Orbiting Fomalhaut, or Things We Did on Jan. 1, 2009

I don't know how he did it, but The Boy wrangled us some tickets to the new Morrison Planetarium at the California Academy of Sciences today. (I've been there three times already, and the lines to do anything there, including use the bathroom, are formidable. So I've not even been close to the inside of the planetarium until today.)

But whatever he did--bribe, kiss, look menacing-- The Boy knows that his little science dweeb Tangobaby enjoys nothing better than some good space-based entertainment. For those who remember the old planetariums with the spidery, imposing star projectors in the center of the floor, those days are gone. Instead are six state-of-the-art projectors cleverly hidden around the ceiling, creating the IMAX version of space travel for those of us packed into the stadium seating.

I miss the old-fangled projector, though. It was a childlike pleasure to think that an universe of stars was enclosed in a metal projector in San Francisco. The stars had to come from somewhere, right? The new show is modern, spectacular with lots of zooming and moving about the planets, and you get the added attraction of Sigourney Weaver's reading the narration.

As much as I was enjoying our trip through the universe, half of my brain kept going off and getting all distracted, wondering is that really Signourney Weaver's voice, or someone who sounds almost exactly like her, and if I really like Alien more than Aliens (I do), and how if it really was her voice, how cool it was (and entirely appropriate) that Ripley would be narrating our space journey.

The best part of the presentation was at the end, after the movie portion, when the planetarium guy (don't know what else to call him) told us about some very recent discoveries regarding exoplanets, or extrasolar planets. I had no idea that we've found so many, 333 planets to date. And two major discoveries by two different teams of astronomers on the same day (Fomalhaut b, which is 25 light years from Earth, and 130 light years away, the three planets orbiting a star named HR 8799).

Learning stuff like this just make me wish I was eight years old again, dreaming of being an astronaut or an astronomer, or wishing I could live several lifetimes just to see what we might discover over a span of a few generations. And I also think about a Pale Blue Dot, that no matter how much we discover about the universe, we're still just a mote, a speck. The real version of Horton Hears a Who!

Awesomely beautiful and fragile and rare, all at the same time.

Of course, I couldn't finish a post like this without another free association segue, so how about some David Bowie: "Life on Mars." I still don't quite understand the lyrics, but it's one song that does bring out the tiny feelings we have sometimes, that our lives are small. Small they may be, but not insignificant. And Bowie, I just love him, so that's reason enough right there.




I'm normally not a huge fan of cover music, but I really love Brazilian singer Seu Jorge's Portuguese covers of Bowie's music. You may remember his songs from the woefully underappreciated (and my favorite) Wes Anderson film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. (The Critereon Collection DVD has a ton of great extras to enjoy with the film itself.)