It’s time for scientists to speak up, Neil deGrasse Tyson tells Drew audience

Now, more than ever, great scientists need to be great communicators, too.

So says one of the masters, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

“There’s a lot of crazy, non-scientific stuff going on out there right now, including a resurgence of people who think the earth is flat,” Tyson told 2,000 listeners who packed Drew University’s athletic center on Tuesday.

The astrophysicist, who is director of the Hayden Planetarium, author of more than a dozen books, and host of Star Talk and the Emmy-winning Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, said cutting-edge research largely is funded by taxpayers, and scientists have a responsibility to explain their work.

“So, before we end up back in the caves, take a look at all the ways you can put yourself out there as a culturally literate scientist, so you can communicate why science is important for the health and the wealth and security of this country and the world,” Tyson said. 

That includes delivering facts even when they’re unpopular. Tyson still gets nasty letters for insisting Pluto is not a planet.

“Get over it!” he advised.

Tyson spent much of his 90-minute talk, which was part of the Drew Forum series, humorously debunking “bad science” masquerading as news.

There is nothing super about “Supermoons,” no doomsday “Planet X” is hurtling our way, nor is there a dark side of the moon, “even if you’re a Pink Floyd fan!”

At times he waxed poetic, sharing cosmic reflections from his mentor, the late Carl Sagan, while projecting images of a distant Earth, photographed from Saturn by the recently demised Cassini space probe.

Tyson marveled at Albert Einstein, whose genius enabled scientists to record the precise instant when a gravitational wave from colliding black holes 1.5 billion years ago arrived here, causing atoms to wobble ever so slightly in 2015.

And he noted bright ideas by modern scientists who hope to use laser beams to blast Lilliputian “nanocraft” probes on a 20-year journey to an Earth-like planet near Alpha Centauri.

Tyson coined a scientific term for the crowd’s collective gasps of wonderment:

“We call them sci-gasms,” he said.

MARTIAN McDONALD’S?

Fielding questions from the audience, Tyson was asked about the 2011 U.S. ban of the Chinese from the International Space Station, ostensibly imposed for security reasons.

He disclosed that his next book, tentatively titled Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military, will explore space politics.

In the meantime, Tyson said he would love to persuade Chinese leaders to leak a memo claiming they are planning military bases on Mars.

“Then we find that memo, and we are on Mars in 10 months,” Tyson said, sparking laughter. “One month to design, build and fund the spacecraft, nine months to get there. We’ll have McDonald’s in there 12 months later.”

When the topic shifted to alien life forms, Tyson wryly second-guessed NASA’s placement of Earth’s location on both Voyager space probes.

“You don’t give your email address to strangers,” he quipped.

Unsure what he would say to an alien, beyond comparing periodic tables of elements, Tyson offered one friendly warning.

“Don’t just reach for any appendage that’s sticking forward and shake it, unless you have prior knowledge of alien anatomy,” he said. 

Singer Katy Perry had a better suggestion for Tyson during an interview.

“She said, ‘I wouldn’t say anything, I’d just listen.’ And I thought that was brilliant. Why do we think they want to hear what we’ve got to say? Maybe they’ve got something to say to us. Maybe they can teach us how to save us from ourselves.”

Tyson’s skills as a science communicator are so formidable that he managed to explain black holes in terms even this STEM-challenged correspondent could understand:

Falling into a black hole is very bad. You get stretched, snapped, and bifurcated to bits–as the fabric of space and time funnels you down to a singularity.

“So not only are you being stretched head to toe, you’re being extruded through the fabric of space, like toothpaste through a tube,” Tyson said.

Of course, there is highly scientific term for this process.

“It’s called spaghetti-fication,” Tyson explained.

Next up in the Drew Forum: Comedienne Samantha Bee with writer Rebecca Traister, Oct. 21, 2017; b, former adviser to President Obama, Jan. 31, 2018; and former Vice President Joe Biden, March 28. Call 973-408-3776 for ticket information.