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Dorothy Copus Brush Keep looking up "Keep looking up" is the advice
given by that Florida-based astronomer who gives snippets of
things happening in the sky on public television. We didn't have
the spectacular show promised on Nov. 18 by the Leonid meteors,
but maybe Dec. 13 will produce a fantastic show by the Geminids.
Just as in November, the sky on the 13th will be without moonlight. If the weather cooperates, the Geminids spit
out shooting stars at one-a-minute and they move slowly, at about
22 miles per second, which allows time to watch them. These meteors
look more like pebbles than streaks. Although some may reach
the ground they weigh on an average of just a hundredth of an
ounce so they don't pose a threat if they hit something. Best
of all, these asteroid fragments appear as early as nightfall
and continue all through the rest of the night. Today our skies are filled with manmade objects
which compete for space with God's handiwork. It all began with
Sputnik 1, the first foreigner to enter the heavens, and it is
credited with starting the space race. When we heard that news, we were filled with
fear. In those years we did not trust the Russians. Even though
Sputnik was only about the size of a beachball and could only
orbit the Earth and send out radio blips it was unnerving to
think the Russians might be observing us. Later, when the word
Sputnik was translated as Russian for "traveling companion
of the Earth," the words did not seem threatening, but the
unease most of us felt was still there. The launching of Sputnik 1 really was a shocking
event and what followed changed the world we knew. Kennedy's
1960 campaign for the presidency used the phrase "the space
gap" over and over. Educators and the public called for
and received more federal aid to improve the teaching of science.
Author Dickson writes, "Without Sputnik it is all but certain
that there would not have been a race to the moon, which became
the centerpiece of the Cold War." Declassified documents from the Eisenhower
presidency show that Ike did not panic but used the fact that
the Russians had been first in space to call for "freedom
of space." This led to U.S. spy satellites to keep an eye
on the Soviet missile buildup. Another interesting spin-off from Sputnik
was the addition of some new words in the dictionary. The first
came the year after the launch when a newspaper columnist coined
"beatnik" to describe members of the beat generation.
That was followed by "peacenik," "neatnik"
and "refusenik." In the 44 years since Sputnik's appearance, the heavens are filled with scores of objects made by humans. Is it progress? All I know is that all those planets and stars that have been there for eons are the reason I keep looking up. Let's hope Dec. 13 will live up to the predictions and fill the sky with Geminid meteor showers. · · · |