Indian Wells Beach, Amagansett, NY

Home sweet home. Amagansett, a small – and I mean small – seaside-town on the southeastern tip of Long Island. While once revered for its placement on the list of “top five eighteenth-century whaling villages that eighteenth-century whalers didn’t know existed”, it is perhaps best known now as a member of a collection of small towns in the area which are referred to together as “The Hamptons”. Every summer, the first week of July through Labor Day to be more precise, my hometown is invaded by vacationers from all over New York and the rest of the east coast. The beaches fill up to the point where large groups of locals picket the parking lots, demanding the young tourists leave and take their “OBEY” snapbacks with them; The roads become almost not worth using from the hours of 11AM-6PM due to the traffic. The vacationers thoroughly enjoy their stay in the quaint villages, in their quaint, modern, beachfront, wooden boxes,  and walking down the quaint sidewalks that are slowly erecting more Ralph Lauren, Chanel, and Prada stores by the week.

We locals treasure the summer for the weather, but loathe it equally for fear of the throngs. The most troubling issue in being a local and dealing with the summer visitors may be dealing with the occasional look of shock on their faces in being told that you actually live in Amagansett year-round. Yes, that is correct, this town was not just built to host your golf-outings and sunglass shopping. Ok, so some of the town is built for that, and it would probably burn down and be ransacked by Rhode Island if it weren’t for the money that you and your sunburned children spend on sunscreen every summer, but we do other things too. Like surf. Or fish. Or… boat? Not to mention some of our geology:

All typing and painting done by yours truly

When I said Amagansett is on the tip of Long Island, that wasn’t 100% correct. It’s more like Tip Jr. Almost there, so so close, but just one town over. Long Island has a literal tip, with a lighthouse on it and everything. The tip, the lighthouse, and the town built around the both of them, is called Montauk. Montauk, by its own accord, isn’t technically part of the Hamptons, and it’ll probably always stay that way, forever stuck in its, deep-rooted, fishing/clamming-town culture. The most popular souvenir purchased by summer Hamptonites is without a doubt the “THE END” t-shirts sold all over Montauk. Montauk is without a doubt the end now, but it was not always. In fact, for thousands of years following the last ice age, Amagansett was the tip of Long Island.

Long Island was formed through a series of so-called “depositional events” from the Wisconsin Glaciation, a massive sheet of ice that covered a large portion of northern-northern North America. Canada essentially.

Wisconsin Glaciation

It was the debris from the shifting ice sheet that was responsible for forming the early separate land masses that, due to the erosional processes operating in the early Holocene period, eventually formed together and gave birth to Long Island: Capacity 99.5%. It was close, but not yet fully realized.

It must of looked something like this:

That, right there, that’s science

When glaciers shift, consolidations of this glacial debris, called moraines, are left behind on their pathways. However, as it is easily imagined, these ice sheets did not have sediment covering the entirety of their surface areas. These moraines were deposited with gaps in between. These sections, or perhaps just portions consisting of significantly less debris, of the ice-sheets left dips in between higher rising coasts. The sea level was much lower than it is today, and, as such, there was a period during which rather than the dip being filled with nothing but water, there could plausibly have been a strip of much lower-laying land connecting Amagansett and Montauk. This strip could not have lasted for long. As the glaciers began to melt, and the sea levels rapidly rose, that dip was quickly swallowed by the waters. Even if that strip had existed, eventually it would have been entirely submerged in water. So technically, for a time, Amagansett was the tip of Long Island.

So what you got on that, parking-spot thieves?

If the sea had never risen, the dip may have filled in on its own eventually due to erosion processes driven by the wind. But now, with the dip entirely filled with ice-cube melt off, the eroding process would be driven by the water. Eroding sentiments driven by currents from both Gardiner’s Bay – referring to Gardiner’s Island: an island that has been privately owned by the same family for more than one-hundred years, an island, fitting with some of the Long Island “old-money” stereotypes, about the size of four square city blocks – and the Atlantic Ocean, eventually filled in this gap, leaving unique formations (e.g. sand splits, bay mouths) in the land mass that now bridged the faraway coasts of Amagansett, known colloquially amongst the unfortunately-ill-famed, Amagansett born, Ishmael-protege whalers, as “THE END”, and Montauk, a place where people liked to fish I guess.

In present day, this strip is called Napeague, derived from a Montaukett word. The Montauketts were a Native American tribe that resided on the eastern outskirts of Long Island, before the pats sailed over. They were known for walking incredibly long distances, miles and miles of sand dune, to get from tribe to tribe,  and also for balling really hard.

The word that gives Napeague its derivation meant “land overflowed by the sea”. So obviously, as far as small strips of land go, Napeague is a pretty interesting place with a really awesome name, and, by association, that proves that Amagansett, and the Hamptons in general, are forever interesting and awesome. And yes, it is possible to live in the area during the winters, no we don’t fear tsunamis, yes there are too many deer, but despite what you might have heard there are no bears or land-sharks. So there’s no need for that look of surprise on your face.

But Napeague is still just basically 11.5 miles of stuff no one really cares about.

Works Consulted:

http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/bitstream/handle/1951/47770/DUBECK00.pdf?sequence=1

http://people.hofstra.edu/J_B_Bennington/research/long_island/li.html

http://www.zonu.com/fullsize-en/2009-11-09-10972/Wisconsin-glaciation.html

One might look at the above photo and ask, “Ben, how in the world did you create such a beautiful tri-color photograph of the deep sky Eagle Nebula? You are an extremely talented individual, and, as such, I would like to offer you gifts and money.” Now, while I do appreciate the well deserved encouragement, the process is not all that difficult. In fact, most of the straight-forward instruction is written into the description of the photo: a “tri-color image”. A photo like the one posted above can be easily recreated using three separate photos of the same image, each one using a different wavelength filter in order to express as wide a range on the visible spectrum as possible.

Ideally, one would have three different photos: one photo expressing a wavelength at the low end of the visible spectrum, a second photo expressing a middle wavelength, and finally a third photo expressing a wavelength approaching the high end of the visible spectrum. Once all three photos are collected they must simply be layered on top of one another (using a program like Adobe Photoshop), with the mid-wavelength photo on top of the lowest wavelength, and the highest wavelength photo on the very top above the previous two. One may then choose to manually alter the image, layer by layer, in order to achieve desired color, contrast, etc. An alternative, much faster option, is to simply utilize a downloadable Adobe “action” in order to maximize each individual photo’s expression of the desired wavelength of the visible spectrum, rather than having to fruitlessly explore Photoshop’s many tools until one somehow arrives at his or her desired image. Once the colors of each photo have been customized, one must simply crop to their desired image size, and Huzzah!, the image is complete.

Below I have posted all the links one will need in order to replicate the “Eagle Nebula” above:

A compilation of downloadable deep space imagery

The application needed in order to open said images

The Photoshop “action” is available here

Detailed instructions for the entire process

All links courtesy of spacetelescope.org. Adobe Photoshop is, unfortunately, not included.

And now some quick info on this “Eagle Nebula”:

Although EagNeb, as i have affectionately renamed it, was discovered was as early as the mid-eighteenth century, it was not available as a defined image until 1995, when the Hubble Space Telescope finally caught sight of this incredible, interstellar, cloud of gas and dust about seven-thousand lightyears from Earth, and, taking advantage of the situation at hand, snapped a candid-photo. Alternatively called M16, the nebula has been estimated to age only 5.5 million years, a proportionally minuscule life in comparison to our own Milky Way. It is also much smaller than our own galaxy, measuring approximately seventy by fifty-five lightyears in area. The nebula is thought to be filled with star-forming pockets of dust and gas, especially in nebula’s best known, not to mention pictured above, component, the “Pillars of Creation.” These “pillars” stretch for lightyears into space, suggesting that the galaxy might be able to give birth to an exponential number of stars. However, while EagNeb is filled with the materials required for star formation, lack of x-ray activity points to the hypothesis that these pillars are close to burning their star-forming wicks all the way to the ground. Last little tidbit, researchers in 2007 compiled evidence leading to a second hypothesis: a stellar supernova occurring close to six-thousand years ago may have already blown these pillars out of position; We will not be able to test this hypothesis for another thousand years, however, as the light will not have reached us until then.

Works Consulted:

• http://www.spacetelescope.org/ 
• http://www.space.com/16396-eagle-nebula-m16-hubble-images-pillars-of-creation.html

One would be hard pressed to find a single resident of this big, blue, and terrifying sphere we call a home, who has not raised their eyes to the night sky, taken in the darkness, a darkness sprinkled with specks of the brightest light one could ever see, and become entirely wrapped up in an overwhelming sense of romance, mysticism, some great cosmic belonging, etc. Much of this feeling has to do with the wonder that humans are inclined to feel when confronted with the unknown. There is something beautiful about the image of earth as a single blue dot lost in a sea of darkness, transforming Earth into somewhat of a cosmic oasis or paradise. But, does this mean that scientific discovery might ultimately lead to the death of this shared human sentiment? Might the accumulation of knowledge on a cosmic level remove this earthly sentimentality? It is not likely.

I believe, that part of what makes this feeling such a common thread strung through humanity through the ages, is the shared feeling of significance that the “tiny blue marble” idea gives to all thing Earth and life on Earth. Discovering and gaining comprehension of the true scale of the universe, and the probable “alien” life that exists out there, might make some feel less important, and feel that meaning has been stripped from living a good life. This however, should not be the emotions that arrive with future scientific discovery, especially when speaking of discovery in the cosmic realm. Yes, the discovery of life on other worlds could hypothetically make one feel like one of many rather than one of a very, unique, few; But, when one considers that all of this other, extraterrestrial, life we may find will be made up of all the same, incomprehensibly small, subatomic particles that every existing piece of matter in the universe is made up of, there will be plenty of true beauty and romance found in that too. And, as far as life seeming less meaningful goes, a shared universal existence with other life should make humanity feel exponentially more meaningful, in no way less. Instead of life on Earth seeming inconsequential because of the infinite existence that it will now only be able to consider itself a very small piece of, everyday interaction should be viewed as sublimely important, cosmically important in fact. Life in general can only be seen as more valuable, and the Earthly connection will still be alive and well, but will have company in the form of a much larger, limitless, universal connection. 

If being a part, any part, of an infinitely expanding world in which life is fruitful, a universe in which feeling, hope, shared experience, can all be broadcast on a universal scale, is not beautiful, then I can’t tell you what is. 

Hello! My name is Ben Okin, and welcome to my “Life in the Universe” blog. I hope you are as excited as I am to explore all that this class has to offer. I’d like to use my first post as an opportunity to introduce myself, share some of my interests, and divulge some personal information and explain, to some degree, how its formed me into the person I am today.

Me and my grandmother Sheila Okin, c. 1996

I was born on May 8th, 1995, at Stony Brook University Hospital, located about halfway between the easternmost shores of Long Island, and Manhattan, New York, to Claude and Sarah Okin. I am my father’s first of three, and my mother’s third of five. The younger of my two older brothers is actually a CC alum, and the main reason I chose to study here for my college career.

I have somehow acquired throughout my family life all the entitlement of a firstborn, as well as the intense belief in my ownership of the perpetual short end of the stick that most middle children are endowed. Incredibly character building. Aside from a few, short, periods spent elsewhere, I have lived almost the entirety of my life in Amagansett, New York, a very small town just west of Montauk, on Long Island.

My parents split when I was seven, and from that point on, and continuing into the present, my mother became exceedingly more involved with exciting things like compulsive spending, and unnaturally high doses of prescription drugs washed down with Grey Goose. To say that my relationship with her has been rocky over the years would be appropriate. So, for the most part, I have been raised by my father, a self-made business man, and his mother, my grandmother, a lifelong therapist and social worker.

Growing up I wanted to follow in my grandmother’s footsteps. I wanted to help people, flip those frowns upside-down. But, when I realized that I would have to spend my days speaking to people who I would be professionally obliged to avoid forming any sort of relationship other than a doctor-patient type, my desire to pursue a profession in that field shrunk very rapidly. As I continued to live and grow, I found that the thing I can do with the most success, and ease, is work with numbers. I can speak numbers about as well as I can English. Because of this, and the fact that I would still like to try to help people if it is a possibility, I am leaning towards a major in economics.

But, just because economics is my major of choice, does not mean I do not have a tremendous amount of interest in other academic realms. This holds very true when it comes to the physical sciences. Everything in this world, big or small, living or inanimate, it is all made up of the same essential parts, all act under the same basic laws, same basic physical principles.  This is a held understanding that amazes me without fail when I let it swim around my brain, and motivates me to discover more; to learn why and how everything is or isn’t. I hope that “Life in the Universe” can further my understanding of some of these questions, or answer those questions of which I have no pertaining information whatsoever.

Speaking of “Life in the Universe” more specifically, the one topic that may interest me more so than any other is the idea of  Earth as a truly rare and unique planet. For life as we know it to survive, not just survive but thrive and evolve, the physical conditions must meet such a specific level of criteria that the fact that life exists at all is an incredible miracle. Why earth? Perhaps why is the wrong question, as the universe will show us time and time again that it has no intended rhyme or reason. How may be the better question. How in our infinitely massive universe did Earth get so lucky? It is a question that we might not have every answer for at this point, but we do have some, and those that we do have give us the template for life in general, and the conditions that would have to prevail elsewhere in the vast expanse of all that lies beyond for life to exist there.