How long?

How long before you think you’d go out of your mind traveling in space? The first 50 mins or 5 hours or 5 days even might be fun what about the 5th month 5th year? Cuz it’s scary out there if you really think about it, you’d be traveling for lightYEARs before you get to stop at a random planet in the middle of nowhere and take a bathroom break and stretch your legs and I doubt there’s gonna be a 7-eleven for you to refill your big gulp cup. How much comfort we actually take from having a piece of seemingly stable ground under our feet that provides sense of security psychologically? A lot. Even though we don’t always realize it, not until you imagine yourself seriously asking the question “are we there yet?” in the pitch black endless space.

Have you heard?

They found an earthlike planet! In the Gliese 581 system which is about 20.5 light years away from the solar system. And it’s the closest thing to earth the scientists have ever discovered! It supports liquid water so think of the possibilities..there could very well be intellectual life out there on that planet! This is the coolest ever!

This is an image of the earth released by NASA in Dec.1968, but imagine there’s another one of those out there in space!
Don’t believe me?? it’s in the news

First read about it at Dilbert’s blog, of course he had something funny to say.

Mars!

so NASA people found a way to photograph this huge body of water ice close to mars’ south pole. if there’s water, could it be possible for people to live there? with lotsa lotsa sun blocks? are we a step closer to making mars the 2nd earth? maybe in my life time, i’d be able to take a vacation on mars, even own a condo there! ..take a look at the article, they have a lot of related stuff on this website. it’s really cool, and very exciting!!

purple sun

NASA’s STEREO-B took a picture of the moon passing in front of the purple sun. isn’t it pretty??

griffith observatory

i went to the Griffith Observatory today with two of my best friends from high school. my first time there was with the same two gurls, we were still in high school back then. hard to believe that it has been nearly ten years. the Saturn we saw through the telescope last time probably hasn’t changed much, but time has transformed us from the naive teenagers that we were then into the independent mature young adults we are now. seventeen to twenty seven, those are the most precious and most dramatic years of most people’s lives. the gang of friends we came with last time somehow drifted apart over the years, it’s kinda sad but at least the three of us stayed together!

the observatory is much more “techie” and modern after the renovation and became an even bigger attraction for many tourists. we were in huge lines for the shuttle to take us from the zoo to the site. then we were accompanied by a lot of people at the main hall for the space-related displays. then we were in line again to get tickets for the show at the planetarium. 15 minutes after that line we got in yet another line waiting to get into the actual planetarium. but, the show turned out to be worth all the waiting. with visuals of the stars and the space projected onto the dome shaped screen, the audio program briefly explained the history of Astronomy and the physical structure of our solar system, the galaxy and the universe. the dramatic lighting and the dynamic visuals all made it seem so real. Imagine yourself being in this huge darkness of the space emptyness of the universe being surrounded by planets floating in distance and just thin air, miles and miles years and years of it, you realized how small how irrelevant how vulnerable you are, you wonder if anything matters or if anything you’ve ever known is even real, you hear your own heart beat you feel your veins popping, you know you are alive but what’s the difference? it’s merely a breath. you find yourself being once again impressed by how out-of-imagination-ly huge this universe is and examining your life in different perspective and realize.. we are probably not as important as we think we are. it’s good to be reminded of that once in a while so you won’t take small matters too seriously and enjoy life more.