10daysofscience

By Kate Hennessy

Today I stumbled upon the humbling realisation that I had a lot to learn, professionally, from school-children.

Astronaut, Megan McArthur. Image: NASA

Megan fields some excellent questions at Google HQ today.

I was one in their midst at Google HQ in Pyrmont this morning, listening, agog, as NASA astronaut Megan McArthur talked about working in space. Megan had fronted up in her blue NASA overalls, there to talk primarily about the fifth and final servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope she worked on in May this year.

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By Jacqui Hayes

Jacqui Hayes is assistant editor of Cosmos Magazine. Every year, when National Science Week rolls around, she gets along to see one or a few of the National Tour Guests. Here’s why …

Imagine you are standing in line at the bank. Suddenly, an armed robber storms in. He fires a shot and hits you in the arm. In this scenario, are you lucky or unlucky?

This scenario and question was posed to an audience at National Science Week in 2007 by ‘visiting expert’ Richard Wiseman during a talk called The Luck Factor. I was one of those in the audience. Continue Reading »

By David Finnigan

Like a lot of young children, I was dinosaur-obsessed. I struggled through Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park in Year Four and the more sophisticated Jurassic Park: The Junior Novelization in Year Eight* and, upon becoming an adult, I hunted for still more dinosaur-related literature.

There is very little.

Dinosaur literature for adults in the last quarter of the 20th century is scarce. The message seems to be that dinosaurs are fodder for kids and action movies, but not a topic any adult would be  interested in. Continue Reading »

By David Finnigan

I’ve been crouched on the internet all morning listening to the gentle crackle of radio static between NASA Headquarters and the Apollo 11 mission.

Occasionally the fuzz is interrupted by Apollo’s astronauts discussing the merits of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, a strangely soothing sound yet, in just 59 hours, the Lunar Module will descend to the surface of the Moon.

Lunchtime on Apollo 11. Image: NASA

Yes, it’s 2009, and what’s going on is this: I have a window of my browser tuned to We Choose The Moon, the JFK Presidential Library’s interactive website recreating Apollo 11’s lunar mission, minute by minute, with archival audio, video, photos and “real-time” transmissions. Everything is dated 40 years to the minute after the actual 1969 event, with touchdown scheduled for July 20, 2009.

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