Thoughts Tagged ‘Science’

Behind the scenes of Contact: The Movie

Wednesday, December 15th, 2010

[I edited a blog for the NSW National Science Week Committee in mid-2009, called 10daysofscience. This is one of my resurrected posts ...]

After a fortuitous encounter at the Eureka Awards dinner on Tuesday, Professor Bryan M. Gaensler leapt on a brilliant opportunity. But first: watch this.

 

Physics professor Gaensler had a tutorial scheduled the next day about the challenges of portraying science and astronomy in film. He planned to use 1996 movie ‘Contact‘ (starring Jodie Foster) as his primary example.

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What are they doing to Derek?

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010

[I edited a blog for the NSW National Science Week Committee in mid-2009, called 10daysofscience. This is one of my resurrected posts ... and was a pretty incredible evening!]

Three-and-a-half seconds, give or take a nanosecond or two. That’s the finely calibrated length of time I could gaze at the man suspended from hooks before a shudder would arch up my spine and I’d turn my head away. Repeat.

But that was Wednesday night and I’m back for more. It’s Friday night at the Powerhouse and it’s all about fear. I’m here with my sister who politely refused a consent armband at the door. “I’ll hold your bag, OK?” she says.

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The cosmic perspective

see published article

Wellbeing Magazine,

June, 2010

A CAREER GAZING INTO THE FAR REACHES OF THE GALAXY AND BACK TO THE WONDERS OF THE TINIEST MOLECULE HAS BLESSED SPACE ARTIST JON LOMBERG WITH UNIQUE INSIGHT.

“Thirty-two years ago something extraordinary happened to me,” wrote American artist Jon Lomberg in 2009.

“I was sitting in the viewing stands at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, watching the launch of NASA’s Voyager 2 mission to the outer solar system and beyond.”

Lomberg had reason to be watching Voyager so keenly. Something he’d laboured over very hard was on board. It was August 20, 1977, and in the six weeks prior to take-off a small team selected by NASA had created the Voyager Interstellar Record, a 12-inch gold-plated phonograph record that contained the best account the team could summon of our world to date.

Its intended audience? Extraterrestrials.

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