Imagination, Pulp Fiction, Exploration & Science

Imagination, Pulp Fiction, Exploration & Science

A Talk by G. J. Wasserburg, Professor Emeritus California Institute of Technology

This is an illustrated talk outlining some aspects of "imagination" as found in popular writings & in serious works through history. It looks at where "imagination" may excite progress & where it begins to break down & cease to guide us to what is "real". It is meant to stimulate thought on what really constitutes exploration and how popularization both stimulates and confuses real exploration. The influence of "From the Earth to the Moon" by Jules Verne and insights into the political-social forces that led to the Apollo Missions will be presented. Buck Rogers & Dick Tracy will play a major role exhibiting the stimulation of advances & the injection of hallucinatory visions into the exploration of the "real" Universe. The effects of a modern Zap gun will be exhibited. A quick look at what Cro-Magnon man did & the deeds of his more modern successors will be commented upon, as well as the supremacy of comic strip "heroes" in governing what we may try to do.

HIG 110, UH Manoa Campus

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

7:30 PM

Talk Sponsored by the W. M. Keck Cosmochemistry Laboratory, the NASA Pacific Regional Planetary Data Center, the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, and the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology.

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Tara Hicks Johnson
Outreach Specialist
School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology
University of Hawaii at Manoa
2525 Correa Road, HIG 135
Honolulu, HI 96822
(808) 956-3151, (808) 956-9987 fax