Special relativity

Lately, Connor has been fascinated with stars and space and galaxies.  Every library day at school, he comes home with a different space book.  One week, I could tell that the teacher guided him to a more age-appropriate section b/c he came home with a variation of jack and the beanstalk.  But, the next week...back to the final frontier.

This morning, he spotted a Stephen Hawking special on the universe and physics.  ???  I know, right???!

There were so many "OH MY WORD!"'s and "Look and this Mama!" and "There are ROBOTS studying Mars!" that I could hardly hear the show. 

Some of his observations and questions about it:

--So, Mama, when was the Earth quite young? (yep, he said 'quite')
--Daddy, there have been robots studying Mars since the 70's.  (to which, Daddy said that he was born in the early 70's). Wha!  The robots have been there a LONG time!
--Are the ice crystals on the moon turned into water that we drink?
--I can't believe that humans are in outer space. (then, daddy qualified it and said that humans only live on Earth).  But, Daddy, isn't Earth in outer space....so aren't we in outer space too....sort of?  (Wow, smart boy!)


The other night, we walked outside to try and spot Venus just before bedtime.  When he found out you can see Venus and sometimes Jupiter in the night sky he was all "no way!".  We stood there and watched for 15 minutes or so while four or five stars popped out.  He noticed that some were "blinking"...I told him they were twinkling and sometimes they looked like that b/c of the way the Earth's atmosphere curved and all the gases made it look 'flickery'.  He said, "Just like the silly mirror at the museum!"

Science is so much more fun through their eyes!