Don’t get
me wrong; I love science.
If you’re
like me, you do too, and not because of how you use it in your daily lives, but
because of how much you don’t realize it until something breaks, aches or
bakes.
It’s
possible, thanks to science, to cook a chicken pot pie in a microwave oven, or
if going viral on YouTube is your goal, to blow up an egg in one. Science is
the reason we’re now using telephones as cameras and can instantaneously send videos
of our dogs performing stupid human tricks to millions of strangers around the
world (for now, we won’t discuss videos of us performing stupid pet tricks, but
you know who you are).
We can also
thank science for the recent discovery of a mysterious and long-sought subatomic
particle. “We are reaching into the fabric of the universe like we’ve never
done before,” said scientist Joe Incandela, adding that they’ve “found the key
to the structure of the universe.”
As an
armchair domestic egghead, Joe, I can relate. That’s exactly how I felt when I
finally vacuumed the rug under the bed and found the key to my house.
Winter in
the North Country is a good time to talk about
all things scientific. It’s too cold to read poetry, too dark to write it, and
the roads are too icy to even risk a trip to the store for a microwaveable
chicken pot pie, though I did once make a mad slip-sliding snowstorm dash to
the store to satisfy a Cheez-Its craving.
Wait … the
roads were suffering from “wintry conditions,” would say the scientist … the
same one who failed to deliver an overcast weather report as six inches of
partly cloudy in my basement.
By the way,
when I looked up the word “science” in my synonym finder, it said “science.” Thus,
for the following, let’s just call this a study in Leonardology.
Today, I
became an amateur Leonardologist when I read a story about how NASA scientists recently
“beamed a picture of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, to a
powerful spacecraft orbiting the moon, marking a first in laser communication.”
Wow! Were
YOU even aware that we had a “powerful spacecraft” up there going around the
moon? I wasn’t. It’s called an LRO, or “Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter,” and it
now, apparently, has a picture of the Mona Lisa on its dashboard visor.
It’s
fitting that the Mona Lisa, painted by a man who designed a parachute 420 years
before Wilbur & Orville Wright proved that bicycles can fly, was picked by
scientists to be the first image transmitted through space via laser beams. To
me, Mona Lisa and the Man in the Moon have the same scientific smile.
The major
breakthrough, of course, is that the image was transmitted with a laser beam,
not with radio waves. Big deal, NASA. I was successfully experimenting with primitive
lasers on one sunny boyhood day when I scorched my name into the picnic table
and burned down the lilacs with a magnifying glass.
To date,
we’ve brought back 842 pounds of rocks from the moon, and left behind almost
375 thousand pounds of junk cars, flagpoles and golf balls. Again, I can
relate, Leonardologically. That’s the same deposit-withdrawal ratio when I go
to the landfill with my trash, and return from its recycling center with junk
car parts, an only slightly bent flagpole and a box of golf balls.
And, if I
had been Neil Armstrong, I’d have struggled with a moral dilemma if the
Sunshine Biscuit Company had promised me a lucrative endorsement deal if I’d
just take that first step onto the lunar surface and yell “Cheez-Its!”
I was also
not aware that we have six humans orbiting the earth in the ISS (International
Space Station). You can check their current workday schedule online. Right this
minute, there’s a scientist flying over your head in the ISS who is about to “post-sleep
inventory the atmospheric revitalization system carbon dioxide scrubber.” In amateur Leonardology-speak, I think that means
he’s going to count trees when he wakes up.
One of the
scientists aboard the ISS says that the most common question he’s asked by
schoolchildren is “What would happen to a marshmallow in space?”
Well, it
doesn’t take brain surgery on a rocket Leonardologist to know that it has
nothing to do with molecular density or subatomic structure or wintry
conditions.
If you looked
at it through a magnifying glass, it would roast and change into a ringer for
the Mona Lisa.
* * * * *
Author and Senior Wire News Service syndicated humor columnist B. Elwin Sherman launches his columns from Bethlehem, NH. Copyright 2013 by B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved. His new book, "Walk Tall and Carry a Big Watering Can", is scheduled for publication soon by Plaidswede Publishing.
This column and website/blog contents are protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Electronic or print reproduction, adaptation, or distribution without permission is prohibited. Ordinary internet links to this column at B. Elwin's website may be distributed without written permission.
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