One of the things NASA takes seriously is the goal of educating people about astronomy. Happily, while everyone takes the goal seriously, they’re not necessarily serious about how to achieve that goal…
Enter IRrelevant Astronomy: a series of educational videos about astronomy, leaning on the infrared aspects of it (because it’s created by folks with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which sees in the IR). These aren’t the bland, dull videos of yesteryear! The videos in this series are really, really funny – I mean laugh-out-loud funny – and frequently feature celebrities like Felicia Day and Sean Astin.
They just released a new one, “Destroyer of Worlds”, and I bet you just might recognize the voice of The Physician…
There were many times I was laughing at this video. And not just at Wil Wheaton’s voice acting (though he’s really good at this). It’s got that perfect Warner Brothers cartoon zeitgeist: kids will like the zaniness, and the adults will get the jokes. I’m not sure if my favorite part is the insect-like spaceship near and dear to my heart seen several times, or The Physician’s ship itself. Either way, this is one of the best of the Spitzer videos. And the science, including binary stars disrupting their planets’ orbits, is pretty interesting and handled quite well.
Tip o’ the sonic screwdriver to Wil for blogging about this (and the link lurv).
Related posts:
- Felicia Day collides galaxies
- Robot Wil Wheaton takes over the Universe!
- Warm dusty rings glow around a weird binary star
- When worlds really do collide
