To Infinity And Beyond

Learning about Space at school was captivating, I think part of this is a realisation that the world which we felt that was so large was in fact a tiny speck within the Universe. We are not one of 10 or 20 planets, 1,000 or even one of a million...in fact we are one of an unlimited and unknown number of planets that exist. This is hard for us to comprehend and the idea that we have only discovered such a small percentage of what is actually out there is mind blowing. Although most of us have a curious fascination about life beyond our planet few of us ever develop this into our careers and continue this discovery, however I am grateful for those that do. Recently we just celebrated the 40th anniversary of the day man stepped foot on the Moon, which was an amazing feat of space science. However since this moment so many more experiments and and investigations have led to new discoveries of Space and although none of them involve stepping foot on another planet we have found new corners of the universe which we didn't know existed, planets appearing in our solar system, black holes & milkways and so much more, the continuing investigations are fascinating.

I thought I would let you know about this link I found on NASA's website, Astronomy Picture of the Day. Each day a new photograph/ image/ video is put up with an explination from professional Astronomers and each day the next image is even more enthralling than the one before. Some of the images seem so unreal as if they were created for a movie screen rather than are the result of a natural occurrence. Also it seems bizarre that some of these images are of stars that no longer exist or of events that occurred thousands of years before we were even born but the images took this long to reach us even with the speed of light because they are so far away. The whole concept is mind blowing and even though I am no longer at school I am still as curious and equally as captivated by the images I see coming from Space and I feel the same excitement I had as a kid by what i see.

This shows brilliantly how the sky changes as the earth revolves

SN 1006 Supernova:- Over 7,000 light years away from Earth

The Sun, Solar Prominence

The Moon, Jupiter and Venus over Los Angeles

Morning Glory Clouds Over Australia

Mars San Dunes acting like liquid

The Planets & Solar Eclipse over The Great Wall, China

Faces Of Evil

"The world is not threatened by evil people but by those who allow evil things to happen.”

Albert Einstein

The Face of Evil exhibition and book by Hans Weishäupl raises some interesting points of discussion and the video above shows how scary it is to see these faces again, for a moment when you see them moving you fear that they have come back to life and back to terrorise once more. History has given us an ability to understand the regimes of terror carried out by the person behind these faces and even more scarily some of these faces aren't from the past but are still in a position of power. However what Hans raises is an awareness that these faces are those of someone, who similar to you and I, has skin, flesh, eyes to see, ears to hear, blood and a heart needed to keep the blood flowing through their veins. However most of us would also like to distance ourselves from any similarity to The Faces of Evil and would like to have no association with people who created such hideous crimes against humanity we prefer to give them a notoriety for their crimes and a place in history that we can learn from and hold them as an example of how warped a human can become. So the question being raised is how is it that we let someone of such evil rise to a position of power to inflict such atrocities and how have we still not learnt from the past but allow this to happen again and again. As Hans says "Whilst everyone joins in to say "Never again!” after a reign of terror has ended, history shows that new tyrants can be allowed to rise to power again and again, in all parts of the world." This exhibition makes us question the role we play in this, are we maybe in some way to blame for allowing such people to rise to power? Maybe we have at some time been supporters of such evil until this evil morphed into something we lost control of?

The World Beneath The Waters Surface

Fact 1: 80% of the earth's surface is water

Fact 2: The deepest part of the ocean, Marianas Trench is 6.9 miles deep

'The Oceans' by Robert Barton

There is a magical mysterious world beneath sea level and one which the majority of us will only see in photographs or on TV footage. There are those who scuba dive with a passion, my housemate being one and she explained to me that although they have an interest in sea life and in part seeing the seals or pretty fish swimming around what makes a dive more interesting are the objects which have sunk and rock formations that occur only underwater it all helps to create an underwater playground for divers. It is interesting then to see that artist Jason Taylor has used this environment to create a great installation on the sea bed in Grenada, West Indies. These sculptures are forever changing as they become shaped with tidal movement and other sea life attaching themselves to the surface. Set against the natural underwater landscape the shapes stand out yet the material they are made from, rusting and transforming, makes them blend it as if they have been naturally formed there and sat at the bottom of the sea since the beginning of time.

o be underwater takes many pieces of equipment, dive suits, fins, masks and most importantly the oxygen tank and regulators, it's not natural for humans to be underwater for more than a minute or two. So artist Leandro Erlich has created a great installation The Swimming Pool which simply makes you question how the people beneath the water can be there. You look closer and can see them in dry clothes, they move quickly and they remain there for longer than a few minutes without coming up for a breath of air. It is a great installation that questions a humans ability to remain underwater and how unnatural an environment it is for us. It puts you in a position where you can feel what it like to be dry whilst being able to look up through the water and to experience all this without a need to hold your breath.

Each Grain Of Sand

This is quite amazing and something I had to put up to share with you. This was on the Ukrainian TV show Україна має талант similar to Britain's got Talent. This was the work of the 2009 winner Kseniya Simonova and her amazing abilities in creating sand drawings to music. The one below is a great example of what she creates, it is telling the story of love and war during The Patriotic War which most of us would know as World War 2.

She tells the story starting at the beginning of the war with a radio announcement about Germany invading the Soviet Union, through to the end of the war and returning to a new life back home. The Ukraine was one of the most devastated countries from the WW2 conflict with 1 in 4 Ukrainians dying during the fighting and a total loss of nearly 8 million Ukrainians with some of these losses coming from the jewish being taken to death camps. The country was left in ruins and Ksenyia was depicting a story which was really touching showing a small part of life within the Ukraine created stunningly to a mix of old and modern songs. At the end she signs off in Russian 'With us, in our hearts'.

">