It Came Out Of The Sky

Driving on my way home tonight (to my new home actually - it's my first night here) I saw what I think was a meteor! It was crazy, because it looked SO CLOSE, close enough to hit the ground from less than a mile away - and my first thought was probably "a fucking missle! We're doomed!". I freaked out a little, but then it suddenly disappeared! Maybe a UFO?

Speaking of UFOs, I never really think about anything floating out in space. I went to a planetarium earlier this month and it was pretty interesting. One thing I never thought about before was the concept of a light year. I knew what it meant of course, but I never really thought about it like this: Say NASA sends a spacecraft 20 light years away to take some up-close photos of a planet. Assuming the spacecraft CAN travel at the speed of light, it takes 20 years to get there to take its photos, and then 20 years to make it back home. While I'm unsure about how and when it could send those photos back to NASA, let's just say it has to return home to do so. The photos we're presented with are already 20 years old. Think of how much technology advances on our planet in 20 years, and how much Earth's climate deteriorates in that much time. What does that tell us about these other planets?

It was probably the first time I had any interest in space since playing with space Legos as a kid!