Thursday, May 31, 2007

The Carnival of Space - week 5 - Space is Amazing

The best presentation I’ve found on hosting a carnival is How to Host a Carnival. One of the points it makes is it helps if a carnival has an overall arch; it helps to tell a story. A list of links can be improved if there is some thematic organization which engages the reader.

Over the last two years whenever I’ve hosted a carnival I have always tried to have some kind of theme. Often the theme for a carnival doesn’t gel until the posts come in. Currently my family and I are spending a month in Virginia and Washington DC. We’ve been learning a lot about the early history of the United States. A large part of the Carnival of Space has to do with exploring the final frontier. I had been considering a theme revolving around the Lewis and Clark expedition.

But as the posts started coming in I kept saying “Amazing” to myself. There are many amazing things we are learning about space and preparing to do in space. So I decided to run with a theme that Amazing things are happening in regards to space.


As I was reading Shadow transit of Io posted at Astroblog I thought “What an amazing time we live in.” Not only can many people in our time check out one of Jupiter’s moons, but it is trivial for anyone on the internet to reap the benefit of such an experience. Galileo and Copernicus couldn’t imagine what the average person today can see and learn.

Speaking of Galileo and Copernicus, Amanda Bauer, the Astropixie, reviews the progress we’ve made over the last five hundred years in her heliocentrism post.


One of the amazing things about the efforts to get into space is how so many people are supporting and helping find more ways and reasons for private space to be successful. Over at Space Transport News Clark Lindsey has a proposal for commercial rocket companies to bring in remote space tourists.


Space still holds many mysteries. We will be amazed for years to come. Emily Lakdawalla posts on The Planetary Society Weblog about Windows onto the Abyss: Cave skylights on Mars. What lurks in the caverns of Mars?

Tales of the Heliosphere raises some questions about sex in space and the risk of pregnancy in The Love Boat to Mars.

Also related to Mars, Wandering Space posted Mars Science Lab Animation from Maas Digital with some pictures of what a landing on Mars might be like.


Colony Worlds has an amazing hook in the post Can Solar Weatherman Predict Radiation Storms?


Not only have scientists come up with amazing ideas like dark matter, but they understand it better each year. Universe Today reports on some new developments in Dark Matter Annihilation at the Centre of the Milky Way

This sounds a bit heretical, but the Robot Guy writes Why Do Space At All?

A Babe in the Universe attended the recent International Space Development Conference in Dallas. Evidently there was an interesting ISDC Announcement about a new shape of the Benson’s Dreamchaser spaceplane.


I hope you have enjoyed the Carnival of Space.

The Carnival of Space will be held next week at Music of the Spheres, click here for information on submitting a post.

I thank everyone who has helped out with bring this carnival together, and to the participants in this carnival.


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