Space and Time

14th June
Today six members from Bucks travelled down to NFWI Headquarters in Fulham to attend a "Stars in their Eyes" day which had been advertised in WI Life.The audience numbered just under 40 from all over the country, including two who had come down for the day from Westmorland. They had left home not long before us and travelled happily by train--- which makes one wonder who needs the HS2.
The first speaker, Dr Carolin Crawford was from the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University and her subject was the "Science and Beauty of Nebulae". She showed us marvellous pictures of outer space and taught us how to look at them and know what we were actually looking at: what sort of stars they were and whether they were growing or about to blow themselves apart. We looked at the Horse's Head nebula, the Eagle nebula and the Head of the Witch nebula and were shown the pillars of dust formed like stalagmites which are the next generation of stars, called proplyds.As a reluctant scientist, I found that it was really impressive to learn in Carolin's talk that when she enthused about the beauty of the pictures coming from large ground-based and space telescopes, she wasn't just admiring their clarity and technical achievement in being received but appreciating the sheer beauty of the stars and clouds themselves.
In the afternoon, we were treated to a wonderful talk from Dame Professor Jocelyn Bell Burnell who had been involved in the discovery of pulsars in the team which won the Nobel Prize for setting up the new branch of research called astrophysics.We heard about all the different types of light rays in the universe and of the importance of infra red images. Once more, we wondered at marvellous pictures and learned about the unimaginable measurements of time and space and that our sun is a third generation star. Science is poised to reveal that there are yet masses more planets circulating around other stars whose presence can be only guessed at now. Again I loved the way Jocelyn brought in art and the language of different cultures into her talk. As we struggled with the mathematics of millions of light years and billions of stars, there was the romance of language and poetry to help to keep one's balance as it were.I came away full of joy and amazement that by what was a sheer stroke of luck really, we had been granted planet Earth and quite willing to believe, if it had happened to us, it could have happened elsewhere in crowded space---OK the odds might be one to a million billions but what is that to an astro-mathematician? Half a grain of rice in a room packed full of rice is what our planet is. The other conclusion that must come to us all learning these things, is that there is a duty of care to the planet on which we ride for such a short time and sadly, this is not what the human race exercises in many places in our world today.
What do you think about having an astronomy related day for the Bucks' WIs? Let's give ourselves time and space to think about time and space.