Nanaimo Astronomy Society members won't think about the universe in quite the same way after this month's guest presentation.
David Prud’homme will present 'The Wonder and Awe of the Universe' at the society's next meeting Thursday, Oct. 24.
The former president of the Edmonton Centre chapter of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada is passionately interested in astronomy and space exploration. He and his wife, Linda, have travelled to see eclipses as far away as Aruba, Libya and Australia. He is a volunteer instructor with Mid Island Elder College, recently revived as a new non-profit society, where he teaches two courses: Introduction to the Night Skies and Space Race: Quest for the Moon.
Prud’homme’s presentation arose out of his passion for mathematics and the challenge of scaling sizes of objects and distances to provide analogies describing the expanse of space between objects in the physical universe.
“Mathematics has always fascinated me and when I was teaching my course, Introduction to the Night Skies, at Elder College, I did a bit of calculations, scaling things down to smaller units to see how much empty space there is out there and so much of it boggled my mind,” Prud’homme said.
One of his calculations reduced the sun to the size of a sewing pin, and he questioned and re-calculated the figure four times before he was satisfied the result was correct – if the sun were that size, the next nearest star would be in Tofino.
“So what I’ve done is taken these kinds of concepts and put them together right down to how far the electron is from [the atom’s] nucleus, to how little or how much matter there really is in the universe.”
Hearing about so much space in between everything, including the atoms of solid matter, has raised questions over the years from his audiences that Prud’homme has had to deal with, such as when we sit on chairs, why don’t we just fall through them, or when we clap our hands, why they don’t just pass through each other instead of impacting to make noise?
His talk also explores the comparative dimensions of planets within the Solar System and distances between them and the nearest neighbouring stars.
“I’m also going to talk about how far Voyager 1 [space probe] has travelled since it left 47 years ago and … if it was going directly to the nearest star, how far along the path would it be?” Prud’homme said. “Well, it’s gone over 24.5 trillion kilometres and it’s nowhere near the star yet.”
In terms of interstellar travel, he said Voyager 1 “hasn’t left the driveway.”
“There’s so much empty space out there and we really don’t know a lot about it … We know distances only because of the speed of electromagnetic radiation,” he said. “That’s the kind of stuff I want to deal with. Just the stuff that, when you hear it, [you think], 'that can’t be right.'”
Prud’homme will speak at the Nanaimo Astronomy Society’s meeting Thursday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m. at the Beban Park Social Centre. Society vice-president Chris Boar and member Tony Puerzer will also report on their trip to the Mt, Kobau Star Party this past summer. For more information, visit www.nanaimoastronomy.com.
