Fine Structure

Wednesday evening had a talk (a short, short talk) with Neil deGrasse Tyson at the Palace of Fine Arts Theater which I didn't even realize was happening until two or three days before hand. I believe the event sold out in the end, but I managed to snag a couple tickets before they did. Not quite as close to the stage as I would have hoped but good enough for short notice.

The event was sponsored by KQED and was focused, or at least was billed as focusing, around the hosting that Neil does for PBS' NOVA and NOVA scienceNOW shows. It ended up being mostly a question and answer session with a little bit of PBS publicity thrown in at the beginning which is fine because Neil's very good at keeping the attention of the audience with interesting facts and answers.

That same day, KQED had Neil on one of their radio shows, Forum, where he and Michael Krasny talk and take phone calls and whatnot. Here's the recording. They talk about lots of interesting things like Pluto and NASA and Universes.

One of the fascinating things Neil mentions is in relation to the new NASA direction, with commercialization of the low-Earth-orbit market and the refocusing on new frontiers. He briefly talks about the "reasons to go into space" and he covers a couple points such as expanding our understanding of the Universe and inspiring a new generation of scientists.

One thing that he misses - and as far as reasons to be in space go, this is pretty important - is that the human race is stuck on this planet. This is a problem for two reasons.

First, we're on the single point of failure for our species. Giant, immediate change to environments isn't common (we think) but it sure as hell can happen and we'd be screwed if it did. Sure, we can send a couple humans away on a small ship to "save our species" if Earth really was in jeopardy (note to self: terrible movie plotline that could make $$$) but even that doesn't escape the fact that we can't go anywhere else. We're too slow and everything is too far away for us to even think about making it to another planet right now. And floating in space just isn't sustainable. Solar power works well enough to power the ISS but even they get shipments of natural resources like food and water.

Second, we're expanding. Fast. And far sooner than we'll fill the habitable space on this planet, we'll have emptied its resources. Sustainability only goes so far when you've taken everything you can find for hundreds of years and your population is predicted to add billions of new individuals in the next 20-30 years. It is this hopeful space traveler's dream to find a new planet to grow on and maybe even start over and try to do things right. It's the only way we'll continue to be able to grow as a species. That is, when all is said and done, the goal of a species.