Anyone else feel like it’s been a long week, even though it’s only Wednesday?
I’ve been swamped in schoolwork, planning for my school’s Relay for Life in two weeks, commitments for both of my jobs, and being a functional adult who makes food and does laundry (…will do laundry…tonight…I swear…). Plus I realized that my window is narrowing rapidly to secure a job for after graduation, and that means that soon I’ll need to pack everything up and leave Chicago (officially less than two months until I graduate), and that’s around the time I start internally screaming.
So today, I wanted to take a minute to celebrate some fascinating things that people are accomplishing.
Stephen Hawking wants to get us to another solar system
With a board of directors comprised of Stephen Hawking, Mark Zuckerberg, and Yuri Milner, a new project is going to get a glimpse of planets orbiting Alpha Centauri, the closest star to Earth (besides our own sun). The goal of the project is to get images of planets that, like Earth, are close enough to their sun that they have more water than ice, but far enough that the water is not all evaporated (like Mars). Essentially, this could determine not only if there is life in the next solar system but if it could sustain human life.
Current technology would take two thousand years for our fastest spacecraft to reach this solar system, but the tech proposed in the project could cut that down to twenty.
Why is this cool? We could find aliens in our lifetimes!
Read more: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/100-million-plan-will-send-probes-to-the-nearest-star1/
Puerto Rican Veterans of the World Wars and Korean War are being recognized with the Congressional Medal of Honor previously denied to them
Today, a segregated infantry regiment known as the Borinqueneers (based off of the word “boricua,” another word in Spanish for someone who is Puerto Rican) is being recognized by Congress for their bravery, decades after their white counterparts were recognized. All of the members of this group were volunteers. They defended the First Marine Infantry Division in a retreat in 1950 during the Korean War, and are finally being awarded for their contributions.
Why is this cool? Recognition of historical contributions of minorities breaks down biases in our history which contribute to racial prejudices today!
Children smarter than all of us are exhibiting at the White House Science Fair
Children ranging from 11 to 18 are exhibiting their amazing work at the White House Science Fair today, with contributions ranging from astrophysics, environmental science, engineering, coding, and more.
Why is this cool? These kids are working on issues of sustainability, medical treatments, disability assistance, technological security, and more. Plus, it’s exciting to see how many girls and minorities are exhibiting, encouraging more equality in the sciences!
Read more: https://www.whitehouse.gov/Science-Fair
Hawkins’ use of details and the complexity of the characters made this a solid read. I had read that this was a book that couldn’t be put down, but didn’t find this completely true for me until the mid-200’s (and with only 323 pages, that’s a bit late in the game). This was most likely a trade-off for the amount of detail Hawkins used in constructing the narrative and exploring her characters’ flaws: with so much interesting material crammed in, it’s hard to build up a fast pace.
Words and Whatnots 