Space in your Face!

Space in your Face

is a monthly educational event, where local Astrobiologists discuss various topics of space science in comical/entertaining ways. It is held at the Deer Pile venue in Denver. Often the events will feature hilarious skits such as “Sarcastic Earth” and “Getting to know Uranus”, and radical raps by the all girl Beastie Boy cover band “Gang Stars” composed of Raea Hicks and Julia DeMarines. The first edition of Space in your Face was February 2013.

Julia DeMarines is project lead of this effort, with contributions from Raea Hicks and Alex Venetucci.

Constellations: How the constellations came to be, their myths, and their science: Focusing on Perseus and Leo but could be adapted to whatever ones (aka what cool stars/galaxies/exoplanets are in Perseus)

Failure to Launch: A play-by-play on the most epic failures, that ultimately lead the US to the Moon, during the space race. – This one features sweet video clips that are also terrifying.

Venus – So Hot Right Now: This one is all about Venus exploration – past, present, and future. (did you know that there is a manned mission in development to send a blimp to the Venusian clouds… I mean… WHAT?!)

Uranus, and other large gassy objects: Gas giants, icy giants, and as many butt innuendoes as possible.

The NEW Solar System: This presentation goes through basic orbital dynamics, as well as a tour of the solar system, spouting out cool facts about each planet giving them first place ribbons for what their best at. I usually do the Beastie Boys, Paul Revere solar system cover song with this one.

Dudes… Mars: Mars stuff! Curiosity rover stuff, viking mission stuff, Phobos and Deimos stuff, info on humans on Mars, and an activity where students break into small groups to plan a mission to Mars and are tasked to overcome 5 challenges faced during a mission to Mars.

Habitability: Talking about water, temperature, pressure and how the habitable zone is evolving. We made a stupid/awesome spice girls cover song (“If you want liquid water” set to the tune of “if you wanna be my lover”)

Astrobiology: A general overview of what Astrobiology is – this one I only gave a short presentation and let a biochemist doing Miller-Urey type work, and a philosopher discussing morality and ethics of space exploration

ET Life: All about the search for intelligent life in the Universe. Here I focus on the history of radio communication/SETI and the history of Messaging ET life. Then a discussion is had of whether or not we should be sending messages to aliens. Next we did an Alien Mad lib, which I highly recommend to every and all adults. Then a short talk on interspecies communication, and a short activity in trying to communicate who you are to your neighbor in three words (imitating the challenges faced with cost effective short messages).

xxx-oh-planets … ermmm … kind of like burlesque meets kepler. Well, more like over the top exoplanet detection method demonstration using people in fishnets and boas and lots of gyration.

Black Holes SUCK! : A presentation on the life cycle of stars complete with a funky remix of a Carl Sagan video monolog mashed with sweet beats… and for some reason… clips from The Three Amigos.

Earth… WTF? : A bit of a racy name, but talks about why Earth is so damn weird compared to all of the other planets in our solar system and of the discovered exoplanets. Chocked-full of cosmic perspective and Carl Sagan quotes.

Feb 2013 – The ‘New’ Solar System

March 2013 – Earth…WTF?

April 2013 – Space Race in your Face

May 2013 – Dudes…Mars.

June 2013 – Uranus! and other large gassy objects

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