The Diaoyu Islands, 222 kilometers northeast of China's Taiwan province, have been China's territory since ancient times. All records, whether contained in books and academic research or on old maps, have proved China's undeniable sovereignty over these islands.
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WALNUT CREEK -- The city has a new weapon against goose poop in Heather Farm Park's cement pond -- floating islands.
To cut down on chemically treating water and to give fish a chance to thrive, Walnut Creek became the first Bay Area city Tuesday to try out man-made floating islands as an environmentally sustainable way to get cleaner water and improve fish habitat.
Volunteers planted and launched two 100-square-foot "BioHaven Floating Islands" in the park's cement pond Tuesday. Using recycled plastic drinking bottles on the bottom, which look like 12-inch-thick steel wool pads, the islands' tops were loaded with mulch and about 50 plants each. The islands act as wetlands designed to suck up pollutants from the lake floor and at the same time create shade for fish, fostering a new habitat.
"If this works -- and there is no reason why it shouldn't -- the water quality will be substantially cleaner without" chemicals, said Mayor Bob Simmons, who helped plant and launch the islands Tuesday. "It will make the pond look nice, and I think a lot of people will appreciate that."
The islands will be chained to the bottom of the eight-foot-deep lake, so they won't move around too much. They also shouldn't be accessible to people.
Within a year, the islands will be established, and their root systems -- which can grow four feet long -- will suck out pollutants, said Mike Vickers, Walnut Creek's public services manager.
Kids from
Watching the kids learn about the islands, the plants and the fish is exactly why the Diablo Valley Fly Fisherman club wanted to get something done at the lake they use.
But fisherman's club members felt creating a better habitat is the right thing to do. And they hope a thriving lake with bigger fish will attract more kids and families to the lake, and eventually result in more fishing, said Dave McCants, a fly tier with the club.
"Kids are not around nature that much, this gets them out here to see there is much more in life than just video games," he said.
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Walnut Creek launches floating islands to deal with pollutants, help habitat
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Dispute Over Islands Reflect Japanese Fear of China’s Rise
The city of Memphis will reduce a planned health care premium increase for city employees and non-Medicare retirees.
In June, the council approved raising rates employees and retirees pay to 28.5 percent of costs, up from 27 percent.
However, Memphis officials and the city's health care consultant, Mercer, since discovered that the existing rate was 26 percent, not the 27 percent they reported during budget discussions.
The city is now proposing to increase the rate to 27.5 percent in January, which could cost the city an additional $600,000.
Deputy finance director James Stokes said the health care fund for the previous fiscal year could produce a surplus of $400,000 and that the city might make up the rest of the deficit after the middle of the fiscal year.
"Because we were given incorrect information, the increase was higher than we intended," said council budget committee chairman Jim Strickland. "It's disappointing that we get incorrect information because we make decisions that affect taxpayers and employees, and we want to be fair."
City ordinance requires retirees and employees to pay 30 percent of their health care costs, but the city has not imposed that amount for several years.
"We've got to get to 30 percent and we all know that," said Mike Lee, secretary for the Association of Retired City Employees. "But we're in a terrible time of austerity and there has to be fairness to everybody. We're real pleased with what the city is proposing."
City transfers James Lee House
The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to transfer the historic James Lee House in Victorian Village to a private developer for $1.
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Just what Congress needs during its year-end tax fight: another tussle over President Barack Obamas health care law.
When lawmakers return to Washington after the November elections, some House and Senate Republicans want the party to fight to repeal billions of dollars worth of new taxes that will take effect next year to help pay for the 2010 health care overhaul.
Id like to think that in theory in the lame duck, everything is on the table, including all of the health care taxes, Ohio Rep. Patrick Tiberi, a senior Republican on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, told POLITICO. The reality is those taxes also have a big impact on Americans.
Tense negotiations between Republicans and Democrats are expected on Capitol Hill during the lame duck session as lawmakers returning from a bitter election must decide what to do with the expiring Bush-era tax cuts, the payroll tax break, emergency unemployment benefits and $1.2 trillion in spending cuts slated to begin in January. In Washington parlance, this unholy tax-and-spending stew is called the fiscal cliff.
Throwing the health care taxes into the mix stands to only increase the chances for gridlock.
Still, some Republicans say the party shouldnt ignore these tax hikes just because Congress already faces a daunting to-do list.
Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), another Ways and Means member, said the health care levies particularly those on investment income claimed by high earners should be part of the year-end debate.
This tax increase on investment income, along with the dozens of other tax rates set to go up at the end of the year, underscores why Congress must act to stop this massive tax hike from slamming the U.S. economy, Black told POLITICO.
The effort is backed by the National Federation of Independent Business, a trade group that was part of the losing bid earlier in the summer to have the Supreme Court overturn the health care law.
NFIB officials say they are already in communication with congressional leaders on the issue.
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(CNN) -
At the dawn of the 20th century, Nicola Tesla wanted to save the world from fuel dependency. Now, an Internet cartoonist wants to save Tesla's last remaining laboratory as a tribute to the futurist inventor.
The structure, a 94-by-94-foot building, was the location where Tesla hoped to develop wireless communications and clean, free energy for everyone in the early 1900s. He moved his operation to the Wardenclyffe Tower in Shoreham, New York, in 1902 -- so named because of a 187-foot tower rising from the ground (as well as being sunk 120 feet below it) that was to be one of the great transmitters for his wireless energy dream.
The facility was lost a few years later due to debts Tesla racked up, and the huge tower was demolished in 1917. The site would ultimately become a Superfund location because of silver and cadmium toxicity in the ground after a photographic film company used it for nearly 48 years. It has now been cleaned up and is no longer harmful.
Tesla died penniless and in debt in 1943.
Currently, the building and surrounding land sit idle and are up for sale. Matthew Inman, the creator of Web cartoon "The Oatmeal," is joining forces with a nonprofit group, The Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe, to help preserve the facility as a science center and museum honoring "the father of the electric age."
"Tesla is an unsung hero, and there are very few monuments to him in the United States. I feel like that's something we need to fix," Inman said. "I made a comic about Tesla on my site. It got the most 'likes' on Facebook that I've ever seen in my career. Combine (the fact) that I've got this army of Tesla fans and the experience and success with my other fund-raiser, I felt like I was the ideal person to step in to control."
Inman's previous experience with the IndieGoGo crowdfunding site stemmed from a potential lawsuit and his subsequent campaign to raise money for the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society. This current effort, bluntly titled "Let's Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum," exploded after it was launched, raising more than $750,000 within five days.
It had topped $792,000 as of Tuesday morning.
The goal was to raise enough money to buy the property and begin efforts to restore the facility. The asking price is $1.6 million, and Inman's goal of $850,000 would be matched by a New York state grant for the same amount, raising a total of $1.7 million. Inman said he was shocked by how much, and how quickly, people have donated to save Tesla's lab.
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Washington, Aug 22 (IANS) Voicing its support for full freedom of the internet, US has urged India to maintain respect for fundamental freedoms, while probing rumours that have caused an exodus of northeastern Indians from southern cities.
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No matter what your faith is, you're more likely to be mentally healthy if you're in any way spiritual. According to a press release from the University of Missouri, despite differences in rituals and beliefs among the worlds major religions, spirituality correlates with good mental health. The MU researchers believe that health care providers could take advantage of this link between mental health and spirituality by tailoring treatments and rehabilitation programs to accommodate an individuals spiritual inclinations.
The paper, Relationships Among Spirituality, Religious Practices, Personality Factors, and Health for Five Different Faiths, was published in the Journal of Religion and Health. The participants in the study included Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and Protestants.
The university release quotes Dan Cohen, assistant teaching professor of religious studies at MU and one of the co-authors of the study, as saying, With increased spirituality people reduce their sense of self and feel a greater sense of oneness and connectedness with the rest of the universe. What was interesting was that frequency of participation in religious activities or the perceived degree of congregational support was not found to be significant in the relationships between personality, spirituality, religion, and health.
Cohen also said that his team's prior research showed that the mental health of people recovering from various medical conditions such as cancer, stroke, spinal cord injury, and traumatic brain injury appears to be related significantly to positive spiritual beliefs and especially congregational support and spiritual interventions. Spiritual beliefs may be a coping device to help individuals deal emotionally with stress, Cohen noted. On the other hand, Cohen cautioned that the negative side of a patients spirituality may manifest itself in the tendency to view misfortune as a divine curse. He suggested that health workers need to learn how to minimize the potentially damaging results of this aspect of spirituality. In their conclusion, the researchers wrote spiritual interventions "should continue to be used in clinical practice and investigated in health research."
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People gathering in New York City's Times Square to salute the sun at the summer solstice. Ancient spiritual teachings such as yoga are very popular in the western world. But many of its spiritual elements and ideas have disappeared on the way to modernity. Corbis
(Phys.org) -- Spirituality is not what it once was that much is certain, according to anthropologist Peter van der Veer. Working at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Gttingen, he has examined the significance of the spiritual and its transformation processes in modern societies using the example of China and India. He has found that contradictions to the concept of spirituality are part of this and have by no means stood in the way of an international career. However, many of the modern trends contradict the original idea of spirituality.
Recently, when several thousands of people gathered in Times Square at the summer solstice to salute the sun, it was very clear just how much yoga has become a Western mass movement. But Peter van der Veer doubts whether such events in fact have anything to do with the original ideas of spirituality: "The critical elements, like those to be found in the spiritual ideas at the beginning of the 20th century, are missing."
For Peter van der Veer, spirituality, along with other secular ideas of nation, equality, the middle class, democracy and justice, is one of the core elements in the history of modernity, which were directed against the traditional social systems and moral concepts. "The spiritual and secular arose at the same time in the 19th century as two related alternatives to institutionalised religion in the Euro-American modern age", is one of the Holland-born researchers core theories. With this, he also rejects the commonly held view that the cradle of spirituality lies in India, in the realm of modern myths. "There isnt even a word for spirituality in Sanskrit", he adds.
Nor was there any mention of Hinduism, Taoism or Confucianism in Asia prior to the encounter with Western imperialism. They only changed to an "-ism" as a result of the intellectual interaction with the West. Van der Veer is convinced that this flourishing spiritual exchange between East and West is a key element in the development of modernity in general and its spirituality in particular. "For me, it is part of a process that I call interactional history", explains the Director at the Max Planck Institute in Gttingen.
In fact, the exchange of the new revolutionary ideas is not restricted to just communication between the US and Europe. In the search for alternatives to the institutionalised religions, Western intellectuals, artists and other social progressive thinkers had, at an early stage, turned their attention to the traditions of the East. The list of those who referred in their works or letters to Indian progressive thinkers reads like a Whos Who of the European intellectual world, ranging from Voltaire, Herder, Humboldt, Schlegel and Novalis through to Schopenhauer and Goethe who, among other things, incorporated special theatre techniques from Sanskrit in his Faust.
Ideas came from India as the centre of spirituality and mysticism, and the birthplace of ancient philosophical traditions that can fill the gaps that had arisen for many since the Enlightenment. "These, in turn, also led to fertile ground in India itself ", explains the researcher about the reciprocal dynamics of the streams of thought. Religious movements primarily in India adopted the Western discourse on Eastern spirituality. Soon, political undertones also entered into the discussion. "Many emphasised that Hindus are the true Indians whose civilisation is threatened by decline due to Muslim rule", the Gttingen-based anthropologist says, describing the burgeoning national feeling that has become part of the debate. Others saw the West and in particular British colonial power as dangers for Hindu culture and civilisation, and turned to spirituality to recover or safeguard their own identity.
As the different concepts of spirituality show, they combine a series of contradictions and contrasts. In this vein, spirituality appears as a universal thought which, at the same time, can be linked to national concepts. As an example of this, van der Veer cites the leader of the Indian independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi. "According to Gandhi, no one who was born into a certain tradition and civilisation should be evangelized or converted", explains the researcher. Instead, each person should seek the truth in his own traditions. In this sense, Gandhi was able to argue for a spiritual nation that overcomes international religious differences. "In view of the fact that the tensions between Muslims and Hindus are part of the biggest problems facing the Indian sub-continent, the idea of such a universal, all-embracing spirituality is of exceptional political significance", says van der Veer.
Gandhis interpretation of spirituality is also interesting in another respect, as its basic characteristics can apply to the total concept. Again he considers the ideas a good example of the fact that spirituality is in no way the opposite of secularity. "Gandhis spirituality was very much linked with it when he argued that all religions should be treated equally and the State should have a neutral attitude towards them." These spiritual principles still apply in India and demonstrate the continuity between the colonial and post-colonial situation. "This could be termed Indian secularism", in van der Veers opinion.
Nor does van der Veer see a simple opposition of spirituality and materialism. "In fact, they often imply one another", the researcher has observed, using developments in China and India. Only as the result of liberalization of liberalising the economy under the influence of global capitalism have traditional spiritual ideas and practices such as tai chi, feng shui and qi gong again become socially acceptable in China, a country that replaced Confucianism with an aggressive secularism that had vigorously attacked religions, temples and priests. This linking of spirituality and materialism in the wake of economic globalisation can also be seen in India. In the case of India, the impetus came from the well-educated middle class which, in the 1970s and 1980s, had gone to the US in search of jobs in the medical and technical professions. "There, they were confronted by the aggressive marketing of Indian spirituality that was offered in a market for health, sports or management training", reports van der Veer. It did not take long before this practice was also imported to India.
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Washington, August 21 (ANI): Despite differences in rituals and beliefs among the world's major religions, spirituality often enhances individuals' health, according to University of Missouri researchers.
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Spacewalk Wind-Up: Expedition 32 EVAs
Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka is seen just before tossing a spherical satellite into space from the International Space Station during an Aug. 20, 2012 spacewalk.
Expedition 32 commander Gennady Padalka, a Russian cosmonaut, throws the small Spherical Satellite into orbit during an Aug. 20, 2012, spacewalk outside the International Space Station. The small satellite will spend three months in orbit and be used for space tracking experiments.
The small Spherical Satellite appears as a bright spot (right) just after being thrown into space by Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka during an Aug. 20, 2012, spacewalk. The satellite will be used for space tracking experiments by Russian scientists.
A camera on the International Space Station captures the small, steel Spherical Satellite as it drifts away after being thrown overboard from the station by a spacewalking cosmonaut on Aug. 20, 2012.
Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalka is seen at the end of the International Space Stations' Strela crane during a spacewalk on Aug. 20, 2012.
Look close near the center of the 'X' created by the solar arrays here and you will spot Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko as he controls a hand-operated crane outside the International Space Station during an Aug. 20, 2012 spacewalk. Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka was riding the end of the Strela crane, and is hidden behind the large antenna dish at upper right.
Cosmonauts Gennady Padalka (left) and Yuri Malenchenko work to move a crane outside the International Space Station during a spacewalk on Aug. 20, 2012, in this still image from a video camera on the station.
Russian cosmonauts Yuri Malenchenko and Gennady Padalka work on a crane during a spacewalk outside the International Space Station in this still image from a video camera on the station's exterior on Aug. 20, 2012.
This still image shows the view of Earth and part of the International Space Station from the helmet video camera of station commander Gennady Padalka during an Aug. 20, 2012 spacewalk. Padalka was at the end of a station crane during this view.
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Photos: Spacewalking Cosmonauts Upgrade Space Station (Aug. 2012)
It is the most expensive and the largest spacecraft ever to be put into orbit - measuring about the same size as Croke Park.
The space station - which has a crew of 6 astronauts on board - will be visible tonight, tomorrow and on Thursday - and will not be seen again until later this year.
Chairman of Astronomy Ireland - David Moore said that spotting the spacecraft is all about timing:
"Unless you are out at the right time you won't have noticed it before but if you go out at the right time then you can't mistake it I watched it a couple of nights ago and it was a hundred times brighter than the brightest star in the sky", he said
"If you see any star in the sky you'll easily see the international space station, it's that bright"
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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Two veteran cosmonauts sailed through a six-hour spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Monday to prepare the orbital outpost for a new module and better shield its living quarters against small meteorite and debris impacts, officials said. Station commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Yuri Malenchenko opened the hatch on the station's ...
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SPARKS, Nev.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Over a month ago, Japans HTV3 cargo carrier launched atop a Japanese H-II rocket delivering an innovative software-defined radio experiment to the International Space Station (ISS). This new ISS facility, known as the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Testbed, utilizes Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) Space Systems developed antenna pointing system. Initial reports indicate the system is operating as designed.
The NASA SCaN Program is responsible for providing communications and navigation services to space flight missions throughout the solar system. Using a new generation of Software Defined Radios, the SCaN Testbed, developed by the NASA Glenn Research Center, will perform a variety of communications, networking and navigation experiments in the realistic environment of space. These experiments will advance space communication technologies in support of future NASA missions and other U.S. space endeavors.
SNC supplied the integrated antenna pointing system, which incorporates the SNC open-loop, microstepping technology. This system has also successfully flown on Deep Impact, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, Suomi NPP and several commercial remote sensing platforms. This is another excellent example of a successful collaborative program between SNC and NASA, said Matt Johnson, space technologies director of programs for SNCs Space Systems.
About Sierra Nevada Corporation Space Systems
Sierra Nevada Corporations Space Systems business area headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, has more than 25 years of space heritage in space and has participated in over 400 successful space missions through the delivery of over 4,000 systems, subsystems and components. During its history, SNC Space Systems has concluded over 70 programs for NASA and over 50 other clients. For more information about SS visit http://www.sncspace.com. For more information visit http://www.sncspace.com.
About Sierra Nevada Corporation
Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) is one of Americas fastest growing private companies. Under the leadership of CEO Fatih Ozmen and Chairman and President Eren Ozmen, SNC employs over 2,100 people in 31 locations in 16 states. SNCs six unique business areas are dedicated to providing leading-edge technology solutions to SNCs customers. For more information visit http://www.sncorp.com.
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Sierra Nevada Corporation Supports Communications Experiment on International Space Station
A sign of a leakyvalve on the International Space Station held up Russian cosmonauts for nearly an hour Monday, as flight controllers sought to isolate the suspected leak.
A suspected leaky valve on the International Space Station stalled the start of a spacewalk by Russian cosmonauts for nearly an hour today (Aug. 20), forcing them to wait in bulky spacesuits until it was deemed safe to venture outside.
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Veteran cosmonauts Gennady Padalka and Yuri Malenchenko were preparing to begin theirspace station spacewalkwhen the leak was detected during air pressure tests. Russian flight controllers at the station's Mission Control Center in Moscow asked the cosmonauts to stay put until the leaky valve could be isolated.
Padalka, the space station's commander, agreed.
"We're in no rush," Padalka radioed Mission Control in Russian, which was translated in a NASA broadcast.
Flight controllers spent almost an hour trying to isolate the leaky valve and monitoring air pressure inside the station's airlock and adjoining modules. Ultimately, they radioed good news to the spacewalkers the leak was resolved and it was safe to proceed. It was welcome news for the cosmonauts.
"We're just hanging here and it's kind of boring," Padalka said.
At 11:37 a.m. EDT (1337 GMT) nearly an hour latethe two cosmonauts finally opened the space station's airlock hatch and prepared to get to work.
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Two Russian cosmonauts merged orbital construction with zero gravity sports in a spacewalk Monday (Aug. 20), when they moved a space station crane and — with a mighty throw — tossed a big steel ball into orbit.
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Space Station Cosmonauts Toss Satellite Overboard in Spacewalk
At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, some of the most brilliant minds in the world work to build the spacecraft that humans use to explore their universe. But where space scientists now roam, dinosaurs used to call home, according to dino-hunter Ray Stanford.
Stanford has discovered the footprint of a lumbering, spiny dinosaur called a nodosaur in NASA's own backyard on the Goddard Space Flight Center campus. NASA officials aren't disclosing the precise location of the print, fearing that someone might damage or try to remove the fossilized track.
The dinner-plate-sized footprint bears the mark of four dino toes. It belongs to a nodosaur, a tank-like, armored beast studded with bony protuberances that roamed the area about 110 million years ago during the Cretaceous period, which lasted from about 125 million to 65 million years ago. Nodosaurs were plant-eaters, and this one appeared to be moving quickly across the Cretaceous mud, as its heel did not sink deeply into the ground. [ See Images of the Ancient Dino-Print ]
Stanford, an amateur paleontologist who has had several papers published, confirmed his find with Johns Hopkins University dinosaur expert David Weishampel. On Aug. 17, Stanford shared the location of the find with Goddard officials and with Washington Post reporter Brian Vastag, who made the discovery public the same day.
Stanford also found several smaller dinosaur footprints in the area, likely from meat-eating theropods. He called the location "poetic."
"Space scientists may walk along here, and they're walking exactly where this big, bungling heavy-armored dinosaur walked, maybe 110 to 112-million years ago," Stanford told Goddard officials.
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Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: For the past nine years, the Robot Hall of Fame has relied solely on expert judges to dole out its honors but this time, the people will get their say.
Maryland is no spring chicken when it comes to dinosaur fossils; in fact, the corridor between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Md., is known as "Dinosaur Alley," because so many of the beasts' fossils were discovered during iron mining in the 18th and 19th centuries, according to Weishampel.
"Today, Maryland remains the only source of Early Cretaceous dinosaur fossils on the East Coast," he wrote in a 1996 article for Johns Hopkins University magazine.
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A list of things NASA has at its Goddard Space Flight Center which are awesome and which you are unlikely to have:
1. Mission control for the Hubble Space Telescope and, in fact, for all unmanned earth orbit missions.
2. This guy, wearing a bolo tie.
3. A dinosaur footprint. Dinosaur hunter Ray Stanford (pictured above, in bolo tie) discovered the creatceous footprint on Goddard Center's Maryland campus and unveiled the results to the media yesterday. The print is believed to have been made by a plant-eating Nodosaur (pictured below, not life-size), and measures 30cm across.
In its promotional release of the photos below, NASA, ever the puckish rogue, comments:
About 110 million light years away, the bright, barred spiral galaxy NGC3259 was just forming stars in dark bands of dust and gas. On Earth, a plant-eating dinosaur left footprints in the Cretaceous mud of what would later become the grounds of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
All images courtesy of NASA, which provides more information at their website.
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ScienceDaily (Aug. 21, 2012) About 110 million light years away, the bright, barred spiral galaxy NGC 3259 was just forming stars in dark bands of dust and gas. Here on the part of the Earth where NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center would eventually be built, a plant-eating dinosaur sensed predators nearby and quickened its pace, leaving a deep imprint in the Cretaceous mud.
On Friday, Aug. 17, 2012, noted dinosaur hunter Ray Stanford shared the location of that footprint with Goddard's facility management and the Washington Post newspaper.
"This was a large, armored dinosaur," Stanford said. "Think of it as a four-footed tank. It was quite heavy, there's a quite a ridge or push-up here. Subsequently the sand was bound together by iron-oxide or hematite, so it gave us a nice preservation, almost like concrete."
Stanford, a "proud amateur dinosaur tracker" has had several papers published, including the discovery of a new species of nodosaur from a fossilized hatchling found near the University of Maryland in College Park. He previously confirmed the authenticity of this track with David Weishampel of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, author of the book "Dinosaurs of the East Coast."
He had material from the same Cretaceous-era sedimentary rock dated, with help from the US Geological Survey, to approximately 110- to 112-million years old, by analyzing pollen grains sealed in the stone. The Cretaceous Period ran between 145.5 and 65.5 million years ago, and was the last period of the Mesozoic Era.
Goddard Facilities Manager Alan Binstock said the agency considers the footprint and its location "sensitive but unclassified."
The footprint is on federal land, so improperly removing it could potentially violate three laws: the Antiquities Act, the Archaeological Resources Protection Act and the Paleontological Resources Preservation Act.
NASA officials will next consult with the State of Maryland and paleontologists to form a plan for documenting and preserving the find, Binstock said.
Stanford also identified and presented several smaller footprints -- three-toed, flesh-eating therapods -- to Goddard officials from the same site.
He called the location of the find "poetic."
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Footprints of cretaceous dinosaur found at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
In about six years, NASA will launch into space a telescope so powerful that scientists hope to see back in time to the first light of the universe. Just how is that possible? To understand, youll need to learn about how telescopes work. And instead of cracking open a book or searching online, how about getting a lesson from scientists at Goddard Space Flight Center who work on the telescope?
Thats just what about a dozen families did recently at Goddards Family Night, a program for middle-schoolers and their families once a month during the school year and occasionally during the summer.
(Linda Davidson/The Washington Post) - Science fans, from left, Ryan Dillman, 13, Liam Clem, 13, and Rashaun Williams, 11, test the telescopes they just made at Goddard Space Flight Center.
Mary Stevenson and daughter Rebecca, 11, of Montgomery Village have been coming to the sessions at the Greenbelt facility for about a year.
Rebecca, who is home-schooled, said she was happy to see several other girls at the program.
Most of my friends arent interested in astronomy, she said, while examining two lenses. Rebecca said she likes science and is hoping for a career in ornithology (studying birds).
The next-generation telescope
At Family Night, future scientists and engineers can talk to professionals about their careers and topics such as the lunar reconnaissance orbiter or the ability of other planets to support life.
Youre meeting people who actually are doing the stuff, said 13-year-old Cameron Moye, a would-be astrophysicist. Cameron traveled an hour to Goddard with parents George and Debra from their home in Graysonville, Maryland. They rarely miss a program.
We want to foster the love and excitement for science, said Catherine Kruchten, who organizes the events.
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Middle-schoolers get hands-on learning at Goddard Space Flight Center