Space — Different kinds

When I was a 5-year-old, I knew there was only one kind of space, which was the outer space. In a warm summer night, when we had the family gatherings on the house roof with live music performed by the members of the family, our kiddie eyes used to look at the sky and check out all the stars. It was part of the childhood that can be still very memorable. We used to apply all our space related knowledge from our text books and used to hold long debate with our siblings and the cousins on whether it was a star or a planet, how to differentiate between the two, was there any possibility to point to the milky way…the person used the most difficult words, won the race; being nominated as the most intellectual kid in the family. Our small heads were surrounded with bigger words as cosmic space, interstellar space, planetary space, Sirius, Achernar, Vega etc. Of course, I am talking about the 90’s Dhaka, which had lot less pollution in the air and lot more visibility in the sky. This was even more fun when we used to visit our grand parents’ house in the country side once a year. We could observe wide open sky from the miles’ wide paddy fields with no real obstructions.

When we had the first planetarium in our city, we were super excited to visit. I still can remember the day, it was a family fun time arranged by my parents. We could see the planets in a dreamy indoor ‘fake’ sky. Saturn was my favorite planet for the rings. It was surprising how a 6-year-old could pick up a planet based on its look as the most favorite one over the mother planet we were living on. I had to confirm, so I asked my 6-year-old few days back about her favorite planet and yes, obviously Saturn was her favorite one too.

I can remember the time when we were expecting the full solar eclipse. We used to make special glasses out of old X-ray sheets to protect our eyes. When the day came, I was at school with my home-made X-ray glasses. It was cold and darker and somewhat ethereal. But above all it was super fun to watch the full eclipse with my friends at school. I even composed a short story on the solar eclipse afterwards and read out loud to the class, which was highly applauded.

When we went over the section in our books where it discussed the exploration of the moon or when we watched the few clips of the documentary related to this, we were super enchanted. According to Neil Armstrong:

“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

And it was an equal big leap in our little curious hearts to think about the moment, when he first stepped on the moon. I even grew a preference to ‘Neil Armstrong’ name as it sounded very cool to me. As far as I can remember I might have named one of my pet pigeons after him as well.

After this not so long thought on today’s topic, which is ‘space’, my curious mind tried to search on google, what does ‘space’ actually mean. This is what I found there,

Space means:

· “a continuous area or expanse which is free, available, or unoccupied.

· the dimensions of height, depth, and width within which all things exist and move.”

Fortunately, all my last trips were related to the ‘space’ I discussed above. I loved to watch the milky way from the Joshua Tree National Park, Mauna Kea Mountain in Big Island, Hawaii and Death Valley National Park just in last three months. I would say that was as much amazing as it was cold and quite adventurous, especially with a 6- year-old.

As a grown up, I know there are other kinds of space. When I tried to dig deep, I came upon a term ‘Interpersonal Space’. To know about personal space, we need to know about personal distance: There are four kinds of personal distances.

• “Intimate distance for embracing, touching or whispering
• Personal distance for interactions among good friends or family
• Social distance for interactions among acquaintances
• Public distance used for public speaking

The distance surrounding a person forms a space. The space within intimate distance and personal distance is called personal space. The space within social distance and out of personal distance is called social space, and the space within public distance is called public space.

After this long discussion today, I could conclude to the point where I have utilized my public space to narrate some of my personal space and social space experiences related to the outer space. Hope you would enjoy this ‘space related discussion’ comfortably from your cyberspace.