The sciences play a big part in our lives, and astronomy is easily the queen among them. While the boys love biology and chemistry, we talk daily about stars, planets and black holes. As parents, we love this. Doug and I had one of our very first conversations about astronomy, and only two nights ago we discussed a new theory about the expansion of the universe. It's a private obsession, and we pass it on to our kids. The results are sometimes amusing (as in Jacob and the Black Hole), sometimes baffling, sometimes annoying.
I had a really weird dream last night - I dreamed that Jupiter turned into a black hole and on Earth, we felt gravitational ripples that told us we were all going to die. A subplot involved getting Alan home from his sleep-over so we could all die together, but never mind that. The gravitational ripples were interesting as it turned out they were not gravitational in nature (they felt like waves of unrealness going through one's body but didn't damage anything) but trans-dimensional as Earth (and the Sun) were whisked away by helpful aliens... anyhow.
I told this to my kids as I thought it was a really cool dream (and vivid!), and I got as an answer almost in unison from David and Alan: "But Mommy, only stars can turn into black holes, and only supernovas do that!" And then they walked away without hearing the rest of my dream. Darn those literal-minded scientists anyway. My explanation that it was a scientific experiment gone bad? They didn't even hear that anymore.
Of course, these are the same kids that will answer to their Dad's question "which is the only moon in the solar system that has an atmosphere" with "Titan!".
What goes around, comes around.
Recent Comments