The Ottawa Trip -- Day Two (Part One!)

Despite the big scare at the old jail last night, I slept like a baby. (I guess that's the best testament to just how tired I was!)  My hotel room was comfy, my pillows just the way I like them, and if I could have packed up that giant bathroom and its amazing shower to take home with me, I would have.

Tweet at 7:20 AM: Am at breakfast. 20 mins until the "Space Shuttle" picks us up from hotel. Just got asked if I were a guest speaker. :)

Breakfast at the hotel was interesting.  I felt a little bit out of place, looking around at all the young people there, obviously heading to the same symposium I was.  Now, despite what I might have told you about Maritimers talking to everyone, I'll let you in on a little secret.  If I'm feeling the least little bit unsure of myself, I get shy.  Really introverted -- the one who just sits back and watches.  For those of you who might know me in person, you're either laughing or nodding sagely, depending on how long you've known me.

Anyway, sitting there next to four teenaged girls one table over, I smiled and asked, "Are you going to the symposium?"  It was a good guess, since they were all wearing identical t-shirts.   "Yes!" one of them replied enthusiastically.  "Are you one of the guest speakers?"  And that was my brush with the Chicks in Space from Penetanguishene, Ontario. :)

The Chicks in Space got up and left a few minutes later, and the table soon filled with four more teenaged girls, all talking about "the conference."  I was beginning to notice a theme.  A moment later, their supervisor (who I later learned to be the principal of their school, St. James Collegiate in Winnipeg, MB) asked if she could sit with me as I had a chair free.  Glad to see someone over the age of eighteen, I welcomed her to have a seat.  Dawn, the principal, explained to me that there was an initiative by the RSC to try to keep girls interested in science, and that high schools had been selected to send students.  The picture was starting to become more clear -- and I was starting to feel quite old and a little bit out of place.

Tweet at 8:39 AM: I'm at the Science and Tech Museum and people are meeting and greeting over breakfast. Just found out my blog is popular! (waving) ...

Dawn and I became instant pals (probably because she's a transplanted Maritimer!), and I became an unofficial adjunct of the Winnipeg troupe.  After registering (when I learned that a number of people from the RSC had been reading my blog -- something that made me warm and fuzzy from head to toe), we headed into the breakfast room, picked up some fruit kebabs, and sat down at a table.

At our table were two gentlemen whose names I didn't quite catch (fellows of the RSC), as well as Andrew Miall (Chair of the Symposium Organizing Committee) and his wife Charlene.  A moment later, the two remaining chairs were taken by a lady whose  face is now blank in my brain,  and astronaut Chris Hadfield.

Tweet at 8:40 PM: I JUST ATE BREAKFAST WITH ASTRONAUT CHRIS HADFIELD!

I'll be honest.  It could have been an unmitigated disaster.  My inner 11-year-old space geek started doing an absolutely hysterical happy dance, starting in my belly and tapdancing all the way up to my throat, threatening to erupt into little girly giggles.

I turned to look at Dawn (who had gotten the whole story of KJ the Junior Space Cadet Wannabe already) and her eyes smiled back at me.  I managed to return greetings and introduce myself, and then I just sat there listening -- mostly because I was afraid to say anything at all, in case it came out along the lines of "OH MY GOD!  YOU'RE AN ASTRONAUT!  OH MY GOD!  YOU WERE THE FIRST CANADIAN TO WALK IN SPACE!  OH MY GOD!  OH MY GOD!"  Um, yeah.  See why I often have a hard time remembering I'm 39-years-old? :)

At some point, an organizer from the RSC came over and spoke to Chris (I'm using his first name here because that's how he introduced himself to me), and I overheard Chris say that autographs wouldn't be possible because they would take up too much time, but that pictures would probably be okay.  A moment later, he got up and went to the auditorium, and I followed at the closest non-stalker-distance possible.  You see, I had made sure to print and bring a 5" x 7" picture with me, specifically to be signed and put in my scrapbook, so I was a woman on a mission!

Chris graciously signed my photo for me, and I went and sat down at the seat I'd staked out in the auditorium, right behind Dawn and her girls.  I was a very happy space camper indeed!

Tweet at 8:52 AM: There are news cameras here. I wonder, since we're linking to the ISS, if this will be on NASA-TV?

Message from the International Space Station

Dr. Robert Thirsk, Astronaut, Canadian Space Agency

Well, I wasn't quite right.  We weren't having a live link to the International Space Station -- it was a recorded message from Dr. Robert Thirsk, and although a live link would have been beyond amazing, the recorded message was still pretty darn cool.

You see, when I took the space studies course last year, Phil (the instructor) showed us a recorded presentation Dr. Thirsk had done with the previous year's space studies class.  Dr. Thirsk had been on Planet Earth at the time, but he was interacting with the class, talking to Phil, doing a PowerPoint presentation, all from a distance, and given the set-up, it was very easy to forget that he wasn't talking to my class.

So when the recorded message from the International Space Station was shown, it felt much less like I was seeing "Dr. Robert Thirsk, first Canadian to spend six months in space", and a lot more like "Our Buddy Bob," because, after all, I'd sort of spent an hour with him.  Watching the video, with his hair and arms floating, and knowing that, even though it wasn't live, that he was up there somewhere at the exact moment we were watching his message was one of the most inspiring moments I have ever experienced.  It's really, really difficult to put into words that are big enough to convey it, but I think the back-flip Bob did at the end of his message pretty much sums it up.

Have You Ever Wondered What It is Like to Live on the International Space Station?

Col. Chris Hadfield, Astronaut, Canadian Space Agency

Tweet at 10:50 AM: Chris Hadfield's presentation was absolutely phenomenal! I need a high-res photo of the lunar lander's feet ASAP!

Having been interested in space as long as I have, and having taking the space studies course last year, I wondered how much of his talk I would already be familiar with.  I certainly don't know everything -- far, far from it! -- but I do know a lot of the basics.  Well, this blog post simply isn't big enough to contain everything I learned and found interesting in Chris's talk, so here are my top three:

1. "The first feet on the moon were Canadian." Apparently, Canada's expertise in robotics goes back well before the Canadarm, and if it weren't for us and our contributions to the original lunar lander, the Americans might not have been able to plant that flag!  Now, as a Canadian interested in space, why didn't I know this?  (That question stuck with me for the rest of the day.)


2. Adjusting back to Earth. Chris described how, for the first few days of being back from the Space Station, he would go through doors and continually be surprised by the fact that everyone was on the same level, on the floor.  In the reduced gravity of the Space Station, there are no walls, really, but six floors, all around the room.  He'd be working on something in front of him, and right next to him would be someone hanging upside-down, working on something else, with another astronaut working perpendicular to them both!


3. Another great reason to go to space. You don't actually become an astronaut until you go to space,  Up until then, you're an "astronaut candidate", usually abbreviated to the much-less-flattering term "AsCan."

After the message from Bob Thirsk and the presentation by Chris Hadfield, I found myself feeling a bit out of place.  With the space stuff over, I was now out of my element, I thought.  After all, I wasn't one of these young girls to whom many encouraging comments were being addressed.  I certainly wasn't in the same league as the Fellows of the RSC (who can basically be summed up as nearly two thousand of the smartest people in Canada), and I was no scientist (having spent just enough time in a BSc in Geology program to simultaneously flunk chemistry, physics, and stats).

I'll be honest.  I've always felt like a bit of an odd duck in a pond where one end is science and the other end is arts, and there are no ducks to hang out with in the middle.  I'm constantly swimming back and forth, and I don't fully fit in with either crowd.  I have always been interested in science -- have been carrying rocks around with me since I was old enough to drag them, for example -- but math is difficult for me.  It's like a vault door slams shut in my head.  Sitting in the auditorium, I was thinking, "Well, I'm too old, and my degree is in arts, and it's too late, and I don't belong here."

And then the next presentation began.

Heirs of Copernicus: Expanding Our Cosmic Imagination

Dennis Richard Danielson, FRSC, Dept. English, University of British Columbia

I am so glad this presentation came first after the space stuff.  Here was a man older than me, and an English professor, who had become interested in space and Galileo and Copernicus as a result of reading Milton.  And here he was, amongst all the physicists, giving a presentation on Man's views of the Universe and how they changed after Copernicus.  In short, here was a duck in the middle of the pond, like me!

Dr. Danielson's presentation was not only fascinating, but incredibly validating.  At the end of the day, I actually sought him out to thank him, because his presentation opened me up to take in as much as possible from the rest of the symposium.  Without him, I wouldn't have given myself a chance.

One of the things that Dr. Danielson talked about was whether or nor Earth had been demoted in going from being thought of as the centre of the universe to becoming a planet spinning around the sun.  He also discussed poor Pluto, who would love to be called a planet again, and put up a slide with these words:

"to pluto": to demote or devalue someone or something, as happened to the former planet Pluto when [in 2006] the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union decided Pluto no longer met its definition of a planet.

Well, folks, I can sum up the life-changing earth-shattering epiphany this symposium gave me in one sentence: I've been plutoing myself for years.

The Violent High Energy Universe

Victoria Kaspi, FRSC, CRC, Physics Dept. McGill University

I loved this woman's energy and enthusiasm!  Her explanations and descriptions of stars and what it really means to go supernova were both fascinating and easy to understand.  I learned so much from her about pulsars, and red giants, and neutron stars -- and that was before my favourite part of her presentation: listening to stars "talking!"  She played recordings of the pulsing of four different stars.  It was incredible!

First Light and Monster Telescopes

Bob Abraham, Dept. Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto

"You are star stuff." -- Carl Sagan, 1934-1996.  You know, as much as I love Desiderata, I never knew that the "you are a child of the universe" line was meant to be taken literally.  And although I've been playing with them since I was a kid, I never really thought of a telescope as a time machine before, but of course it is!

I got so much out of this presentation, and what I loved best about it was the way it was delivered.  He was engaging, and entertaining, and genuinely excited about the fact that we humans don't really know much about anything in the grand scheme of things.  How can you not love that?  By the time this presentation was over, I was like, "What's next?  Give me MORE!"

Magellanic Clouds: Galactic Neighbours Just Passing By

Gurtina Besla, NSERC Scholarship Winner

Over breakfast, Dawn had told me about someone who had done a fantastic job speaking to the female teenage delegates last night, encouraging them to stay in the sciences.  Dawn was very impressed by how passionate she was about "the leaky pipe", and how girls need to continue on with sciences even after high school.  It turned out that Gurtina Besla was that person.

Gurtina's presentation was one of the most technical of the day, and some of it was over my head (pun intended), but a lot of it I understood.  You know how, in The Grinch That Stole Christmas, there's that line about the Grinch's heart growing three sizes that day?  At the end of the morning's sessions, that was pretty much how I felt about my brain!

Tweet at 1:02 PM: I've just heard the term "explosive nucleosynthesis" and for the next three minutes, I could probably explain to you what it means. :)

---

(onwards to The Ottawa Trip -- Day Two (Part Two!)) NOT YET! :)