Distant Vision

Courtesy of Richard Massey (who just sent this link round by email), here is President Obama holding an Astronomy Night at the White House. The man is always a hypnotic orator – but hearing him tell a crowd of schoolkids how Galileo changed the world is just magical. Love it.

He looks through a telescope at a double double star that is one hundred sixty light years from Earth. (Epsilon Lyrae I think). Definitely a far-sighted politician.

Mind you, Gordon Brown’s February Oxford speech was pretty damn good too. (Here is my post on that). Maybe I am a sucker for the purple words, and should concentrate on the money ?

3 Responses to Distant Vision

  1. Michael Merrifield says:

    Gets really scary when you find yourself agreeing with David Willetts, though:

    Speaking at a fringe meeting of the party conference in Manchester this week, David Willetts said: “We do not wish to get into the clunky business of defining the outputs of research projects in advance.”

    He said it was “particularly offensive” to force academics to tick boxes for bureaucratic purposes and suggested that research councils disregard impact statements when awarding grants.

    (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=408581&c=2 )

  2. Colin Cunningham says:

    If you watch the video carefully, I think you will notice that neither Barack Obama nor Michelle could really make out what they were looking at! As someone comments on the YouTube page, perhaps they should have chosen something more obvious, like Jupiter!
    Great speech though!

  3. Mr Physicist says:

    Anyone for “Astronomy Night at 10 Downing Street”?

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