Drifting through the infinite darkness of space, you find that everything that you know, everything that you have ever touched, and millions of people you have not even met yet are combined, smaller than your thumb. Only 12 people in human existence, as we know it, have ever set foot on the moon. Some people have conspiracy theories, but the most important people, the astronauts themselves still have the memories.

The difficult thing is to capture this somehow. Well you are in luck “In The Shadow of the Moon” is a new movie that travels through the entirety of the missions to the moon through the eyes of the astronauts. This movie shows the difficulty and concern each of the astronauts faced while trying to accomplish the impossible. 

One of the biggest impacts the movie had on me was when each pilot bared their soul and explained what they saw from space. They said even today you can see how big cities have their own atmosphere of pollution and that we have to start thinking about saving our planet. One astronaut stated after his visit to the “beautiful desert” (the moon) that we live in the “Garden of Eden” (Earth) and that it is very delicate so we must be careful.

Another interesting note is that the movie claimed in its credits that it is carbon neutral. I am not really sure how I feel about being carbon neutral, but it definitely does not hurt. Plus the awareness that this could bring is huge; the only problem is that it does not seem to be at all of the big local theaters.

If you would like to hear the tales of great adventure and strife this should definitely be on your list of movies to see. An extremely well done movie that helps to disprove the conspiracy theory and gives you new insight into how difficult the moon missions really were. I will easily give this movie a 9 out of 10. 

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conspiracy theories 
“In The Shadow of the Moon”

As many know the florescent light bulb is not the only alternative for incandescent bulbs. The up and coming challenger is the LED light bulb. LED’s started their life as a feedback mechanism for early electronics. They were dim indicators that showed that something was on or that something was happening. Until recently they were never considered a serious challenger to the current incandescent bulb. They have plenty of energy savings but also were not very bright and had issues with natural color light. 

Once upon a time LED was the ugly duckling. Sure it gave off light and used little electricity but not enough for everyday use. Recent research had determined ways to make LED’s much brighter and increase the possibility for home use. Another issue was the ability to give off white light, this issue too has found a solution. Still there are issues that keep them from homes. One of these issues is the price to purchase a LED bulb. Currently due to the complexity of LED bulbs because they use so many LED’s for one light bulb it is expensive to manufacture and that is passed down to the consumer. Currently to buy an LED bulb it costs anywhere from $20 – $80 to get a normal 30 – 60 Watt replacement bulb. Another issue is the angle of the light. LED lights have a very narrow path of light so it makes it difficult to get bulbs to have the wide angle lighting that normal incandescent bulbs. For instance, I have an LED flashlight, and its bright but, it only show the things you point it at so when you point it at the key hole on your car door the light does not show on your door handle. 

On the bright side, pun intended, there are advantages. LED Light bulbs have very low power requirements, and usually use less than half of the power of a comparable brightness Florescent bulb which is four times less than a comparable incandescent bulb. Also due to this efficiency there is very little heat produced. Finally LED lights are expected to last 10 times longer than a compact florescent bulb and 100 times longer than and incandescent bulb. That is quite a bit longer if I do say so myself. 

The future is so bright you gotta wear shades. OLED is the latest popular derivative. Some of the interesting ideas for OLED is to make a thin layer of the OLED material and put it all the way across you celling and give your whole house light or wrap it around a pillar. Some other ideas would be to make a clear version of OLED canvas and place it on your window, so at night you could turn on your window lights and it would light the room similar to daylight. For more news on this you should definitely check out Google News. 

Advantages:
- Low power usage
- Runs cool
- Lasts a very long time

Disadvantages:
- Angle of light
- Price to purchase

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Google News – OLED Lighting