I'm at the Quantum 2 Cosmos festival in Waterloo, Canada (near Toronto), in celebration of the Perimeter Institute's 10th anniversary. It's quite the celebration, with two weeks of public lectures, special events, and exhibits open to the public. The public, in turn, has turned out in full force: every event thus far has been sold out, with Waterloo residents packing Perimeter's main auditorium night after night to hear world-class scientists talk about the universe, space exploration, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, technological innovation, and the intersection of science and art.
It's impossible to see everything, and I'm only in town for a few days, but I did take a moment to explore the exhibit tent in downtown Waterloo, chock-full of family friendly demonstrations. I also had the chance to meet the star of a local children's show on TVOKids, "Captain Kent" (played by Mark Sykes), whose show is called Space Trek. (I'm sure it's just a coincidence that Captain Kent's delivery has many of the signature inflections immortalized by William Shatner. And I was relieved to see Captain Kent sporting a yellow shirt, not the more ominous Red Shirt.) Plus, there's a nifty online video game associated with the series.
Anyway, Captain Kent was all agog about the full-scale model on display of "Curiosity" (formerly known as the Mars Science Laboratory), slated for launch in the fall of 2011. He wasn't alone. Sean and I had just been admiring it, and observing it looked for all the world like a dune buggy. We could just see ourselves whooping with glee as we tumbled over the Martian rocks on a fine red-hued day.
Since he was toying with the idea of purchasing said space buggy, Captain Kent had a few questions about Curiosity, some of which I was able to answer, like where could he sit on it? Alas, there is no seat, so one would have to perch precariously on top and try not to interfere with all the bits ad bobs on top, crucial for communication. He also wouldn't be able to steer the craft on his own (bummer!); that's done with computers back down on earth, and the instructions are then sent hurtling through space and downloaded onto Curiosity. It takes a few minutes to cover that distance, and you just hope the instructions arrive before the craft takes a nosedive into a crater.
Any joyrider would also have to be careful not to interfere with Curiosity's scientific missions: taking soil and rock samples with its robotic arms, collecting data on the atmosphere and climate of Mars, and determining whether life could ever have evolved there -- all with an eye towards eventual human exploration of the Red Planet.
Curiosity isn't really for sale, which didn't seem to dampen Captain Kent's enthusiasm -- probably because, whether we get to ride it or not, it's a very cool machine. You can read more about it at the official Website.
The season premiere of The Family Guy was even edgier than
usual, exploring numerous alternate universes in an episode entitled
"Road to the Multiverse." Resident genius toddler Stewie invents a
device that enables him to travel between parallel universes with the
family dog, Brian -- who tries to pretend he knows about Many Worlds as
Stewie explains the concept. It's a nice brief summary of the basic
concept.
Soon Stewie and Brian are popping in and out of
alternate universes: one that is far more technologically advanced than
ours; one where everyone has two heads; one that is based on ironic Washington Post
political cartoons; one that is completely Disneyfied, with cheery
songs about pie and a touch of anti-semitism; and finally, a universe
where dogs rule the world and humans are the pets. That's where Stewie
meets his Dog Self and discovers he's had the device on "shuffle" all
along -- hence their random jumping around. Eventually they manage to
get back to their reality, bringing Alternate Pet-Brian back with them
-- who [SPOILER ALERT!] is promptly hit by a bus, because after all,
can two Brians co-exist in the same universe?
Scientists don't
really know what would happen in such an instance. One of the critical
features of most multiverse theories is that the various parallel
worlds never interact. In fact, there's no direct evidence for the
existence of a multiverse -- and only a few proposals for how one might
detect them if they did. For instance, we might see evidence of another
bubble universe if it had collided with our own a long, long time ago
-- except such a collision would pretty much destroy the fabric of
spacetime in both bubbles.
The latest scheme for evidence of a multiverse comes a new paper on the arXiv
by Anthony Aguirre of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and
Matthew Johnson, a postdoc at Caltech. They think they've come up with
a version wherein spacetime in two alternative universes could be
preserved, assuming they didn't so much as collide, as sideswipe -- a
sort of "cosmic scrape." Signs of a such a scrape would include a
negative curvature to the universe, or the remnant patterns that could
be observed in the cosmic microwave background. The latter has the
advantage of possibly being detected from advanced telescopes. Even
then, it would be a sliver of evidence, not definitive proof.
It's still tantalizing stuff. Maybe cosmologists in a
technologically advanced parallel universe will beat us to it, and
detect our presence first -- inspired by their version of The Family Guy. Because if there's a mutliverse, there's got to be a version of Seth MacFarlane out there somewhere out there, too.
I definitely will be among the physics fans glued to the TV set this Thursday evening for the series premiere of Flash Forward,
based on the sci-fi novel of the same name by Robert J. Sawyer. Heck,
the novel kicks off the action at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, despite
the fact that it hadn't been built yet when Sawyer wrote the book in
1997. But Sawyer, an uber-science fan, read about plans for the
project, and it just so happened that the concept of achieving
unprecedented energies fit very neatly into a science fiction plot he
was sketching out at the time. The result was an action-packed story
that prominently featured physicists on the ALICE experiment.
Particle physics has come a long way since 1997, but the LHC is
unlikely to trigger a global event in which billions of people black
out for exactly 2 minutes and 17 seconds, and catch a glimpse of their
lives six months into the future. Judging by the series trailer, a lot
can happen in six months. That's one of the departures from the
original book, according to Sawyer, who told io9 recently
that the producers opted not to have the glimpse be 20 years into the
future, because then they would face the daunting task of trying to
imagine and then create that future on a Hollywood set. And who has the
budget for that these days?
Symmetry Breaking is currently featuring a terrific interview with Sawyer about the series, his book, and his love of science. The blog is also running a series of posts on the science of Flash Forward,
including the reactions of physicists who have volunteered to watch the
pilot. I predict a bit of nit-picking, since even Sawyer admits the
producers departed significantly from his book (which took some
liberties of its own). But Sawyer did serve as a technical consultant
on the series, and was chuffed to discover that several cast members
had read the book to prepare for their roles, including star Joseph
Fiennes (pictured above with Sawyer).
Flash Forward isn't Sawyer's only novel to feature physics and physicists. He's also featured the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (Hominids) and the search for dark matter (Starplex),
and hints in the Symmetry Breaking interview that his next book may
well feature the Canadian Light Source, a national synchrotron research
facility. He doesn't think that gives much away, since "a synchrotron
is a Swiss army knife of science."
If this keeps up, network television will be dominated by physicists in the coming years. Certainly Flash Forward has the advance buzz to make it a potential candidate to displace The Big Bang Theory as the hippest physics show on TV. Can a physics-based crime drama be far behind?
Last week NOVA aired a three-part series, Hunting the Hidden Dimension, in which yours truly made a brief cameo appearance. I thought the producers did an excellent job exploring the fascinating hidden world of fractal patterns, and PBS has an excellent affiliated Website set up, wherein you can design your very own fractal.
What exactly are fractals? They arise from chaos theory. To scientists, "chaos" denotes systems that are so sensitive to initial conditions that their output appears random, obscuring their underlying internal rules of order: the stock market, rioting crowds, brain waves during an epilectic seizure, or the weather. In a chaotic system, tiny effects are amplified through repetition until the system goes critical.
The mathematical offspring of chaos theory is fractal geometry. Fractals may appear haphazard at first glance, yet each one is composed of a single geometric pattern repeated thousands of times at different magnifications, like Russian dolls nested within one another. A fractal pattern is what is left behind by chaotic activity. If a hurricane is a chaotic system, then the wreckage strewn in its path is its fractal pattern.
Some fractal patterns exist only in mathematical theory, but
others provide useful models for the irregular yet patterned shapes found in
nature – the branchings of rivers and trees, for instance. Mathematicians tend
to rank fractal dimensions on a series of scales between 0 and 3.
One-dimensional fractals (such as a segmented line) typically rank between 0.1
and 0.9; two-dimensional fractals (such as a shadow cast by a cloud) between
1.1 and 1.9; and three-dimensional fractals (such as a mountain) between 2.1
and 2.9. Most natural objects, when analyzed in two dimensions, rank between
1.2 and 1.6.
There is even a chance that all the matter in our universe is arranged in a fractal pattern, at least according to a study released last year by Italian physicists. Here's what New Scientisthad to say about the work:
"Nearly all physicists agree that on relatively small scales the distribution is fractal-like: hundreds of billions of stars group together to form galaxies, galaxies clump together to form clusters, and clusters amass into superclusters. The point of contention, however, is what happens at even larger scales. According to most physicists, this Russian doll-style clustering comes to an end and the universe, on large scales, becomes homogenous."
Francesco Sylas Labini and Luciano Pietronero beg to differ. Their analysis of data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey shows that instead of the fractal pattern smoothing out at scales of over 200 million light years, if the distribution does smooth out -- and they maintain this is still an "if" -- it would have to be at scales larger than 300 million light years across.
I expect they'll be debating this for years to come. The point is, fractals are cool, so check out Hunting the Hidden Dimension this weekend if you're looking to chill, and learn more about these amazing patterns.
We have rather belatedly found ourselves addicted to Lost in our household. I know, I know, friends have been raving about it for years, but I resisted because, frankly, I had a feeling that once we started watching, we wouldn't be able to stop. I was right: the first four episodes of Season 1 comprise some of the best television I've ever seen. Who knew 40+ people stranded on a desert island could be so dramatically compelling? Now we can't stop watching, and are slogging our way through the DVDs to try and catch up before the final season begins this fall.
From a physics perspective, the most interesting season has to be Season 5, wherein the main story arc rested on time travel/temporal anomalies. We did see a few episodes, in part because Sean was interviewed for the DVD extras, to be released this fall, along with two University of Southern California physicists, Nick Warner (who studied under Stephen Hawking) and Clifford Johnson (who writes the Asymptotia blog, among his many other research and outreach activities).
The writers clearly did their homework when it comes to researching the most famous tropes on time in science fiction. In-jokes abound, along with some pretty geeky debates between characters about what is, and is not, allowed by the laws of physics.
But the folks who put together the DVD package didn't stop with a simple short documentary as a bonus feature. They've launched an associated Website, LOST University, with an actual "curriculum" spanning not just time travel, but philosophy (many of the characters' names are nods to famous philosophers), foreign languages, and Egyptology. (Yes! You can learn the ABCs of hieroglyphics!).
Jeremy Davies, the actor who plays Daniel Faraday (is he alive? Dead? A flesh-eating zombie? We'll find out in Season 6!), is also featured at LOST University, "teaching" a course on new physics -- scientific studies that have captured his interest over the summer. Apparently he's a longtime Friend of Science, long before landing the role of Faraday. And the cast and crew pool their efforts for a "course" on the basics of jungle survival skills.
Sean's take on this intriguing new venture is here. Those who follow my work regularly know I'm a big fan of using popular culture (film, TV, books, including comics, etc) as "teaching moments" to talk about the underlying science (or lack thereof). LOST University is an uber-cool example of what is now possible when online multimedia meets TV meets science. Yummy science and entertainment goodness, with a twist!
I love Comic-Con. Where else can you wear an embroidered purple steampunk trenchcoat and not have anyone bat an eye? Because that's practically a Brooks Brothers ensemble compared to the guy decked out in a Robin Hood costume. And where else do you overhear people complaining that the hordes of zombies crowding into the streets are really holding things up? (Personally, I think zombie hordes add a certain je ne sais quois to a festive evening on the town.)
We rolled into San Diego Thursday afternoon, so I could be on hand for the science and science fiction panel my organization, The Science & Entertainment Exchange, put together in conjunction with Discover magazine. I had enough time beforehand to wander through the exhibit hall with Bad Astronomer Phil "Death from the Skies" Plait, geeking out over the replica Enterprise captain's chair and latest offerings from film, TV, gaming, and comics. I got to meet one of my favorite Webcomic artists (and fellow physics phreak), Zach Weiner, who draws Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and check out the local coffee shop that transformed itself into the fictional Cafe Diem from Eureka for the weekend. (Eureka creator/showrunner Jaime Paglia stopped in Thursday evening and was instantly mobbed by fans of the show.)
Paglia was just one of the featured speakers on our panel, which also included JPL's Kevin Grazier, the technical consultant for Eureka (he also advised on Battlestar Galactica), and Phil as Moderator with the Most. Also on hand were Rob Chiappetta and Glen Whitman, both staff writers on Fringe, and one of their tech consultants, Ricardo Gil da Costa of the Salk Institute.
And finally, Jane Espenson rounded things out; she's written for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Battelstar Galactica, Dollhouse -- really, the list goes on and on. Espenson is Comic-Con royalty by now. These days she is the showrunner for the forthcoming BSG spinoff, Caprica, which just started shooting a few days before. (Espenson promised lots of "hot robot action coming soon!")
I'll go right ahead and say that these folks are putting out some of the most well-written, thought-provoking and boundary-pushing sci-fi on TV these days. The clips shown from each show ably demonstrated that. And as panelists, they didn't disappoint: it was a lively, substantive, and often funny discourse on the crucial interplay between science and science fiction.
Science, of course, plays a vital role in all of these shows, even though all three are very different in theme and tone. (Eureka is a dramedy, Fringe is partly "a horror show," per Whitman, and Caprica is -- well, I guess we'll see when it premiers this fall, but based on the clip (and BSG), it's definitely slanted toward serious sci-fi drama.)
Robotics, AI, cloning, brain imaging, transgenics, icky viruses run amok, "smart homes," and dimension-hopping to a parallel universe all figure prominently in the various plotlines. And therein lies their appeal to both head and heart. Cutting-edge science -- particularly the game-changing, revolutionary breakthroughs -- invariably comes with troubling implications for society, even morality. "Science fiction is a reflection of our current standing in our moral decisions," Phil observed.
For instance, the panelists mused on the ethics (and philosophical implications) of downloading someone's consciousness into a cloned body, not to mention the legal questions that might be raised. The Caprica clip showed two men debating whether or not such a creature was really one of the men's daughter, or simply a perfect facsimile, prompting questions about the nature of human identity. Espenson acknowledged that the writers had debated fiercely about whether this constitutes some sort of "afterlife," adding, "I think we should all worry about being downloaded and put into robots."
Season 2 of Eureka featured an episode where a man's wife comes back from the dead, only to find her husband is now living with a clone of her, with whom he has had a child. The child is genetically "hers," yet she feels no maternal instincts. Does she have a legal obligation to this child, Pagila wondered? (Grazier pointed out that DNA testing means she couldn't prove the child wasn't "hers.")
What about Fringe's Walter Bishop, who uses some semi-fictional brain-reading technique to extract information from a recently deceased person? It almost seems like torture, Phil observed -- so is it ethical, even though the guy is technically dead?
Gil da Costa, as the representative neuroscientist, assured us that "the neurobiology happening at the Salk Institute is a lot more tame than what what you see on Fringe," but there are existing brain imaging techniques that can extract information from the brain. He cautioned, however, that this data "is very tricky to interpret because we don't understand the brain fully yet. The brain doesn't lie, but what we get is our biased interpretation. You cannot always directly transpose laboratory advances socially and legislatively." (Quipped Whitman: "We need a Law & Order: Fringe to debate the ethical issues.")
Where do they get their ideas? Sometimes the writers draw on breaking headlines in the news as
inspiration for their stories; sometimes they come up with a compelling
story and then try to find science that makes the scenario
semi-plausible. And not all of the ideas end up working their way to
the screen: Paglia bemoaned a discarded episode toying with Attack of the Killer Tomatoes on Eureka. (Look for it on Fringe, Season 5, joked Whitman.) Incidentally, Grazier swears he has a plausible scientific explanation for the glowing spines on BSG, but apparently it's not the sort of thing one can share in polite company.
What about maintaining that all-important balance between science and science fiction? Just how far can sci-fi writers push the boundaries of plausibility? "From an audience perspective, you want to start with something that's more grounded, and then take them on that ride," said Chiappetta of the approach on Fringe. "Start with familiarity, easy to understand concepts, because then you get the opportunity to push people's buttons. We want to be 'science next,' 10-15 minutes into the future as opposed to a year in the future." While bemoaning the inherent limitations of the 42-minute format for Fringe, he and Whitman acknowledge that much of the audience doesn't really want in-depth explanations on primetime TV, and will "tune out the science if it starts getting too complicated."
Paglia said that the manifesto for Eureka is that "we don't want to cross over into magic, things that are not yet scientifically possible at all." Espenson also shies away from "the mystical stuff," preferring story lines where "the magic is technology. We are so limited that we grasp for magic when it's physics we don't understand yet." Paglia agreed: "The closer you look, the more magical the science is. Heck, I want to know how my iPhone works because it's magic to me!" And Phil quoted the incomparable Carl Sagan in closing: "It does no harm to a sunset to know a little bit about it."
Ultimately, of course, these shows are fiction; they are not documentaries. Exactly how accurate does the science have to be, when the primary objective is to entertain and tell a good story? I usually tell people that shows like Caprica, Eureka and Fringe serve a broader purpose of inspiring audiences to take a closer look at real-world science. "So many scientists go into science because they want to be Captain Kirk or Spock," Grazier said. (Apparently sci-fi action figures abound in JPL's offices.)
And chatting with Chiappetta after the panel, he mentioned that they had selected the particular Fringe clip shown because it demonstrates Walter Bishop employing the scientific method -- in his own madcap, zany way. That said, it's still fiction. Chiappetta cautions, "The general rule of thumb is that if you see Walter do something on Fringe, don't try it at home!"
Photos: (top) Jane Espenson waxes profound while Jaime Paglia and Kevin Grazier look on. Source: Phil Plait, via Twitter. (bottom) Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Source: Zach Weiner.
Excitement is mounting over the imminent release of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek "prequel" wherein a promising young actor named Chris Pine attempts to walk in William Shatner's legendary footsteps as the young James T. Kirk. Even if you're not a hard-core Trekkie, it's tough to deny the enormous impact the series (both film and TV) has had on popular culture. "Beam me up Scotty." "He's dead, Jim." "Set phasers to stun." Not to mention the almost certain expendability of any unfortunate crew member wearing a bright red shirt (brilliantly satirized by the character of Guy in the spoof film Galaxy Quest).
And don't forget all that cutting-edge futuristic technology: phasers, the Holodeck, the transporter room, and those nifty handheld devices that inspired a thousand cell phone designs. But perhaps the most famous is the Enterprise's "warp drive", which enables it to travel faster than the speed of light -- something normally in violation of the laws of relativity, which say that nothing with mass can travel faster than light, even the tiniest subatomic particle.
But is a warp drive possible for real? Alas, Wikipedia tells me that
At
present, there is no known way to naturally or artificially establish a
separate, finite space-time region or "bubble" - such a
region is necessary to locally suspend or encapsulate the spacecraft
within its view of a "normal" space-time. Concurrently, external from
that region, there would exist a "warped" space-time, through which the
separate region travels at velocities exceeding c, the speed of light.
Unless,
of course, one happens to have a plentiful supply of antimatter and a
"gravimetric field displacement manifold" handy, a.k.a., a warp core.
The warp core is the literal heart of the Enterprise, a special kind of
reactor in which matter and antimatter annihilate and release energy
with 100% efficiency, thereby beating the laws of thermodynamics as
well as relativity. When Stephen Hawking guest-starred on an episode of
Star Trek: The Next Generation, he was given a tour of the set.
Stopping in front of the model of the warp core, he commented, "I'm
working on that." (Hawking has been gravely ill this past week, but
it's looking like he'll pull through, and we wish him a speedy
recovery.)
He's not the only one. Science and science fiction have always inspired one another in turn, and Star Trek has inspired as much physics research as it has drawn upon over the decades. The most promising theory to date was advanced in 1994 by Mexican physicist Michael Alcubierre, who insisted that while relativity forbids faster than light travel when it comes to the fabric of space-time, regions of space also move relative to each other, and some of those regions could, theoretically, move faster than the speed of light.
Alcubierre's notion is that the Enterprise would be enclosed within a highly distorted bubble of space-time, which would shrink in whatever direction the ship was traveling from the front of the ship, and expand behind it. The bubble could then move faster than light. Here's Lawrence Krauss, physics professor and author of The Physics of Star Trek, explaining it all for you in plain English, with just a balloon and a magic marker as props:
Ah, but that's relying on classical relativity. Bring it down to the quantum level and things get quite a bit trickier. Stefano Finazzi of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, has been working the problem with a few colleagues, and earlier this month posted a paper claiming that "Warp drives would become rapidly unstable once superluminal speeds are reached." Bummer. It's got something to do with "the renormalized stress-energy tensor" which the math shows grows exponentially at faster-than-light speeds, making that cozy little bubble housing the Enterprise dangerously unstable.
Oh, and the bubble would also be filled with Hawking radiation, most likely killing the entire crew. Kirk and Crew don't know how good they have it in their fictional film and TV world, where the laws of physics can be bent at the whims of the writers.
Photo: Visualization of a spaceship in a warp field. Source: Wikipedia (Public Domain).
For those who caught last night's episode of Bones, it was the long-awaited episode (by me) I've taken to calling "Murder by Physics": a leading physicist at the fictional Collar Institute (a kind of inter-disciplinary think tank at the frontiers of science) is murdered and Booth and Brennan have to figure not just who, but how.
I won't spoil things for those planning to watch it later thanks to the wonder of DVR, but my spouse and I had the privilege of brainstorming with the writers on the show last fall about the ways physics might be used to commit murder. Sean even polled a few of his colleagues, one of whom, Juan Collar, had apparently given this a great deal of thought -- purely as an intellectual exercise, you understand. (Sometimes Sean's friends, they worry me.) His idea found its way onto the show, and the fictional institute bears his name in thanks.
Collar's own research would not be out of place at that intitute: it looks both to the past and to the future. He is resurrecting the relatively old technology of bubble chambers to search for dark matter. His project is called the Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics (COUPP) experiment, located 350 feet underground in a tunnel on the Fermilab site. Bubbles chambers were nearly extinct in high-energy physics labs before Collar hit upon the notion of using them to search for dark matter. (They're great as neutrino detectors, too.) While the basic technology might be old, Collar insists, "This is not your daddy's bubble chamber."
COUPP's "detector" is a glass jar filled with a liter or so of a fire-extinguishing liquid (iodotrifluoromethane) -- a simple bubble chamber. When a weakly interacting massive particle (WIMP) hits a nucleus of one of those atoms, it triggers an evaporation of a small amount of that liquid, producing a tiny bubble. It's initially too tiny to see, but it grows, and that growth can be recorded with digital cameras.
Once the bubbles reach about one millimeter in size, the COUPP scientists can study the images in earnest, looking for telltale statistical variations between photographs. Ideally, this enables them to distinguish whether a bubble resulted from background radiation, or from a dark matter particle.
Next on the agenda for COUPP is to increase the detector's sensitivity by increasing the amount of liquid from one liter to around 30 liters. Last year Collar also installed a new compact neutrino detector (germanium-based) 330 feet below ground in the sewers of Chicago. (The lab is renting this unusual lab space from the city -- apparently Chi-Town has one of the longest systems of tunnels ever built, in its case, to control flooding.) The design has been modified to detect not neutrinos, but WIMPs.
So for all intents and purposes, bubble chambers are back, baby! Talk about a stunning comeback. Still, Collar emphasizes that "there is no perfect dark matter detector out there." Each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses. Which is why it's highly unlikely that one single experiment will conclusively "demonstrate" the first detection of dark matter; in fact, several are in hot pursuit to be the first to achieve that honor. One day lots of lines of data from all the different experiments around the world will cross -- and that will constitute what a criminal lawyer might call a preponderance of evidence verifying direct detection.
In the meantime, all those other rival teams might do well to show Collar a bit of extra respect, now that we all know how fiendishly clever he can be when it comes to the fine art of murder.
Photo: Juan Collar's bubble chamber for detecting WIMPs. Source: Collar lab, University of Chicago.
Galileo Galilei is known for many things: dropping items from atop the leaning tower of Pisa, for example, to demonstrate that all objects fall at the same rate, regardless of their mass. That's actually an apocryphal story: he often used the notion as an illustrative example, but there's no record he ever did the actual experiment. (He did roll balls down a gentle incline to measure their acceleration, using his pulse as a time-keeper.)
He's also famous for espousing the Copernican model of the solar system -- the one where the Earth and other planets revolve around the sun, rather than the Ptolemaic model wherein everything revolved around the Earth -- and being convicted of heresy by the Inquisition in 1633 for his trouble. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest, and his condemnation wasn't revoked officially until October 31, 1992, by Pope John Paul II. This has made Galileo the patron saint of misunderstood science crackpots everywhere, who fancy themselves equally persecuted by a close-minded scientific "establishment." Personally, I prefer the take of online comic Medium Large, which views Galileo as a suave crime-fighting man-about-town:
Well, maybe the world isn't ready yet for a TV series based on a crime-fighting 17th century astronomer -- are you listening, Les Moonves? -- but the world is definitely ready for a new documentary celebrating the International Year of Astronomy, 400 years of the Telescope, airing on PBS this Friday, April 10 (local airtimes may vary). The film celebrates four centuries of discoveries about our universe made possible by the the telescope, from Galileo to the most cutting-edge instruments exploring the outermost frontiers of scientific knowledge of the cosmos.
And that's not all. The cinematography is breath-taking and uses 35 mm RED camera technology. I don't know what the acronym stands for, but it means the film was recorded at a whopping 4520 x 2540 pixels per frame -- five times the resolution of high-definition TV. But wait! There's more! It's narrated by Neil de Grasse Tyson. Now how much would you pay? And yet it's free, thanks to the glory of public television. There is no bad here.
Tell your friends, even those who might not be all that keen on science. Astronomy is always a crowd-pleaser. Then, maybe more people will be able to correctly identify another of Galileo's breakthrough discoveries: three of Jupiter's moons. That's how he became a Copernican the first place, rightly reasoning that if a planet like Jupiter could have its own orbiting moons, then Earth could not possibly be the center of the entire universe. He published his observation in Sidereus nuncius (Starry Messenger) in March 1610, doing his small part to topple Ptolemy once and for all.
I'm sure it will come as no surprise to anyone that Gawker has no shame. But the snarky celebrity gossip site has sunk to new depths with a recent post by Ryan Tate -- remember that name, so it can live on in Internet infamy -- marveling at why so many people would crowd a Manhattan Barnes and Noble just to hear Neil de Grasse Tyson speak. (h/t: Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy) The post is entitled "Who is Neil de Grasse Tyson and Since When is He a Literary Rock Star?"
Seriously, Ryan, WTF? Have you been living under a rock, or just been too busy stalking Lindsey Lohan and her girlfriend in hopes of catching a glimpse of some hot girl-on-girl action to pay attention to the actual world around you? As Phil said in his post on the subject, "I have no surprise that the Gawker writer didn’t know who he was, since
Neil’s never hit a paparazzi, not been seen to do drugs after swearing
he doesn’t do them, or hasn’t had massive plastic surgery." (To which I would only add: that we know of! Maybe what Neil needs is a nice juicy scandal.)
Look, I don't expect the average person to know the names of even the more well-known scientists, any more than we pay pay attention to producer credits on film and TV. But all those people are many times more significant to the world's future than yet another paparazzi photo of the Brangelina brood on a Central Park outing (the kids are awfully cute, though). Rather than mocking the people smart enough to recognize that fact, maybe you should be ashamed that you aren't one of them. Tyson is a science rock star, in the sense of being a genuine celebrity. He has his detractors, to be sure, but there's no arguing that he's a compelling and entertaining public figure.
Wake up and smell the coffee, Ryan. This is the 21st Century. President Obama holds the nation's reigns. Wallowing in willful ignorance and immature snark aren't the trademarks of cool anymore. Didn't anyone tell you? You have to put some actual thought into your zingers now, instead of opting for the easy cheap shot. Check out your uber-cool Gawker Media sibling, Annalee Newitz and the gang at io9 to see how it's done. Or check out Neil in the clip below explaining how we might deflect an asteroid that's about to hit the earth. Then come back and tell me he's not a celebrity.
Science is not something only smart nerdy people do. It's central to all our lives, and it's all around us, all the time. Reveling in one's ignorance of this fact is just -- well, kinda sad.
Jennifer Ouellette is the author of "Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales from the Annals of Physics" and "The Physics of the Buffyverse", holds a black belt in jujitsu, and lives in Los Angeles with a tall cosmologist named Sean.
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