Turning on his star power
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is landing in Houston.
The topic of astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson’s four-date Texas trek, which lands Monday night at Houston’s Jones Hall, is “Cosmic Collisions.” Those unfamiliar with Tyson, then, could be forgiven if they think the man who has used science as a catapult to celebrity is simply going to scare everyone with predictions of imminent death by asteroid. To add Hollywood insult to fiery injury, a valiant Bruce Willis won’t even be on hand to save us.
But collisions aren’t just about destruction and death, they’re also catalysts for birth and creation.
“Normally, when people think of collisions, you might think of an asteroid strike,” he conceded by phone from his New York home, where he’s taking refuge from a different force of nature, a blizzard. “But there are other kinds
of collisions … . The collision of two black holes, the collision of two pulsars, the collision of atoms that creates energy inside of stars. There’s the collision that created the moon. … There’s so much that has shaped the world that we live in by virtue of collisions. … They’re fundamental to everything that we know and care about. There was a collision that took out the dinosaurs that enabled the early mammals to rise up.”
Well, when you put it that way.
It’s just such layman-friendly explanations that have made Tyson, 59, director of New York’s Hayden Planetarium, the face of science in pop culture in the 21st century. Earlier this year, he published his 14th book, “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry,” and he still has his “StarTalk” podcast and National Geographic TV show. He’s the heir to the position once held by the late Carl Sagan as America’s unofficial scientist-in-chief, having hosted a new version of Sagan’s popular “Cosmos” TV series, called “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey,” and having been appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on two different commissions regarding space exploration.
And yet, in a time when facts have become malleable currency, deGrasse Tyson’s status as “Mr. Science” doesn’t always come with approval. The flat pack
Though he certainly has his fans, deGrasse Tyson angers others, especially on social media. CollegeHumor.com devoted an entire page to the heady topic of “12 Times Neil deGrasse Tyson Was Stupidly Condescending on Twitter.”
And it’s safe to say Tyson won’t be an honored speaker at any function for the Flat Earth Society, a group whose numbers are growing.
“For me, that’s evidence of two facts,” he said. “One, that we live in a society that protects free speech and two, we live in a society with a failed educational system … . People don’t know what science is or how and why it works. Maybe that’s what should be taught in school, rather than just the science itself … . Learning science can be thought of as this body of information, like any other class I’m taking. History is a body of information, or literature. And then you just move on, without realizing that the methods and tools of science are the most potent way we have ever devised to distinguish what is and is not true in this world. If you’re not taught that, you’ll think it’s just something that is subject to your opinion.”
He says that though the anti-science movement might seem a unique outgrowth of this particular age, it’s actually long ingrained in society.
“There were people in the 1960s and ’70s who claimed to bend spoons with their minds,” he said, referring to the likes
“Learning science can be thought of as this body of information, like any other class I’m taking. … And then you just move on, without realizing that the methods and tools of science are the most potent way we have ever devised to distinguish what is and is not true in this world. If you’re not taught that, you’ll think it’s just something that is subject to your opinion.” Neil deGrasse Tyson
of Uri Geller, who became a sensation because of his supposed abilities. “You’ve always had pockets of this, but now, with the internet, these people can find each other. You can just search for ‘mind-bending spoons,’ and it will affirm what you think is true simply because of how many other people think the same thing.”
Science education at a fundamental level is something that intrigues deGrasse Tyson, though he’s not yet ready to say what his solutions would be.
“I’ve got some things still in the oven that I’m formulating about how to fix the educational system, but they’re figuratively half-baked at this point,” he explained, noting it would be probably be another couple of years before he’s ready to say anything. “I want to do more reading about what research others have done before I come out with my own ideas.” Keeping it realist
DeGrasse Tyson thinks one reason people are susceptible to imbecilic ideas they stumble across on the internet is that humans want a definitive answer, even if it’s one unmoored to reality. As the slogan from “The X-Files” goes, “I want to believe.”
Take the recent revelation of the government’s secret $22 million Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program and a video of Navy pilots reportedly tracking a mysterious object.
“It turns out that people equate in their brain UFO with visiting aliens, and there’s not justification for that,” said deGrasse Tyson, who acknowledges there are things in our world that cannot yet be identified. “There’s this huge gap between what people want to be true and what there’s sufficient evidence to say that is true.
“A scientist is completely comfortable with not knowing something. People, in general, are not comfortable with not knowing. Back when, with epilepsy, (they thought) it must be the devil invading the body because that’s exactly what the devil would do to you. So, they have an explanation and they’re done, rather than, ‘This is a mystery. We don’t know what it is.’ ”
Which brings us back to deGrasse Tyson’s Twitter feed, where he often riles those who don’t see the world as he does. His Christmas-themed tweets — “Merry Christmas to the world’s 2.5 billion Christians. And to the remaining 5 billion people, including Muslims Atheists Hindus Buddhists Animists & Jews, Happy Monday” and, “On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642” — raised many hackles.
But deGrasse Tyson says he’s just speaking basic truths.
“I don’t mind people getting (angry) at what I tweet if they’re getting (angry) at what is true,” he said. “People go, ‘Tyson is trolling Christians on Christmas Day.’ And it’s like, whoa. So when I’m speaking pure truth, if you get angry, I feel no obligation to soften it for you.
“I’m a realist. I’m trying to make you understand what the real world is, not the world that you may have created for yourself in whatever bubble you might happen to live.”