Letters from an Astrophysicist
Page 2
In another case, in 1996, while attending an evening gala for my Museum† (I was largely unknown to the public at the time), a liberal-minded woman at my table saw that I worked for the Museum—but only high-ranking Museum administrators were in attendance, and so she was quick to presume that I was head of Community Affairs or some such title commonly reserved for token Blacks. I replied that I was an astrophysicist, Director of the Hayden Planetarium, and Project Scientist for the Rose Center for Earth and Space, under construction, after which she had nothing to say for the rest of the dinner.
Those kinds of encounters were common then, but simply do not occur anymore, except, possibly, among older people whose life experience was shaped in a Black & White America, rather than in simply, America. Various high-profile biographical mentions of me in recent years make no mention of my skin color.‡
So the trends don’t support your contentions, or perhaps, it indicates that your experience does not represent prevailing trends and truths.
Thank you for your supportive comments, and while the struggle continues, the times are indeed a-changin’.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
On IQ
Just a few days later, Marc continued, wondering about the difference in IQ scores between blacks and whites. He debates it often between friends and family, and sought more talking points to help him argue against it.
Dear Marc,
The issue is bigger than race vs. IQ. It’s more likely about the meaning of IQ at all. Have a look at the book titled Genius Revisited: High IQ Children Grown Up, which studied what became of hundreds of graduates of Hunter College Elementary school in NYC, a selective public school where the students have an average IQ of 150+.
Tracking them into adulthood, one might imagine great achievements among them. Not so. There were no Nobel Laureates. No Pulitzer Prize winners. In fact, no person was singularly distinguished in his or her field. Meanwhile, they are all successful by any normal measure in American society—happily married, secure jobs, manager-level or higher, homeowners, etc. But one can’t help reflecting on what distinguishes singularly successful people from others, because if IQ mattered on the level that IQ purveyors claim, then all the shakers and movers of society would be people drawn from this population. But the data show this not to be the case.
IQ correlates nicely with GPA in high school and college, but after your first job, nobody ever asks what your college GPA was. What matters are your people skills, leadership skills, real-world problem solving skills, integrity, business acumen, reliability, ambition, work ethic, kindness, compassion, etc. So for me, conversations about race and IQ are of no practical consequence, any more than are conversations about race and hair color, or race and food preferences.
I do not know my IQ. It’s never been measured. I graduated 350-ish out of 700 in my high school class. So few teachers (or classmates for that matter) would have said of me, “He’ll go far.” Why? Because the educational system fixates on test scores. Meanwhile, for two years running, I am listed in the “Harvard 100,” a compilation of the hundred most influential living graduates of Harvard University.
Good luck in your conversations with family. If any of them has a question, I will be happy to take a stab at it. But there are clearly more important issues out there to debate than IQ.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
100 mph
Thursday, May 3, 2012
How’s it going, Ty? I feel I can call you that ’cause I feel like I know you already.
I’ve watched literally every second of all your YouTube videos. I would be at your talks, but my job requires me to travel a lot. My name is Jarrett Burgess and I play professional baseball. I’m emailing you because ever since I was four-years-old, I wanted to be an astronaut. You inspired me and gave me confidence in doing what I love to do, despite the public and family pressure on me to play baseball. I want to be known for discoveries and making a difference in science. I don’t want baseball to define me.
Keep up with your videos—you’re even reaching out to people like me. Yeah, I can throw a baseball 100 mph from the outfield, or run a 60-yard dash in 6.2 seconds, and hit a baseball over 410 feet. Even when I’m on the field, I’m thinking about science. I want to pursue my goal in science. I need help and a guide on what I should start off doing. I’m 21-years-old and the most dedicated person, with great integrity and, most importantly, an amazing imagination. And I love the cosmos.
Please help me, Neil, in any way you can. I will appreciate it.
Jarrett Burgess
Dear Jarrett,
Thanks for that all-out appeal to connect with the cosmos. You express a dilemma that afflicts many in society: Should you do what you’re best at? Do what others expect of you? Or do what you love most?
I love baseball (a few dozen of my Tweets are on the subject), so I’d be hard-pressed to tell you to take your 100 mph arm and study the universe. But I also happen to love what I do. And because I love what I do, I am self-driven and incentivized to make myself better at it every day—without limit.
If I remember correctly, minor league players make hardly any money at all. So your time in the farm system is conceived to hone your skills in anticipation of being called up, rather than to accumulate wealth. It seems to me that you could’ve instead attended a good baseball college, where you can play competitively while simultaneously majoring in astrophysics. If memory serves, in the early 1980s, Roger Clemens pitched for the University of Texas at Austin, took them to the nationals, then entered the Major League.
Meanwhile, in the 1980s, Brian May had a successful career as lead guitarist for the legendary rock group Queen, then—then—then—decided to get a Ph.D. in Astrophysics. Earned just a few years ago.
I’d bet most people who are encouraging you to stay in baseball carry high expectations that you will make tons of money. But that means your career would be driven by the search for wealth, rather than the search for cosmic fulfillment. In my experience, when money is the sole carrot, people can lose sight of life’s deeper sources of happiness.
Until you major in physics or astrophysics in college (taking all the attendant math courses) you will not know for sure what you’re better at—academics or sports. That will be useful to know. If you’re better at sports than academics, but still love the universe, then return to professional baseball, play for 10 years while getting your master’s degree over the winter months, then, like Brian May, get your Ph.D. after you’ve made tons of money.
If you delayed professional baseball, and went to college to major in Physics (while still playing baseball) that would make headlines—especially in today’s science starved culture. And if it doesn’t, I’ll make sure it does.
In any case, I am delighted to learn that I have helped, in whatever small way, to sustain the rage of your cosmic flame.
Best to you.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
If I Were President
During a particularly obstinate run of congressional cacophony, the “Sunday Review” section of the New York Times solicited responses from non-politicians to the phrase: “If I Were President . . .” What follows is the unedited version of my published answer.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
New York Times
The question, “If I were President I’d . . .” implies that if you swap out one leader, put in another, then all will be well with America—as though our leaders are the cause of all ailments.
That must be why we’ve created a tradition of rampant attacks on our politicians. Are they too conservative for you? Too liberal? Too religious? Too atheist? Too gay? Too anti-gay? Too rich? Too dumb? Too smart? Too ethnic? Too philanderous? Curious behavior, given that we elect 88% of Congress every two years.
A second tradition-in-progress is the expectation that everyone else in our culturally pluralistic land should hold exactly your own outlook, on all issues.
When you’re scientifically literate, the world looks different t
o you. It’s a particular way of questioning what you see and hear. When empowered by this state of mind, objective realities matter. These are the truths of the world that exist outside of whatever your belief system tells you.
One objective reality is that our government doesn’t work, not because we have dysfunctional politicians, but because we have dysfunctional voters. As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
New York City
* Neil deGrasse Tyson, The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2004).
† The American Museum of Natural History, New York City, where I have served as the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium since 1996.
‡ E.g., 2007 Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World; 2008 Discover magazine’s 10 Most Influential People in Science.
Chapter 2
Extraordinary Claims
Curious about UFOs, cryptozoology, astrology, extrasensory perception? It’s all here. The Carl Sagan dictum “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” remains a potent guide when investigating the natural world for its underlying order. But it comes with a recurring risk: knowing enough about a subject to think you are right, but not enough about the subject to know you are wrong.
ET Phone Home
Saturday, March 8, 2009
Neil, if the ETs are out there, why don’t we send someone to the moon and Mars and get their input on who they are and why they are coming to Earth?
Mel
Dear Mel,
Until someone drags an alien carcass into a public lab or ET lands on the White House lawn, or on the roof of the New York Times building, one cannot justify the trillion-dollar expense of travelling to Mars to greet them because the weight of the evidence is incommensurate with the strength of the claims.
Neil
Alien Aliens
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Dear Neil
I have been patiently waiting for my wonderful scientists to “prove” that Aliens exist. and I believe it is coming, however slowly. And I might be thinking way out of the box here—but instead of always looking for something that mirrors us, why not look for something that does not?
Melodie Lander
Dear Melodie
The number of ways that life might be alive, for which we have no foundation to select, vastly exceeds the one way we know life can be alive. So when designing an experiment on a limited budget, you always start with what you know.
We know life is possible with carbon-based molecules (evidence = us). We further know carbon is highly abundant in the universe and is the most chemically fertile element on the periodic table. So we begin there.
Neil
UFO Sightings
Trenton Jordan noted that he was losing his skepticism regarding UFOs. The cause? Freshly released video footage from shuttle missions, in which unexplained objects were flitting about outside the windows. He was aware of space debris and other possible explanations, but he grew convinced that NASA must be withholding information about aliens that the public deserves to know. He wrote to me in July 2008, in search of arguments that might quell his skepticism.
Dear Mr. Jordan,
Thanks for your kind words about my life’s work. They are warmly received.
Regarding your evaporating skepticism of visiting aliens: When you see shapes or lights that fly through the air or through space, and you do not know what they are, they become a UFO—emphasis on the “U.” Such sightings split into four broad categories:
1.The observer is crazy or otherwise delusional.
2.The observer sees and reports inaccurately, confounding an account that would be a simple description of natural phenomena.
3.The observer sees and reports accurately, but is insufficiently familiar with natural phenomena to be mystified by what he or she sees.
4.The observer sees and reports accurately something that defies any normal or conventional explanation—constituting a genuine mystery.
Note that eyewitness testimony is, by far, the weakest form of evidence that a person can present in support of a claim. In spite of its high value in the court of law, in the “court” of science, eyewitness testimony is essentially useless. Psychologists have known for quite some time how ineffective the human senses are as data taking devices. Note that the pedigree of the observer is irrelevant here—as long as he or she is human, the fallibility of observation is manifest.
Note further that claims of a “cover-up” or “conspiracy” is the battle cry of people who want to believe, in the face of insufficient data to fully support their claims.
Another well-known shortcoming of the human mind is what psychologists and philosophers call “argument from ignorance.” The NASA cases you describe come closest to category (4) above, since we have video of strange phenomena—video that we take to be generally reliable, reminding us again of what the “U” in UFO stands for. Once you confess to not knowing what you are looking at, no logical line of reasoning allows you to then declare that you know what you are looking at. And that includes assertions that the flying shapes “must be” intelligent, technologically advanced aliens from distant planets secretly observing the behavior of Earthlings. You simply bear insufficient evidence to make that jump, however tempting it may be.
A similar argument from ignorance comes from the Big Bang. When I am asked what was around before the Big Bang, I say, “We do not yet know.” Often the reply is, “It must be something—it was surely God.” To go from “We don’t know” to “It must be God” is another example of an argument from ignorance. This kind of disconnect has no place in rational investigations, yet it perennially permeates the thoughts and statements of people who already know what they want to believe.
So if the flying mysteries actually turn out to be intelligent aliens, it will not have been demonstrated by any observation yet brought forth. What’s required to draw the conclusions you seek is much better evidence of the kind that would survive the “court” of science: Aliens visiting multiple media centers, for example, demonstrating their technology on national television; joining the President and First Lady for a state dinner or high tea in the Rose Garden; allowing themselves to be CAT scanned at the Johns Hopkins Medical Center so that we can learn about their physiology; submitting some of their communication devices or other hardware to our most respected research laboratories. The day real evidence comes forth, you will not need congressional hearings parading high-ranking eyewitnesses on the subject.
Until any of that happens, UFO sightings of category (4) are simply intriguing unidentified lights and shapes in the sky—perhaps worthy of further study like any mystery in science—but without conspiracy theorists invoking cover-ups to bridge all gaps in the data, convincing themselves of what they are already sure is true.
Should NASA direct funds to study these mysterious reflective objects visible from the window of spacecraft? Would be nice one day to have a radar device that constantly monitors and photographs anything of any size that approaches the craft. But there’s so much happening outside the window of a spaceship—dislodged tools, loose paint chips, particulate fuel exhaust floating by. Not to mention rapid, ever-changing lighting conditions.
In summary, if you want public money to investigate UFOs for the possibility that they may be alien visitations, then you need much, much better evidence to justify the cause.
Thanks for your interest.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
A Glowing Pattern in the Sky
In March 2005, Dave Halliday of New Jersey wrote of facing northward at night as a teenager in the mid-1970s, when he witnessed what looked like a star encircled with orange dashes projecting outward. His guess at the time was that maybe he saw a planet bombarded by a meteor shower. Ha
rboring this mysterious vision for three decades, he wondered if I could shed some light on what he saw.
Dear Mr. Halliday,
You have asked about a 1970s sightings of orange dashes. There is nothing more fickle and unreliable than eyewitness testimony, no matter the pedigree of the person who made the observation. This is why eyewitness testimony comprises the lowest form of evidence in science (curiously, unlike courts of law).
For example, I recently received an email from a retired engineer who said he saw a brilliant meteor streak across the Brooklyn sky at 8:15pm the night before. He wondered if I had heard of any other reports. Sounds like a high precision account. However, five other city-based reports placed a similarly described event between 7 and 7:30 pm. So unless two bright meteors crossed the sky that night, somebody has the wrong time. When confronted with this fact, the engineer notified me that his wife corrected his memory and in fact what he saw took place at 7:15, not 8:15. Notice that this exchange of information is happening 24 hours after the event. Not a decade. Not thirty years. Not a century. And you would think that reading the time would be the least likely source of error, since we do it every day.
With this story as preamble, I know of no cosmic phenomenon that would create the view that you describe. The closest thing I can think of must start with the question: Do you have long eyelashes? If they are wet and you look at a small bright source, the light will pass through droplets in your eyelashes before reaching your iris, and create a pattern of active wagon-wheel spokes. Try it. The best effect comes when rising up out of an outdoor pool.