See Astrophysicists in Captivity

On a platform before a crowd of curious onlookers, the scientists eagerly
ripped open a box of CDs containing data from a newly released
million-second-long exposure taken by two cameras onboard the Hubble telescope,
and struggled to transfer the data to nearby computers as they answered a
multitude of questions shouted out by reporters and middle-school students.

So began Science Live: The
Race to Decode the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Image
at the American
Museum of Natural History in New York.

Michelle Delio
See Astrophysicists in Captivity  (Wired)

Odd… According to the museum website, this is “an unprecedented opportunity to watch competitive space science in action, as teams of astrophysicists from the American Museum of Natural History, Columbia University, and Stony Brook University race to decode strange space objects revealed in a newly released Hubble Space Telescope image.”

I wonder… if this is supposed to get kids interested in science, will they be bored when they realize that “real” science doesn’t offer this kind of artificial adrenaline injection? What if a “Bill Nye the Literature Guy” dressed up in a funny costume and pretended to do literary research in front of a camera, with a modest budget for special effects and gallons of caffeine for the editors to use when they stitch the show together?

Oh, well… maybe that’s what poetry slams are…

2 thoughts on “See Astrophysicists in Captivity

  1. That’s a good question, Mike. I think science is already somewhat competitive — witness the recent red faces of the Brits, whose Mars lander was supposed to start beaming back data first, but which presumably crashed on the Martian surface; or the recent million-dollar robot competition.

    The “space race” was frequently presented as a contest between U.S. and T.H.E.M. While W.E. still face serious ideological opposition in the Middle East, there isn’t really a significant technological rival, so are we constructing rivalries to keep an audience interested?

    There is indeed a long history of presenting scientists as “mad,” but I think the competition is a step away from that; it still satisfies what seems to be a long-standing layperson’s appetite to see people of lofty talent and ambition humbled (Dr. Frankenstein, Doctor Faustus, Icarus, Prometheus, etc.), but in this case it’s another group of scientists that dishes out the punishment.

  2. Interesting article. I liked the line: “I want to play, I waaannnttt to plllaaayyy,” howled one toddler in the crowd, who evidently believed the scientists were engaged in some sort of nifty new game. I notice that it’s called “competitive space science” and not “collaborative team work.” Is the assumption that the “competition” makes it more games-like? Your joke about slam poetry aside — what does your scholarship in the theater tell you about this event? Can the joys of scientific discovery really be performed in a meaningful way (especially behind glass) — given that science ist usually represented as “mad”?

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