Astronomy

A

10 ASTRONOMY • MAY 2018

re you ready for some

exciting news about

apathy?

Back when Dan

Goldin was

administrator of NASA, his

sister was one of my students.

She thoughtfully told me he

totally loved Discover magazine

— especially my astronomy

page. Pleased to hear it, I fol-

lowed him closely after that,

which is why I vividly remem-

ber August 6, 1996, when he

called a press conference to

make a jaw-dropping

announcement: NASA’s analy-

sis of the Antarctic martian

meteorite ALH84001 revealed

the possibility of life. Life on

Mars! It finally happened!

I quickly turned to my long-

suffering wife and yelled: “Now

we’ll find out!”

I’d long suspected that the

endlessly repeated adage that

“everything will change if we

find extraterrestrial life” was

wrong, that it gave our apathetic

citizenry too much credit, that

people wouldn’t care if geeky

scientists found evidence of

some microscopic or plantlike

organisms in a distant place.

Even today, that adage is still

repeated like a mantra. Bill Nye’s

December 3 op-ed piece in The

New York Times said the same

thing: finding extraterrestrial life

would profoundly alter our

everyday attitudes.

Goldin’s announcement

wasn’t about some distant exo-

planet. This was Mars. It was

next door. So I figured, now

we’ll finally know how the pub-

lic reacts.

I don’t want to say I told you

so. Actually, that’s not true. I do

STRANGEUNIVERSE

Would the discovery of extraterrestrial life

really change the world?

BY BOB BERMAN

Apathy Now!

want to say that. Because as I

paid close attention the next

day, nobody talked about the

life-on-Mars discovery. People

didn’t care. (That Goldin’s

announcement later proved too

optimistic isn’t relevant here.) It

was one more sign our culture

is scientifically apathetic.

Fast forward to 2017.

Someone in Sweden posted

gorgeous Facebook photos of

atmospheric ice crystal phe-

nomena. They showed halos,

the upper tangent arc, the par-

helic circle, and other cool stuff.

Then I read the comments.

“Wake up, folks,” wrote the

first guy. “Here’s proof the gov-

ernment is releasing metals

into the atmosphere!”

The next commentator

agreed. “Absolutely! Fifteen

years ago I saw a ring around

the Sun for the first time. Now

I often see rings. The govern-

ment is poisoning the air.”

“You’re wrong,” I said to her

in my mind. “Early on, you

never noticed rings —which are

called halos, by the way —

because you didn’t watch the

sky and don’t know about

refraction phenomena. Now

you’re aware of rings, so you

see them because they’re com-

mon. And, incidentally, metal-

lic particles can’t refract light

and wouldn’t resemble ice crys-

tal effects. They wouldn’t form

halos in the first place.”

It’s no use. Ignorance of sci-

ence seems only to be growing.

When I was hired to run

astronomy programs at the big

2015 Wanderlust yoga festival

in Killington, Vermont, a staff

member met me at the office.

“Did you see the news?” she

asked. “The Earth is flat.”

“What? Earth isn’t f lat.”

“Yes it is. They’ve proven it.

It’s all over the net.”

“You don’t have to believe

me,” I said. “Do you have any

friends in California?”

“Yes.”

“Then during the next sunset

here, phone your California

friends. They’ll tell you their

Sun is halfway up the sky. Yet

it’s on the horizon here. So

Earth can’t be f lat.”

Her face had a “don’t bother

me” expression. I get the rea-

soning: Our government lies. So

if it insists Earth is a ball, it

means Earth is f lat.

Call it fake science or any-

thing you want. It’s spreading.

Climate change is not real. We

never went to the Moon. White

lines in the sky are from gov-

ernment programs. A planet

named Nibiru is on a collision

course with Earth. Armageddon

is coming. Aliens are already

here. Astronomers are keeping

everything secret.

The problem lies deeper than

the sad reality that fewer teen-

agers are participating in out-

door hands-on nature hobbies

like astronomy, bird-watching,

or canoeing. Nonetheless, many

are glued to screens with the

potential to believe the fakery.

Our response? We mustn’t

try to bring young people into

real science too quickly.

Instead, reality should be intro-

duced incrementally. The first

step is a return to the situation

a decade ago, which was mere

indifference. That’s an achiev-

able objective. To help, we’re

offering a new bumper sticker:

“A p a t h y N o w! ”

We’ve founded NAP — the

National Apathy Promotion.

Our goal is to get 1 million

teenagers a year to say, “Don’t

bother me with astronomy.” If

you donate, my friends, we can

replace the current insistence

that Mars is a secret alien mili-

tary base and that congressmen

are reptilians (no joke, Google

it) with a return to the NASA

glory years of “I don’t care.”

It’s a lofty goal. But with

your help, we can succeed.

BROWSE THE “STRANGE UNIVERSE” ARCHIVE AT http://www.Astronomy.com/Berman.

The meteorite ALH84001 is a 4.5 billion-year-old chunk of Mars’ crust that arrived

on Earth about 13,000 years ago. In 1996, NASA announced that the meteorite

might contain fossils of early martian life — a statement that didn’t have a major

impact on society or its view of science. NASA/JSC/STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Ignorance of science

seems only to be growing.

Join me and Pulse of the Planet’s

Jim Metzner in my new podcast,

Astounding Universe, at

http://astoundinguniverse.com.

1 cm