Arrival - Blog Posts

In 2013, researchers published a shape model of asteroid Bennu based on years of observations from Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory. Their model depicted a rough diamond shape. Five years later, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has reached the asteroid, and data obtained from spacecraft’s cameras corroborate those ground-based telescopic observations of Bennu. 

The original model closely predicted the asteroid’s actual shape, with Bennu’s diameter, rotation rate, inclination and overall shape presented almost exactly as projected! This video shows the new shape model created using data from OSIRIS-REx’s approach to the asteroid.

One outlier from the predicted shape model is the size of the large boulder near Bennu’s south pole. The ground-based shape model calculated it to be at least 33 feet (10 meters) in height. Preliminary calculations show that the boulder is closer to 164 feet (50 meters) in height, with a width of approximately 180 feet (55 meters).

Also during the approach phase, OSIRIS-REx revealed water locked inside the clays that make up Bennu. The presence of hydrated minerals across the asteroid confirms that Bennu, a remnant from early in the formation of the solar system, is an excellent specimen for the OSIRIS-REx mission to study. Get all the details about this discovery HERE.

Learn more about OSIRIS-REx’s journey at nasa.gov/osirisrex. 

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Review: Arrival (2016)

Rating: 9.0 of 10

When aliens come to earth, how do we talk to them? Arrival tries to answer the question with Amy Adams starring as Dr. Louise Banks, an American expert linguist. When 12 spaceships landed on earth for no apparent reason, she and a team that includes theoretical phycisist, Ian Donelly (Jeremy Renner), had been assigned with the difficult task to determine whether those aliens meant peace or harm.

Amy Adams plays Louise with restraint, but full of determination and no less affecting. Louise Banks is the heart and soul of this film, as she not only acts as our eyes and ears, but is also responsible for the tone of their whole mission. Unsurprisingly, governments want to attack as soon as possible for fear of invasion, but as the people around her grow more wary and anxious, her equanimity convinces them to remain peaceful--to keep communicating.

Arrival is a quiet film whose real action only comes in the form of a single explosion, but it is by no means devoid of tension. The first few minutes, as we and Louise found out about the alien landing was absolutely chilling, and more and more pressure is felt as Louise is forced to create results. Arrival is a story about big ideas, but it is especially moving because ultimately, it’s a story about Louise and her experiences. However, there are bits and pieces that feel superfluous at first, but ultimately they pay off wonderfully at the end.

Arrival's imagery is the kind that will stay with you. It's visual strikingly beautiful, sometimes interposed with dreamlike flashbacks--accompanied with atmospheric score by Jóhann Jóhannsson. There is an ethereal quality about the film, without forgetting how to ground the characters and how to create tension when there need be. Some of the film's memorable imagery comes from the oval spaceship floating above green pasture, surrounded only with open air that is both calming and threatening.  It's directing (by Denis Villeneuve) is calculated but tender, creating a seamless journey from beginning to end. Arrival proves that no matter how a story ends, there is a journey worth taking.

Observations Through the Inescapable Looking Glass

11.9

Arrivals are realizations. Either our presence is realized, or we arrive at a previously unknown conclusion. In many ways, they are one in the same. In the context of travel both forms of realization remain relevant: whether we land in an unfamiliar place, or whether we find ourselves discovering new perspectives on an unfamiliar culture. When traveling, the two forms intertwine and form one’s true arrival. A traveler is most impressionable at first physical arrival to a place. In fact, before he has even touched foot on the strange soil he has already arrived at multiple opinions of said place. Once arriving in this new place every experience becomes a piece of an infinite puzzle; travelers generally start piecing together the puzzle as soon as they arrive, but these pieces of the puzzle are never clear. Maybe having travelled often the traveler has learned to keep an open mind, and not to jump to false understandings. But I think it is something plainer: something to do with viewing something from an inevitably outside perspective. This haze is one of the many nuances that define ethnocentricity, or in this case, viewing a culture from a foreigner’s point of view.

My arrival began when I landed in Boston. That is when it began to sink in. I was leaving my home country and culture, my family and friends, my life in many respects, for a transitory existence that would only last nine short months. But after somewhat reluctantly saying goodbye to my mother the idea of nine months abroad began to feel anything but short. My arrival commenced with the realization of leaving the United States and starting the “life-changing” adventure everyone promised me it would be. All I could think about were the trifling cultural differences between France and the United States. I did not wear sweatpants like I normally would have. I tried to keep my hair messy and my outfit simple; for the first time in my life I wanted more than anything to blend in with my surroundings. I kept practicing my introduction in my head trying to improve my sorry French accent. Thoughts swirled through my head, growing and growing as I gave each idea attention, until I was blessed with chaos. The quintessential airport environment, filled with that specific emotion that lies on the fine line between anxiety and excitement, began to distract me from my worries, my anxieties, and my independent, uncontrollable thoughts, drowning me in excitement and anticipation. I was one of the first students to pass the border from familiarity to the unknown. As soon as I left my mother and crossed to the other side of the divide I knew I had to look forward. But the idea of inevitably experiencing France from a foreigner’s view lingered in my mind. I wanted desperately to be what I could never be: an insider.            When we arrived at Charles de Gaulle I looked around at the familiar European advertisements, and beneath them the crowds of people that I would hopefully soon be apart of, or at least appear to be. I have travelled to this country many times before and am familiar with the culture through proxy of my grandfather’s French nationality. I tried to mimic some of his mannerisms and kept him with me in the back of my mind. As I walked through the E.U. line of customs and handed the guard my Swiss passport I tried to speak as little as I could to avoid standing out. My heritage offered great comfort to my anxieties of cultural exclusion. My physical arrival began. While arrivals are sometimes depicted as moments of clarity, vividly remembered for years to come, a certain haze, as I mentioned earlier, seems to always accompany my arrivals abroad. Again, I am an outsider never able to see as locals do. The haze is an almost inexplicable feeling. At moments of arrival, a time when heightened presence would be expected, almost necessary, I feel entirely un-present. I feel almost as though I am having an out-of-body experience in a way. Everything I do, everything I say, I picture in my head what it would look like in the eyes of others. It is possibly a physical phenomenon connected to sleep deprivation, or perhaps it is the traveler in me who desires more than anything to travel through the cultures around the world as a member of each and every culture, and not to travel as an outsider. A world traveler can even feel in limbo at times, between a citizen of the world, learned in many cultures, and a patriot learned in only one. But in truth this learned traveler can only genuinely know one culture for each traveler knows each place uniquely, because in truth no traveler sincerely knows said place at all. Instead, his knowledge is a combination of notions preconceived and outside perceptions, yet perceptions grounded with truth nonetheless. It is most similar to a memory, but one that resembles that of a painting of an amateur work of watercolor, the artist having used too much water and too little paint. That which holds little validity is the water, and that which weighs more heavily through experience is the paint. Although a traveler can infinitely better the quality of his masterpiece, he can never avoid being an outsider: having too much water and too little paint. My first perceptions on arrival were inevitably coated with this foreign haze. I consistently try to diminish the haze and blend with my surroundings, like when we first played the scavenger hunt game. I never held the map in my hands and tried to walk swiftly, I did not want to be labeled “tourist” and excluded from the culture before I ever had the chance to explore it, but no matter how hard I try I am aware that I share the shame of every traveler because I will never be more than a traveler. Each of us holds a different view because we, as travelers, are forced to study foreign cultures from the outside. This outlook is something complex and entirely unique to each traveler, who first creates their imagination of the specified place, and then slowly supplements truths of said place for their preconceived ideas continuously approaching the divine arrival, but never reaching it. For an outsider will never become an insider, no matter how determined, no matter the extent of cultural knowledge, no matter anything at all.