fandomhigh | Fuck Yeah! Science! - Monday 9/14 Period One

Today the class was not held in the park. It was in the classroom and as usual there was coffee and this time an assortment of bagels and cream cheese.

Any thought of a normal class today would probably go out the window once the class noticed a giant pink portal going through a wall.

"Grab your shit and follow me. Today we're going on a field trip," Barry informed them all once everyone had gathered. He then immediately entered the portal.

Upon passing through the portal the class would find themselves on a giant circular platform with nothing but the night's sky in front of them. Nearby was a giant gas planet with very prominent rings orbiting it. The floor of the platform was a simple circular platform though around the edges were what appeared to be human-sized hamster balls. The second thing they would notice is that as soon as they stepped off the platform they would be floating.

"Welcome to zero gravity," Barry informed them. "I've got dramamine patches for those of you who easily get motion sick. You don't want to puke in zero gravity. It's not pretty."

Barry gestured around them. "Currently we are under a giant domed force field so you kids can see what outer space is like up close. Without all the light pollution on Earth you can see the sky more clearer than you could ever see on the ground. We are currently 3.7 billion miles from Earth. This is the very same spot that Voyager 1 turned around and took a picture of Earth. Carl Sagan talked NASA into turning Voyager around to take the picture which stirred up a bunch of shit with other scientists because of the effort and cost involved."

He then turned and pointed at an almost invisible blue dot. "See that? That's where we started from," Barry said before pulling out his tablet. "For those of you from another planet or advanced scientific cultures this probably isn't new to you. I brought you out here for some fucking perspective. And to give you a better perspective I'm going to play you some excellent fucking words from the guy I just mentioned."

Tapping a button on his tablet the voice of Carl Sagan came into the room.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Barry turned off the recording and gave his class a small smile. "So. Now that we've heard how small we are from Carl, how about we take a look around the universe?"

He pointed to the human-sized hamster balls. "Jump in and seal the door behind you and take a walk around the fucking stars. Take your observation journals with you and write down your impressions," he instructed and then pointed to another table filled with books. "Or if you're not up for wandering around space you can write an essay for me here. The spheres will protect you from anything that's out there and I'll pull you back in when class is over. Choice is up to you kids.

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Wei Wuxian took a notebook with him and promptly abandoned it in favor of staring at everything. He spotted Julius and grinned, waving an enthusiastic hello. Then his brows dipped in puzzlement. "I thought you were afraid of heights?"

It took Julius a long second to remember what Wei Wuxian was talking about. And then grew very flustered as she struggled to come up with an excuse. "Uhh. It's different out here," he explained quickly. "Nothing to give me, uh, scale? Or, umm. Vertigo?"

"Oh, okay," Wei Wuxian said. "Isn't this amazing? You'd never get this high on a sword!"

"On a sword?" Julius asked. "Is that an idiom?"

"No, an actual sword. Cultivators fly on them." At least the ones that still had their golden core. Wei Wuxian took a stance that a modern eye might associate with a skateboard as a demonstration. He shrugged. "It's useful. This is better!"

"...People fly on swords?" Julius asked, blinking. "That's so cool!"

Not as cool as having your own wings, but...SWORDS.

"Yeah, yeah," Wei Wuxian waved his hand. "When it comes to traveling, I prefer a donkey. It gets cold on a sword." He shivered dramatically. "Brr!"

"You fly on the flat, right?" Julius asked. "The edge would just be silly. Do you have to stand? Or do you practice sitting and balancing on it?"

"You stand on the flat. Kids usually use a lot of spiritual energy trying to stay upright, but once you've got some practice it's pretty natural," Wei Wuxian said. "Sometimes you can carry a passenger."

"So you just...balance on a sword as it zooms through the air?" Julius asked, eyes wide. "...That doesn't sound very aerodynamic."

Neither did being a big, feathered lizard, Julius, hush.

"But I bet it looks awesome!"

Wei Wuxian waggled his hand in the air. "Eh. It's convenient, though. Everyone carries their sword everywhere," said the man carrying a flute, "so you can always move quickly if you need to."

Fuck Yeah! Science! - Monday 9/14 Period One

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