Same disclaimer. Raw notes. Coherence is random.

Until we have FTL most stories about humans in space will happen in our own solar system. Even when we send people out, it’s probably a good idea to understand the local real estate.

(Jerry still includes Pluto as a planet. “Poor thing, it gets no respect.”)

Mnemonic to remember the order of the planets. “Mother Very Easily Made Jelly Sandwiches Under No Provocation.”

I’m going to put the rest behind a cut, because I took a lot of notes on this one.

Continue reading Jerry Oltion, Solar System Tour

Once again, these are my raw notes. No promises about coherence.

When dealing with conceptual change theory, you can’t say, “This is wrong” or “This is the right answer” you have to change their conception.

Jim told about how he was asked why the moon looks big when it comes up. He answered wrong, based on his own misconception. Later apologized to the class and corrected his statement. But there was a cartoon, FRAZZ,¹ in which the janitor was asked the same question and got it right. Getting it right in the cartoon probably reached more people than his classroom. And that is part of why it’s important to get the science right in fiction.

Watched: “A Private Universe. Misconceptions in Learning”²
In the film, they interviewed randomly selected Harvard graduates, faculty and staff. 21 of 23 thought that the seasons were caused by the distance of the earth from the sun.³

Also the phases of moon are not caused by the earth blocking the suns rays.

Jim says imagine what impact you could have if you have good science in your fiction.

Must discover the misconception. Confront the misconception. Before you can change the misconception.

My misconception. The moon is not over the equator. It’s 5 degrees off the ecliptic plane.

There’s a surprisingly good animation on wikipedia, which shows the libration of the moon. I’d never heard of libration.

Kinesthetic astronomy. Using your body to understand astronomy. Check out the packet, developed by Cheryl Lynn Marrow, which is really cool. http://education.sdsc.edu/teachertech/downloads/k_astronomy.pdf

The primary thing that Jim was talking about was that, because our stories will reach a wide audience we have a certain responsibility to make sure the science is right and that we are not introducing the new misconceptions.

1. This isn’t the specific strip Jim was referencing [↩]
2. Definitely watch this film [↩]
3. It’s caused by axial tilt. [↩]

These are my raw notes. I don’t promise they make sense.

—

Mike Brotherton:
The goal is not to learn all of astronomy in a week, but to learn enough that we can intelligently research questions for stories.

People learn through story, more easily than in the classroom. If he can get us to use more and better quality science then through our works we can reach a wider audience and raise the awareness of science. Which is what NASA wants.

Jim Verley:
Started out as running the cultural association on campus. Always read SF. Noticed misconceptions as he proceeded on the educational track. As a science educator, he knows that we can reach an audience that he can’t. More than facts it is important to be a clear thinker. If we can learn to be clear thinkers and to ask appropriate questions then that will allow us to be educators to the general public through our stories.

Jerry Oltion:
Started as SF writer with casual interest in astronomy. Burned out on writing in 2003. Got bit by the astronomy bug. Builds telescopes and grinds his own mirrors. Designed new type of telescope mount.

The Scale of the Cosmos: Mike Brotherton.
From Seeds, Chapter 1

Astronomy deals with objects on a vast range of sizes, speeds, and times.

Most of these scales aare way beyond everyday experience.

Humans the Earth and even the solar system are tiny on a cosmic scale.

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.
– Douglas Adams

You don’t want to go to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for science, but Douglas Adams gets this thing totally right. This is the kind of thing that sticks in the general public’s mind.

Showed us slides stepping up by factor of 100.

Metric system is the language of science. Jay says that he uses metric with SF and english (usually) with Fantasy.

When the numbers get astronomically large, it becomes meaningless, so Mike prefers to explain things via relative scale. (It took the Apollo astronauts a few days to get to the moon.)

Science world-building: In order to avoid large numbers beyond our imagination, we introduce new units: Distance Sun to Moon = 150,000,000 km = 1 AU (astronomical unit) Scientist still like numbers between 1 and 10, because we like to count on our fingers, so we make new units in order to keep the numbers small. Even up to 100 is fine and 100 AU gets us all the way out to the edge of the planetary disc.

Solar system use AU. Outside solar system, use light year. Mike explains what a parsec is. Yoiks. When an object moves one arc second, we say that’s 1 parsec.

1 light year (ly) = distance traveled by light in 1 year = 63,000 AU = 1013

You can go 1000 LY in any direction and you are still in the Milky Way.

Figuring out that we are in a galaxy and where the center is was hard stuff. Not exactly sure what the galaxy looks like because we can’t take a picture (see the 1000 ly issue) from the outside. Diameter of the Milky Way ~ 75,000 ly But there’s a dark matter halo that’s like the Ort Cloud.

Galaxies not universally distributed through space, and they are are also large in comparison to the distances between them. Stars are very far apart compared to their sizes. If two galaxies collided there would be no stellar collisions.

Distance to the nearest large galaxies: several million light years.

Galaxies not universally distributed through space, something called Large Scale Structure. Clusters of galaxies are grouped into superclusters. Superclusters form filaments and walls around voids. Astronomers start using mega-parsecs and giga-parsecs when talking on this scale. Again, this is to try to keep the numbers between 1 & 10 or 1 & 100.

We stop here because stepping up another scale of 100 would take us larger than the observable universe. We can see 14 billion ly.

Other approaches to Sizes
Powers of Ten movie(s)
Cosmic Voyages
Contact Opening
When looking to reach readers, relate to everyday exerience whenever possible, if only to boggle with the truth.
Examples? How long to walk to the moon if you could? The sun? Another star? How about at jet airplane speeds?

Re-emphasizes the importance of trying to get numbers down to 1-10 or 1-100 because those are numbers that we can wrap our heads around.

I got my hair cut last weekend and promised my parents pictures. I’ve been trying to find a stylist in the city with little success. Anyway, some months ago Rob’s mom sent me a link to a book called, Curly Girl: More Than Just Hair…It’s an Attitude by Lorraine Massey. I wasn’t much interested in the book, but it mentioned that she had a NYC salon, Devachan, which specialized in curly hair. It’s crazy expensive, but I was annoyed enough by the last couple of haircuts that I was willing to plunk down some change so that I didn’t look like a distressed mop at WorldCon.

To say that I am astounded by the results doesn’t fully cover my glee with what seems like a new head of hair. Seriously. I mean. Look at the curls. Not frizz, not a mix of straight and curly hair, but actual defined curls. This is the hair I’ve always wanted. Everytime I pass a mirror I stare at it because I’m having a hard time believing that it’s behaving.

That’s not a result of product. It’s just the cut and their theory on how to wash and manage the hair. Basically, I’ve stopped using shampoo and just wash with water and conditioner. Then let it air dry. So easy. Stunned. I’m stunned.

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I’m heading for Laramie, WY today for LaunchPad Astronomy workshop. Mike Brotherton has posted our schedule.

Here’s what’s happening on day one. You can pop by his site to see what the rest of the week holds for me.

Thursday, July 31

9:30 AM Coffee, Juice, Continental Breakfast
10:00 AM Welcome and introductory remarks from the instructors (MB, JV, JO), Astronomy pre-test and pre-workshop questionnaire, Lecture/discussion: Scales of the Universe (Brotherton)
12:30 PM Lunch
1:30 PM Activity/Discussion: Seasons and Lunar Phases, Public Misconceptions (Verley)
3:45 PM Afternoon break/snacks
4:00 PM Lecture/Discussion: Solar System Tour (Oltion)
6:00 PM Dinner break
8:00 PM Bad Astronomy Movie Night (Armageddon tentatively scheduled)

Um… pre-workshop questionnaire? Yoicks!