Kids are known to go through phases of interest. There’s the dinosaur phase. The cars. The superheroes. The LEGO. The sports. The video games. And then phones/internet and it’s over.
My son is about to turn four and we’re diving right into SPACE. It blows my mind to think that this tiny human knows more about our place in the Universe than 99% of humanity who have ever lived.
For Christmas, we gave him a sweet Planetarium Projector from Toys R’ Us. They’re less than $50 and really good. It comes with slides of planets, moons and galaxies to click between.
Now he goes to sleep looking up the spinning stars with a projected Earth. The blue is water, the green is grass, the brown is dirt and the white is snow and clouds. He knows he lives on Earth.
A few nights ago, he started asking for YouTube videos of the planets from his projector and I played the video up top. Incredible visions from the Cassini probe in its mission to Saturn: launched in 1997, arriving in 2004 and spending 13 years in its orbit.
“How many Earths could fit into Saturn?”
763. That’s a lot of Earths! 1300 would fit into Jupiter, that’s the biggest planet. Let’s take a look (clicks the projector onto Jupiter).
“Oh. How many Earths would fit in the Sun?”
1.3 million.
“Pffft that makes me laugh so hard.”
I remember being a kid in the early 90s, excited about space. All we had then were pixelated photos and plans to fire probes at the outer solar system. Now we’ve sent Cassini to Saturn, discovered global oceans on its moons and can livestream HD video from Mars rovers.
Who knows? Maybe your kid will end up on Mars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIoRWIgzvbM&
