Perfection

Saturday, August 14, 2021 —(In 8 days, August’s full “Sturgeon” moon will rise nearest to earth.)

The redness in this image is nothing close to a real-time view of the sun late yesterday. Then, the ball itself was perfectly-round and very bright red, made stunning by smoking from massive wildfires. My camera couldn’t pick up the sun’s brilliant color, but it captured some atmospheric reflections.

The smoke is heavier now. On opening a door this morning, a smoke smell greeted me. I’ll try again this afternoon with another camera to capture the fire-red ball.

That was one thing on my mind, from yesterday, and another has been a question from Kat A.. She’s a very bright reader who wonders why the number twelve is considered a perfect number. While blogging, I had mentioned that without giving a thought as to why. My mind had been on some other element of twelve.

Kat often encourages me to research more and to learn. I explored twelve and found myself on an interesting journey.

Actually, twelve isn’t a perfect number. Instead, it’s considered a sublime number, and only semi-perfect, because the sum of its factors, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, is greater than the number 12 itself. While twelve has a perfect number of divisors, by not adding up to twelve, they don’t create a perfect number.

Here’s the rationale for perfect, according to “number theory”. A perfect number is a positive integer that’s equal to the sum of its positive divisors, excluding the number itself. The known first five perfect numbers are 6, 28, 496, 8128, and 33550336.

A number is perfect if all of its factors, including 1, but excluding itself, perfectly add up to the same number a person begins with. For example, the number six is perfect, because its factors, 3, 2, and 1, all sum up to 6. Another example, is the number twenty-eight, also perfect, because 14, 7, 4, 2, and 1, add up to 28.

Only 50 total perfect numbers are known, despite a dedicated worldwide effort to computationally discover more. Perfect numbers are connected deeply to some of the greatest mathematical questions of our time.

Here’s another thought. In general, people consider the even numbers as very lucky. A long-standing common belief is that good luck comes in pairs and dates count too. For example, consider 12/12/12 (or December 12, 2012), anticipated as becoming a very lucky day.

For me, this bit of research touches on another and very non-mathmatical, inner sense. It helps me recognize an extent to which number logic satisfies a very human need to know of elements existing which absolutely are definable as balanced, logical, and perfect.

Dear Friends: These few numbers enable worldwide celebrations of an existence of perfection. Diana