Famed scientist, author and People's Sexiest Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke to Northwestern University Thursday night about controversial tweets, hate mail about Pluto and the state of science in the world today.
Tyson delivered his two-hour lecture, titled "This Just in: Latest Discoveries in the Universe,” to a packed audience of 600 comprised of students, faculty and the public in the Ryan Family Auditorium. It was the sixth in a series of lectures sponsored by the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics (CIERA), along with the Contemporary Thought Speaker Series.
Dr. Tyson began by discussing the popularity of his television show Cosmos, which has been broadcast in 181 countries in 47 different languages.
He said its popularity is “evidence that science was trending in the world, and it’s these combined facts that gives me some hope for the science literacy of the nation.”
He also touched on recent award-winning films like The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything that featured scientists prominently.
“We’ve given Academy Awards for military generals, politicians, famous artists, not for scientists: that’s a first,” Tyson said.
He also acknowledged the success of Interstellar, noting that all of the lead characters, played by famous actors and actresses, were scientists or engineers. He did, however, have some qualms about the logic behind the film’s premise.
“You’re telling me they had the technology to fly to Saturn through a wormhole, but didn’t have the technology to fix crops?”
The science of television and film may be thriving, but Tyson argued that American scientific progress might not be. He congratulated Europe for finding the Higgs Boson, Canada for putting their space station on the five-dollar bill, Japan for winning the Nobel Prize in Physics for creating the entire home LED lighting industry. He then went on to congratulate the United States on the Orion test launch last December, but with a caveat.
“I am deeply disappointed that I’m not congratulating the US for first walking on Mars in the year 2015 rather than having a capsule come back out of orbit,” Dr. Tyson said. “It’s evidence that we’re really fading here.”
There are, however, still some who dream of new space exploration, which Dr. Tyson touched on by discussing the Mars One mission to establish a human settlement there in 2027.
“The pilgrims, stepping off the Mayflower, onto the shores of the new world, could breathe the air. The trees in Massachusetts are made of wood just like the ones they build their ship with. There was fruit growing in the vines. There were human beings on the shore to greet them,” Dr. Tyson said. “Mars? Not so much. But someone needs to be dreaming like this.”
Dr. Tyson, however, may be guilty of crushing, or at least gently bruising, the dreams of some young scientists. He partially planned an exhibit in New York that categorized Pluto with icy bodies rather than the rest of the planets, and said he received plenty of criticism for his culpability in its demotion.
He showed the audience “hate mail” he received from one fourth grader asking him why he demoted Pluto, arguing that the people who lived there will “no longer exist,” and asking him to “write back, but not in cursive.”
Dr. Tyson also issued a harsh criticism to the media’s coverage of science.
He referenced USA Today’s coverage of the blood moon asking if it signaled the end of times, to which Tyson replied, “No it doesn’t. No. This is USA Today, which is supposed to be talking about objectively verifiable news.”
He also showed a news story about a large asteroid that recently passed near Earth, but showed that it was accompanied by an illustration of a giant rock crashing into earth.
The catch, he said, is that “you don’t actually have to lie about science to get clickbait,” giving the example of the Russian meteor in 2013 that collided with earth at 40,000 miles per hour.
Finally, Dr. Tyson discussed his famous Twitter account (actually posting a tweet mid-lecture), explaining the absurdity of the intense controversy over his Christmas tweets.
He closed with one of his other tweets: “Imagine a world in which we are all enlightened by objective truths rather than offended by them.”
Editor's note: A previous version of this article mispelled "sexiest" in the lead. NBN regrets this error.