Letters from an Astrophysicist
Page 5
Consider that Handel’s Messiah is among the greatest choral works ever composed. So too is Bach’s Mass in B-Minor. Yet neither of these works would exist were it not for somebody inspired by Jesus. This does not (or at least should not) subtract from the brilliance, the beauty, and the majesty of these great works of music.
Furthermore, as an atheist, you surely use the words: “holiday” and “goodbye,” yet their origins come from “holy day,” and “god be with you.”
As in anything in life, you must choose your battles.
So may I recommend that you adopt CE and BCE and leave it at that? Instead, devote your energies to the real battlefield—the “sanctity” of the science classroom in the face of religious fundamentalists who perennially attempt to influence the science curriculum with religious-based philosophies.
Sincerely,
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Skies Over Iraq
Monday, March 5, 2007
Dear Neil,
My name is Derrick Philips. I am a Private First Class in the Army. I am currently deployed outside of Balad, Iraq. I asked my wife to send me a copy of your newest book and since I received it two days ago, I have not been able to put it down. Currently, I am charged with the mundane task of pulling guard duty. After my grueling 12-hour day of watching mule drawn carts and standing in one spot, I get an opportunity to sit down and open your book, Death By Black Hole. I am sure that a lot of people are enjoying it in as many ways as there are people reading it. I think that you might like to hear my unique way of deriving pleasure from it.
I am about an hour north of Baghdad. This is a place in your book that has gotten a few references.‡ I am able to talk to some of the local people who are well aware of their past significance in the role of the sciences and give them opportunity to speak to me of many other things that I was previously unaware of, that have transpired right here in my temporary back yard. These conversations, that are spawned from the knowledge imparted by your book, leave me feeling more like a heavily armed tourist, rather than an occupying invader.
A book like yours, I imagine, leaves people wanting to gaze upon the stars and reflect on some of what they have just read. I have discovered that the night sky is teeming with a lot more than I ever thought possible, when I turn on my Night Vision Goggles. How many of your readers can say that they were inspired to use defense technology to relax after a long day at work? Well, some I imagine.
Anyhow, your book has inspired me to think, to use my head for something other than just an ear spacer! I have to thank you for helping to stave off my boredom for part of the year that I am here.
I am highly interested in this subject, but seriously under-educated. I am doing independent research into our cosmos so that I can relay this information to my children. They seem to share my fascinations, and with a minimal investment of a telescope I can see a lot of serious quality time coming from that endeavor.
In short, I just wanted to write to you and thank you for the contribution that you have made to MY war effort.
Sincerely,
PFC Derrick Philips
Dear PFC Philips,
Thank you for your kind words about my latest book and its relationship to your service in Iraq. It’s an honor to help your time pass.
With regard to your night scope—connections between astrophysics and the military extend far beyond most people’s awareness. I am working on a book now that highlights the countless connections that exist between them.§
And yes, Baghdad has deep history in the sciences, especially in mathematics—algebra in particular. Furthermore, next time you look up at night (as you may recall from the book), two-thirds of all stars that have names, are named in Arabic, enabled by major advances in navigation a thousand years ago.
The most enduring thing about being human is the discovery of cosmic truths that transcend culture, politics, religion, and time, forming the corpus of knowledge and wisdom that we call civilization.
All the best, on Earth and in the universe.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Seeing Stars
The “Metropolitan Diary” is a weekly feature of the New York Times in which readers share unique tales of city life, as I did back in 1993.
Wednesday, December 15, 1993
New York Times
Dear Metropolitan Diary:
An elderly woman with a strong Brooklyn accent recently called my office at Columbia University’s Department of Astronomy to ask about a bright glowing object she saw “hovering” outside her window the night before. I knew that the planet Venus happened to be bright and well-placed in the west for viewing in the early evening sky, but I asked more questions to verify my suspicions. After sifting through answers like, “It’s a little bit higher than the roof of Marty’s Deli,” I concluded that the brightness, compass direction, elevation above the horizon, and time of observation were indeed consistent with her having seen the planet Venus. Realizing that she has probably lived in Brooklyn most of her life, I asked her why she called now and not at any of the hundreds of other times that Venus was bright over the western horizon. She replied, “I’ve never noticed it before!”
You must understand that to an astronomer this is an astonishing statement. I was compelled to explore her response further. I asked how long she has lived in her apartment. “Thirty years.” I asked her whether she has ever looked out her window before. “I used to always keep my curtains closed, but now I keep them open.” Naturally, I then asked her why she now keeps her curtains open. “There used to be a large apartment building outside my window but they tore it down. Now I can see the sky and it’s beautiful.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Manhattan
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
I’m Georgette Burrell and I’m seven years old. I saw your special on how Pluto is a dwarf planet. I thought that it was very cool. I heard of a planet (or star) called Lucy that is a big diamond. My question is how would scientists know about what it is if it’s so far away?
Thanks,
Georgette
Excellent question, Georgette.
Many dead stars are made of carbon (they are white dwarfs). Under high pressure, pure carbon turns into diamond. These stars have strong gravity, which puts their carbon under high pressure. So we can use math to calculate the star might just be made of pure diamond.
Neil
I’d Rather Direct
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Dear Mr. Tyson,
I am a member of the Writer’s Guild of America, currently working on a script about interplanetary travel. I have seen you on numerous TV specials and I am a big admirer of your frankness in observations. One that struck me, and in turn made me seek your counsel, was your matter-of-fact summation of what if something goes wrong in space—your answer: “You die!”
I am working on a script about an astronaut who is sent off to Japetus, the third largest moon of Saturn, to investigate a mysterious alien transmission from the surface. Here’s the thing—I want to get it right. I want this to be as accurate as possible. Could you answer a few questions about the inherent dangers of such a long space travel, from both inside and outside the ship?
Sincerely,
Andrei Anson
1.How long would it take to get to Japetus?
Dear Andrei,
Thanks for your questions. How long to Iapetus? Any amount of time you choose. An energy-minimizing ballistic trajectory would take about ten years. But if fuel is no object, then you can accelerate for most of the trip, then use fuel to decelerate—this gives you artificial gravity en route, and you could get there in a year or two.
2.In my script, I have a new shuttle meeting up with the space station to affix its new fuel supply. How would they actually get to Japetus? Slingshot, etc.?
In Earth orbit, you already possess half the energy to get anywhere else in the solar system. In other words, the energy necessa
ry to achieve Earth orbit is exactly half the energy it takes to leave Earth entirely. Slingshot maneuvers are for spacecraft that do not launch with enough fuel to reach their destination. They take longer than ballistic trajectories because their total distance traveled can be twice what it would otherwise be, as they fall towards the planets and moons that would provide the needed gravity boost.
3.How fast could we have them going? Is 39,000 mph the realistic limit these days?
Any speed at all. It’s just a matter of fuel available to accelerate and decelerate. Escape velocity for Earth is 25,000 mph. That should get you to Iapetus in 10 years.
4.How would they get back?
You need even more fuel to get back than to get out there. You’d have to refuel at Saturn somehow. Saturn’s atmosphere contains molecules that you could use for this purpose, including water. But you would need a factory that could separate the H from the O in H2O. Then the two elements can be combined in a rocket motor, to form rocket fuel. Or they could just get fuel from an alien fillin’ station.
5.What would happen to our hero, Tom, if he were to be stuck in space for the next twenty or so years? Physically speaking.
Nothing. Unless he runs out of food.
6.And lastly, how could I cripple the ship permanently?
One scenario: you use Saturn’s atmosphere to aero-brake (see the 1984 film 2010: The Year We Make Contact), but a hole develops in the fuselage and hot air leaks into critical engine parts that permanently damages the throttle controllers and fuel tank. You have fuel initially. You have rocket motors. You just have no control of how much they fire. And then all the fuel leaks away as he spins off into oblivion.
7.I was thinking some debris from an asteroid that just misses the ship. But its nearby debris does cause damage, rendering the ship useless. Or, quite frankly, is there some kind of other way to strand them? I know at 39,000 mph, most things would just probably obliterate the ship, something I do not want to do.
Unlikely. Asteroids are few and far between. Or rather, space is vast, so they are actually many and far between. You could instead slingshot the ship around Saturn, en route to Jupiter, but then it accidentally gets catapulted through the field of Trojan Asteroids, which Jupiter has gravitationally trapped in orbit around the Sun. The ship then suffers collision damage that they are unable to repair—perhaps with lost fuel. Then requiring the aerobraking maneuver around Saturn, since the ship would not have enough fuel to decelerate. This ensures that Major Tom does not leave the solar system altogether, and dies in orbit around Saturn.
Have a nice day!
Neil deGrasse Tyson
Worst Ever
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Dear Mr. Tyson,
I just wanted to know: what do you think is the absolute worst cinematic offender to science? To make it easy, we will exclude all movies of the pre-2001: A Space Odyssey period, so you don’t have to name Ed Wood’s filmography. And what about the movie Armageddon? That movie sucked on both a scientific and artistic scale.
Anyway, I hope you have time to reply, since I know you are busy, but I am unfortunately a very curious creature. I thank you for your time. Keep on rockin’ in the free world.
Chris Bostwick
Dear Chris:
Disney’s 1979 film The Black Hole. Worst ever—given how fertile the scientific material was—until the 1998 film Armageddon, which violates more laws of physics (per minute) than any other film in the universe.
Neil
A Viral Blunder
Tuesday, January 8, 2019
Dear Dr. Tyson,
We’d like to begin by introducing ourselves—Samyuktha and I are two NYC medical students and, more importantly, museum aficionados who frequent the American Museum of Natural History. We are writing to inform you about a small but substantial inaccuracy on one of the displays. Regarding a rhinovirus, the board reads “Rhinoviruses are among the major causes of the common cold. They consist of DNA surrounded by a protein coat.” However, a rhinovirus contains RNA (ribonucleic acid) and not DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) as the board states.
We acknowledge that this may seem trivial and do not mean to sound nitpicky, but whether or not a virus contains DNA or RNA is actually one of the most fundamental ways in which viruses are classified and distinguished. It affects the viruses’ mode of transmission, mode of replication, stability, and physical characteristics among other core properties. Therefore, we decided this was important enough to write to you about.
Sincerely,
Samyuktha Guttha & Aneek Patel
Dear Samyuktha & Aneek,
Everybody knows that viruses carry RNA and not DNA—except, apparently, for all of us who wrote and reviewed the panel text as well as the tens of millions of people who have seen this exhibit since opening day, 247 moons ago.
I even checked my original files to see if there was a transcription error. That way we could blame the fabricators of the exhibit instead of ourselves. But, alas, it was the submitted text that had the error.
So . . . where were you both, twenty years ago when we mounted that panel? Could have used you back then!
Thanks for the sharp eyes.
And we’ll get right to fixing that text.
Neil
Samyuktha and Aneek replied . . .
Thank you so much. We were around 2 years old back then, but you definitely should have reached out!
Breaking Up Is Easy to Do
An open letter to all my fellow employees at the American Museum of Natural History.
Thursday Afternoon, May 4, 2006
Dear Museum Community,
As you may already know, “countless” comets (perhaps as many as trillions) orbit the Sun, along with everything else. The public will typically hear only about those bright enough to see with the unaided eye, or, of course, those that are about to hit something.
Unlike the near-circular orbits of planets, most comets travel on highly elongated trajectories, crossing other people’s orbits as they plunge in and out of the inner solar system. Made principally of ice, as a comet nears the Sun’s heat its outer layers evaporate, creating an enormous ball of reflective gas—the “coma.” These gases also stretch through interplanetary space, forming the celebrated comet’s “tail.”
We have a good idea what comets are made of, but we do not know how solid they are. The range of structural integrity among the solar system’s comets is surely wide, just as some snowballs will stick well, while others will crumble the moment they leave your hand.
Just now becoming visible to the naked eye, comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 in ten days will come within seven million miles of Earth—thirty times the Earth-Moon distance. From the stresses of being a comet this time around, its nucleus has begun to disintegrate, laying bare dozens of smaller chunks of ice, each creating its own mini-coma and mini-tail. On the sky, the lead comet fragment and its tail now span several degrees in angle, which is five or six times the width of the full Moon. Have a look at this stunning image of the comet, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope two weeks ago.
Visibility from light-polluted cities will be poor. But if you live in rural areas, Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 should be an easy target for you, with or without binoculars. This week, it moves across the constellation Hercules. Next week, it crosses the adjacent constella tion Lyra. If you face south, both constellations will sit high in the sky, several hours before sunrise.
And contrary to the announcements of doomsday websites and heavily forwarded email alarms, this comet poses no harm to Earthlings.
As always, keep looking up.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
* Fibonacci (ca. 1170 – ca. 1250), Italian (Pisa) mathematician, most famous for the number series that bears his name, where each entry is the sum of the two previous entries; i.e., 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, etc.
† a-theist: literally, “without God.” Never liked the term. Odd for words to exist that tell you what you are not. Is there a word for no
n-golfers? Non-chefs? Non-astronauts?
‡ During the Golden Age of Islam of a millennium ago, the intellectual center of the world was Baghdad.
§ Neil deGrasse Tyson and Avis Lang, Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military (New York: W. W. Norton, 2018).
II.
Cosmos
The universe seen as a well-ordered whole.
Chapter 4
Hate Mail
About a third of all correspondence I receive qualifies as fan mail. Occasionally, the opposite arrives in my inbox.
An Apology
Monday, June 18, 2012
Dear Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson,
I am writing to you to deeply apologize for a nasty but stern coloring I sent to you, 12 years ago, when I was 10-years-old, calling you a “big poo-poo head” for demoting Pluto as a planet.* Please accept my sincerest apologies, for I am a huge fan of your work and deeply regret hurting your feelings with such vicious and harsh words!
Sincerely,
Michael C. Hotto
Dear Michael,
I have only a vague memory of that particular letter—my file cabinet brims with such correspondence. But I nonetheless warmly accept your apology, knowing that you were simply being honest about your feelings at the time.
Sincerely,
Neil
An Appeal
Fall 2006. A third-grader writing from Peters Elementary School, Plantation, Florida.