RocketSTEM Issue #6 - March 2014 | Page 32

Episode 06: DEEPER, DEEPER, DEEPER, STILL Neil dons a Cloak of Visibility and we see him purely as a being composed of atoms. The Ship of the Imagination journeys to micro space – to the bottom of a dewdrop – as we view the strange life there, and the struggle for life they are embroiled in. Further still, Neil takes us on a journey traversing the complex neural networks in our brains, jumping synapses, from a molecule, to our memories of home. The ultimate scientific truth is that we never truly touch each other and this is shown in a tender love story between a young boy and girl. We look around and view the world differently as we’ve never seen it before. The plants and trees breathe around us. In an ancient Grecian evening, Democritus tells a magnificent tale of reality’s true nature that has been long since proven. Looking deep into his wine glass we see the intoxicating effects of the carbon atoms in his wine – and why carbon is essential to life on Earth. Neil drives us deeper to the inner chambers of atoms, to the cathedral of the nucleus and onward to the very heart of our Sun itself as we understand fusion. Voyaging deep into the Earth, to a place unseen by human eyes, we discover the mystery of the neutrino. Our onward path leads us back in time to the Egyptian Temple of Ramses, where the nourishing rays from our star always halt before the Lord of Creation named Ptah. Deeper, deeper and deeper still into the mists of time, we come to that place on the Cosmic Calendar beyond which the unknown beckons – but a great barrier lies between us and the beginning of time itself. “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” – Carl Sagan, “Cosmos” Episode 07: THE CLEAN ROOM Unsung heroes of science come in all forms, and this tale of a man from Iowa goes back to before the Earth was formed. Even to before the elements themselves were formed in stars. Earth’s constantly changing nature has all but erased this origin tale but how do we know the true age of the Earth? This story to discover the true age of our terran home spans centuries, until we stumble upon a guy from Iowa who develops an exacting but demanding method to do this. However, in his efforts to determine the truth, he finds a terrible crime has been done. Committed to the search for truth he will not stop, will not rest until the killers are found. Yet as he battles on, his efforts draw in an enemy, a man practiced in the misuse of science… This grand saga shows us the highs and lows of science over the ages. It illuminates how one person using science as a tool for good can change the world for the better for all of us. 30 30 Image: Richard Foreman, Jr./FOX www.RocketSTEM.org