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I really enjoyed the Christmas Meeting yesterday. Two excellent pro speakers talking about cutting edge science in a very accessible way and a great opportunity to meet up with many people. Very many thanks to Hazel Collett, our meetings secretary, and to everyone else who contributed to making the meeting a success.
For those that couldn’t make it the good news is that the video recording worked perfectly this time and all three talks will be up on the website soon. They are currently being rendered and this takes a while. In the meantime my Sky Notes are on our public Youtube channel here. Many thanks to everyone who provides material for these notes, either through the members’ section of our website or directly.
Thanks Nick. According to the Beeb, the Hawaiian name for 1I/2017 U1 is pronounced oh MOO-uh MOO-uh.
Definitely a great meeting. The Christmas meeting is always a big event for me as, living in Australia, it is the only one that I can attend during the year.
Nick, I would like to add to your comments an appreciation of your Sky Notes, particularly the section about the interstellar asteroid. Rama immediately came to my mind when I first heard of the object. Not so sure though about the word you chose to describe Arthur C Clarke’s writing style? I am sure you are deliberately stirring 🙂
The videos of all three talks are now on the website here.
John, Thanks. I guess it was slightly OTT. I’m not a great fan of Clarke’s style but “turgid” was definitely unfair. His sci-fi contains a lot of very good stuff but he concentrates on technical detail rather than characters. In any case Rama is definitely worth a read and the parallels with ‘Oumuamua are interesting. In general reading sci-fi from that era shows that we have advanced far more rapidly in some areas (e.g. computers, telescopes, imaging) than most authors expected, and far more slowly in others (manned spaceflight, politics?).
And the Guardian has ‘Oumuamua on its front page today. Hmmm. And I was worried that the Daily Mail might pick it up.
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