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originalStar Trekfilms andThe Dish. “It's a way of connecting

science to people who wouldn't necessarily choose to go to a

science lecture,” Rachael says. “If you advertise a talk about time

travel, then there's a certain segment of the population who's going

to go to that. But if you advertise a talk saying, ‘Is the TARDIS real?’

I think you reach people who wouldn't necessarily go to the

drier-sounding one.”

For the record,The Martianis one of her favourite scientifically

accurate flicks – apart from one big gaffe right at the beginning.

And no: explosions in space wouldn’t look like Hollywood ones.

Rachael is willing to admit there might be a bit of fire (“because

there's presumably oxygen inside the spaceship”), but no sound.

There’s no sound in space. Which might make all the ‘pew pew pew’

noises a bit redundant, too.

Still, sci-fi was part of Rachael’s origin story, and it continues to

be a big part of her life. She’s a regular at the annual Las Vegas

Star Trekconvention, rocking handmade cosplay outfits that help

her connect with fellow fans. “As an introvert, if you're dressed

in costume, it makes people come up and talk to you, which is

much easier for me,” Rachael says. She also stitches her own

space-themed frocks; a little break away from hard science that

lets her use her hands and mind for something more tactile

and earthbound.

For the most part, space is cold and silent and really amazingly big.

And gazing into that vastness for a living changes your perspective.

“There are probably a trillion galaxies in the universe,” Rachael says.

“Each of them has hundreds of billions of stars. Every single star, we

think now, has planets. That tells us there's probably hundreds of

trillions of planets in the universe. But the universe is so incredibly

vast, and the hope of us getting to these other systems is very slim.

In all of that vast expanse of space, there's only one planet we were

specifically designed to live on. But the Earth has no real incentive

to keep us alive. It's up to us, really, to look after the Earth.”

One way we’ve messed up our planet is dividing humans by ‘he’ and

‘she’ – and dealing with gender bias is a tiring business, as Rachael

knows. From undergrad lecturers assuming she was getting boys to

do her work to constant commentary about her wardrobe, Rachael

describes a slowburn dismissal of her academic worth, based on

sex. “I was at a conference one time,” she says, “and someone took

me aside and said, ‘If you want to be taken seriously, you really need

to stop wearing dresses.’ At that point, I switched to exclusively

wearing dresses, because that's just the kind of person I am.”

Things came to a head when a rival academic published a journal

paper claiming Rachael was faking data (a claim since refuted

by the American Astronomical Society). With findings in her

favour, but no real repercussions for the men who pushed her

there, Rachael recently decided to move on from academia. She’s

currently writing a book, and has nabbed a position at Britain’s

National Film and Television School, studying how to make science

docos – an extension, you might say, of all those pub talks and

Star Trekmusings. These past years have been rough, but Rachael

has decided, finally, to put herself first.

“I was getting so much pushback from people calling me a quitter,

and saying that things are never going to change if all the women

leave, which is true. But also, being the one who stays and deals

with this crap is really hard. I don't feel like I quit. I feel like I had too

much self-respect to put up with that shit, and, yeah, I'm going to do

something else.”

Photo

Leanne Dixon

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