STEAM Summer School: a 10 day interactive course in science communication
At some p
oint in our history we realized that in addition to Earth our neighborhood had a few more planets. Until recently we thought there were nine in total but then Pluto was demoted. Well the number eight is fine to me as it reminds me of a complete atomic shell. Later we discovered that in addition to our own star, the Sun, the sky is filled by other suns. We can see a few thousand of them with the naked eye on a clear night without light pollution but in reality our own galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars.
About a hundred years ago, the American astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that apart from the Milky Way there are other galaxies. We now know that there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe with Andromeda being the nearest to our own. Furthermore we estimate based on observations that the visible matter is just 4.6% of the total matter in the universe. We honored Hubble by giving his name to the famous telescope that we put in orbit around Earth and which has given us stunning images of space over the past few years.
It was just three decades ago when we first discovered planets outside our solar system and today we already know of two thousand extrasolar planets. We are able to find them by looking at periodic changes of a star’s motion (due to the gravitational pull of the planet), its light (due to the passage of the planet in front of it) and other techniques.
As for ice and water, the base of our own life, we have already found them on several places in our neighborhood. With our space missions we have collected data on ice on our Moon, ice on Pluto, underground oceans on Jupiter’s satellite Europa and Saturn’s satellite Enceladus, ice and running water on Mars etc.
The universe is unimaginably large and as we explore it we discover that it is full of everything. Therefore it might be a matter of time before we find out that life elsewhere is easily and often created. And if you want to take that thought even further, consider that maybe all we know are ordinary in the cosmos.
Dr Spiros Kitsinelis is a physical chemist and former associate professor at Ehime University in Japan. He has worked as a researcher at various universities and companies in Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, Greece and France. Since his participation in the international competition Famelab (in 2007) where he received both the audience and the judging committee’s first awards he has been a very active science communicator. He is the co-founder of the first scientific theater group in Greece (SciCo), the science communication website www.openscience.gr, judge and presenter for the International Science Film Festival of Athens (ISFFA by CAID), author of books and articles on various scientific topics for the general public (www.the-nightlab.com, Protagon.gr), speaker of public scientific events in Athens with the most recent being his talk at TEDxAcademy and guest science presenter on major Greek TV and radio stations(Alpha TV, SKAI radio). Currently he is collaborating with the science journalism organization Science View delivering science communication courses at various European universities. Website: www.the-nightlab.com – email: kitsinelis@yahoo.gr
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