Got a Whitelines notebook with graph paper, plus a set of Stabilo 88 fineliner pens in many, many colors. This ensued.
Authors quoted (in order, omitting duplicate appearances): Carl Sagan, Rainer Maria Rilke, Jalal ad-Dīn Rumi, Franz Kafka, Mary Oliver, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Douglas Adams, Stuart Kauffman (as quoted by Melanie Mitchell), Daniel Levitin, Alan Lightman, & Simon Garfield. The page has a disproportionate concentration of quotes from Sagan and Rumi, because they have such consistently lyrical and quotable writing. :)
When I was a junior undergrad, a fellow student–a physics major–recommended Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams as one of his favorite books. Having had a small taste of physics in a mechanics course that fall, I was hungry for more–especially since we stopped just short of an introduction to relativity. I picked up a copy to read over winter break, and that novel became one of my favorites, as well. Five years later, I’ve finally gotten around to reading more of Lightman’s work.
Dance for Two is a collection of essays centered on the interplay, differences, and similarities between science and art. “It seems to me,” Lightman observes, “that in both science and art we are trying desperately to connect with something–this is how we achieve universality. In art, that something is people, their experiences and sensitivities. In science, that something is nature, the physical world and physical laws.” And pure science, he believes, offers a kind of immortality akin to that of great art:
“Hundreds of years from now, when automobiles bore us, we will still treasure the discoveries of Kepler and Einstein, along with the plays of Shakespeare and the symphonies of Beethoven.”
The essays are themselves artfully written, sometimes vividly poetic, sometimes almost musical in their composition. The opening piece, “Pas de Deux,” describes the physical forces acting opposite a ballerina with no less delicacy than we imagine of the dance itself. It is as if she dances not alone on stage, but with all of nature as her partner, each move paired in exquisite synchrony.
Lightman balances fictional narratives and beautifully detailed explorations of natural processes with autobiographical essays on his own journey as a scientist. These latter range from a humorous tale about a semester-long lab project gone awry (Lightman, as he learned, was destined for theory, not the lab) to a poignant reflection on the early age at which scientists reach their peak. Above all, he brings a beauty and a human touch to science prose that I can recall seeing in no other author save Carl Sagan.
There are occasional digressions from the main science versus art theme. In one, “Progress,” Lightman expresses his concern about society’s headlong rush to assimilate every new technology we create; he cautions that “we cannot have advances in technology without an accompanying consideration of human values and quality of life.” In another he advocates the pursuit of pure science–science for science’s sake–arguing that what may seem useless entertains, changes our worldview, deals in truth (“there is no greater gift we can pass to our descendants”), and more practically, paves the way for uses we cannot predict. “If we stop paying for pure science today,” he argues, “there will be no applied science tomorrow.”
In all, Dance for Two is a pretty easy read, though the essays do sometimes show their age, as when Lightman writes that the universe is approximately 10 billion years old instead of the current estimate of about 13.7 billion years. Regardless, it is a delight to read, offering interesting comparisons to art and an engaging reminder of what drives us to do science.
Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke twice during the GRAIL NASATweetup in September, once during the afternoon of lectures after our tour and once the next day, after the scrubbed launch attempt. Other speakers on Wednesday included Charlie Bolden, NASA administrator; Maria Zuber of MIT, the head scientist behind the GRAIL mission; Jim Adams, a planetary scientist at NASA; and Nichelle Nichols of Star Trek fame [Lt. Uhura], who–and this was a surprise to me–spent time recruiting female and minority astronauts in the 70s and 80s.
Tyson would talk all day if you let him, and if he were talking to you, you probably would. Very entertaining, and he interacts with the audience a lot more than other speakers (which is part of why he’s the only one I got pictures of on Wednesday–I also should have just turned on flash and set my camera to auto, but oh well). He was the only one who came into the audience, which gave us in the back a good chance to shoot photos…including one of him dragging an audience member out of his seat in illustration of a point about providing evidence for your claims… :P
"Our sensory system is not only feeble, it deceives us. You cannot claim to understand the universe through sensory devices where half the time they're giving you the wrong information or allowing you to interpret it the wrong way."
"Drag the alien with you!"
"We have to love the questions"
At the end of the talk on Thursday, Sept. 8, Tyson made the comment that scientists have to ”love the questions themselves.” It’s a quote straight out of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, which was curious to hear; it’s not that common for people to cross the boundary between art and science fluidly, without making a fuss about it, and I’ve since seen a video in which he used it in another talk. I'm pretty sure he knew the reference he was making, which is both cool (scientist quoting poet) and jarring (Rilke goes on to say “do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you”). You could interpret Rilke’s statement such that Tyson’s use of it doesn’t mean “don’t try to answer the scientific questions that seem very difficult,” but the tension's there. Yes, live the questions, as the poet said, but don’t let that stop you from seeking answers.
One of the tweeps sitting up front on Wednesday managed to record the speeches from that afternoon; Tyson's starts at 54:15 and runs to 1:22:45 in this YouTube video (fair warning: the guy recording occasionally laughs very loudly into his camera's mic):
Also, like I said, he'll talk to you all day if you let him -- he stayed after the speeches until building security kicked us out so they could lock up. And the next day at the first launch attempt, he "held court" with a crowd of us until we were shuffled onto buses headed for our viewing site on the causeway, and once we were there, a crowd gathered again; he'd have talked right through the launch if it hadn't been scrubbed. He also obliged a few people who asked him to record a brief video for their family or friends or, in this case, their students:
The final part of the Kennedy Space Center tour (besides a brief stop at the countdown clock, pictured below) was a trip inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB. This is the portion of the tour that most people, even VIPs and press, do not get to do; it's a special aspect of the NASA tweetups. It seems that some have taken to calling the building a Nerd Cathedral, for good reason. The size of it is incredible; the space shuttle seems right at home, even smallish, sitting under its roof. And in the widest-angle photo below--taken nearer the wall behind than the one in frame--you can see neither the roof nor even the top of the door (by which I mean the grey thing you see in the photo with the flag--you get an idea of the size of that door). If you had a functional jet pack, this building might make a pretty sweet obstacle course. It's big.
[countdown clock]
[VAB seen from near the countdown clock]
[shuttle Endeavour--British spelling!--in the process of being decommissioned]
[there were signs like this for all of the shuttles]
Moving along, here are some photos from Space Launch Complex 17, where GRAIL launched from (plus one of an Air Force building we passed on the way to & from SLC-41). SLC-17 has two launch pads, A and B; except for the third pic, these are of SLC-17B, GRAIL's site. You can see the Delta II rocket behind the gantry. This was the last launch from 17B, and 17A has been inactive since 2009.
