 The technology of combining observations from several telescopes some distance apart is called interferometry. Using this technology, astronomers will study the farthest and most mysterious objects in the universe--objects such as quasars, neutron stars, supernovae, and, yes, black holes!
But by playing our new board game,
|
|
you can take an imaginary trip to a black hole right now!
You will also visit such interesting places as a giant array of radio telescopes in the New Mexico desert and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Then you will blast into space and visit the Earth-orbiting Japanese VSOP Radio Telescope (launched in 1997) and Russia's RadioAstron telescope (planned for launch in October 2008).
Then you will leave Earth orbit and go on to explore other galaxies, an interstellar gas cloud, a neutron star, and finally, a black hole! You will earn "Antigravity Tokens" along the way, so that you will be able to escape from the black hole's tremendous gravitational force.
You will need Adobe Reader to view and print the game. If you don't have Acrobat, you can get it free now.
This is a game for 2, 3, or 4 players. The game board covers six 8-1/2 x 11-inch pages.
Be sure to set your printer to print "Landscape," not "Portrait"!
Cut off the white borders on each page and tape the pieces together. You will also print and cut out Adventure Cards, Antigravity Tokens, and player markers. To make the player markers easy to handle, we suggest you glue them onto buttons, pebbles, bottle caps, corks, or some other small objects. You will also need a single die (one of a pair of dice) or a spinner from another game that has only numbers 1 through 6.
Read the rules and good luck on your adventures!
|
Exploring black holes from a safe distance is one of the jobs of the international Space Very Long Baseline Interferometry Program (Whew! SVLBI for short). SVLBI is bringing together radio telescopes around the world and in space to create a huge "virtual radio telescope" larger than Earth.
