A Day at the 2014 American Astronomical Society Meeting; Or, the day that I felt the most out of place

The other day I was lucky enough to be able to attend the 223^rd American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C . I say lucky because a) I’m a nerd and b) this conference normally costs approximately $600 to attend if you’re not a member of the AAS, but I fortunately got in for free, thanks to my dad. It’s also physically impossible to actually get to – when I say it was held in Washington, D.C., I really mean National Harbor, Maryland, aka the metro-less, bizarre, Stanley-Kubrick-esque hotel that holds several thousand people and only one observable coffee shop. No one would ever go there unless forced, and they’d still have to have a car with GPS.

Okay, so it’s actually a pretty scenic spot. But still impossible to get to.

Anyways, right: SPACE. There’s a whole lot of it and a whole lot of research going on about the nature of gravity, pulsars, quasars, dark matter, dark energy, luminosity polarimetry, and everything else that’s fascinating and confusing. Astronomers are finding extra-solar planets like it’s their job (oh wait…) and giving them names like Kepler 406 and GJ1214b and KOI-314c. The discover of that latter planet, about 200 light-years away from us, is actually really exciting because it has the same mass as Earth – a rare find, despite the plethora of planets that have been discovered outside our solar system. For whatever reason, Earth seems to be a rarity in its dimensions; most other planets that we’re finding (I’m saying we as if I’m helping… brilliant astronomers, I should say) fall somewhere between Earth and Neptune’s size, Neptune being about four times the size of Earth.

The astronomers I met are absolutely certain that we could find life on other planets in the next couple decades – if NASA and other agencies receive proper the funding to develop technologies.  And that’s a big “if.” The telescopes they’re talking about building would cost around $6 billion. There would have to be an enormous push from the public to get that kind of funding.

But the astronomers are optimistic, and the conference had a tangible excitement in the air, a real community buzz – you could tell that everyone there was either friends or going to be friends by bonding over their obsession with space. As I walked through the field of posters on the lower level – there must have been about 500 posters in there – I felt like a total oddball, like I was orbiting the outskirts of something really important and yet completely inaccessible and incomprehensible to me. What are these mysterious words printed on the boards – surely not English? What was I doing here, again? Why did I feel like the only non-astronomer out of thousands of people, anyway?

If you can understand this board then by all means, please post a comment in the comment section.

Poor toddler in the poster room. I feel for ya, kid.

I left feeling both excited by the prospect of future space exploration, and discouraged by how little I understood about this realm of science. There is so much about the universe that I don’t understand, not even remotely. And most of all, I felt stupidly lucky to have had the opportunity to meet Geoff Marcy and other scientists who have the talented knack for getting others jazzed about the potential for finding aliens and exploring our galaxy (as well as others) in the future. There are some really smart, engaging, passionate scientists out there who are powerful communicators, when seen in person; but had I not been with my dad, there was no way I would’ve known about them, nonetheless met them.

For the past several months, I’ve been exploring the Carl Sagan collection in the Library of Congress, which contains every letter, essay, photo and piece of fan mail from this famous astronomer’s life. More than anything, the archive has shown me just how much of an impact Sagan had on the public. He was a true figurehead in the Space Age (an age that is very much in the past, unfortunately); he was so famous that he’d receive hundreds of letters a day, from anyone ranging from Jimmy Carter to the crazies. Sagan was able to inspire every kind of person, from scientist to artist, philosopher to poet, to think about their place in the universe.

Sagan passed away in 1996, and the past 18 years have been all but silent of a public figurehead explaining complex astronomy concepts (with the possible exception of Neil deGrasse Tyson). I don’t blame the astronomical community for this – in fact I think there are real figureheads that have similar talents and passions to Sagan. Rather, I blame the way media is structured now, as opposed to 20 or 30 years ago.

Think about it: Sagan became famous with his TV series, Cosmos. He could engage every American at the same time on the same day with his talented conviction about scientific concepts. These people could then go and talk about the fascinating ideas the next day with their friends or co-workers. This is a conversational-driven system of sharing knowledge, where information is passed through passionate speech.

Look at our world now. We live in a world saturated in online articles, YouTube videos, blog posts and tweets. We are constantly bombarded by information, including scientific information. But I would argue that these only pull in people who are already science nerds and avid followers of science news. A clever twitter feed about biology will never, ever inspire the average citizen to suddenly pick up Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life, nor will a Facebook post about a new galaxy cluster prompt a Facebook user to watch the television show called… oh wait, there aren’t any well-known TV programs devoted to astronomy (at least, not to my knowledge).

A standard astronomy news article posted to the web. I’m sorry, but what kind of average citizen is going to be drawn to this kind of article? Between the confusing low-res image, the nonsense jargon in the headline and first sentence and the distracting ads, this isn’t the kind of stuff that inspires the public to learn more about the true nature of gravity.

I think it’s easy to think that the Internet solves many problems relating to communicating science, but I’ve found in my own life – and I’m pretty sure I’m not unique in this – that the information on the Internet is a poor substitution for information from a person-to-person conversation, or even a well-written book. The Internet will never replace a voice like Sagan’s, one that you can hear and see and connect with on an emotional level. (I realize I say this as I passionately type away for my blog which has very few followers… but I’m not pretending like life isn’t ironic). People don’t use the Internet to gravitate towards unknown subjects. They use to find things that they’re already interested in.

So it occurs to me that a convention like the one I attended – which is chock-full of brilliant and engaging astronomers – are exactly what astronomers are looking for as they want to gain public support for space missions and telescope development etc. In other words, these mass gatherings, if open to the public, could be a way for people to become excited about discovering the cosmos, and re-launch the Space Age. My generation doesn’t have a Carl Sagan. We didn’t witness the first man on the moon. We need a different way of connecting with science now.

Ok so I realize this isn’t the most captivating photograph in the world, but I promise that Geoff Marcy is a killer speaker and explainer of complicated (and exciting) new finds in the astronomy world.

If the AAS just made one of their four days free and open to the public (and held the meeting in a location that was actually accessible!), they could potentially drive a lot of public interest in astronomy development. I really do believe that astronomers could find extra-terrestrial life in my generation, if they were given enough funding to develop and implement the powerful technology that it requires. But without obvious support from the public, it strikes me as unlikely that these scientists will get a grant for six billion dollars, at least not anytime soon.

Carl Sagan Unfiltered

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” –Carl Sagan, Cosmos

I was first introduced to Carl Sagan in New Zealand, in the spring of 2012. It was a Monday and I had that blah-Monday feeling – vaguely tired, uninspired to do productive things like laundry or grocery shopping or homework (even New Zealand has its fair share of unexciting afternoons). So I went over to Lisa’s. Lisa is a great friend because she knows how to take almost any mood and make it a good one, and that day she decided we should watch Cosmos. I had no idea what that was but it sounded cool. She and my friend Laura and I made a bunch of coffee in a French Press, drew the curtains, turned off the lights, and flicked on the first episode of Sagan’s famed TV series.

Carl Sagan amidst the Cosmos.

Within an instant, my Monday was the opposite of blah: it was exploding with stars and galaxies, deep history and deep time, the meaning of human evolution, visions of the eternity of space! Transfixed by Carl Sagan’s soothing voice, I was immersed in an entirely new mindset – one which escaped my tiny pinprick of a cranium and expanded into the grandness and vastness of the universe. I left Lisa’s flat feeling new, awake, and alive – a feeling that no other TV show will ever be able to give me, nor scientist, for that matter; and a feeling that many people have experienced similarly from Sagan’s enchanting spell.

Fast forward 15 months, and I’m sitting in the basement of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, underneath fluorescent lights, and still amidst Sagan’s philosophies – but this time, it’s unmasked, un-TV’d, un-done Sagan, Sagan stripped to his true self. I’m sitting with the letters from his life, preserved in approximately 2,000 boxes (each box containing at least a dozen file folders of dozens of documents), which the library has made public as of last month. Within the boxes contain letters to friends, notebooks, old photographs, provocative science articles, to-do lists, report cards, t-shirts, you name it. Anyone can have access to this collection, provided they live in Washington DC and have enough free time to go down to Capitol Hill, deal with the bureaucracy of the LOC, and then navigate the files… a challenge which I will get to in a minute.

Also provided that you can read his handwriting, in rare cases when he doesn’t use a typewriter. If you can decipher these cryptic sentences and symbols by all means please let me know.

I will admit to being a huge nerd and being SO excited upon opening my first box of Sagan papers, and unearthing my first Sagan letter. This was the real deal! This is the original paper that Sagan sent! These little black letters CAME OUT of the pen that SAGAN held with his very own hand! And more than marveling at my own absurd luck, I was overwhelmingly impressed with Sagan himself. How did he have time to write all of this? After seeing my first few boxes, it dawned on me just how many letters he wrote in his lifetime – often dozens a day. He must have been profoundly dedicated to corresponding with anyone and everyone who sent him mail.

So I peeled through the papers one by one.  A note here to a professor. A thank-you there for a visit. A technical debate over something involving the atmosphere on Venus. A snide letter involving financial matters. Quickly my nerdy excitement faded into subdued intrigue; and then, slowly, my intrigue slowly faded into a vague disenchantment. I noticed scribbled notes on the margins of certain letters and realized that his secretary, not him, wrote many of the letters. I read his blunt and often cold responses to people who poured their hearts out on paper to him; his generic one-sentences to students who told him that Cosmos converted them to astronomy; and his dismissal of ideas thrown his way by average Joes or confused fans. His letters were often short, to the point – if he responded. He rarely cracks jokes, or shows any emotion whatsoever, in a typical letter. There weren’t any love-type-letters about the universe; his style was pragmatic and often emotionally distant from his correspondences.

It’s strange, because Sagan clearly had a God-given talent for connecting with people on an emotional level about science. But after a month of looking through his letters with people – approximately several thousand of them at this point – I’m convinced that he didn’t use letters to do the same, and that was a letdown.

Part of my problem with it, I’ve realized, is my preconceived, “millennial” notion of a “letter.” When I hear that word, I think of something long, thoughtful, and time-consuming; therefore, something gracious and a genuine attempt to connect with someone. But to Sagan, a letter was an email. A letter could take two minutes to pop out, serving the purpose of securing logistical details, not inspiring fans and professors to look at the universe in a new way.

So thinking about this reprieved Sagan slightly. Also, recognizing how insanely busy Sagan must have been, and who has time to write lengthy responses to random penpals? But I still felt somewhat disenchanted by his cold correspondences. So what really did it for me, what really restored my admiration, was this little file called “Ideas Riding”. Keep in mind: this collection has almost 2,000 boxes full of files, requiring a 300-page navigational directory, and even the directory itself is dense and confusing. Fortunately, on the first day I ever stepped into the Library of Congress, I met someone who had worked directly with the collection and told me about the “Ideas Riding” file. Being me, I didn’t listen right away – but eventually I recovered the files, and almost as soon as I started reading them I was smiling. Here was the kooky, inspired, deviously smart Sagan who I originally found so endearing, the Sagan who had a myriad of ideas and theories about the world, the man who quoted masters of poetry to express scientific phenomena next to ancient philosophers, geologists, you name it.

Let me back up though – what the heck is “Ideas Riding”, anyway? It’s Sagan’s more private side; not quite a journal, but not quite a blog, the Ideas Riding files essentially contain Sagan’s idea-explorations, or bits and pieces of information he’s acquired (with the ideas riding off another…. in true hippie fashion). Many of the ideas in these files wind up in his books. Sometimes a page will only include one sentence (for example, on New Years Day, 1981, Sagan wrote “Chocoholic is to alcoholic as cheeseburger is to hamburger.” Don’t know what this means? Neither do I). Sometimes they include quotes or poems; Keats is in there a couple times, as is his quote that good writing “should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thought, and appear almost a remembrance.”

But mostly, they’re Sagan’s theories about almost anything ranging from geology to human evolution to social constructs. He comes up with ideas for why women wear lipstick and why men wear neckties, why we need to stop our dependence on fossil fuels, why the dinosaurs may have gone extinct (a pollen allergy, in case you’re curious); why males and females can be distinguished in their speech, why pheromones could explain asexuality, why the Anasazi civilization crumbled… This file will make you realize that Sagan is not just an astronomer. He is a thinker, a writer, a public speaker, a developer of ideas on all scientific platforms. And that’s what makes Sagan so special. He’s the scientist that covers a full spectrum of theories, and makes bridges between people and ideas that would normally remain isolated.

Once I had this file in my head, I realized that it’s not so much the content of each individual letter that Sagan wrote to these people, but the incredible variety of his correspondents that’s impressive. He attracted not just astronomers but famous biologists, musicians, sci-fi writers, kids in Korea, chemists, and “alien-abducted” (aka deranged) citizens. Within his life he wrote to people of almost every background. The diversity of his files speaks to his incredible appeal and ability to synthesize every corner of the world. In this way, it’s not Sagan’s original letters, but the mail he receives, that makes me admire him even more.

So after about 1300 words here, I’m kind of back where I started: still in reverence of Sagan, still awe-inspired by his accomplishments, thoroughness and dedication to his work… but with perhaps a more grounded view of him as a person. He is not an idol to be worshipped. He is not a celebrity of a scientist. He’s a normal person with normal flaws; someone who can be cold, makes promises he can’t keep, and probably let a lot of people down in his life. But his is still one of the greatest scientists to ever live, in my opinion. Not many other scientists can claim a career with similar variety and depth as Sagan’s.  If anything, the collection inspired me to learn from more kinds of people. And to watch Episode 2 of Cosmos.

A portrait of Carl Sagan from his collection in the Library of Congress. In case I didn’t make it clear enough, it truly is an honor to be able to hold in one’s own hands the work and products of an extraordinary scientist.

p.s. If you’re still somehow with me here and want more, here’s a classic snippet from the “Ideas Riding” file, an emblem of Sagan’s philosophies and writing.

“Superstition [is] cowardice in the presence of the Divine.” So said Theophrastus, a contemporary of Aristotle and Alexander. We live in a universe where atoms are made in the stars; where life is sparked by sunlight and lightning in the airs and waters of youthful planets; where the raw material for biological evolution is sometimes made by the explosion of a star halfway across the Galaxy; where matter can be put together in so subtle a way as to become self-aware; where a thing as beautiful as a galaxy is formed a hundred billion times; a universe of quasars and quarks, snowflakes and fireflies; where they say black holes and other universes and intelligent beings so far beyond us that their technology will seem to us indistinguishable from magic. How pallid by comparison are the pretensions of superstition and pseudoscience; how important it is for us to pursue and understand science, that characteristically human endeavor – imperfect and incomplete surely… There is no aspect of nature which fails to reveal a deep mystery, to touch our sense of awe and wonder. Theophrastus was right. Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who wish to pretend to non-existent knowledge and control and a Cosmos centered around human beings, will prefer superstition… Superstitions may be comforting for a while. But, because they avoid rather than confront the world, they are doomed. The future belongs to those able to learn, to change, to accommodate to this exquisite Cosmos that we have been privileged to inhabit for a brief moment. –Carl Sagan in “Ideas Riding” circa September 21, 1979