"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is."

Last night as I sat at the Union Theatre listening to astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson decrying the general scientific ignorance of Americans, I couldn't help but think of CNN's recent decision to "cut its entire science, technology, and environment news staff". Tyson is director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York and host of PBS' Nova scienceNOW program and is probably this country's most prominent populizer of science so he knows just how lacking people are in this area.


(Photo by Kate Brenner of The Badger Herald.)
Tyson's presentation was largely about scientific illiteracy and he waited until the end of his time on stage to bring the proceedings to his chosen field. For about two hours he held the attention of the packed house as he alternately lamented our collective ignorance about science and tried to lure us into the gravitational pull of the field. He began by deconstructing several myths that people have about the world: what goes up must come down, the sun is yellow, the North Star is the brightest in the sky, days are longer in the summer and shorter in the winter, et al. People tend to believe these things, he said, because they "seem right". This was an issue he returned to later when talking about astronomy. Many things are out of our normal experience and/or beyond our senses so, instead of objectively assessing things, we turn to myths or pieties like those above. If you look at the sun at noon, you will see that it is white (before you damage your vision); however, if you look at the sun when it is close to the horizon and considerably less bright, the blues and violets are filtered out by the atmosphere (and the pollution in the air, as Tyson noted) and we get yellow (and orange and red).

He followed this with some newspaper headlines. One that sticks in my mind was: "Half of students score below average" or something along those lines. Of course half will be below average, he explained. The average is the mid-point so that about half will be below and about half above. At this point in the evening I was reminded of John Allen Paulos' Innumeracy. Tyson proceeded to show that investing in discovery creates legacies. He did this by pointing out that European countries which invested in sailors and discoverers have a legacy of their language being an official language in other countries. For instance, Spain bankrolled Columbus and many others, hence much of South and Central America speaks Spanish. This notion would come into play repeatedly during his presentation.

Tyson then brought up the Periodic Table of the Elements. While there were many in attendance with what he called a high "geek index", I wondered if there was anyone there who was unfamiliar with it. He sorted the table by year of discovery and by the country that discovered it. The Noble Gases, which don't interact with the other elements, were all discovered by the English, he observed. And English noblemen don't interact with non-nobles, hence the name. Along the bottom of the table were all the elements that did not occur in nature and were instead created in laboratories – laboratories in the United States. In the middle of the 20th century, Tyson explained, the U.S. invested heavily in this area primarily to create better bombs. Regardless of the outcomes expected by those who funded the research, a lot of knowledge came out of it and this was because money was invested.

After all of this introductory material, Tyson's presentation entered its polemical stage in which he addressed the consequences of our ignorance. His conclusion was that the United States was losing or has lost its status as a leader in science. The Large Hadron Collider was built in Switzerland which moved the epicenter of particle research from here to Europe. The breached levies in New Orleans, the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota, and ruptured steam pipes in New York were all shown and labeled as the results of how we no longer dare to dream, to look to the frontiers. Instead, we are very short-sighted and are doing a bad job of applying technology to boot when 18th century technology like moving steam through a pipe fails. This was reiterated in the Q&A session when he said “We are boldly going where hundreds have gone before" in relation to NASA. We've got the low earth orbit thing down so why is NASA so preoccupied with it? That kind of stuff should be given over to private industry while NASA tries to enter the next frontier. We don't invest nearly enough money in science, its teaching, and promotion. Hence we are losing our position as the most scientifically advanced nation.

Lest the reader think that Tyson spent his entire time on the stage ranting and raving, let me tell you it was anything but. He told stories and filled his presentation with humor. E.g. - he chided biologists for giving things long, cryptic names. The foundation of life? Deoxyribonucleic acid. Astrophysicists, on the other hand, are direct and to the point. A large explosion that created everything in the universe? The Big Bang. A depression in space that sucks everything in and even light can't escape from falling into it? A black hole.

For his finale, Tyson made an excursion into his own field of expertise in a lesson called "Cosmic Perspective" in which he looked at numbers. Starting with one, he moved on exponentially through millions up to sextillions. Along the way he gave examples of just how big these numbers are. For instance, a quadrillion - 1,000,000,000,000,000. That's the number of grains of sand on an average beach. He showed a slide of a star field that represented just a portion of one galaxy before bringing up another which showed dozens of galaxies. And this photo was just a teensy tiny point in the sky as we view it. The universe could be much larger, he conceded. There could be dips and curves in the space time continuum which means that light from these areas don't make it to us here on Earth so we have no way of knowing. To quote Douglas Adams, "Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

But this didn't make him feel insignificant. With that panorama of galaxies on the big screen behind him, Tyson explained how stars explode and churn out the matter from which we humans are made. "The universe is in us," he intoned.

Aside from his extensive knowledge and a great sense of humor, Tyson displayed passion. Passion for science, passion for learning, and passion for teaching. It was infectious and made me want to run out and buy Starry Night Complete Space & Astronomy Pack for my computer and to bust out my slumbering telescope from its closet. I attended the lecture with my buddy Dogger and we hatched a plan to take the kids out to a park one night when the weather warms up and show them the night sky with it. The UW's Washburn Obsevatory is closed until later this year due to remodeling. However, you can go to the Space Place on south Park Street and do some rooftop star gazing.

And don't forget, 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy.



Tyson's home page can be found here.

Also check out reports of Tyson's lecture at The Badger Herald and The Capital Times. Thanks to those folks for the photo and quotes.