Our next meeting is tomorrow night, Thursday, February 4th, in Gonzaga College, Ranelagh at 8pm. The talk on the night is “A Voyager Looks Back” and will be about the mission of the Voyager 2 spacecraft. The talk will explore not just the probes Grand Tour of the outer solar system but also the events of the time period (both personal and worldwide) back on Earth from Voyager’s launch in 1977 to Neptune flyby in August 1989. Hope to see you along!
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Congratulations to the Gonzaga College students who won prizes in the recent Young Scientists exhibition and also to students in Belvedere College who also won awards at the event.
Gonzaga pupils Ben McRedmond and Patrick O’Doherty won first prize in the Senior Group of the Technology Category for their project “Analysing social networking data to identify trends on the web”. A number of complex computer programs were created by the boys to search for key words and phrases on sites like Twitter to build an analysis of trends. It’s an exciting area of research as we become more connected via social sites and the internet. The idea of using statistical data to predict trends is well established and my first reaction on hearing of the guys work was to think of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series which introduced the idea of psychohistory — predicting the future of humanity based on the actions of a large group of individuals. You can read more on the subject at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional) and ponder whether science fiction could some day become science fact.
The other winner in Gonzaga was Rory Hughes who came joint first in the Junior Individual section of the Technology Category for his wireless electricity controller. Well done to all the students who entered who showed the innovation and flair for science in schools around Ireland.
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The weekend of February 12/13 sees Galway Astronomy Club hosting their Astronomy Festival in the Westwood House Hotel in Galway City. An exciting programme is planned and two talks will be held on Friday, February 12th while Saturday has a full series of lectures. More details are at http://galwayastronomyclub.com/ and http://www.irishastronomy.org/cms/forum?func=view&catid=11&id=81793
