Saturday, November 21, 2009

Boldly Going Where No Man Has Gone Before...

Tonight we went to the Science center's Sci-Fi and Night sky evening. Saw new pictures of the center of our galaxy--I believe they call it the "Galactic Center." The pictures were generated by the Hubble, the Chandra and the Spitzer. Afterwords we had a discussion about black holes... Time does not exist in a black hole. Yeah, try to wrap your head around that concept... I love science geek nights... they make me think about words like... Paschen Alpha, "light echos from a super nova," "star forming regions," the comet Homes, the blue that is O2 and the red that is H, Star clusters and super novas... Ahh, to be a part of different world of thought for at least one night. Pretty neat to think of the awesomeness of God and the unlimited expanse of His creation. It is mind expanding. Then on the way home Art Bell was talking about the expanse of the human brain--more powerful and complicated than any computer... and that YOUR brain makes all the human technology seems like rocks... Yeah--that Iphone you have--it's just a pebble compared to what is between your ears. Combining these two ideas--the expanse of God's creation and the incredible human potential... a door that only God Himself can open. He will be the bridge that connects our world to the future. There is so much we don't understand. We also had a discussion about string theory... and now the new thing to be talking about is membrane theory... totally invisible but watch out if membranes collide!! "M theory." I won't pretend to understand any of that but it still peaks my interest.

January 2010-- 400th Anniversary of Galileo ...discovers Jupiter's moons,
July 2010-- 400th Anniversary of Galileo first observes Saturn's rings
December 2010-- 400th Anniversary of Galileo confirming Venus' phases.

Some dates to put on your calendar! Space... the final frontier...

I'll be making some groovy mail art out of the NASA photo/postcards I picked up tonight...
(I picked up a map at the GIS event and I told the guy I was going to make a piece of mail art out of it... he wasn't pleased.) Hopefully NASA will be better sports...I mean we are twitter pals and all...

After the power point we had the sci-fi portion of the evening... we saw the new Star Trek movie--projected on to the side of the building. We sat with all the kids and my mom and watched it. It was the first time for her... we saw it in the theater a while back. I love that young Spock and the young Captain Kirk... so reminiscent of my childhood... watching all the old episodes with my Dad. I think I've seen almost all of the old series. Never got into the next generation stuff or whatever that was... but liked the old school, "set your lasers to stun." Anyway it was a fun family evening... The only thing that could of better is if it would of been a clear night and we could of seen something through the telescope at the Planetarium on site!

2 comments:

Ester Wilson said...

sounds like one very fun and thought-provoking night!

the ice chewer said...

I like the observation about the small powers of the iphone relative to our brain. Although I have to say that some of those aps sometime make me feel that my phone is smarter than me:)