Yabusame: An arrow shooting metaphor for Hayabusa

Yoritomo time travels...

Chiyoda Onomoto: Yabusame

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Yoritomo: Is your “Hayabusa” a peregrine falcon?

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JAXA Scientist: It’s a metaphor. Hayabusa will pass Ryugu and then fire an arrow at it like samurai used to do in yabusame in your times

JAXA: Shooting an arrow,
galloping to safety

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Yoritomo: Is Ryugu a country?

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JAXA Scientist: It’s a small asteroid, a rock spinning in space.

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Yoritomo: And you will attack it? For what purpose?

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JAXA Scientist: For knowledge. Not to conquer. When the device detonates, the Hayabusa will have moved around to the safe side of the asteroid, away from debris fallout.

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Yoritomo: Aha. Like the samurai who galloped on by to safety.

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Voice-over

Nice use of metaphor using samurai skills to explain modern Japanese science and technology feats.

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My Other Life is an Astrophysicist

After Bohemian Rhapsody...

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Martin: Rami was great as Freddie. Deserved the Oscar.

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Phyllis: But Gwilym Lee was a solid anchor as Brian May.

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Martin: “We Will Rock You” and “Who Wants to Live Forever”. Didn’t May write those?

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Wikipedia: Brian May

Phyllis: He did. And great musician as he was, he was more. An astrophysicist. Began his PhD in the early 70s on interplanetary dust. Picked it up again in 2006, finished 2007.

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Martin: Thirty-five years later? Way over the deadline.

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Phyllis: Imperial College let him. Hadn’t been much research on that topic in the intervening thirty years.

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Voice-over

A performer like Freddie Mercury had a great team behind him. Notably Brian May as lead guitarist. May is even more fascinating because of his academic and activist activities. A steroscopic photo enthusiast. On the enironmental front, a supporter of animal rights, opposing foxhunting and protecting badgers. Created woodlands and wildlife corridors. Vegetarian and non smoker too. More...

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The Glass Universe

On reading The Glass Universe
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Annie: When I was about ten, I wanted to be an astronomer.

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Harlow: Why?

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Annie: I liked the pictures of the moon and planets.

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Harlow: Stars?

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Annie: I liked the planets. They were bigger. They had features. I could relate to those whereas the stars just, well, they just shone.

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Harlow: When you were ten… that was before the universe had been mapped.

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Annie: Steady on, I’m not a hundred and fifty yet. Reading Dava Sobel’s The Glass Universe and those women astronomers last month got me interested in astronomy again and particularly, the stars more than the planets. Their sizes, magnitudes, compositions, distances and the fact that the universe is expanding..

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Harlow: I see reviews of The Glass Universe split the readers into two camps: those who like the science and those who grumble there wasn’t enough about the women astronomers’ personal lives.

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Annie: It was a little hard to visualize the women, although there were pictures of them. But because my knowledge of astronomy stopped at the planets and the stories of the stellar research was so gripping, the science was enough for me.

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Voice-over

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“Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us to other worlds.” Plato.

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Inspired by Galileo's Telescopes

An early interest in astronomy…

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Jacques: When I was ten I joined an astronomy club. Someone gave a talk about Galileo building his own telescope. I thought I’d try to build one too.

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Antonia: And did you?

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Jacques: Well, I didn’t grind the lenses like he did but I put two lenses at opposite ends of two sliding cardboard tubes.

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Antonia: It worked?

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Jacques: After a fashion. It only had a magnification of about 3 times, and the image was fuzzy. But I painted the tubes red and gold like Galileo’s. It looked artistic.

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Voice-over

The telescope was not even as powerful as a spyglass, which preceded Galileo’s models. He ground his own lenses and went from 8 times magnification up to 30 times. And the instruments looked good too. An age of art and science.

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