Bedtime, August 25, 2015

Bea: Daddy, is the earth the center of the universe?

Byron: Nope.

Bea: Ok. That's what Annie said too. (Annie from The Magic Treehouse).

Bea: Who's the philosopher?

Byron: Socrates? Plato?

Bea: No. No. 

Byron: Aristotle? 

Bea: Yes! Aristotle.  He thought the earth WAS the center of the universe. And you know King Phillip? His son, Alexander the Great...Aristotle was his teacher. He (Alexander) had a wild stallion, named Bersephulus.

Byron: That's right. Yes. And then many, many years later there was this guy name Copernicus who solved a problem and learned that the earth is not the center of the universe. 

Bea: Can we see Pluto?

Byron: We can't. It's too far away. But we sent a satellite to take pictures of Pluto. It took the satellite 10 years to make the journey. 

They go on chatting. I won't be home this weekend, so they talked about their weekend plans. Bea wants to go to the natural history museum. Byron is game for that, of course. He also suggested a movie at the IMAX. Modern times that we live in, he took out his phone to see what was playing. Turns out their is great feature on dark space. Bea was quite intrigued. She claims to be quite fascinated with outer space. There is also another movie on humpback whales. Byron showed her the preview, which reminded him of a story he heard on NPR on his way to work about the anniversary of some of the first sonar recordings of humpback whales from the 1960's. He let Bea listen to those too. Then he whipped the whole topic right back around to Pluto.  

Byron: Did you know that these recordings were included on the Voyager's trip?