The Scale of the Universe 5 Minutes on the Farm

Think about your favorite science fiction space opera.  Whether it’s Star Wars, Star Trek, or something more obscure like Larry Niven’s Ringworld novels, sooner or later someone’s going to jump into a spaceship, mutter some mumbo jumbo about warp drives, light jumps or wormholes and go winging past the stars at some fantastic speed,  crossing to the other side of the galaxy in a matter of minutes. It makes for great storytelling, but it’s all bunk. Even if faster than light travel were possible — and most scientists think it isn’t — spaceships would spend not lifetimes, not generations, but hundreds of thousands of years to get to anywhere really interesting.  The Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has a new program designed to impress us with just how really, really big the universe is. Dr. Jean Creighton, Director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium joined Monday Buzz host Brian Standing on January 13, 2020.