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JWST Catches a Glimpse of Jar Jar Binks · Made of Stars

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Warning. The following podcast contains an entertaining look at astronomy, physics, and
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space news throughout the known universe. Listeners have been known to learn about astronomical
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phenomenon, the scientific method, and expanded vocabulary to include terms like quasar asterism
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and uranus. Listen, that's your own risk. Go ahead. When made
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of stars, made them stars, mad sizes. When made us stars,
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you could be from high they would New Mexicomus where all stars? When we
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are made of stars. I'm West Carol, joined by my good friend doctor
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Sean Cruisin from Lumba State Universities Coca Cola Space Science Center. Hey, Sean,
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Wes, it's an honor and privilege to be here with you again today,
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and I'm looking forward to a pretty fun discussion about some of the crazy
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things going on in space. Well we're at that part of May. Yesterday
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was I don't know if it's Timberlake Day whatever we call May first. Now
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I know it's May Day, it's got that, but you know, uh,
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May Day, and then there's Timberlake Day, and then we got this
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weekend. We get the because it's the weekend, it'll be Star Wars Day
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on Saturday, and then we've got Cinco de Mayo on Sunday. I know
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that today, the second of May is International Day of Prayer, what National
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Day of Prayer, whatever the but it doesn't have one of those sort of
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prayer day, like they don't call it that. It doesn't have that thing
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that just sort of rolls off the tongue. Although I guess with the state
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of things, we need to be praying today. But we have the sixth
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of May as as a significant day. Uh. And it's at this point
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still it's Starliner Day. That's what we're looking at. And we've been talking
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about this for a while, how we were leading into this, and as
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of now it is still a go for Monday. Yeah. And right along
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with that is my students know it's the final exam day for quantum mechanics class.
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So I don't think that probably made your docative days, but that's one
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that they're certainly looking forward to getting over with. I know that. But
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right after my final exam happens for quantum Mechanics, apparently NASA is going to
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be launching some astronauts to space with Boeing's help. So so that's that's a
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that's an important milestone right there, and we're you know, we were talking
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about this now for a little while about how they were looking at early May.
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We didn't know exactly when it was going to happen, and we've now
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known for a little while that they've been trying to get this done, and
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I guess this first week of May that would still be on course if they
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can make this happen on the sixth. So this is the Boeing CST one
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hundred. Its nickname is the star Liner. This will be the first flight
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of star Liner with astronauts on board, heading for the International Space Station.
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The launch time is set right now as of the recording of this show,
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for ten thirty four pm Eastern daylight time on Monday, May the sixth,
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So if it's a night launch, right that's that's kind of a cool thing.
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So you know, if you want to jump in the car and drive
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down to Florida, I'm not sure how, I'm not sure how in stone
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this launch time is. And as anybody knows, it's ever try to go
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to a launch, you know, there's often that they will drift off the
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original launch day for whether reasons or for technical reasons, or for other reasons.
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But right now, as we're recording the show, just a little less
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than a week ahead of this launch date ten thirty four pm Eastern daylight time
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Monday May, the same astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Sunny Williams, will be
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the first NASA crew to fly aboard a Boeing star Liner. Now we've documented
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on this show and formerly when Wes and I were on the radio, the
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long development of the Boeing star Liner developed alongside SpaceX Dragon, part of the
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commercial Crew program that NASA put into place. Hey, let's outsource our trips
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to lower Earth orbit to companies and let them build their own spaceships and figure
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out the launch vehicles and things like that. So that was that's what happened.
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So the contracts from NASA back in twenty fourteen for these commercial crew missions
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went to Boeing for their star Liner and they got about four point two billion
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dollars. Also went to SpaceX for the Dragon and the Falcon nine system two
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point six billion dollars. Two point six isn't quite it's a little bit more
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than half, but it's not a ton more than half. So in some
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rough manner of speaking, Boeing got almost twice as much money as SpaceX,
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and they have yet to fly an astronaut to space, whereas rides to space
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on SpaceX Dragon are almost commonplace. So that's that's really the setup. And
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here comes the pitch Monday, May sixth, ten thirty four pm. So
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we're kind of waiting, you know, it's an anticipatory thing. I was
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having some conversations with my friends here at Space Science Center. They were asking
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me if I was actually nervous about this launch. I like to think that
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NASA has really gone through everything, because they are definitely not taking this launch
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lightly. So I am sure that with their partners at Boeing, they have
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gone through the details of this mechanical operation with the fine tooth comb. So
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I won't say that I'm nervous. I will say I would have preferred to
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have seen a completely technically perfect, unpiloted launch of Starliner before we put people
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on Influentida space. That never really happened. However, you know, Boeing
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has said now that they have all of the technical problems resolved with this vehicle
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and it should be ready to go. So gonna just take them at their
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word and probably whisper a little prayer before lunchtime for Butch and Sonni and today's
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the day for it. Apparently, now that does exude a lot of confidence.
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I mean, we're not looking at a situation where they're saying, we
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feel okay about this. I mean they're they're putting a lot out there by
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putting astronauts on board. Yeah, that that speaks to their level of confidence,
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right, And so since they're the ones with the actual technical knowledge,
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I'm gonna go ahead and defer to them. And and I like to think
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that it's going to be a good mission. So it will be exciting to
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have two different launch systems going to space taking American astronauts making trips to the
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International Space Station. If something happened to one of those systems with a technical
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issue, or you know, if they saw some kind of faulting going on
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that they had to ground that vehicle for a certain period of time to figure
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that out from an engineering standpoint, the other vehicle could continue to go to
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space. So that's that's the really good thing about having a redundant secondary separate
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system during the Space Shuttle era, if you know, if they found out
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that tiles were being two cracked or you know, something else, some other
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kind of technical problem. It basically grounded the whole fleet until they could resolve
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that problem because there wasn't another way to get to space. Right. So
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so now we have these these two systems that should be coming into place by
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next week. And actually that's a good thing in the long run. I
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know this is not something new obviously, because we've got multiple different images of
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the horsehead nebula. But now that James Webb again another example of what James
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Webb is capable of. We've got a new and it's almost too detailed.
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It's almost too detailed because it's zoomed in so much of the horse head nebulae.
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I would just like to say this, and I know that this is
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not obviously brand new. I can stick with the horse head. That's fine.
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We're two days away from May to fourth. And this thing to me
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looks like jar Jar binks coming out of a cloud. That's all I just
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want to say. And that sort of terrifies me a little bit. Oh
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jar jar, That's all I have to say about that. Anyway. Yeah,
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me so want a picture taken by James Webb. I think is probably
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what he would say so well, let's talk about this. So first of
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all, James Webb Space Telescope definitely has the lead in terms of capabilities of
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any telescope that's producing really nice visual images. And we will remind all of
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the audience right now that these are infrared images. They're not visible light images.
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In other words, you couldn't see the same view with your eye that
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James Webb is getting with these pictures because it's coming in the infrared portion of
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the spectrum. However, other infrared telescopes have also taken extremely detailed and beautiful
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images of this iconic object called the horse head and nebula. And most people
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probably when they think of if you're savvy enough in the astronomy or amateur astronomy
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area, you know what the horse head nebula is. It looks like a
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little seahorse. It's a plume of a star forming region, and it looks
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quite beautiful, right. It looks beautiful and optical. It looks beautiful in
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the infrared. If you know of any picture of it in the infrared,
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the thing you probably have ingrained in your mind is the Hubble Space telescope image
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because it is absolutely gorge just filled with detail, interesting colors. Now the
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colors are false colors, but okay, they're there. It's a beautiful shot.
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Well, James Webb Space Telescope definitely has the highest resolution, and so
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recently the science team at James Webb released their own shot of the horse.
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Said Nebula and this close up, I mean, I think off air.
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I compared it with Wes. We were chatting. I said, it's like
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you were taking a picture of someone's face and all you could see was their
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cheekbone. And man, could you see the details of their cheekbone. Wow,
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you could see those you know, clogged poors in their skin on their
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cheek. You just can't tell who it is you're looking at. Yeah,
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I mean I guess to also nerd out a little bit. I mean it's
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if you've seen the Deadpool and Wolverine trailer. You might have noticed Deadpool and
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Wolverine jumping into a portal. You might not have noticed that it appears to
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be the eye socket of ant man his skull. So you know, it's
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kind of one of those details that you get. Yes, I was thinking
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of that exact example. So one of the things though that this image does
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show, it's let me just say I'm gonna go ahead and just go out
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on a limb, and I hope I don't offend any of the JWST people.
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It is not a cool picture of the horse head nebula. It's a
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cool picture that happens to have a piece of the horse head nebula in it.
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There you go, that's well, put the piece of the horse head
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nebula that you can see, which by no means can you tell it's the
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horse head nebula. But the piece that you can see, you can see
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a lot of detail in the cloud that is kind of like, you know,
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the back top mane of the horse itself if you zoom out and see
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the whole thing. But the one thing you can see in the image in
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addition to that, is you just see a field of galaxies. When you
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first look, you think, oh, look at all the stars in the
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back, But no, by far the majority of those are individual, very
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distant galaxies, and so yes, that does make this a very cool astronomical
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image. I won't call it a great picture of the horsehead nebula. I
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will call it a great astronomical image because of the detail you can see in
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part of the horsehead. But then this beautiful panorama of galaxies laying back behind
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the horsehead cloud in the distance is absolutely gorgeous and so so yeah, Okay,
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James Webb, they probably win the contest. It's like that old expression
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sometimes it's hard to see the nebula for the galaxies, you know, I
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mean, isn't it always true? It's true in this image at the very
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least. Yeah, I mean, you're right, it is. There's a
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lot going on obviously in the image. But yeah, I mean, you're
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basically getting the top of one of jar Jar's ears is all you're really getting
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for the horsehead nebulous So still, I mean, I don't know how you
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don't call it for the images in the background. Another win for James Webb.
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And it's always great when we get another update from James Webb. Let's
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talk about this, Cmeme. We've got a and this is one of those
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deals where I feel like it's almost like crying wolf, because we talk about
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it and we say, hey, this could be bad, and then it
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ends up kind of not being so bad at least that we're aware of.
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I don't know, we don't really know what's going on, right because they
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they happen, and I don't know if they're you know, throwing off some
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random satellite somewhere or maybe there's something that happened, but we feel it's important
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to alert you. I mean, it's just like, you know, people
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get upset and they say, why does the weather guy keep interrupting while I'm
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trying to watch TV, And he's like, I don't know, maybe because
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there might be a tornado. You might want to know about this. So
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I guess it's worth each time mentioning these CMEs, especially when they're potentially headed
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right for us, right right. So, And one of the things I
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like to do on our show, and I've got a little bit off kilter
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here, is I like to make sure people know the attributions. So let
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me go back and just say this quickly. The James Webspace telescope image.
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It's out there in lots of different places. In fact, people have been
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sending me links to that horsehead Nebula picture from a variety of different sources.
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We took our story today from Universe today dot com, so you can for
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sure go to Universe today dot com during the week of the recording of the
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show and you'll see that image on their blog about astronomy and astrophysics. The
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story about the coronal mass ejections coming from spaceweather dot com. That's a website.
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Both of them actually our websites we quote often on this show because they're
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great websites. You should try to follow these websites and maybe you'll know about
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some of these stories yourself as they come along. But there was another big
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storm on the that launched a bunch of material in the general direction of the
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Earth. It's coming from a sunspot group called Active Region thirty six fifty four.
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Maybe you don't have a T shirt with that on it already, probably
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don't, but anyway, so it's good to know that the sunspot groups are
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called active regions and they catalog them with numbers. So it launched into space
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what we call a C class solar flare that is based on the X ray
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intensity produced by the solar flare event. And that C class event triggered what's
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called a chronal mass ejection, where stuff is actually escaping from the Sun's surface
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and launching out through the Solar system. That cme that chronal mass ejection is
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going to pass by the Earth on star Wars Day. It turns out on
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May the fourth, and we tell you in part because of a caution.
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As Wes said, but this is not likely to produce any kind of serious
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geomagnetic effects on the Earth, but it can trigger northern lights. And friends,
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let me just tell you that if you haven't gotten a chance to see
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a fantastic northern light display occurring in the nighttime sky, you're missing out on
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one of life's great visions or great pieces of scenery natural occurrence. And you
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might say, well, I live where you guys live, I live in
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the South. I'm never going to see the northern lights. I have seen
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the northern lights on three different occasions just in and around the area of Columbus,
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Georgia where we record the show, So you can, in fact,
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and so one of the things I would suggest doing is following along with spaceweather
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dot com. You can even sign up for a service well where they will
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text you when there's a giant geomagnetic storm that's about to occur and they'll tell
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you, hey, might be a good opportunity to go look for northern lights
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in your area. So one of the things we like to do is we
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like to keep you informed of potential dangers, but we also just like to
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keep you informed of fun and interesting things that are taking place in the nighttime
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sky. So when we talk about chronal mass ejections and they're geomagnetic effects,
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it's partly so you might be able to see a northern lights display at some
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point in your lifetime. Then if you get an opportunity to see northern lights
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and I'll also hear the cicadas at the same time, then you're really just
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you're doubling down on all the sensory you know, maybe also eat a nice
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I don't know, a piece of cake or something while you're doing it.
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Start trying to hit as many senses as possible, is what I'm saying.
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You know. See, what you can add to funny about that is the
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cicadas that have had their seventeen years, a seventeen year hatch and whatever.
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They don't come out very often anyway, So they come out in great magnitude
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where I live, which because I live a little bit outside of town in
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a forested kind of area, there's lots of the cicadas out there, and
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there's just this constant hum and it's well, it's not constant. It actually
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turns on in the morning, yeah, and turns off at night, which
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is kind of nice. Actually, thank you cicadas for not going all my
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life. You know, it's maybe a little crazy, hard to sleep,
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but I would say this, I'm finding the sound strangely calming. I don't
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why I'm with you. It doesn't seem annoying to me. I mean,
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I know it's a buzz, it's like an all day long, constant buzz,
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but it's in this tonal region where it almost sounds like the phasers on
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Star Trek to me for some reason. I don't know, it's kind of
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a it's not kind of a screechy, high pitch thing. It's kind of
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just a I don't know how to describe it, a mid range white noise.
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And it's calming to me. I kind of like it. Yeah,
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I'm completely on board with that. And I've also sort of made the observation
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though that it if you're on Instagram or TikTok or one of those apps,
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and then you inevitably end up with you know, the ads that pop in,
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and it's like and it's the other way sponsored content, and it's like
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a girl in a bikini, and she's just kind of dancing around to try
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to get you to click on something with their website. That's kind of what
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the cicadas are doing, except it's the males. Right. That noise that
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you're talking about is the insect equivalent of look at me, I'm in a
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bikini, except it's the males. I mean, that's basically what they're trying
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to do, you know, just from a science standpoint. I'm only saying
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this for science, and they only have a short time to do. It
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must be successful, they must, so they got to go on. They
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gotta get your attention because they got to get the eggs in the in the
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ground, because seventeen years ain't gonna start too soon from now. They got
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to get back in the ground. Coming up, after a quick break,
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we're gonna talk about the devil comet because it's now visible in Australia down under.
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We'll talk about that right after this. All right, the devil comet,
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if you will, is now it's it's visible now in the Southern hemisphere.
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We don't have a look at it anymore. We talked about that how
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it would become now out of our view. They can now see it,
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and let's talk about solar wind in this comet. Yeah, so the comet
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that Wes is referring to picked up that nickname because it had kind of a
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horn like structure as it was approaching the Sun. Doesn't even really look like
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that anymore. This is comet. What we know is Comet P twelve.
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I'm sorry, commet twelve pe Ponds Brooks. And so the twelve P is
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a catalog number. The Ponds Brooks are the names of the discoverers, and
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they're both very famous comet discoverers by the way. Anyway, So so Commet
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twelve p Ponds Brooks went around the Sun right at the solar eclipse. It
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is right right in the you know, in the the day's immediately surrounding that
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event, and as it reappeared coming out from behind the Sun, it reappeared
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in the southern hemisphere, which is why people are seeing it from places like
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Australia right now. Spaceweather dot com, another one of our websites we would
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like to give attributions to to has a beautiful image today. This is the
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second of May. As Wes said earlier, it's a gorgeous image of comment
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Ponds Brooks, taken by an amateur astronomer in Australia. His name is Michael
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Maziazo Matiaso, Michael Matiaso. He's from Swanhill, Victoria, Australia anyway,
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So there's a lovely picture that shows a lot of structure in the tail,
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and the story on space weather today is reminding us that that structure in the
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tail is caused by basically waves or buffeting from the solar wind itself, a
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constant stream of particles coming out from the Sun. And so it's an interesting
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thing to see the structure show up in the comet's tail that indicates that this
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underlying wave of particles that are invisible to our naked eye are actually there.
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Because it wasn't that long ago that we were trying to decide whether the solar
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wind was really a thing or not. So back in nineteen ten, a
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very famous strunomer by the name of Sir Arthur Eddington suggested that similar structures in
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the tail of a comet called Comet Moorhouse indicated the presence of a solar wind
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or a constant stream of particles coming out from the Sun. We were not
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able to confirm the existence of the solar wind until the space age. So
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it was Eugene Parker, who was an astrophysicist that termed the name of that
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stream called solar wind. He came up with that term in nineteen fifty seven,
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and then the existence of the solar wind stream was verified in nineteen fifty
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nine by a Soviet spacecraft called Luna one. So again, knowing that there
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even is a solar wind is something that's reasonably new about fifty years old,
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and the fact that we can see it so clearly now in this image of
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Commet Ponds Brooks is just kind of a really fun confirmation of this constant outflow
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of gaseous material coming from the nuclear radiator that engine down in the inside of
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the Sun, the solar core. I want to talk about Martian spiders,
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and I know we've got the cicadas here. Mars has the spiders. They're
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everywhere, They're all over the place. They're just crawling around up there,
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and it's the first thing that we've really noticed on Mars since we sent monkeys
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up there. That goes that's a throwback to the radio show, by the
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way, when we talked about we know someone who thinks there's monkeys living on
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Mars. But anyway, Uh, but there's also not spiders there. What
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are the spiders? What can we get to the bottom of the spiders.
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Well, I mean, first of all, let me address the monkeys.
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Want to send a monkey to Mars? You have an infestation problem, clearly,
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you have, you know, cause an invasive species to take over a
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habitat. Yep, And so you know all of those NASA experiments where we
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send all those monkeys to Mars clearly was a bad idea. Yeah, I
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mean, it's it's uh, it's it's just asking for trouble. Really,
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I don't know how they would function in the space suits. I don't I
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doed they keep the bananas in the suit? I don't know what you do.
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I don't know how they're eating. But uh, they're they're thriving.
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And I've seen all those movies, those Disney movies on Sunday Nights where the
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monkeys get out of hand, and it's it's just a problem. So why
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would you ever send them to Mars. They're going to make a mess of
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the place. I don't know. But I mean, now you've got do
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they send the spiders to deal with the monkeys. What what's going on with
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the spider? I mean, fortunately, the spiders seem to be a native
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species, and I would say that those spiders would cause a serious problem for
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any monkey infestation coming from some kind of invasive species from Earth. So so
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beware Earth monkeys on Mars. Maybe you know, maybe we sent the monkeys
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to Mars to deal with the spiders and it's turned into a whole cane toad
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deal like in Australia. You know, the cane toads are now the problem.
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So maybe that's it. But no, we're starting to see these images
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popping up and it's got people talking about it, and obviously people go,
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hey, what's going on with this? We're just full up with clickbait stories.
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It really is a great clickbait story and it's but as we like to
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do on this show, we like to dispel all the clickbait. Although the
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title of the episode might be clickbait, I haven't decided yet. Yeah,
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I mean, it's it's a good one because you know, first of all,
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the horsehead Nebula was certainly a clickbait story. Yeah, uh, you
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know, the the comment the devil Commet has certainly been fair fair amounts of
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clickbait going on with that. Uh you know, there's there's always the clickbait
26:11
in associated with astronauts going up on a vehicle for the first time, and
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you know, will they survive or whatever that's all about anyway, So so
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yes, clickbait insanity today on Made of Stars podcast, let me tell you
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this, friends I have received so people know, Hey, Shawn's into astronomy.
26:29
Let's I see this fun astronomy link. Let me let me send this
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to him, see what he has to say. They don't ever read the
26:33
story. They just they say, they just send me texts and it says
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things like, hey, what do you think about these spiders on Mars?
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So I get the text and I say, okay, that's cute, let
26:45
me answer this. And then the next thing I know, I've got four
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more texts, Hey what do you think about these spiders on Mars? What
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are those things? It's like, okay, it probably said in the story
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that you clickbaited me, but okay, let me try to see if I
26:56
can explain. And then I'm suddenly being over with clickbait stories. What is
27:02
an Inca city? Did the Incas have a city on Mars. Come on,
27:04
let's think for a minute, people, Let's just think apply the h
27:08
the problem solving skills that we taught you in higher education when he came through
27:12
the system. All right, so there's where we are. Now, let's
27:17
address it. You've heard of it. You've probably seen it. It's probably
27:19
shown up on your phone. Spighters on Mars. It has nothing to do
27:23
with David Bowie or Ziggy Stardust. By the way, these are actual spider
27:29
shaped objects on the planet Mars. And if they were real spiders, they'd
27:33
be very large, like anywhere from three to eighteen meters across, so you
27:40
know, three to eighteen yards across. These be large, so like a
27:44
small spider in Australia. Yeah, like like it would be one of the
27:47
smaller spiders in Australia. But that's another planet. So anyways, these structures
27:55
on Mars that have been photographed by the European Space Agency's XO Trace Gas Orbiter
28:00
or the TGO, are actually plumes of gaseous material that are building up underneath
28:08
a sheet of ice near the south polar region of Mars. And what happens
28:14
is as the seasons change and as the sun begins to finally shine on this
28:18
area on Mars that's been dark for several months. The ice begins to melt
28:23
from the bottom upward, and so then what happens is these fractures that occur
28:30
in that ice icy layer invoke geysers, and usually that geyser material just shoots
28:37
right out of the top of the ice layer lands on the outside of the
28:40
ice, and it doesn't really make spiders. But what happens sometimes is certain
28:45
regions can be melting from the top I'm sorry, from the bottom up,
28:48
and the top layer is still so solid that these geysers can't escape. And
28:53
so you basically have a geyser from melting CO two from a lower level of
29:00
that CO two ice shield, and it's just splattering into a top yet unmelted
29:06
layer, and it makes a piece of art that we have now identified as
29:11
Mars spiders. They are, you know, multi legged structures that look a
29:15
bit like an ink blot. Some people thought they looked like spiders. There
29:19
we go, So that's what this that's what these objects are now. The
29:23
fact that they're found near some structure on Mars called the Inca City, and
29:29
by the way, it was nicknamed the Inca city back in the nineteen seventies
29:32
when it was first discovered by one of the Viking missions. So this was
29:36
an interesting thing. It is a geological feature that we really don't completely understand,
29:42
although we do think as a group of scientists it is highly unlikely that
29:45
the Incas themselves colonize the planet Mars. So it's really unlikely that it's actually
29:52
an Inca city. It just looks like an aerial shot of Machu Pichu.
29:57
So the structures are likely some kind of geometric fractures in the surface of Mars
30:04
caused by volcanic pressure from beneath that pushed up through those fractures in a certain
30:11
pattern and form these line, these long lines of dune like structures or cliff
30:18
like structures that look somewhat square. And let's remember that that square appearance,
30:23
or the appearance of right angles or something near right angles, is due to
30:27
the underlying geometry of the geological structures in that area. So that's the way
30:33
they fracture, because that's the way they're shaped. And so if that happens
30:37
on smaller scales, it's compounded to bigger scales, and then you get something
30:41
that looks like an Inca City near the south pole of Mars. By the
30:45
way, this feature is actually called the Augustus Labyrinthus, the Labyrinth of Augustus,
30:52
like Caesar Augustus, right, So anyway, there you have it.
30:56
Friends, that's the spiders living in the Incas city on Mars. We still
31:02
haven't figured out where all the monkeys are. We're into May. That means
31:07
the school year is winding down, and that'll be a little bit of a
31:11
transition for what you guys are doing at the Cocola Space Science Center. I
31:15
know you'll have some school groups coming in as the school year winds down.
31:18
That's just a very popular field trip obviously, And anybody listening, by the
31:22
way, that's not in our immediate Chattahoochee Valley area that already has kids that
31:29
come to the school. If you're listening somewhere beyond and a field trip is
31:34
something that you know you would like to do with your kids at some point
31:40
in the future, bring your kids in from elsewhere. I know I was
31:42
there one day and there were kids from other school districts, other cities coming
31:45
in. That's a pretty common thing for you guys. But you guys will
31:49
be also transitioning into this summer mode where I know you're going to have camps
31:55
and things going on there. But again, people are always looking for ways
31:59
over the summer to keep their kids engaged and not just staring at a screen
32:04
in front of them their phone or tablet or computer or video game, whatever
32:07
it is. There's some things that are similar to that there that they can
32:12
do while also learning over the summer. Yeah, let's let's remind everybody that
32:19
first of all, no one knows where the Mars monkeys go when the spiders
32:22
come from below. So that's that's an important scientific thing we have to get
32:25
out. Yeah, that's true. The other thing is we have we have
32:30
a brand new exhibit at the Coca Cola Space Science that are It's good for
32:34
the youngest visitors. We're talking pre K up through about third grade, but
32:37
I will tell you even the middle school students and of the high school students
32:40
like to play with it as well. It's called the guzzle Vortex, so
32:44
it sounds a bit like Augustus labyrinthus, but it's called the guzzle Vortex and
32:49
it's a it's an exhibit in our exhibit gallery where you can feed aliens of
32:53
an exol planet type nature. You feed them a special food, and then
32:58
their food goes through an air maze and flies out through the air and comes
33:01
back down to the ground, and you can feed the aliens again. And
33:05
you can sit there and feed aliens for just as long as you want and
33:07
watch all these pieces of alien food fly out from the air maized tubes from
33:13
high up above in the top part of the exhibit gallery here at Space Science
33:15
Center. It's a good way to just have fun. First of all,
33:20
not everything has to be about education. Sometimes you just want to have a
33:22
good time, so it's good for that, but you can teach your kids
33:27
also. You can begin to introduce ideas about could there be alien life in
33:31
the galaxy? What are planets called that don't orbit the Sun? They're called
33:35
exoplanets. By the way, how do airplanes fly? And how does air
33:39
move masses through the air, kind of like in the air maze itself.
33:45
So there's lots of fun topics that can be addressed with this one exhibit.
33:47
It's a exhibit sponsored by our friends at Pratt and Whitney and it's a lot
33:52
of fun and our stay time at this exhibit has been great, which means
33:55
we just noticed that families and kids are staying there for a long time,
34:00
having a good time at that one exhibit. But don't forget. We also
34:01
have our flight simulators, We have our Mars rovers, we have our green
34:05
screen, we have our infrared camera, we have dozens and dozens of NASA
34:09
Space Shuttle and other artifacts on our exhibit gallery, and we have our newly
34:13
upgraded Omnisphere Theater Planetarium, all for one low admission price. Friends, you
34:21
pay once, see as many shows, fly, as many flight simulators,
34:24
have a great time on our Space Shuttle Odyssey, play with a dozen Vortex
34:28
drive cars on Mars. All of these things for one low admission price.
34:31
So if you're looking for something fun to do as school is winding up,
34:36
keep us in mind. Bring the kids over to Columbus, Georgia, hang
34:38
out for a few hours with us here at Space Science Center, and you'll
34:42
have an awesome time. If you want to know more information about visiting the
34:45
Science Center or all of the programming that we have going on, well why
34:49
don't you check out our website. I know it sounds a little old fashioned
34:52
in twenty twenty four. You can also follow us on Facebook, but check
34:54
out the website. Its address is www dot cc s SC dot org.
35:00
Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie dot org. My friend Melanie, who is a very
35:07
regular listener of this podcast and others that I do, said that her son
35:12
recently came in to visit you guys, and when he got home, she
35:15
said, do you have fun at Charlie Charlie SamSam Charlie and he said,
35:19
huh So clearly, clearly the sudden needs to listen to the podcast. Absolutely,
35:25
he certainly does. Shawn and I thank you for listening, and we
35:30
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