This is, however, a vision, not a fact.
Wednesday I drove to the University of Indianapolis to see a lecture given by the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Dr. Tyson is the fifth director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, and is the host of the reboot series Cosmos.
His lecture was entitled This Just in: Latest Discoveries in the Universe and covered topics like the moon in eclipse, why Pluto isn't considered a planet anymore (get over it), and the world's focus on science.
His lecture was a roller coaster of fact, fun, and somber truth. But it wasn't filled with facts or data or high amounts of questioning. Instead, it was like we were in a bar, and he was talking to us about the universe.
I watched Dr. Tyson and saw that he had a finger on the pulse of the universe, and he recognized that today, that pulse is us. The most astonishing fact to him (and now me) is that we ARE a manifestation of the universe. We are a concoction of star dust that combined to make elements. Elements that make life, and the possibility for that life to understand its origins, its path from the beginning of known time (4.8 BILLION YEARS) to now. We have the power to recognize things that can kill us, make us happy, and put us in touch with the natural world.
And the amazing part of his lecture is that Dr. Tyson can just talk about it. He does it to capture the interest of science, to unlock the secrets. and not to find answers, but to find more secrets and recognize who we really are.
On Pluto, he stands by the designation of a dwarf planet. He helped put it in such a designation, so blame him.
For the moon, he criticized the media, how it considers cosmological events to be "rare" and, in some cases, "signs of the apocalypse." Of course, for him, he knows all these things. He has his own planetarium.
He talked how there is plotting for the number of asteroids large enough to eliminate all life on the planet. And there are pages of them that at any time can hit us. Think of the one that just detonated above Siberia. It was 40 meters in diameter, and traveled at 40,000 miles per hour. when it hit the Earth's atmosphere, it stopped. Like a car hitting a wall. The explosion was equivalent to 500 megatons of TNT. The nuclear bomb over Hiroshima was only 20 megatons. And the asteroid detonated with such force it broke windows around the towns it detonated.
He talked comets. The Rosetta probe, launched earlier this year, caught up to a comet and is soon going to place a probe on the surface of it. Comets are little more than ice balls and dust hurtling through space, so putting a probe on the surface of one is extremely delicate and awesome. Tyson also discussed how a comet shouldn't mess with the sun. The sun wins every time.
I admire Neil deGrasse Tyson because he speaks with such passion about these things. I want to harness that emotion when I talk, feel the passion through me when I present my case to the world. Another part I admire about Neil is how he talks to people. He talks to everyone exactly the same. What you see is what you get, no matter who you are or what age you may be. I watched him last night explain (highly sarcastically) to a teenager why he tries not to reflect his opinion on matters. He wants to express fact when he has a debate.
He showed us a picture someone took of him making waffles one morning. Then later, someone used Photoshop to make it look like he was creating the Earth.
Original Photoshop
Looks great too. But in my opinion, I see Dr. Tyson not creating the Earth, but adding the knowledge of the cosmos to the Earth.
Plus it looks good on a van.
Until next time.
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