Through The Nebulae.

Diwan Ghazza's amateur astronomers took off on a journey through the nebulae, the spectacular paintings across our  vast universe..

To kick start the event I delivered a cosmic perspective talk:

''The nebula is a beautiful cosmic contradiction, you may ask why?. It's in these deep beauties lies the secrets of star birth and death. When you gaze at a nebula you may find yourself wondering about what it once was, you start thinking about the colossal loss of the star death, the huge explosion that left this cosmic rubble, state of sadness might overcome you, and you start grieving this loss, and for a moment you forget about all this expanding space around you and you'd feel stuck in space and time.. 

But there's another side to the nebula story. A nebula is also the home of new beginnings, you might find yourself gazing with optimism wondering about the future potentials being  born in front of your eyes, how many news stars are being formed, how many new solar systems and how many of them could form planets that could support life.. you find yourself light-hearted with happiness and you start to see possibilities where you thought they would never exist.. It depends on how you see it, so let your cosmic cups be half full today and let our journey through the nebulae inspire you to see the optimistic possibilities.''

I finished my talk and scanned the audience and I was overjoyed to see smiles on their faces, they seemed receptive and excited, and then the movie rolled, we started watching the documentary ''The Nebulae'' from the TV series ''The Universe'' a production of History Channel.

''Nebulae are everything in the galaxy that stars are not''

An hour long of beautiful imagery of the colorful glowing clouds of gases known as nebulae. We felt what it would like to fly ''inside'' the Orion Nebulae, a breathtaking experience! The film also featured a segment on Astrophotography, how some amateur astronomers take their equipment and camp and spend hours and hours trying to catch the perfect photographs of the cosmic wonders especially nebulae. 

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After the documentary, Khaled Shehab, one of the team's organizer's presented a slide show themed ''We Are The Universe'' to point out our connection to the nebula we just watched and how the universe is not something that's ''out there'' not something that is disconnected from us but in fact it's something within us.

''We are all connected;

to each other biologically,

To the Earth, chemically,

To the rest of the universe atomically.''

- Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I'm so proud of the Diwan Ghazza amateur astronomers, you guys are astronomically amazing! :)

#Atoms2Cosmos

After organizing two successful events with the support and participation of Dr.Suleiman Baraka  we managed to attract a huge audience and everyone seemed eager to be a part of this new merging community of Space fanatics to enjoy the beauty of being a human at this moment in time surrounded by the most brilliant discoveries of science. Membership applications were arriving like crazy and the number reached over a hundred applicant some of which are life-long Space Geeks. As I looked through the applications to pick out my ‘’Organizers Team’’ and as I read their answers, I muttered to myself: ‘’Hey, there’s life on this planet, I’m not alone.’’.  The team was selected and I held our first brainstorming meeting to discuss our vision and ideas for the future. And that was the moment when the Diwan Ghazza ‘’astronomy club’’ advanced to be the ‘’Amateur Astronomers Club’’

I was very impressed with their energy and enthusiasm, you could just feel the passion flooding their hearts and eyes and I thought to myself: This is going to be fun!

We all had agreed on the topic of our next event and wheels were turning to get everything ready for the Big Day, the day of our first team event.

The idea of #Atoms2Cosmos was presented by the brilliant  Amjad Shehada (Communication Engineering Student)   He proposed the BBC documentary series and suggested the idea of the event, we all agreed on watching it first and then discussing the selection. And we did.

The team liked the documentary because of its simplicity and elegance, now we had to agree about the dynamic of the event. And another meeting was held.

The Big Day:

We arrived 2 hours earlier to practice and solve any potential problems and avoid any delays. The time was approaching 3 pm and people were arriving and the event was on.

Mohammad Al-Muzaini (Architecture Student) did an amazing job presenting the concept of the today’s event along with a historical background about the discovery of the atom. The interactive introductory was smooth and fun; some space jokes were made and the audience seemed to be pleased.

The second segment of the event was screening the BBC documentary: Atoms, Keys To The Cosmos. The audience watched and tweeted their thoughts and feelings to #Atoms2Cosmos.

The third and final segment of the event was an interactive discussion between the audience and Amjad who presented the interactive video ‘’The Scale Of The Universe’’ http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html and took us from Planck length through atoms, cells, humans, trees, earth, moon, Jupiter, sun, Polaris, the horsehead nebula all the way to the Known Universe just to get a sense of our place in this colossal universe.

Our event has ended and we couldn’t be happier with its success. Our first team event. I couldn’t be prouder of my team. They are brilliant and passionate and we’ll surprise you in our future events, stay tuned! 

Dark Matter: A Change in Perspective.

                               ‘’It’s the stuff that makes up you and me but it’s not shining.’’- Richard Ellis.

One of the simplest definitions of dark matter. It’s an invisible matter that fills our universe. Dark matter lured scientists to its secretes when Professor Fritz Zwicky measured the motion of a cluster of galaxies and calculated how much mass it ‘’should’’ contain, he discovered that the mass that makes this high speed is much larger than the ‘’visible’’ matter that appeared to light up the cluster, actually at least 400 times larger. It appeared as if something was missing, actually, colossal thing.

We know the galaxies are formed of stars, nebulae, planets, cosmic dust and countless of comets and moons, that’s what you see when you look at a picture of a galaxy, you see glowing pinpoints, millions of them and you think, there’s nothing more to it.

There is more than what you see.

Our human bodies are like the galaxies of our vast universe, when you see a human, you see their physical form, but you know, being a human yourself that there is more than flesh and bones to you. You act upon what you think, your facial expressions change depending on how you feel, you speak of what you think is socially acceptable. But even that is a superficial look to us as humans. As it was to assume that galaxies are only made of the stars and things that you see. But wait, let’s not get judgmental, a change of perspective does not happen over night.

It took years for astronomers to entertain the mere idea of dark matter and a lot of work to try to develop ways to detect it, and yet zero dark matter particles were directly detected. So how do you know it even exists if you can’t see it or prove it’s there? Well, it’s simple, scientists observed the radical effect that this dark matter exerts on the universe, it has a huge gravitational attraction that was able to influence the speed of entire galaxies. It has to be there right?

‘’Scientists now realize it’s not what shines in the light but what hides in the dark that holds the true secrets of our sky’’- The Universe series.

Dark matter particles are very rebellious, they don’t absorb light, and they don’t emit light, however, they ‘’deflect’’ the light like all matter does. And once new techniques were used scientist discovered that 96% of the universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy. . It’s everywhere, it binds stars and galaxies together, it affects their speeds, and it’s basically the skeleton of our universe. Kind of insane right? A huge shift of perspective.

The same thing goes to us on the human level, we are breathing-walking creatures, but there’s more to us than skin and bones, there’s more to us than what an X-ray can reveal. Your muscles, heart and lungs do not make you human. Your pain, your emotions (unless correctly directed) don’t make you human enough either. So what does? Just like our universe, the secret lies within.

Astronomers didn’t need to look very far to find the answer, dark matter is literally everywhere, and it connects everything you see. You don’t have to look far either, the answer is inside you.

Think about it. What really made you the human that you are at this point in your life? To most

Of us out there, the answer would be ‘’I am who I am today because I followed everything I was told was expected of me.’’ You were taught to think a certain way to meet the social standards, which are not always correct as you already know and may not always be our true calling either. We even see ourselves in the light that others point on us whether it’s positive or negative, and it’s mostly negative.  We desperately seek their validation that we are good enough. Then we grow up and become miserable adults and we are the only ones who face the consequences of every choice we thought we were ‘’forced’’ to make because it’s the ‘’accepted’’ thing to do. Waking up every morning with a soul-ache because we have to go to a job that we hate, a job  that its sole purpose is to pay the bills.

You live your life going through the motions till you reach a point of meaninglessness. You stop feeling anything you become indifferent towards everything and everyone around. You function on your muscle memory. And the only reason you’re still doing it even though it’s making you miserable is because you believe you can’t change it, for whatever the reason, the excuse are countless. And I’m not interested in listing them here.

We lie to ourselves, a lot. We give ourselves permission to do certain things, act a certain way, limit ourselves and think this is it because we're ''told'' so. This is as far as we can go. Even if it doesn’t make sense, we do it anyways, and list countless of reasons why it’s Okay to put ourselves in a box. Maybe it feels good? Well good luck if it still feels good in 10 years.

It’s not until you realize that the power lies in you, that much like the dark matter, the largest quantities and qualities are deep inside your heart, how you feel about yourself, what you think about yourself determines how you interact with others and therefore gain everything you want. You can re-shape your reality if you change your ‘’perspective’’ of you. You don’t start by changing everything or everyone around you because you’d be resisting the truth.

It’s beautifully put in holly Quran:

‘’ALLAH does not change a people’s condition unless they change what is in their hearts’’ [13:11]

It’s a lot easier to think that you can change if you would adopt a positive attitude and think everything would turn around as if you’re flipping a light switch, I wish it was that simple.

The universal fact that is staring us in the face is that you unequivocally can not gain any long-term happiness if you don’t see yourself worthy of it. You must first seek self-validation from within.

The recipe is simple;

You must change your perspective of you, to change how you feel about you and develop habits that will support this view. Those critical factors are the dark matter that makes you a human being, its gravitational pull on your character keeps you mentally, emotionally and to a large extend-physically composed. It will hold you together; make you strong enough to face life. So I guess ‘’dark matter’’ is not as gloomy as it sounds?