: Mai Umemoto at TEDxSaku
Translator: Reiko Bovee Reviewer: Leonardo Silva Hello, everyone. Audience : Hello. Umemoto : (Laughter) Good. First I would like to ask you this: Do you like the night sky? (Laughter) Great. I love too. During the last Golden Week holiday, I went to Nobeyama Highland in Nagano. I love the night sky full of stars. Looking up at the night sky there with my mother, I said, "It just looks like a planetarium, doesn't it?" My father said, "Shouldn't it be the other way around?" (Laughter) Its beauty was something else. Nobeyama Highland in Nagano is where I lived for 4 years from when I was 5 years old untill I became 9 years old. It's because my father was transferred to the National Astronomical Observatory, the Nobeyama Solar Radio Observatory. My father is an astronomer. I am sure that some of you might have seen this picture. This is the 45m radio telescope of the National Observatory in Nobeyama As you have just seen in the picture, Nobeyama is blessed with a lot of nature. I was raised there for 4 years, so I kind of grew up as a so-called child of nature. When I was small -- I even can't believe it myself now though -- I would collect insects and climb trees. What I still most remember is all my family would go out at night with no street lights at all and look at the clear night sky filled with stars. How clear do you think the night sky there was? We could see the Andromeda Galaxy with our naked eyes! You may not understand what I mean, so I will explain to you. The Andromeda Galaxy is said to be the farthest celestial body from the Earth that we can see with our naked eyes. It is 2.3 million light years away from the Earth. To see such a celestial body, Nobeyama is very much suited for it. As for my private life I used to go to Yamanashi Prefecture once a week to take a piano lesson. Yamanashi has a science museum, Yamanashi Prefectual Sicence Center. They have a circle called, the "Star Story Teller," for those who love stars. The main jobs of the "Star Story Teller" are the planetarium production and workshops, etc. For example, there are the play or music performances describing our Universe. In a workshop, my younger sister once wrote a poem titled "The most delicious sweet in our Universe." We decided to make a planetarium program based on this poem. To promote this program, the "Space language" I made up when I was small was used. When I was taking piano lessons, I composed a piece of piano music imagining Perseids. I would like to play the piece. (Applause) (Piano music) (Music ends) (Applause) Thank you very much. Let me go back to my talk. (Laughter) Since I was in the environment of Nobeyama Highland where I could experience watching starry skies, I had been feeling our Universe so close. When I was in forth grade, my family moved to Tokyo. The most shocking thing in Tokyo was that I couldn't see as many stars as I did in Nobeyama. One thing that I was most surprised at was I could see the clouds floating in the sky even at night. This really surprised me. Even the night sky of Tokyo had one good thing, which is that you can easily find the bright constellations. You may think that it is a matter of course, but there were too many bright stars in Nobeyama to distinguish which one was which. Comparing to that, Tokyo is easier for me to identify constellations. When I was a 6th grader I faced an entrance exam for a junior high school. It was a very hard time. I sometimes studied for 13 hours a day for the exam, and the night sky became just one of the science problems to me. Soon I quit looking up at the night sky. When the East Great Earthquake occurred on March 11, 2011, we didn't have enough electricity in Tokyo. So we had planned power outages to manage with the electricity that we had at that time. During this time, luckly I had a chance to see the night sky without being blocked by the city lights. I went out to see stars one night when we had a planned blackout. It was awesome! I could see my own shadow made by the moonlight! I had never thought that the Moon was that bright. It was really an eye opening experience. When I got home after that, I opened my old favorite book -- "George's Secret Key to our Universe," of Stephen Hawking. There, there were the pictures and the stories of our Universe that I used to love looking at and reading. And I then remembered that I would look up at stars when I was younger. From that point on, I began loving to look up at the night sky again. Imagining our abysmally outspread Universe beyond this clear blue sky that we see everyday just leaves me awestruck by its enormity. I would like to conclude my talk with a quote from a book that has been one of my favorite books since I was younger. "Let's learn astronomy in comics — Explore our Universe," Let me quote this sentence. "We are made of dust of stars that existed a long time ago." Our body is made up of oxygen, carbon and many other elements, but these elements didn't exist when our Universe was just born. After stars ended their lives a long time ago, the elements produced by their deaths eventually created us. So, we are the products of star dust. Will you do this today after this talk? Thinking that we are made of star dust, please look up at the night sky. Thank you. (Applause)