Neil DeGrasse Tyson

My brother went to see one of the brightest men in America last night.

Here is the article he sent me:


Face of space Tyson laments Americans' scientific illiteracy

PJ Slinger\ — 2/03/2009 8:27 am \

Neil deGrasse Tyson is one in a million.He said so himself."There are six-and-half billion people on this planet, and there are 6,500 astrophysicists, so that makes each of us (astrophysicists) one in a million," Tyson said Monday night at the Wisconsin Union Theater as part of the UW's Distinguished Lecture Series.It's too bad there aren't a lot more like Tyson, who kept the packed house enthralled with his charisma, knowledge and off-the-cuff humor for more than two hours.Tyson is the 21st century face of space, a mantle previously held by the late, great Carl Sagan. Tyson is director of the Hayden Planetarium and the host of PBS' "NOVA ScienceNOW" program, aimed at educating a new generation of Americans in science.And that is no small task.Tyson pointed out numerous examples of scientific illiteracy in the U.S., including a general lack of understanding and a belief in silly superstitions.On the screen behind him he showed a photo of the inside of an elevator in a tall building, and how there was no button for the 13th floor."We are supposedly a technologically advanced country, and yet people are afraid of the number 13?" he said.And since he was speaking on Feb. 2, Tyson showed a picture of the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, who supposedly tells the weather future on whether he sees a shadow."Groundhog Day," Tyson said. "Sure, it's innocent fun. But it's a remnant, a celebration of our climatological ignorance."And ignorance is unfortunately the rule, not the exception, when it comes to science knowledge in the U.S., he lamented.He began the lecture with a list of scientific ideas that people assume to be true, including that the sun is yellow, that the North Star is the brightest object in the night sky and that total solar eclipses are rare. He pointed out how the entire list was false, but that because of scientific illiteracy, people tend to believe them because they seem right.He went on to describe each of the fallacies, pointing out that the sun is white, not yellow, that the North Star is the 49th brightest object in the sky and that total solar eclipses happen once every two and a half years."We hold presidential elections every four years, and you never hear them say, 'We have a rare presidential election coming up.'"Tyson, in Wisconsin for the first time, took the audience once around the universe and back home, touching on everything from science, math and world history to, yes, journalism. But at the heart of it all was the fact that scientific literacy in the U.S. is woefully deficient.Tyson pointed out the need for scientific literacy and how it seems to have fallen by the wayside over the past generation or so. He showed photos of the broken levees after Hurricane Katrina, the fallen interstate bridge in St. Paul, the aftermath of two trains that collided, among other photos of devastation wrought by a lack of scientific knowledge and understanding."That's not the country I grew up in," Tyson lamented. "We've stopped dreaming."Tyson showed how the elemental makeup of the universe is nearly identical to the makeup of the elements here on Earth, which he says is a pretty good indicator that we have no special place in the universe. It only makes sense, he said.As he neared the end of the lecture, he brought the audience on a trip through larger and larger numbers, which he called the "Cosmic Perspective." From one to a thousand to a million, a billion, a trillion … all the way up to a sextillion.That's 10 to the 21st power, or, written out: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That's how many stars are in our observable universe. And our little planet orbits just one of them.Does this make Tyson feel insignificant?"Not at all," he said. "The universe is in us."


I love that philosophical question. When we hold a rose in our hand, Is the beauty of the rose coming from itself or from us? Is it our perception of the rose or is it the rose itself that is important? Is the world all inside us? There wouldn't be a world without us to perceive it, right, but there has to be a world. Of all people, Deepak Chopra does a pretty good job of describing the rose's beauty being inside us. Very interesting.