Today's Photos
We woke up rather early, especially early considering that we usually get up around noon. Most of us ate breakfast in the hotel. To be honest this was my first time actually eating the hotel breakfast instead of just using that time to sleep in more. I was pleasantly surprised. I had eaten breakfast at a Best Western before and I remember a grubby little half lit room with absolutely nothing edible. Here however you eat in a restaurant on the third floor with windows facing the mountains and many choices in food.
Then we all headed to Canyon school where we discovered others in our room. We ended up discussing the basics on how to do our presentation outside on a bench. When we finished we came back in to our computer room to discover the others gone and settled down to work on our journals. Then John showed us the NASA video of Deep Impact. It was awesome to see the pictures of it and not so much to see the NASA people jump around and applaud themselves on a job well done.
Galen Gilser gave us a talk about some of his research on the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs. It was very interesting. Todd Haines gave a talk as well and his was focused on neutrinos. His side lesson was that science is always changing so that what we think we know now will be so different in the future.
Astronomy Days Lecture with Ed Fenimore on Gamma Ray Bursts. Throughout all of these lectures I believe that we have learned a very basic fact, that there are SO MANY things that we don't know. Gamma Ray Bursts are really cool and are the highest known form of energy.
For dinner we went to Galen's house. There we had pizza with salad. We got to see Contact. It was awesome to see it because we get to see her go through the part we went through. Later that night we went back to the hotel to get rest because our presentations were the next day.
The Day of the lectures. It began, naturally, with waking up; well, the day did, the lectures would have to wait a few hours more. Anyways, we awoke, ate breakfast, and headed over to Canyon School. We then sat around for a while and either worked on our journals or did more sitting around, it was really very exciting.
Eventually the fun had to come to an end and so we went to eat. The food was good, but even better were John’s stories about his climbing days in college. They all seemed to end with him running out of food and doing something either dangerous or stupid, but always hilarious. That crazy Italian guy whom he never saw again, who just may not have made it, ahahaha. John’s had some wild times.
And then we came back for, brace yourself, the lectures! The first was by Galen about the extinction of the dinosaurs. He had some incredible simulations and the topic was interesting, so his hour went fast. Showing the possible effects of the asteroid hitting from different angles was fascinating.
The next lecture was by Todd Something-or-Other and it was on neutrinos. I would explain the lecture, but my head would probably explode about halfway through. Suffice it to say that some people were bored, some people were not, and we were all confused at some point.
There was then a short break followed by another lecture, this time on gamma ray bursts. See notes on previous lecture.
Today's Photos