questions of cosmos
Space is a wild and mysterious thing. Big and black and endless...
With points of light and death stars and Han Solo and rocks that zip all over and no gravity and matter and holes and all kinds of wacky energy that we say we understand but only partly, or not at all, or maybe just a tad...
Space is crazy. And it's even crazier when you've gotta explain space... to a bunch of kids...
See, I substituted once for a bunch of first-graders. Let me start by saying, I know nothing about first graders...I mean, I know they're small little creatures, and they all wanna have 'play-time' and even the boys have high-pitched voices...
But really I know nothing about them. They're like a bunch of gremlins who haven't hit puberty yet. (I'm not sure what that means, but just roll with it...)
See, when I started 'explaining' outer-space to these kids, I was bombarded by a trillion questions. Oddly enough, questions that I too have wondered, and have yet to answer.
"Where does it end?" one munchkin kept shouting. What was I to say? I told him that we didn't know. That very smart people had been studying it for some time and that there were a lot of different ideas and theories.
One kid asked me how something could go on forever. Again, what to say? I tried to relate it to a circle, but even that didn't really make sense in my mind, cuz I knew it wasn't quite like a circle, and I also knew that I didn't really know anything about space aside from the few things I had learned Wikipedia-ing one day.
Fortunately, some questions were a little easier to handle. And it was good to see them learning. After all, our galaxy the Milky Way is, in fact, not chocolate OR edible. And I felt that was an important distinction to make.
In the end, it was comforting to know one thing. That all of us, from time to time, regardless of age or knowledge, wonder the same things.
What's out there?
Do aliens exist?
Can we go back in time?
Is there intelligent life?
And if our galaxy is called the Milky Way... have scientists located the Baby Ruth?
With points of light and death stars and Han Solo and rocks that zip all over and no gravity and matter and holes and all kinds of wacky energy that we say we understand but only partly, or not at all, or maybe just a tad...
Space is crazy. And it's even crazier when you've gotta explain space... to a bunch of kids...
See, I substituted once for a bunch of first-graders. Let me start by saying, I know nothing about first graders...I mean, I know they're small little creatures, and they all wanna have 'play-time' and even the boys have high-pitched voices...
But really I know nothing about them. They're like a bunch of gremlins who haven't hit puberty yet. (I'm not sure what that means, but just roll with it...)
See, when I started 'explaining' outer-space to these kids, I was bombarded by a trillion questions. Oddly enough, questions that I too have wondered, and have yet to answer.
"Where does it end?" one munchkin kept shouting. What was I to say? I told him that we didn't know. That very smart people had been studying it for some time and that there were a lot of different ideas and theories.
One kid asked me how something could go on forever. Again, what to say? I tried to relate it to a circle, but even that didn't really make sense in my mind, cuz I knew it wasn't quite like a circle, and I also knew that I didn't really know anything about space aside from the few things I had learned Wikipedia-ing one day.
Fortunately, some questions were a little easier to handle. And it was good to see them learning. After all, our galaxy the Milky Way is, in fact, not chocolate OR edible. And I felt that was an important distinction to make.
In the end, it was comforting to know one thing. That all of us, from time to time, regardless of age or knowledge, wonder the same things.
What's out there?
Do aliens exist?
Can we go back in time?
Is there intelligent life?
And if our galaxy is called the Milky Way... have scientists located the Baby Ruth?
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