Rock star scientists

[fbhjr]

Last night my wife and I cancelled our normal Thursday night sword research
(for the third week in a row) so that I could go see the lecture at The
College of the Holy Cross (where my wife works) by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
(www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/profile )
He was giving a lecture titled “Science as a way of knowing.”

I’ve loved astronomy since grade school. I used to work in a (much
smaller) planetarium when in college. I’ve seen Dr Tyson in plenty of
documentaries and such.
I’ve gone to lectures, talks and classes with astronomers for as long as I
can remember. Often then are small events where I can count the number of
folks there without problem, maybe not on my fingers and toes, but
certainly without cracking three digits.
This was different. They had already moved it from the original room it
was scheduled for, that holds hundreds of people, to one that holds a few
thousand. And, they still weren’t sure they had enough seating.
So, I wasn’t really going to hear him talk.
I really wanted to go and watch the people watching him.

It was very interesting. It really was more like watching people going to
see a rock star or movie star.
OK, I’ll grant you he is a TV star. Even on network primetime TV.
But, still doing science documentaries.

I got there two hours early and was already more than 300 feet/100 meters
back in a line that at that time ran about a quarter of the way around the
building. In the dark. In the cold. As it was getting ready to snow.
The line got longer and longer as I waited.

I guess the place holds about 3500 people. They had some of it blocked
off, but I’d bet there were still about 3000 folks there.

To see an astrophysicist. An acknowledged agnostic one at a Catholic
University.
Yeah, yeah, at TV star one.

Before his speech he apparently had dinner with the leaders of the
university and city. The mayor of Worcester was there and gave him the key
to the city of Worcester.
He showed it to us all at the start of his speech.

(“So what?” my wife said later. “We’ve got one too.” “Yeah, but we stole
ours so it doesn’t count,” I replied. Yes, it is true, my wife and I stole
the key to the city of Worcester MA…)

It was an interesting talk. Fairly damning towards current US culture.
He thinks we’ve turned our back on science and the human race will suffer
as a result.
That’s a very condensed version of the more than 2 hour speech, but that’s
the upshot.

He thinks the golden age was 1968-1972, and attributes it to the Apollo
moon landing program. How the astronauts looking back at Earth caused a
fundamental shift in the way the whole human race thinks of our planet.

I’m not sure he’s wrong. But, that isn’t how I usually think of Nixon’s
first term.

Despite telling us all we have been failing the human race, he got a
standing ovation at the end.

Of course it was presented very well with a great number of slides and a
very dynamic presentation. And, I do mean dynamic. For the whole two and
a half hours he moved about. Sometimes walking, sometimes dancing,
sometimes pointing, but always moving.
I had to give up trying to get a photo of him and switch to video. Maybe I
can get some stills off of that later.
There was one point when he did at least slow down. A six year old girl
asked him what first graders could do to make the world better. He brought
her out on the floor and sat down with her so they were at the same level
before answering her. (The short answer is: become a scientist)
An engineering student asked what he could do and was told “didn’t you
listen to what I told that little girl? Why would it be different for you?”

He did also talk a lot about Pluto. I’m not saying he’s the person who got
the planet demoted, but he was a big factor in it as he started the whole
thing off.
Apparently he gets hate mail from people about it.

He says that caring about how many of a thing there is instead of caring
about the things themselves or what kinds of things there are is a symptom
of the problems our society.

It was an interesting talk. I’m glad I went.
When I came out it was snowing.
I like snow.