASA plans to send three projects into space. One of them is the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory. This mission wants to better understand our outer atmosphere. This knowledge will help us understand changes that occur in the area just before we get to “outer space.” Scientists call this the geocorona. Scientists love big words. And, Of course, they need a very specific definition they all know and understand. But, the rest of us need some help to understand these things. I wanted to know more about the geocorona. Sometimes, for the sake of scientific accuracey, Wikipedia obscures definitions. So, I wanted to know more. In that spirit, I’m sharing the lovely image that Claude.AI used to describe the Geocorona(Italics are mine):

Think of it like this: the geocorona is like Earth wearing an invisible, gossamer cloak that billows way out into space. Just as you can’t tell exactly where a flowing cape ends and the air begins, scientists can’t pinpoint precisely where our atmosphere stops and space starts. The Carruthers mission is essentially studying the fabric of that cloak - how it ripples when solar winds hit it, how thin or thick it gets, and what that tells us about the boundary between our planetary home and the cosmic neighborhood beyond.

I loved the phrase invisible, gossamer cloak that billows way out into space. This is how it sounds to me: The gossamer cloak image stirs up something alive, spiritual, and sensual. A woman at an evening party in the outdoors with the Moon, stars, trees, and a lake in the background. She feels alive and beautiful.

There’s something here that’s missing in science and science in public life. Non-scientists often feel put down by the real scientists. As though our thoughts and beliefs are stupid.

Then, when a pandemic comes along, our inability to establish a shared vocabulary where we all respect the specialized language of scientists but scientists also respect our beliefs and love for the ordinary as it is.

The chef who measures every component on a scale must appreciate the longing beauty of a single Mom trying to put nourishing and fun food on the table for her son at the end of a long day. Sometimes, when she can, she sits on the living room sofa and watches the cooking programs looking for what she can do? She doesn’t care about converting weights into grams. She just wants to feel alive.

On the other hand, our single mom also sees and love the idea that elegance unfolds from nuance, poetry from precision. She imagines wearing her own gossamer cloak on a special evening where everything is scintilating, beautiful, and alive.

We need each other. We and our children need geocoronas, measurements of grams versus cups, and the sensual heat of gossamer cloaks. Whether they are in space or in our living rooms.

Our future awaits us on the dance floor, starlight all around, the beauty in the gossamer cloak hand in hand with a beguiled scientist.

This post is my work. Where I have used other sources, I have credited them. I have used AI collaboratively - working back and forth - to expand on my ideas. I could not have written this as well without learning much about writing from AI. AI is teaching me. I am unapologetic about my use of AI.