John Shoffner flew to the International Space Station back in May, spending around 10 days in space. Now that he’s back on Earth, he’s working to inspire the next generation of astronauts to follow in his path.
Shoffner dedicated his mission to creating a 16-part series exploring what it's like living on the International Space Station. The series, Habitat Space, will be free for educators to use in the classroom with episodes that cover teaching topics. Shoffner shared how important it is to answer some of the questions that kids have about living in space.
"As the future comes, the 10-year-olds today are going to be the Martian astronauts, they're just beginning to realize that so [the goal is] to get students and also teachers to understand that these dreams are real," Shoffner said. "And for students that have aspirations and love of science or space, let's show them that how real it really is and let them start really tagging on to it."
Habitat Space is the first of many STEAM resources to come through Shoffner’s newly launched Perseid Foundation. In collaboration with MIT Media Lab, ISS National Lab, Crayola Experience and more, he aims to improve education in underserved schools of Appalachia and around the world with art-based programs like International Space Art and Poetry Contest.
Then, black holes. They’re destructive! They’re mysterious! And could they have a sibling? Paul Sutter, a research professor in cosmology at Stonybrook University, dives into the theoretical existence of white holes.
Sutter explains that due to the physics of general relativity, white holes should exist. Although white holes are similar to black holes, they act in an opposite manner.
"The white hole is actually the time reversed mirror image of a black hole. It's the evolution formation and evolution of a black hole just run backwards in time and general relativity because it is time symmetric because it doesn't care about the flow of time, we get both solutions," Sutter explained.
