Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Of black holes and rust

Last week I read this book that I had borrowed from a friend - George's Secret Key to the Universe by Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy Hawking.
The book is meant for children aged around 9 to 11 and does a good job of presenting science in a very interesting format. Concepts about the solar system are presented in a simple manner complete with pictures and data snippets and fit into a storyline full of adventure that children would absolutely enjoy.


One of the pictures in the book is this image captured by NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit of a sunset in mars. The picture does look a whole lot more 'real' stretched across a full glossy page, so much that I must've spent minutes on this one view. Pictures of galaxies, computer generated images of moons, infrared pics of the sun inspire awe. A sunset in another planet made me pause and imagine.