Intergalactic Education Revisited

Teachers often select young students to be the sun and planets. The student sun stands in the middle while the teacher helps students playing (and maybe dressed as) Mercury, Venus, Earth,  Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune walk in elliptical orbits around the sun. A moon also can be chosen to walk around Earth. Between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, students can play roles as rocks in the asteroid belt that some scientists think might be the remains of a planet that exploded in the solar system. (And, of course, there is the fear that one of the large rocks from the asteroid belt might hit Earth and destroy life here.) There is much more to the universe.

    Sometime later in a student's education a teacher, or shows with Carl Sagan or someone like him, may mention Earth is part of a solar system located on one side of the Milky Way galaxy, which is filled with other planets and billions of stars in fixed positions. Like our sun, some stars have two or more planets that might sustain extraterrestrial life. Some stars are brighter than others and some have different colors depending if they are dying or just developing. The universe is filled with a spectrum of light not visible with the naked eye.

     The Milky Way is not the only galaxy in the universe; the Andromeda galaxy is the biggest one closest to the Milky Way. At some places on Earth that are free of man-made lights, it's possible to see the stars in the Milky Way and the entire Andromeda galaxy spiral. A black hole that sucks up light seems to be located near the center of galaxies where it might hold galaxies together like the sun's gravity attracts the planets. When galaxies crash into each other, they seem to send ripples throughout the universe.

    Beyond their solar system, students have much to research about the universe and many ways to demonstrate what they have learned. Perhaps a Milky Way of students dressed as different colored stars could surround student stars holding a large black garbage bag representing a black hole. The rotating solar system students would be positioned on one side among the stars. Classrooms could even act as separate galaxies, bump into each other in the hall, and set off a kind of wave like that performed by spectators at a ball game.

   

   

Space-Searching International Team Sees Results

Using NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, astronomers have found 150,000 stars with 4,706 planets casting a shadow, when they orbit past. The February 23, 2017, issue of Nature reported astronomer Michael Gillon at a Belgium university headed a team that used telescopes in Chile, Hawaii, South Africa, Morocco, Spain, and England to find the Trappist-1 solar system with a planet, Trappist-1e, that maintains a habitable temperature above freezing and below boiling as it orbits around its sun-like star.

     Light from stars is scattered and absorbed differently, if orbiting planets have an atmosphere with a chemical composition. Atmospheric gases, such as methane, oxygen, or carbon dioxide, signal the possibility of water and life. The Hubble Space Telescope has been able to tell what atmospheric gases from two of the Trappist-1 planets don't have, but the spectroscopes the James Webb Space Telescope will carry when it launches, possibly in October, 2018, will be capable of more atmospheric analysis.

Space Explorers

Kids everywhere in the world see the same sun, moon, stars, and comets. Astronauts can launch into space from any place on the globe, and those from different countries have lived together in International Space Stations.

     New countries are joining the U.S. and Russian space pioneers. On June 11, 2013, China sent a manned space craft  to its experimental Tiangong 1 space station from a launch pad  near the Gobi Desert. China's Long March rocket successfully launched an unmanned    8-day mission around the moon and back in October 2014, while its Jade Rabbit rover has been sending back data about the moon's surface every since December, 2013.  From Sriharikota island on November 5, 2013, India launched its first mission to Mars. The Mangalyaan ("Mars-craft" in Hindi) began to orbit its target and send back information on the Red Planet's atmosphere and to map the planet's surface on September 24, 2014. Earlier in the month, Maven (Mars Atmospheric and Volatile Evolution), NASA's robotic vehicle launched on November 18, 2013, also went into orbit around Mars and began its mission to discover what happened to the planet's water before it became hot and dry.

     In November, 2014, the European Space Agency's Philae probe attached itself to a comet and began sending back images. This first time event enables scientists to look at ice and organic molecules that have survived for more than 4.6 billion years in the solar system. Could comets have carried water to Earth?

     Playground equipment lends itself to space exploration and imagination. Any object that children can crawl into, a stack of tires or a playhouse, can serve as a space station. Swinging is like flying to the moon with an adult providing the rocket blaster push. Despite danger similar to that faced by astronauts, older kids often launch themselves into space by jumping off high flying swings and teeter-totters. Then, there are the climbing domes that look like half a globe. Those who make it to the top can feel like they are sitting on top of the world looking out at the universe. Zip lines can carry a child from Earth to any heavenly destination. Climb up a slide into a rocket and slide back down to Mother Earth. Name each step or swinging step for a planet and travel through space. Orbit the Earth on a merry-go-round or spinning toy. And it's always fun for children to play the roles of various planets that orbit around a child who plays the Sun.

     The "Schoolhouse Rock" DVD provides a catchy tune kids can sing when they are pretending to be space explorers. While traveling throughout the solar system, "Interplanet Janet," a song about a galaxy girl, mentions a fact about each planet, including Pluto which has since been declassified as a dwarf planet too small to be a real planet. (However, in Steve Metzger's book, Pluto Visits Earth the former planet gets advice about size from a little Earth boy.)

     A book, such as Rand McNally's Children's Atlas of the Universe, gives even more information about the planets than Interplanet Janet does. It also explains an eclipse, stars, quasars, supernovas, asteroids, and comets. With spectacular photographs, Hubble Telescope Book and The Hubble Cosmos from National Geographic (shopng.org), look at planetary nebulae, galaxies, "dark energy," the birth and death of stars, and the expansion of the universe that this space-based telescope has seen in the past 25 years. It may have been the Hubble Telescope that enabled scientists to discover Sedna and another dwarf planet 80 astronomical units from the sun. (One astronomical unit is the distance from Earth to the sun.)

     Little ones might like the book, Toys in Space by Mini Gray, or Sue Ganz-Schmitt's book, Planet Kindergarten, which introduces children aged 3 to 5 to space travel. Older readers would enjoy the adventures of Zita the Space Girl, a series by Ben Hatke. Girls interested going into space themselves would like to read about the first women who trained to be astronauts in Tanya Stone's book Almost Astronauts. Also, be on the lookout for National Geographic's publication, Illustrated Mission to Mars. In it, Buzz Aldrin tells about the projects that could take human travelers to Mars by the 2030s.

     Not only is the 13.8 billion year old universe expanding, but it also is dying. We can help children understand the concept of an expanding universe by putting dots on a deflated balloon. As the balloon is blown up, the dots, like stars, move farther away. Scientists observe the increasing rate of expansion in the universe by measuring how fast the brightness of an exploding star dims as it dies. Since stars, quasars, and other radiant objects in the universe have been converting matter into energy for billions of years, astronomers have discovered that the energy output from 200,000 nearby galaxies is about half what it was two billion years ago. As the universe, like a star releasing its gases, has less and less mass to convert into energy, through the centuries space will become colder and darker.

      Enabled by a wide variety of telescopes, students can study the night sky. And local observatories and planetariums offer programs for the public. In Washington, DC, for example, visitors can look through the telescope at the Naval Observatory on nights of a full moon, when a lack of shadows prevents astrophysicists from studying the moon's surface. North of Chicago, Yerkes Observatory in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, home of 40-inch and 24-inch diameter refractor telescopes, offers Saturday tours and visits to its Quester Museum. Kitt Peak National Observatory also hosts day and night tours in Tucson, Arizona, and at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, there are events as well as tours.

     Researchers are finding more and more space to explore. Of the 1,010 planetary bodies said to lie outside our solar system, about 1% are in positions where water could exist in a liquid state, according to the November, 2013 issue of The Futurist, the magazine of the World Future Society.
The book, The Pioneer Detectives by Konstantin Kakaes, questions the reason why a space probe went off course and kept sending back signals even after it passed Pluto.

     Viewing outer space is best where skies are darkest away from city lights. In US locations, such as Highland Park, Tonopah, Nevada; Cherry Springs State Park, Pennsylvania; Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, California; and Baxter State Park in north-central, Maine, the bright green nucleus and tail of the comet ISON (International Scientific Optical Network), which was discovered by two Russian amateur astronomers in September, 2012, easily could be seen by the naked eye before it reached the sun November 28, 2013. Indoors, some teachers use dry ice and dirt to demonstrate why comets, formed far out in the solar system before they fall toward the sun, are called dirty snowballs.

      YoungExplorers.com offers a kit that enables kids to build and launch their own Meteor Rocket and a set of die cast and plastic replicas of ten U.S. space vehicles, plus study information cards about the U.S. space program. National Geographic also sells space-oriented "toys," such as a Talking Planetarium, Interactive "Laptop" Planetarium, and Space Exploration Kit.

     Last summer's Star Trek Into Darkness (PG-13) film reminds us that TV shows and movies often transport children and adults to galaxies far, far away. Kids who once played with sticks and swords switched to lightsabers after the first Star Wars movie was screened in 1977. The Star Wars theme also is captured in action figures, like Darth Vader and the Ewoks, LEGO characters and weapons, books, comics, board and video games, and music. Star Trek fans, known as Trekkies, even dress up and attend annual conventions such as the one just concluded in Boston. Lady Gaga claims she'll be performing from space in a couple of years.

     Planet of the Apes may have given a child nightmares on an episode of Mad Men, but the story of astronauts who crashed into a world where humans were treated like animals and apes ruled has merited more than one movie treatment. In E.T., however, children learn it's possible to be friends with other forms of life.

     The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) runs a day camp for children 8 and up in Florida and works with other organizations that sponsor similar programs. One of these organizations, the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, invites interested parties to sign up on its mailing list to receive information about its Space Camp programs.

     Private companies now are very much involved in space exploration. On the website, virgingalactic.com, you can follow what Virgin Galactic is doing to advance the future of commercial space travel. Unfortunately, the crash of a Virgin Galactic's spacecraft killed a test pilot and injured another on November 1, 2014. An attempt to resupply the International Space Station using a rocket from Orbital Sciences also failed when it exploded in Virginia in October, 2014. Elon Musk's privately owned SpaceX company has contracts to launch satellites for businesses and to resupply the International Space Station, but a SpaceX launch carrying cargo for the space station exploded in June, 2015. Another SpaceX craft designed to carry a satellite that would connect Africans with Facebook exploded on and destroyed a launch pad in August, 2016.  With a government contribution of $6.8 billion, NASA had hoped to rely on the private space industry to provide access to and from the International Space Station. The U.S. also planned to use private companies, SpaceX and Boeing, to run its manned space program. And the successful launch of a SpaceX rocket on February 6 2018 showed the idea of commercial space travel was still alive.

(See the later blog post, "Hunt for Moon Rocks.").