I want to talk about science. Why? I think science is cool; well, at least to someone like me it is. It’s something that I love learning about, because it can answer a lot of my questions, along with things that I had never thought of or imagined. 1
Alright, let us begin, shall we? Science. From the Sodium-Potassium pump to the strong nuclear force to plate tectonics to magnetars to hereditary genetics to the periodic table 2, I love it. From Darwin to Hawking to Easley to Faraday to Ibn Al-Nafis to Curie, I love them.
Now I’m not as smart as any of the people on this list, to actually create the science that we learn about. I’m just smart enough to remember some of the details. That’s it. These people have inspired me with their discoveries and their positive impact on the world is massive.
Take the field of astronomy and astrophysics, which are two of my oldest loves. Having different people from all over the world research stars, comets, planets, quasars and everything else, is quite frankly, completely amazing and humbling at the same time.
An example of this was in April 2019, when the Event Horizon Telescope project released the very first image of a black hole. 3 To me, reading about the project; watching the video clips; and staring at the image; I was left with one word. Wow.
I know it was debatable whether an image could be taken of a cosmic object that had a gravity well so demonstrably strong, that not even light could escape it. However, as Sheperd Doeleman of Harvard University and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said “We have seen what we thought was unseeable.” If that is not an example of “Impossible is nothing”, then nothing is.
Having people dedicating their lives to mapping the human genome, creating weather models, studying planetary magnetic fields, understanding isolated ecosystems; and then revealing that information to the world is amazing. Because of this, I’m reminded of Sir Isaac Newton quote, when he said in 1675 “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
We are currently living in the Contemporary History time period. Never before in the history of life on this planet, has the sheer amount of information and knowledge about everything, has been so accessible to the population of our species; regardless of age, gender, class, job or favourite snack flavour.
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay
In my humble and geeky opinion, this is truly astounding, because we can learn about centuries worth of scientific content; as well as new discoveries as they unfold. Seriously, you can learn about time dilation, while you eat your breakfast; covalent, polar and ionic bonds while riding public transportation; or the difference between igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks, while distracting yourself from your neighbours’ out of control party. Seriously, is that not cool? Well, you not being invited to the party is not cool, but…you know.
Another thing that is important to me is that details matter. Facts matter. Misinformation and disinformation about Science seems to be on the rise, which to me, is just insane. By this I mean take COVID-19.
Scientists are promoting social distancing, self-isolation, hand washing and mask wearing, to limit the spread of the virus. However, it seems that in too many countries around the world, these scientists are slowly getting dragged into political arguments.
It gets worse, because some people believe that (all) scientists are part of different deep state or conspiracy groups, hell bent on controlling or brain washing us. So science and scientists can never be trusted.
Because of this, some people in our society are under the impression that science is a religion or at least, it’s some form of cult, where you need to worship scientists as gods and perform crazy ass rituals. Therefore, they must be “devil worshipping, god hating zealots.” I find this interesting, because in 19th century New Zealand, a lot of the scientists of that time, were also clergymen.
Science is not a religion. Religion deals with belief systems that govern our actions, based on those beliefs. They are about how we should treat ourselves and each other. 4 To me, science is simply about understanding the world around us through observations and experiments.
So if you ever are curious about something scientific about our world or if someone else asks you a scientific question and you don’t know the answer; don’t panic (unless you forgot your towel). Be brave and make the time to search for the answer, but be careful: you may fall into a rabbit hole of information and you might learn something.
I believe that having more adults that are scientifically literate in society, means we have more informed adults. 5 By having more informed adults, means they can make better choices about themselves and the world. Like saying yes to vaccinations and saying no to climate change and Sour Cream and Chives.
Thanks for reading and see you in a fortnight!
1 Basically questions related to super powered individuals.
2 I was reading a book about helium and I couldn’t put it down.
3 I like to call them “beautiful nightmares.”
4 Notwithstanding the law, of course. Somewhere Judge Dredd is silently agreeing.
5 Birds are a special kind of dinosaurs. Accept it.
SOME GEEK TOLD ME 
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