Working in such close proximity with all of the astro physics folks at the museum really gives me an entirely new perspective on a lot of things. I am a geology student. I study the Earth. I know the Earth. I live on the Earth.... I generally don't have reason to give too much thought to what is not on the Earth.
During my time at the museum I've been hanging out in the Rose Center and seeing planetarium shows on my down time. I just feel so dumbfounded at all of this new astro stuff that I'm being pelted with here. I've never thought about how miniscule Earth is in the grande scheme of things. And people too, for that matter. It almost makes me want to major in astro physics as well... but then wanting is different than doing, and I can safely tell you that will never happen.
Today I heard the Earth referred to as "very far out in the cosmic suburbs". I've always heard how small we are, but I've never really felt it before. We're quite removed from the hustle and bustle of the rest of everything in existence.
It's just crazy. All of this physics stuff. I don't pretend to comprehend any of it. But it's very inspiring as well.
Today we had a Nobel prize winner in physics, John Mather, come and talk to the astro department and they let the Geology department kids sit in as well. And I can't say I gathered all too much from his technical aspects of his project and what he did. It had something to do with proving the big bang was real. But it was all Greek to me. What I did take back with me was given in our informal question/answer/chit chat with John Mather and about 15 of us REU students after the lecture ended. He was a very encouraging fellow who radiated wisdom. Just looking at him you could tell how knowing he was. And it wasn't that he knew so many things as much as he was happy to admit that he didn't know everything, people are usually wrong, experiments often fail, and no instrument will ever perform correctly the first time. He gave us advice and told us how scared he was during his undergrad and graduate studies. He said that he often felt overwhelmed and when he achieved his masters in physics his first thought was "I never want to do that again!" Some quotes that stick out from the lecture today waere "Wrong results are often easy to obtain." and "Confidence does not equal success."
I really enjoyed the day. I got to look at lots and lots of thin sections from various meteorites at work. I'll try to get some pictures of those to post on here from the scope, believe it or not they really can be beautiful. After work ended my friends and I got some pizza and went back to the museum to see a talk in the planetarium.
Off to go play spades with the roomies.
GoodNight,
Chelsea
