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| Space Travel and Aliens (presented before the movie, Planet 51)
North by Northwest, an Elm Street Program, Fairview Park, Bethlehem, PA
17 July 2010 |
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Today is another special day for the North by Northwest Neighborhood Initiative. You can see the Program Director, Mr. AG Pitsilos, in the photo on the left, setting up the big screen at Fairview Park in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. That's where me and my friends live. When it gets dark, we are going to see the movie, Planet 51.
North by Northwest is a State-funded Elm Street community and economic development project. It's called North by Northwest because the project is located in the area surrounding the Northside downtown to the north and west of Main Street. |
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Before the movie starts, Dr. DeLeo, a scientist from Lehigh University, will talk to us about Space Travel and Aliens! He will be accompanied by his able assistant, Ms. Lisa O'Brien, from Underwired Vintage Clothing.
Dr. DeLeo has been running science outreach programs in the Lehigh Valley for about 20 years. Many of us know him since he ran science programs at our area schools. Some of us remembered him from visits to Thomas Jefferson and Calypso Elementary Schools. He reminded us that he has a website (this website) called Science Learning Adventures, where we can see photos from some of the programs he ran more recently. The big Thomas Jefferson Timeline Planet Earth program is there, along with many others. |
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| Before any of the programs could start, Mr. Pitsilos and his helpers had to put up the big projection screen. Here are some photos showing them at work. You can see from the middle photo below how it might be pretty dangerous! But, the set up was finished before the sun went down. |
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| Just before it got dark, Dr. DeLeo and his assistant, Ms. O'Brien, invited kids in the audience to come up to the microphone and ask questions. Each of us got a placemat showing the planets in the solar system. Dr. DeLeo and Ms. O'Brien wore the usual scientist lab coats and glasses. |
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Dr. DeLeo answered a lot of questions. Several of us asked the same question about the moon; namely, why does the moon appear to have different shapes? Dr. DeLeo explained that the moon is a ball, like the Earth. And, like the earth, when it's daytime on one half of the moon, it's nighttime on the other half. Since the nighttime half is dark, you can't easily see that part. So, it looks like that part isn't there. The picture on the left was taken with a camera set to make dim things look brighter. And, as we can see, the rest of the circle is really always there! The bright part is where it's daytime on the moon, and the dim part is where it's nighttime. When the moon is full, the earth is pointing right at the daylight side, so we don't see any of the nighttime side at all.
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Dr. DeLeo didn't have much time for his slide show, so he put the slides on this website, with descriptions, below.
After the opening slide on the left, the middle slide shows an early rocket, a German V-2. The right slide shows how a rocket works. Fuel and oxygen are ignited in the combustion chamber. The burning gases come out so fast that they push the rocket forward.
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| The first American astronauts rode into orbit in a Mercury space capsule (spaceship), as shown just to the right. In the Gemini program, a spacecraft took two astronauts into orbit. In one mission, those two astronauts sat in their seats while in orbit for two full weeks! |
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| Gemini missions also were used to learn how to perform space walks, and meet up with other spaceships while in orbit. |
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The Apollo missions took astronauts to the moon. They lifted off using a giant Saturn V rocket, and two of the three astronauts used the special lunar landing vehicle to land on the moon. (That's Dr. DeLeo on the right side of the right photo below. He always wanted to go to the moon, but has to settle for Photoshop!)
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| The photo just to the right shows the earth as it appears on the way back from the moon. The photo on the far right shows the Apollo 11 astronauts in quarantine after their mission, since people were worried that they might bring back some kind of germs from the moon. (Dr. DeLeo always wanted to talk to the astronauts, but again he has to settle for Photoshop.) |
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The photos below show the space shuttle and a space-shuttle astronaut working outside the spacecraft in orbit around the earth.
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The most logical place to look for life, or the fossilized remains of life, in our solar system (aside from earth) is the planet mars. The photo in the center below is an actual picture taken by the Pathfinder spacecraft, which landed on mars. Contrary to appearance, no human being has yet walked on mars. (It's just that, as you know, Dr. DeLeo always wanted to visit mars!) The photo on the right below show a piece of mars. It was blasted off the surface of mars by a large rock from space, and landed on earth as a meteorite (but from mars!). Some scientists think that they may have found the fossilized remains of microscopic Martian life in that mars meteorite. But, many scientists think this is unlikely.
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| One way to search for intelligent life is to see if we can pick up their radio or television signals. So far, we haven't found anything. One of the big questions is the following: How likely is it that there might be intelligent life in our galaxy with which we might communicate? This involves a number of factors, but one of them concerns a timeline. |
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Just above on the right is an example of a timeline, in case you haven't seen one before. But imagine a timeline that doesn't just cover one day. When the figure on the left below was projected in the big screen, one thousand years was represented by one foot. So, the whole range on the screen covered 25,000 years. Now that might seem like a lot, but, on that scale, we would have to extend the timeline 2,000 miles to the left - out to Idaho - to show the time when our galaxy formed. The reason this is important is that there could have been many civilizations in our galaxy, but with none of them around at the same time we are around. You see, if civilizations only last 1,000 years, it could be quite unlikely that two are around at the same time. However, if civilizations typically survive for millions of years or more, there may be many of them out there right now! How long do civilizations with radio capabilities last? We don't know!
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Some additional questions were raise by the next three slides below. Unfortunately, no one knows if faster than light travel is even possible. And no one really knows if we should expect aliens to be friendly or very mean.
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And this ended Dr. DeLeo's story about Space Travel and Aliens. So, as seen in the picture on the right, with the big dipper and a gigantic moon in the sky, we began the movie,
Planet 51 ! |
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Gary DeLeo and Lisa O'Brien said that they had a wonderful time at the event. What a great program! Thank you Mr. Pitsilos!
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I hope you have enjoyed this web presentation as much as we enjoyed sharing the actual learning experience with your son or daughter. Although we have endeavored to exclude photographs where permission has been denied, it is possible for errors to occur. If you would like us to remove a photograph of your son or daughter for any reason, please send me an e-mail message at lgd0@lehigh.edu or call me at 610-758-3413, and we will remove it promptly. Please note that we will never associate a child's full or last name with a photograph except in circumstances where special permission was explicitly provided. Thank you. Gary DeLeo. |
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