Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome everyone. I'm Mike Simmons, the founder of Astronomy for Equity. And welcome to our podcast about everything around the world where astronomy is used for good things. Today we have a very special guest on the podcast. Phil Plait is an astronomer, author and science evangelizer, known as the Bad Astronomer because he writes about space astronomy and science. And he started with his eclipse acclaimed Bad Astronomy blog, which is now the Bad Astronomy newsletter on Beehive.
And we'll bring up that link in a while. He is also writing for Scientific American magazine. He's written four books. A Bad Astronomy Death from the Skies two to the seventh Nerd disses a significant quantity of disrespect with webcomic artist Zach Weinersmith, who people know and Under Alien Skies.
He's also a much sought after consultant for science fiction books, TV shows and movies. He was the head science writer for the first season of Bill Nye Saves the World on Netflix. And he was the science advisor for the CBS series Salvation. He was also the science Advisor for the 2016 Hollywood blockbuster movie Arrival. So that was a big one and one where they got the science pretty good, I think, which is a good testimonial. Phil Plait's widely known for his Crash Course Astronomy, which he wrote and hosted on YouTube. This is a 46 episode web series. It provides a quick and fun introduction to astronomy for interested learners. Very accessible, a great way to start. And it has had over 85 million views to date. And that might be an old number. It might be over a hundred by now. Phil currently lives in rural Virginia with his wife and his dogs. And it's really a pleasure to have Phil on the program. So welcome, Phil.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Thanks, Mike. It's good to see you.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: So 85 million is current?
[00:02:12] Speaker A: The 85 million is current. Okay.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: As of November of 2023. So it's like at 80, maybe 6 now. Something.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think this is. And let's, let's just show people that to remind them because this is a great way to get started to pick up a few things. And we have Cassandra backstage here running things, who got into astronomy recently because of you and Crash Course Astronomy. So it's very popular and I highly recommend it.
[00:02:42] Speaker B: Thanks.
[00:02:44] Speaker A: So, Phil, you're the Bad Astronomer. What makes you so bad?
[00:02:50] Speaker B: Well, I'm lazy and a terrible writer and.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I've known you a long time. Really? Yeah, I've known you too long to buy that one.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Yeah, the moniker came up because when I started doing outreach and we are Talking about early 1990s, when the web, as it is now, didn't even really exist. So it's sort of just Internet times. I started debunking myths and misconceptions about astronomy. And there are a lot. And it was like, no end of stuff I could write about or talk about. So a lot of them aren't even around anymore, like standing eggs on end on the first day of spring. That was a big thing back in the, like, 90s. But also people that don't believe the moon landings are real and UFOs and. And just ideas in astronomy that people have that maybe aren't correct, like why the Moon looks big on the horizon and things like that. And it was just fun. It was a way of. I don't want to say teaching, but I mean that. That's really what it was, teaching people about astronomy by using, you know, these. These urban legends and things that they've heard as a hook. So, you know, that that makes somebody interested right away. It's like, oh, yeah, I heard about that. And then I'm like, well, you know, it turns out it's not really right, and here's why. And it just became a bigger deal than I ever expected it to be. And somebody or a bunch of people probably started calling me the Bad Astronomer online. And I liked it, and I kept it. It's just a funny name. So here we are.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: It's fantastic. So let's get right into this. Who cares if somebody's got something wrong about what's up in the sky? I mean, why. Why does it matter? Astronomy's up there. It's not down here. What difference does it make anyway?
[00:04:34] Speaker B: If I may quote the TV show Rick and Morty, literally everything is in space. You know, it's like if you're living on Earth, you want to think that we're not really in space, but in fact, we are. We are in a gigantic ball of rock and metal and water and gas, and it's floating around the sun. And, you know, space starts over our heads in many ways, closer than, like, the nearest big city to me. So, you know, it's only about 50 or so miles up 100 kilometers, whatever. Space is right there, and it affects us all the time. Our lives depend on it. The Earth spins. The sun rises and sets. We get day and night. The Earth goes around the sun, and we have seasons and years. The whole planet depends on that. And that is, like, the most basic astronomy. There is also the fact that we are talking satellite technology, computer technology, video digital cameras, all of this comes from space exploration, scientific exploration. So the fact that basically any of this stuff exists, a lot of it has to, has its, if not roots, is at least related to astronomy. And it's also cool and pretty and interesting. I mean, who, who hasn't looked up at the moon and the stars if they're able to and say, you know, why is that there? Why am I here? Is there anybody else out there? I mean, the why am I here? Is one of the most fundamental questions we can ask and that absolutely 100% astronomy related. Because we were born in this universe and created out of stars that existed before and a planet that formed from material around the sun. And you know, why you're here is because of all of that. So in the most fundamental way, astronomy is in everything you are and everything you do, and it doesn't matter who you are.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: It's one of the things that people don't realize these days, and that's a big change, is that we are in space. Astronauts see when they go into space, they look at Earth and they don't. It's not just looking down at Earth, they're looking out at Earth, whatever direction it is, and seeing it among the stars. We're on a planet, you know, it's no different than being on Mars, except that, you know, there we, we keep you alive and we die. But, you know, other than that, it's, it's not a lot different. But we kind of lost that because as you alluded to, a lot of people can't see the stars anymore. And this is a very recent thing. Astronomy has been a part of every culture, still is a part of every culture, even if people don't realize where these things are coming from. I mean, five star reviews or, you know, so many different illusions to it. So it, it really is something that we've kind of lost. You're helping to bring that back for a lot of people. It's, it's not really just about Hubble. It's about getting out and seeing the stars and everything else.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: Well, I hope so. You're right.
Most people live near enough to a city, you know, whether it's even just a, you know, a town or a city or something like that, that the skies are polluted with light at night and you can't see the stars. And we're losing that connection. And that's very troublesome. There are a lot of reasons why that's troublesome. It affects biology. There are plants and animals critical to the ecosphere that are affected by this, that may need dark nights or the cycles of the moon to reproduce and do things like that. And we're messing that up with all our lights. But also we are just losing contact with the beauty of the sky and the fact that it is a real thing. And when I talk about astronomical objects, even when I'm talking about the Moon or Mars or Jupiter, people feel disconnected from this. And part of that, too, is that, you know, we're consuming this media. We see things on tv, we see things in the movies. And now everything's on a screen. And so when you're looking at a picture from Hubble or JWST or any telescope, it doesn't feel. I don't want to say real, but it doesn't feel like it actually exists as a place.
This is one of the reasons I wrote my book Under Alien Skies, the last book that y'all showed earlier, because I wanted to show that these places are real, they exist. We've been too many of them. If not people, at least our robots. There we go. Thank you. The subtitle is A Sightseers Guide to the Universe. This is a tour guide to the Moon and Mars and Saturn and stars and even black holes, as if you are visiting these places. I had a lot of reasons for writing it, but one of the things I had in my head is I want people to understand these places are real. And I think we are losing that. We tend to think that this is all just made up. And we. But I mean, just some people do. And it's just easy to forget that the Moon is a world, Mars is a world, a place.
And if you have that connection, if you understand that it's much easier to be connected with science in general and to understand its importance in life.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: Absolutely. And you know when you're out and I know that telescope over your left shoulder there behind you, that's my scope. Yeah. And I'm sure that you show a lot of people things through that public outreach is something I've been doing for longer than I even want to say. And you know when you show people the moon up close in a telescope, and then they look up at it and they realize, wait a minute, that's not just a light in the sky, it's a place. That happens with the planets, too. You know that people look at Saturn and they see the rings. Is that real? That's the most common thing. And absolutely.
Say, where? Where is that? How can we see that? And you point up in the sky and there's this bright, pale, yellowish star like object That's Saturn. You can see it. It's a place. It's right up there.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I used to take my telescope out at Halloween. That was one of my favorite things to do. And there'd be a bucket of candy next to my scope, and I would tell kids would come up, if you want piece candy, you got to look through the telescope first. And sometimes it's the moon, sometimes it's Jupiter, sometimes it's Saturn. Saturn is always my favorite because the kids can't believe it that they can see the rings of Saturn. And like you said, you know, I pointed out in the sky, and they're like, that's it. That's. Yeah, that's a planet. But my favorite was when they would, like, check to see if I had, like, something in front of the telescope, like a picture of it that I was holding up and taking it away. It's like, no, that's. You're seeing it. This is how this all works. So making that connection right there and seeing it on their faces is one of the most wonderful feelings in the world. I always love doing that.
[00:11:31] Speaker A: That is the reward for what people are doing everywhere around the world. You know, I've done a lot of organizing a lot of programs and things worldwide, and there are amateur astronomers doing outreach everywhere. I've even been to places like in northeastern Iran, where there is a very active group there. They didn't have a telescope, but eventually they get them. I've helped a lot of them get them.
That's the payoff. That look of amazement and the astonishment and everything. So that's why it's happening everywhere. It's like John Dobson said when he first looked through a telescope, he said, well, everybody's got to see this. And then he set out. His life mission was to get everybody to see. See that.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: That's why I promote amateur astronomy clubs and societies and observatories or even professional observatories all the time. The ones that do public outreach and say, get out there and do this. It's such a wonderful experience. And I. I still remember seeing Saturn for the first time and the moon when I was a kid looking through a telescope. So, you know, if it's been so many years since I've done that and it still stuck with me, and, you know, oh, yeah, I'm sure I'm an astronomer, but it doesn't matter. Even when. Even when I go to places that are very rural. Years and years ago, I went to a family retreat, more or less friend and family, and somebody who showed up was on their phone and just raving to a friend about how dark the skies were there. This was not an astronomer. This is just, you know, person. So, yeah, this. It's just shocking when you get to see all these things for the first time and it sticks with you forever.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I've. I've had people contact us about images like when, you know, Babak Taffers and we started the World at Night under the organization that I had. And then he spun it off and it's been fantastic. And people writing and saying, why do you make the sky look like that? Doesn't look like that. And I said, yeah, it does look like that. You just never seen it, but it was quite real. People really just don't realize what they're missing. I always think back to, was it Joni Mitchell's? You know, you don't know what you've got till it's gone. She's take all the trees and put them in the tree museum and charge the people a dollar and a half just to see them, which tells you how long ago that was.
But it. But it's like that, you know, people haven't been to a forest or whatever. This is one of the things about. Because, you know, we're all about here on this podcast about talking about how astronomy is used for. For doing good things.
And this is one of those things that makes people aware of the universe around them. I liken the looking through a telescope to like being in your backyard and then one day getting up on top of the house and looking out and seeing all these people in trees and everything else out there. So it's really an awakening. And that's something you're doing as well with your newsletter continuing to this day. And let's put that up there. Bad astronomer newsletter. So if you want to get some bad astronomy with a few nuggets of good astronomy thrown in in between there, this is where you go. For the latest.
[00:14:46] Speaker B: I'll add, it's mostly good astronomy these days. I don't do a lot of debunking, although it's still in there. I still wind up talking about a few things. But it's also. It's. It's astronomy news. Just pretty pictures. Sometimes I stumble on as well as. I mean, a lot of other things. Anybody who has an opinion and a newsletter is going to write about them, right? So I said, there is some politics, not much, but it could be TV shows. I like music, recipes, anything. It's just a lot of fun. And I really, I really enjoy writing it.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: Well, that connection to astronomy is important for everybody. And I know it's very, very important to get these things right. I had an experience very recently. I was having lunch with another astronomer. And the person, as I was leaving the parking lot says to me, next to me says, do you know that the Earth is flat?
He picked the wrong guy say that too. But he had a bunch of things. He had all the right observations to make. Well, if the Earth was round and we were going around the sun and the Moon was going around us, and he named a bunch of things like you'd be able to see the Earth's reflected light on the Moon. I said, we do. He said, you do. And you know, the Venus would go through phases. Well, I mean, he had all the right stuff, right? But he never looked for or himself.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah, we wouldn't have time zones.
[00:16:06] Speaker A: No.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: I'll call somebody three time zones away when the sun has just set for you and ask them what it's like where they are. Boom, done.
[00:16:12] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. Yeah. And this is the one place where I really wish we did live on a flat Earth because I work with people around the world and it just confuses me.
[00:16:20] Speaker B: Yeah, time zones are a mess.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: The time zones are a mess. So there's the Bad Astronomer newsletter, and that's something that we people should be reading now. The, the TV shows and movies and so on, you've done a fair amount of that as well. But that's a little bit of a battle because I know that you have to fight the good fight between marketability and getting the science right and so on. And there are very few TV shows and, and movies where people have actually gotten all of the science right because it's science fiction, you know, it's fiction.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
When I was a kid, and even for a while as an adult, I used to hate it when they would make mistakes in TV shows. It's like, oh, that's so wrong.
And over time, as I matured, I realized that actually what's important is the story. Getting the science exactly 100% right is typically not going to make for a very interesting story because it takes, you know, weeks or months or years to get from point A to point B in space because things are really far away. So just right away, if you're gonna have faster than light travel or something, whatever, the story is more important than the science. And. But if you can do both, like the Expanse, which was a TV show, and before that a series of 10 space opera books, it's Wonderful. It gets, you know, it basically extrapolate science and says, okay, here's what the science is going to be. We'll stick to that, which is important, internal consistency, and then bases everything on it and actually did really, really well with that. But even, even if you don't, even if, you know, transporter technology doesn't make sense or you're faster than light travel doesn't always make sense, that's okay, because it's a plot device. Now, if you're basing the story on the science and you're doing egregiously bad science, that can really take you out of it. It can also misinform people. So in that sense, yeah, I want better science in TV shows, but more than that, I want people to be interested in the science. If you're doing science fiction and there's science being depicted in some way, let's make it interesting. Let's talk about what's really happening, what we really think is going on, and let's put that in the show. The beauty of that is it behind the scenes, it used to be that nobody, not nobody, but very few writers, producers, whatever, cared that much about the actual science. There's been a trend recently to have more consultancy, more science and technical advisors in shows especially. I think the Internet has a lot to do with that because people can, you know, spout off when they see something they don't like. And the people on the creative end see it and they're like, oh, you know, we based our whole show on this criminal doing this thing. And it turns out that doesn't work. So our whole show wasn't good. So they are. Everybody's kind of has this interest in getting it right. And when I meet with writers and producers and things like that, they want to do it as well as possible, which is all I care about. I mean, as best you can, because you can't do it perfectly. But the beauty of that is that they aren't scientists. And so they may not know what's going on. If they, you know, if they want an asteroid impact to happen or a solar flare to impact, you know, make a blackout or something, not only can I tell them how that works, but I can also say, you know, there's this other stuff that would happen as well. And if you include that, not only, you know, is that neat and maybe people can learn about it, but also you have all of these other plots, you can have all these subplots, and these other characters can be working and doing all those other stuff, and it's all accurate. So the writers love that. Every single time I give them something they didn't know, their. Their eyes perk up. You can see it because they're like, ooh, more fodder for the plot. More things we can write about. So everybody wins. And that's. That's my favorite thing. One of the things I love consulting about is to give them more ideas, and then to actually see it happen on tv. That's always really exciting.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: What a thrill that has to be. I mean, that's amazing. And, you know, I'm a fan of the Expanse. I think it was really, really good.
Not because they got most of the science right, because of course, they couldn't get it all right anyway, but because it was good stories. I mean, it's good storytelling.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: Amazing storytelling.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah. And that was the case for Star Trek. You know, I'm old enough that I watched the original series when it was on tv, broadcast live. You two really serious?
[00:20:59] Speaker B: Oh, wait, not. No, no. I saw it in reruns, but I mean.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: Yeah, but still.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: So I watched it back in the 60s. I was a teenager because, you know, I'm older than dirt, but. And it was a lot of fun. And even then, I knew enough about astronomy and faster than light travel and all these things to know. Yeah, none of the science in there was right. I mean, but it was about storytelling. Gene Roddenberry said he wanted to do Wagon Train to the Stars.
Wagon Train, the old TV show, was not about how to get a wagon train across the country. It was about the people and things that happened there. And so it was good storytelling, but it's certainly a plus when you can get those things right.
[00:21:42] Speaker B: And they did a good job of allegory. And sometimes, you know, how does this technology affect things? The balance of power between two warring factions, and one of them gets an advantage technologically. And how does that affect things? And the novels that came out after the series showed this really well, because Star Trek as a. As a. As a device, as a way to tell stories, and how science and technology affect us is great, you know, even to the point of having an alien working on your bridge. And in the future, when you can have, you know, a black person and a Russian, oh, my gosh, in the 1960s, they had a Russian on the bridge. So, you know, the. The idea of diversity and people working together. But also, there was a great book called Spock Must Die that came out not long after the series aired on tv. Asking the question, when you. When you transport somebody, what Happens to their soul. And if you, if you have a transporter accident, you have two identical copies of somebody, who's the real one. Are either of them real? And so is either of them real? Pardon my grammar. And so the idea of using science to ask these questions about fundamental truths is age old. And to be able to use that that way, I think is terrific. And they're doing that a lot with all the new series today, too. And I love it, love it.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: That absolutely. You reminded me, I don't know if you ever saw the new Twilight Zone series. Some of them, incredible stuff. And I watched the original Twilight Zone when it came out too, and that was great. But some of those are really great. And you reminded me of something. I think it was on that, where somebody, people are being transported to another distant place and then something happens and the person shows up there, but is still back on the planet. So now you have two of them. Which one is real? Those are the kinds of things you can. Yeah, you can do that with fiction, and you can't do it, you know, if, if you don't make up something like that. But you also alluded to why, that sometimes there's politics involved in these things. Because it's about technology. It's about using science for good or bad. It's. It's always a political question. Splitting the atom was a huge advance. You know, an Einstein showed how these things could be done, but then was dismayed to find that people made a big weapon out of it. So it happens.
[00:24:11] Speaker B: That brings up a point too, that you had asked earlier, how astronomy impacts our lives. It's like, maybe not astronomy specifically in this case, but science in general. Everything is science. That was a point I was making earlier. The technology, everything that we. Everything right here in front of us that we're talking about, and behind the scenes, everything we're doing here is based on science, the technology and the engineering. An aspect of science.
Well, first of all, in the United States, and this is true for many other countries too, the entire economy depends on technology and science. So there's that to that impact in your life. But science isn't just finding things out. It's a process. And part of that process is trying not to fool yourself, is saying, okay, I've got this result. I made an observation and I had an idea of why it happened, but I'm biased. I have this hypothesis that I would like to be correct because I thought of it. So how do I make sure that my desire doesn't affect my conclusions, that I'm not going to play things up a little bit and downplay the negatives to make it look more real. And this idea of counteracting your own bias is part of science. Not just counteracting your own bias, but counteracting any bias, any sort of false conclusion you might come to because you're not looking at enough samples. So you have small number statistics. You're, you know, there's bias in how you get your team together to examine these results. You may not be looking at everything that is affecting what your experiment is doing or what your observation is doing. And so one of the beauties of science is that it's, it's in ideally it's self correcting that there are methodologies in place that either avoid or counteract these things. Of course they're imperfect because humans do science. Science is a human endeavor and we are flawed down to our cores. But a lot of this is so fundamental to science that this is something I like talking about. Like, you know, we used to think this, but now we think that. And the reason is because our telescopes got better and we realized, oh, you know, this is, this is something we couldn't see before our cameras got better or just that we were biased. We thought that this kind of object wasn't that interesting. We understood them. And it turns out, no, they're way more complicated than we thought and really cool. I love all that stuff. And so how this affects people all the time is that, you know, you, you watching my fingertip right now. You are making decisions every single day. Financial decisions, social decisions, you know what to do, where to go, how to do it. You have to think critically about these things. You have to say, what's the best way to do this? Am I fooling myself? You know, I want to buy this thing, but is that really the best thing for you? Do you need it? Is this person who's trying to sell it to you lying to you or misleading you in some way, are they giving you all the information you need to make a rational decision?
And if you are versed in the scientific method, if you are versed in the ways of thinking about all this kind of stuff, you are harder to be fooled. And especially in the political environments that we're seeing all over the world right now, politicians are just out and out lying or they are giving you information that sounds right, but isn't or not giving you enough information and holding back a little bit that prevents you from making a decision that you should be making all of this every day in your life, all the time, the scientific method, the way of thinking critically, it profoundly affects or should profoundly affect how you live your life. And the more you know about it, the better your life's going to be. So there you go.
[00:28:03] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. A couple of comments I have. One is you kind of implied there that politicians used to the truth, so I, I might take his exception to that.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: No, I shouldn't say that. I'll just say it's worse now globally than it generally has been for the past few decades. There are always bad politicians, there are always a lot of them. But getting to such heights of power that we have to fight wars to take them down. That, of course, and that's always. That's happening too. But globally, that doesn't happen that often. And we are approaching that now again, where we're seeing dictatorships rising and that, you know, if people could see through their own prejudices.
And I don't mean to be a Pollyanna here, I'm not saying that, oh, if only everything were so glorious and wonderful. It's just that it helps. It helps. It makes it harder. And I don't have a problem making evil people have to work a lot harder because at some point it makes their job so tough that maybe they can't do it.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: Maybe. Well, an informed public, of course, is the most important thing there is. But, you know, let me bring this down to earth a little bit, too, because I've had kids of various generations crawling around my floors here, getting into everything for a long time. And, you know, after a while, you realize we're just born scientists because that's what they're doing. Go into. What is this thing sticking out of the wall here? Oh, if I pull on it, something opens in there, stuff inside there. Well, what if I grab a hold of that and pull it all out onto the floor? First of all, one result is it makes a mess. And the second result is the mother comes in and screams. But so you learn from that and maybe you don't do it again. But we're born scientists and this is a natural process. One of the things here that I think is a problem is talking about science as something different from every day. And you're talking about how this is every day, this is what we do. But somehow science has gotten this reputation as something ivory tower. And so people can say, well, I don't believe in science. What they're saying is they don't believe the scientists because their own biases. But science is just. The scientific method is just observing things and coming to the Best hypotheses that you. You can from that. And I want to point out, too, that you are not just a PhD who went into journalism. You were a research scientist as well, using the Hubble Space Telescope and so on. So you know whereof you speak.
[00:30:45] Speaker B: Yeah, kids are natural scientists. And there's. There's sort of twofold ways that kids do things like this is that they ask a lot of questions. Why, why, why? And they also categorize things. You know, a lot of science starts off as just simply categorization. And my favorite example of this is exoplanets, Planets orbiting other stars. The first few were discovered in the early 90s, and then more in the late 90s, and now we know thousands of them. And for a while, every new one that was discovered was a big deal because, you know, we've just added one more to our roster of, you know, six or something like that. And over time, when you start doing enough, what astronomers, what a lot of scientists call stamp collecting, just, you know, getting enough examples of everything, you start to see trends, and then you can start to look for rules. You know, why. Why are we seeing more big planets than little ones? Well, are we biased? You know, are we only able to see the big ones more easily, or are there just more out there? And that's why we're seeing more. And so then you can start applying these ideas. You start to have hypotheses. And the next step after what you said about having hypotheses about the observations is testing that hypothesis. So you can say, are small planets fewer, or are they just harder to find? Then you get better techniques, and then you start finding more of these small plants and go, aha. There are a lot of these, too. We weren't good enough before to see them, and we're looking in the wrong places. Turns out they are made better by this kind of star. And we were looking at that kind of star. So you test us all out, and kids do this, but we don't typically formalize that training. We don't show them how that works. And so it becomes very easy to become prey to. Well, I heard right, or my person of authority says, and then we kind of close off our minds to the real ways of making sure that our ideas work.
So, yeah, kids love all this stuff, and we kind of don't keep it up with them. We don't make it a thing in their life, and they lose it. And part of the other issue with that is they lose their wonder. That idea of looking at through the Telescope and seeing Saturn for the first time, or hearing about black holes, or the fact that we have photographs of planets orbiting other stars. We have literally seen them, we have dozens of them directly imaged planets that we see next to their stars. And you tell somebody that and their jaw opens up, their eyes get big, and you can see that wash of awe roll over them. That's something that we kind of lose as adults. And it's too bad. And I've heard many times a lot of people talk about scientists as having the capacity of wonder of a kid. And that is not always true, but in a lot of cases it is. We either refound or never lost our sense of wonder. And that's a wonderful part about being a scientist.
[00:33:43] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I've been accused more than once of being youngish, let's put it that way, in a nutshell.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: Childish. Yeah, I get that a lot.
[00:33:52] Speaker A: And that. That's definitely. Well, okay. All right. So I've never done this before. I've saved this birthday card which my wife gave me many, many years ago, and it says, never open. The secret of staying young is to find an age you really like and stick with it. Yeah.
[00:34:16] Speaker B: Unless it's like 13. Then it's like, well, yeah, you grow up a little bit, maybe, but. Yeah, but don't lose that sense of. You know, a lot of nerds these days, and I'm one of them. Right. We grew up with Star Trek or Space 1999. I don't know if you can see that behind me. I've got a model of the spaceship from that show.
[00:34:36] Speaker A: Yes, Yes. I was going to get to that, Phil.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: I love that show. Nobody's even heard of it anymore. But, you know, we're seeing.
We're adults now, and we're kind of craving that old sense of joy and adventure that we had watching those shows. And so a lot of those shows are having resurgences, and suddenly. Oh, look, you know, these. These folks also have disposable money. And so the studios have figured that out and they're making these shows. But in that sense, I really like that. I love.
Hey, look, I love the fact that monster movies are popular again, and I'm watching Godzilla on my. On my screen for the first time in years. And I love those movies when I was a kid. So tapping into that, that aspect of craving storytelling, of craving fantasy and science fiction for those who do. Yeah, I love it. It's so much fun to be able to dip into that again and see it with modern technology, modern special effects. Yeah. It's fantastic.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. It's great storytelling and science fiction just lets us do things that you can't do otherwise. Basically it's saying, you know, just don't worry about it, we're going to get to that other star and here's how we're going to do it. And you know, like the original Star Trek. Well, we can't afford to keep having a shuttlecraft go down to planet, so we'll invent a transporter.
And so now I want to get back to. You just mentioned that thing behind your right shoulder.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: I don't have to shoot this out again. Here we go.
[00:36:15] Speaker A: My camera with the cow getting beamed up in everything.
[00:36:20] Speaker B: Oh, this?
[00:36:22] Speaker A: Yes. Oh, yeah. Oh, well, what did you, what did you show me that that was hidden there that I didn't.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: That's my model from space 1999, the Eagle transporter. The greatest spaceship pretty much ever created for tv. It's just really cool. And it's a model and I'm going to be putting it together here pretty soon.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Fantastic.
[00:36:40] Speaker B: Yeah. This, the flying saucer abducting a cow. That was a gift from my wife. It's a lamp and it cracks me up. I. She found it and bought it for me and I just, I love it. It cracks me up, the fact that she also knew me that well. But also it's just, it's just so fun.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: Well, I, I think it's great. I'm jealous, actually. I've got a lot of.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: You can get them online?
[00:36:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I think I may. I'm putting that on my Christmas list because I can wait that long.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: The fact that it has a cow and this little plastic cone that is like the beam beaming the cow up, that's what, that's what slays me. It makes me laugh every time I see it.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: It's great. So, astronomy. So we're talking about science in general, how important it is.
You do astronomy. I do astronomy. Why do we do astronomy? Well, you know, not everybody can go out and do experiments in nuclear physics or fortunately or, you know, biology. Although some kids do biology experiments they probably shouldn't on wildlife and various other things. But astronomy is accessible to everybody and that's what I think makes it so important.
You do talk about the pictures from J. West and Hubble and so on. But I know that you also talk about people getting out and just seeing for themselves. And that is something that. And you know, it's ironic it. We use astronomy to introduce science in places around the world, in developing countries, rural communities where they don't have other things. They may not have any science facilities whatsoever. But if they're out in a rural area in the middle of Africa someplace, their astronomy lab is way better than yours or mine because it's dark. So they have much better lab there and it's there all the time and everybody loves it. So. And I know you encourage people to get out and look for themselves as well.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: Well, yeah, the, there's a lot to say here. It's good to remember that the telescope is a relatively recent invention. You know, came around in the 1600s, early 1600s and before that, you know, the Maya, they didn't have telescopes or anything like that, but they had an incredibly advanced understanding of, of astronomy. They understood the seasons, they understood eclipses. They had recently, it was recently discovered that they understood the period of Venus moving around the sun relative to Earth. And that's because they had access to the sky. It's just right there, dark skies, and they could observe it. And because these agrarian civilizations depended on the seasons, you know, the rainy season, the dry season at least, if not, you know, actual summer and winter, that's all. You can predict that from the cycles in the sky. So that's tied to their everyday lives.
So yeah, you don't need all this fancy equipment to have a grasp of astronomy. And because we do have some of this understanding of the science now, even if a country doesn't have access to a lot of the facilities, we can at least teach them the science while they can look at the stars and they can get that basic understanding. So that's, that's terrific. And I, and I like to tell people, yeah, just know if you can get out to a dark site and the critical phrase and you're able do it. Not everybody can get up and just go someplace. Of course that place may not be available. They may not have enough money to do that, or they may be visually impaired. And now there's a lot of work being done on astronomy, which in many ways is a fundamentally visual science of translating that for people who can't see, for example, sonifying, turning pictures into sounds so that they can hear what's going on in the picture. And there are ways to do that. That, that can represent structures in space that they can, they can then understand without having to see, which is cool. Also there's this idea of 3D things built like plastic that's been vacuum formed to that they can feel raised bumps and things, they can feel Saturn's rings, they can feel the sun and the earth and the moon and how they have to line up for an eclipse and things like that. So it's terrific. And in that sense, astronomy is for everyone. If we love it enough to go out and tell people about it, we should make sure as many people can learn about it as possible. I think that's a good thing.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: Absolutely. That is the best.
Better than I could say it myself. And I want to say, too, that I've been involved in astronomy for the Blind for some time. And we will have guests on here talking about that. We have a group of people, some you may know. You know Carol Christian from Space telescope. Yeah. She 3D prints these, these models and does that. She's part of the group to share how to do this with other outreach groups around the world who never heard of doing this for the blind. We can get thousands of people out there doing this for those that we have left behind. That's. That's our mission here. So you gave me a great segue to that. I appreciate that.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: You are welcome.
[00:41:44] Speaker A: So I want to thank you very much for coming on what's Next. You're writing about the eclipse, I know like crazy for all different places because this is recorded about a month before the total solar eclipse across the US And Mexico and Canada. So good luck with that. And I want to thank you very much for coming on. This hopefully won't be the last time because there's plenty to talk about. Like you said, there's so much to unwrap in some of these things. So thank you. And for everybody who wants to learn more about the Bad Astronomer and his good astronomy newsletter, here once again is the link to it. And thanks for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
