There is nothing quite like the experience of sitting in a darkened lab that is lit only by a dim, red light bulb while peering through a microscope at a hidden world. If that world is illuminated by LED fluorescence, so much the better! An interesting side effect of sitting in a sensory-reduced, dimly lit room is that the mind often tends to wander. Thoughts of what it would be like to travel the universe unencumbered by space and time, studying phenomena that occur anywhere and anytime, flit through one's imagination. Of course, there are places that are too dangerous or too distant, in time or space, to explore. That's what this section is all about.

What would it be like to step foot on a Jovian moon, walk with the dinosaurs, watch atoms and molecules in motion from way up close, or splash around in an ocean on a planet orbiting a double star in a galaxy far, far away? Even if life is not found anywhere else, what strange wonders await the explorer?

Imagine a planet with oceans filled with piezoelectric forms that scintillate as they bob about enduring temperature and pressure changes. Picture the flickering lights and creaking sounds as crystals grow and flex on planet-X. Perhaps that planet might somehow be orbiting a pair of blue and red supergiants. Or imagine reaching over and touching the skin of a Stegosaurus. We can't do these things—yet. But in a universe created within our desktop computers, we can certainly explore these things. The imagined can be brought to life and shared with others. Welcome to the world of cyberSPACE Travel!

If you surf the web for any length of time, you will come across beautiful computer-generated images, which are truly works of art. But the one missing ingredient, at least for me, is life! Wouldn't that scenic portrait look great if there were just a few birds flying around or, maybe, several people milling about? However, animation is painstaking work. Character animation, in particular, has been called hard. That is a gross understatement. It can take years to become really good at the art. Nevertheless, animation will bring your message and artwork to life. If your goal is to represent worlds that exist in reality or only in your imagination, static images are a very good first step. But dynamic images are so much better. If your goal is to clearly represent some scientific phenomenon—and that is my ultimate goal—then employing animation is mandatory.

Recently, I took my first foray into animation and cyberSPACE Travel for a "Journey to Io." Single click on the image of Jupiter to activate the recording of that trip. My newest adventure is a trip back in time to the tail end of the age of the dinosaur. (It's the first episode in my soon-to-be-released video Dinosaurs Gone Wild—not available in stores.) I call that adventure, "Chasing the Dinosaurs." If nothing else, it might help to explain why scientists have so much trouble obtaining useable dinosaur DNA. Single click on the image of the flying reptile to view the animation.

I hope that you enjoy these brief flights of fancy. If viewing the adventures encourages you to try your hand at creating dynamic worlds to travel, that really would be great! There are many such worlds, real or imagined, lying in the present, past, and future. I am currently working on a few and learning as I go. However, the more people and computers doing this, the better.