I'm a big fan of the It Gets Better project, which reassures queer kids who are getting bullied that life will get better. That there's a whole gorgeous life waiting for them, if they just survive their teen years and resist suicide.
I've seen Apple Employees, White House staffers, all kinds of neat people make videos for It Gets Better. Why not scientists? Anybody interested?
A few months ago, the wif and I were sipping bad beer in a hole-in-the-wall bar, part of a weekly queer happy hour of friends and friends-of-friends. I had planned an evening of kvetching about officemates and such, but instead, I got sucked into this intense conversation with a new acquaintance about dark energy. I tried to keep up with her rapid-fire questions, by explaining about the expanding universe, how it's expanding ever faster and faster, that we don't know why, but blame some sort of dark energy or cosmological constant. Basically I blew her mind. Didn't mean to. Really just wanted to talk about politics or TV or the LA Dodgers ownership fiasco. But I blew her mind.
This was something she'd never heard of, but was absolutely fascinated by. And this was a well-read, well-educated, news-following person.
Which made me realize that, although astronomers have (reluctantly) accepted that the concordance cosmology is what our experiments tell us over and over again is true, the public really hasn't internalized it yet. Even though the accelerating universe was the 2011 Nobel Prize. Over and over while giving public talks, I'm asked about The Big Crunch. And I have to say, "That's so 1975! Not only will the Universe never contract into a Big Crunch, it's flying apart!"
So what's up with that? Are we just bad at explaining stuff? Or is the behavior and ultimate fate of the Universe really not something every educated person should know?
This week is the superbowl of astronomy: American Astronomical Society (AAS) winter meeting. Several thousand astronomers will be networking, sharing new results, and awarding prizes for standout contributions to our science.
At the meeting, the AAS will honor LGBTQ civil rights leader and former astronomer Dr. Frank Kameny with a certificate recognizing his contributions to society. While the grass-roots effort to honor Dr. Kameny got started while he was alive, sadly he passed away before the award could be given. Several queer astronomers will accept the certificate in memory of Dr. Kameny.
I wish Frank had lived to see the ceremony, or that astronomers had gotten their acts together to honor him earlier. After Frank was fired in 1957 from US government astronomy job for being gay, he walked away from astronomy. After all, he had no recourse -- homosexuality was considered a psychosis. Frank played a key role in changing all that, and those of us who live openly and honestly owe him big time. But I wonder if he missed his former profession -- taking data on the mountaintop, analyzing it late at night in the lab, going to lectures, trying to figure out how the Universe works. Anyone know if Frank talked about this? Would he be satisfied to be be recognized by his former profession?
The kind folks at AAVSO will be bringing their signed copy of Frank's astronomy PhD thesis, as a sort of physical memory of Frank, to be there when his citation is read. Not sure if that's cheesy or profound, but I like it.
