Scientists with a sense of Humor

Sir Isaac Newton's legacy is heading into Space.

A four-inch sliver of bark from Sir Isaac's famous Apple Tree is headed into Space on the Space Shuttle Atlantis to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society in London.

The astronaut who is carrying it, Piers Sellers, said,

"We're delighted to take this piece of Sir Isaac Newton's apple tree to orbit. While it's up there, it will be experiencing no gravity, so if it had an apple on it, the apple wouldn't fall," Sellers said of the mission. "I'm pretty sure that Sir Isaac would have loved to see this, assuming he wasn't spacesick, as it would have proved his first law of motion to be correct." 

The Atlantis is on its way to the International Space Station where “I’ll take it up into orbit and let it float around a bit, which will confuse Isaac, and bring it back and give it to the society,” he said.

Irony, right?

At least scientists have a sense of humor!

(This is the real Apple Tree at Sir Isaac Newton's homestead in England!)

Hyperactive Galaxies

Every now and then, I hear or read something that boggles my mind.

Looking almost 11 billion years into the past, astronomers have measured the motions of stars for the first time in a very distant galaxy and clocked speeds upwards of one million miles per hour, about twice the speed of our Sun through the Milky Way.
A hyperactive galaxy.



Has anyone seen that new show, Defying Gravity?




In the near future, eight astronauts from five countries (four women and four men) undertake a mysterious six-year international space mission covering thirteen billion kilometres. With the eyes of the world upon them - everything they do is monitored, and every emotion they feel, scrutinized - they soon discover that their real assignment is not at all what they thought.

I LOVE it!!

Any new shows you're excited about?
Are you into space like I am?!

Shoot for the moon

While in Houston we visited Space Center Houston and took a tram tour of the Johnson Space Center NASA next door. One of our stops on the tram tour was Rocket Park, where there is a complete Saturn V rocket launch on display.

Only seven nearly-complete Saturn launch vehicles still exist. These are the last of the powerful machines that launched the Apollo lunar landing missions. Houston has the only complete one.

Here are Donny & Remy standing near the bottom of this powerful rocket.

And here is Donny holding up the moon on his shoulders. hehe

I've always told my boys to shoot for the moon. It's pretty amazing what we've accomplished in Space travel in our lifetime, goodness knows what will happen during theirs.

The Truth is out there

Today's post is going to be dedicated to Space, aliens and the unknown! Exciting, I know.

First of all, did you know that our government set up a program to work on contacting alien life? I think it is no longer government funded, but is instead now private. It is called SETI (which stands for Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, I think). The Mission of the SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe. They listen out for possible proof of alien life. In 1974 they sent out a huge broadcast using the Arecibo radio telescope, which is in Puerto Rico and is HUGE (and pictured above). I think it is 1000 feet in diameter and covers about 20 acres. So far, SETI hasn't had any proof of intelligent alien life, as far as we know...

Did you know that all our radio transmissions and cell phone conversations and such travel into space? They transmit from our phone and just keep going and going and going. Someone recently explained this to me, and I may get it wrong here on the blog, but it goes something like this. Our first radio signals started around a little over 100 years ago (the end of the 1800's actually), so they are now 100 light years out from Earth, which isn't very far in terms of distance in Space. So, really, it seems very unlikely that any alien intelligence out there has received our transmissions because alien life isn't that close in to Earth. Does this make sense? It's wild to me to imagine all our cell phone conversations heading out to space...

Meanwhile, in the UK, Doritos is working on advertising in Space... Some companies will do anything for advertising!

And, about a year ago, an unusual meteor landed in Peru, unusual because it didn't follow the usual "meteor rules." It also seemed to make people who visited the crash site sick...

My 11 year old, Donny, is teaching me about Dark Matter. And, he also taught me that Pluto is no longer a planet, which is obviously different from what I learned, and I think everyone has heard that in the news.

During my searches today about Space, I learned there is the possibility of space tornadoes.

I am so fascinated by deep space and what's out there, what we know and don't know about it all. We have so much to learn still. Some of the best pictures I've seen come from the Hubble Telescope, NASA's orbiting telescope. You can sign up for their astronomy emails and news alerts also.

We're never too old to learn more, and we should never cease our quest for knowledge!