Category: astronomy

Scientific American proposes policing the language of astronomy to make it “beautiful and elegant”, as well as “inclusive” and non-triggering

January 7, 2024 • 9:46 am

Oops! Scientific American did it again, this time with an op-ed that could have been ripped from the pages of The Onion.  As is so common these days, the piece proposes that we change the language of science (astronomy in this case), since some of its terms are bad in four ways:

a.  They are violent, sexist, and triggering

b. They are not “beautiful and elegant” like astronomy is, but grating; and they are “not kind”

c.  They are non-inclusive, presumably helping keep minorities out of astronomy.

d. They are untruthful and distort astronomy

In my view, none of these claims holds up, for the article is all Pecksniffian assertion with not a shred of evidence. Author Juan Madrid assumes the role of a bomb-sniffing dog, snuffling the field of astronomy for linguistic mines.

Click the headline below to read and weep, or find the piece archived here.  The author is identified this way (my link):

Juan P. Madrid is an assistant professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

The piece begins by describing a collision that will take place, 4 to 7 billion years hence, between the Milky Way and its closest galaxy, Andromeda.  Immediately the word “collision” is seen as triggering. One of Madrid’s students described the future collision instead as “a giant galactic hug.” But the person who sent me this link added this comment:

My wife says that if Andromeda doesn’t want the Milky Way to hug her then it’s interstellar sexual assault.

Indeed! But Madrid hastens to instruct us why using “collision” is not only grating, but misleading:

The kindness, but also the accuracy, of the language my student used was in sharp contrast to the standard description we use in astronomy to explain the final destiny of Andromeda and the Milky Way: “a collision.” But as astronomers have predicted, when Andromeda and the Milky Way finally meet, their stars will entwine and create a larger cosmic structure, a process that is more creating than destroying, which is what we envision when we use the term collision. A galactic hug is scientifically truthful, and it’s led me to believe that astronomers should reconsider the language we use.

First of all “collision” doesn’t mean “destroying”, but simply two objects hitting each other. In this case, two galaxies “collide”, but their stars are spread so far apart that they’ll simply merge into one big galaxy and star will not hit star.  You could say “merge” instead of “collide”, but that also implies that perhaps the stars will absorb each other.  If you want to convey the idea that “nothing gets banged up,” then, Madrid suggests using “galactic hug”. He actually wants astronomers, their classes, and their textbooks, to adopt this new, kind, and romantic term. (There are, of course, more salacious terms that could be used.)  But they won’t be because they sound dumb, and in fact “galactic hug” is just as inaccurate as the other terms, for “hug” implies that there is some mutual enfolding, when in fact, the entities merge and do not remain separate, as humans do when they have a (temporary) hug.  When Fred and Sue hug each other, they don’t merge into one person. . .

And so Madrid, combing the literature for other terms that are jarring and, he says, misleading, finds more, as of course he would. (You can do this in any field of biology, chemistry. or physics; all you need is a sufficiently diligent Pecksniff). I’ve singled out Madrid’s instances of bad language below by adding my own links, and putting those words in bold.

For instance, in galaxy evolution we invoke imagery strikingly similar to what you would expect if you were eavesdropping on Hannibal Lecter: words like cannibalism, harassment [JAC: no instance found],  starvation, strangulation, stripping or suffocation. There is a rather long list of foul analogies that have entered, and are now entrenched, in the lexicon of professional astronomy. We have grown accustomed to this violent language and as a community, we seldom question or reflect on its use.

Strangulation is a particularly cringeworthy term in astronomy, referring to the decline of the number of stars born in some types of galaxies. This is a vicious crime where most often the victim is a woman; the perpetrator, a man. Yet, we use this word mindlessly to describe a slow astronomical process that takes millions of years. Under certain conditions, some galaxies use up or lose the gas that is the primordial ingredient to form stars. When that happens, galaxies make new stars at a lower rate. But these galaxies do not die or suffer great harm. They will continue to shine and will live their natural evolution.

This is but one of many examples of violent language in our field that actually describes something gradual, slow and perhaps even gentle.

Madrid was savvy enough to impute misogyny to one of these terms: “strangulation”, giving some woke heft to his thesis. But if you look at how the terms are used, only someone who wants to be offended would be.  Moreover, they are not inaccurate. “Starvation“, for example, refers to something that cuts off the flow of gas that galaxies need for new star formation. I don’t find it inaccurate at all. In fact, none of these terms are inaccurate—what Madrid really objects to is that they are “triggering” and “unwelcoming”. He tries to sell his campaign to deep-six these terms as being “untruthful”, because he doesn’t want to look like an ideologue, but I’m not buying it. Also he allows “explosion” for the creation of a supernova, in most cases he finds this language “needlessly vicious and [promoting] inaccurate connotations.”

In short, Madrid finds this language triggering, for that’s the only explanation for why we should avoid this kind of “vicious” language.  And, as he says below,

The use of hypercharged words in our field ignores the fact that this violent imagery can trigger distress in colleagues who might have been victims of violence.

But there are two points to be made here. First, as I noted in a recent post, giving the relevant studies, “Trigger warnings don’t work” and can even cause more trauma. There is no evidence that using this sort of language somehow harms the students. In fact, the remedy for those who are traumatized by certain words is not to avoid exposure to them, but to learn to not be upset when you are exposed. There is therapy for this.

Second, as is so often the case in these screeds, Madrid gives no examples of how the “bad language” upsets people. He should be able to produce at least a dozen cases on the spot, like “Jane got upset and left the class when she heard the word ‘strangulation'”, or “Bob reported Professor Basement Cat to the university for using the term  ‘cannibalism’ on the astronomy exam, which, he said, made him think of the Donner Party and prevented him from completing the exam.”  In nearly all of these language-policing articles, there is a surfeit of outrage and a dearth of examples or evidence of harm.

But Madrid circumvents the lack of evidence and simply suggests ways that we can censor this language, again pretending he’s interested mainly in scientific truth:

To shift toward more welcoming and truthful language in astronomy, scientific journals can push to change the currently accepted language. The referee, or the scientific editor, can ask the authors to consider more appropriate descriptions of the physical processes involved. Referees, editors and editorial boards can step up to enforce scientific accuracy and stop the use of violent, misogynistic language that is now pervasive. This is a call for scientific precision. The use of hypercharged words in our field ignores the fact that this violent imagery can trigger distress in colleagues who might have been victims of violence.

“Can”, “could have”, “might have”. Where are the examples of this? The sweating professor gives none. And isn’t it amazing that the more accurate language is always the kinder language?

And, as expected, Madrid manages to drag race, inclusion, and diversity into his discussion, even though none of the terms above have anything to do with race. And this belies his faux concern mainly for scientific accuracy:

As astronomers, we must strive to create a more inclusive and diverse community that reflects the composition of our society. Valuable efforts to provide opportunities for women and minorities to succeed in astronomy have been created. However, by many metrics, the progress made towards gender equality and true diversity has been painfully slow.

We must listen to the new generation of astronomers. My student showed me that while some astronomical processes can be intense, the universe revealed through astronomy provides us with the most fascinating sights known to humankind. Like many other young scientists, she thinks that when we explain astronomical phenomena with wording and phrases that share our excitement and appreciation, it also encourages others to join in and wonder what else we can discover together.

The universe is beautiful, elegant and ever-changing. Astronomy would be wise to follow its lead.

And so, in the end, we see that this kind of misguided effort, concentrating on words rather than science itself, is part of the corruption that has entered science via DEI and its ideology.  What we have is one more attempt to control thought by controlling language.

There is no evidence that minorities and women are being kept out of astronomy because they don’t find its language “inclusive,”, though that’s really the thesis of Madrid’s piece.  But the very idea that this thesis is true is laughable. Promoting the idea that galaxies hug each other is not going to bring people pouring into astronomy.

Once again Scientific American, trying to ride the woke bandwagon, has fallen off the train. Blame not only the author, but the editor, who actually approved this nonsense.

Readers’ wildlife photos

November 4, 2023 • 8:30 am

Today we’ll have a mélange of photos that have accumulated over the past months from readers who sent in just a couple of pix. The captions are indented, and click on the photos to enlarge them.

From Jon Alexandr:

I’m not a biologist, but I do occasionally like to take photos of plants and animals, including “bugs.” Because I favor its handy small size, I’m still using an old, first-generation iPhone SE (2016 or 2017), so it’s not “professional” photography. Still, I think the attached impromptu photo of a “grasshopper” in a wood pile next to my house has a certain presence, which is maybe amplified by the lighting, shapes, and textures.
The grasshopper’s body was just slightly more than an inch long, I estimate, not counting the extremities. Location is San Francisco East Bay, Contra Costa County.

From Bryan Lepore, sent October 29:

 I spotted what I think is a tree frog, genus Dryophytes, today. Middlesex county, MA.She is about the size of my thumbnail and has a very long jump span. Usually, I see what I think are Leopard frogs (genus Lithobates) jump like that but they’re green. Maybe she’s a brown variant, or a differeny frog.

Two animals photos and an architecture photo from reader joolz:

 Two of my photographs from the Oceanographic Museum, Monaco 2023.  Taken through glass.
Lion fish [Pterois sp.]. Oceanographic Museum, Monaco 2023. Didn’t take a photo of the info.
Longspined Porcupine Fish – Diodon holocanthus. Info on sign: “At the slightest danger it inflates its body, pushing its spines outwards to protect itself. The fish of the Diodontidae family are toxic and unfit for human consumption. In Japan, where they are eaten in sushi, a special licence is needed to cook them.”

Queen Hatshepsut‘s Temple at Deir El Bahri, Egypt. Taken from a hot air balloon decades ago.

Hatshepsut was very powerful and took on the role of Pharoah. She wore the pharaonic regalia, which includes a false beard, so trans activists claim she was transgender, but there is no basis for this assertion. She just wore the standard regalia that all pharaohs wore. Her stepson Thutmose III had her name erased from monuments and she was unknown for centuries. Thankfully her legacy as a female Pharoah was restored when the hieroglyphs at this temple were translated in the 1800s.

Photos of the solar eclipse that occurred on October 14. The first is from Don McCrady:

Thought I’d send you a hot-off-the-press shot of this year’s annular solar eclipse, this one from Winnemucca, Nevada.An annular solar eclipse is a total eclipse of the sun by the moon, where the moon is far enough away from the earth that its disk does not fully cover the sun’s, creating a “ring of fire” effect such as this one.  I took this with a Canon EOS R5 with an RF 100-500 x1.4 extender, for a total focal length of 700mm.

From Avis James:

Bill and I went to a field half way between Ruidoso and Roswell New Mexico in the path of the annular eclipse this morning.  We took a colander- it is has the Star of David pattern:
Here is the shadow it made at full angularity!  The dot in the middle of each circle is the moon in the middle of the sun!

From John Runnels, “Unknown mushroom species, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.” (Readers: can you ID?)

Finally, a weird giraffe from Bob Wooley of Asheville, NC:

I know you don’t usually do zoo photos, but if you feel like making an exception for an exceptional animal, you’re welcome to use these. You featured a story about this amazing unspotted baby giraffe the other day. I live about 90 minutes from Brights Zoo in eastern Tennessee, where she was born, so today I went there to see her for myself. It’s very difficult to get good pictures of her because her enclosure has a tight-mesh fence that you have to shoot through (unless you have a 12-foot-long photo stick). That’s why most of the news stories just use pictures and videos given to them by the zoo. But I got several that I think are worth sharing, and hold up to on-screen embiggening. She’s a seriously beautiful creature.

Ideology sucks another scientific field down the drain

April 9, 2023 • 11:15 am

Several readers sent me a link to a Quillette piece by physicist Lawrence Krauss.  It adds another field—astrobiology, the search for extraterrestrial life—to the many (indeed all) scientific fields that have been corrupted by “progressive” ideology.  In fact, astrobiology has gotten so badly infected that it’s now difficult to do any science at all. Click the screenshot below to read his piece:

Krauss sees the high point of the field in the 1990s when the head of NASA called for more biologists to start looking for extraterrestrial life. Since then, he argues, that despite our increasing knowledge about the universe and technical sophistication, astrobiology hasn’t advanced much. His explanation:

. . . why on Earth, or, rather, why in the Milky Way would I cast any aspersions on this emerging field of science? The problem is that it is an emerging field, and that implies three important things: (1) the development and use of rigorous scientific standards characteristic of more mature fields has not yet been universally established; (2) unfounded claims are too often made, and they gain support in the popular press; and (3) small groups of ideologically driven researchers can have, and have had, an inordinately large impact, hindering progress and potentially pushing the field backwards.

He describes several early claims—including evidence for microbes in meteorites from Mars and a new type of DNA that implied life had two independent origins—that proved to be wrong. This supports points (1) and (2) above, In the rest of the article, Krauss expatiates on claim (3): the malign influence of ideology on the field. Here are a few bits of ideology that are holding back the field (Krauss’s prose is indented):

a.) Religiously-based objections to putting a telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Weirdly, many scientists joined the objections, although there are already several telescopes on Mauna Kea. It looks as if the effort to find truth about the Universe is still trumped by an unwarranted respect for unevidenced religion.  I’m not sure how far we’re supposed to “respect” Hawaiian religious beliefs, but I don’t think it should be to the extent that it puts the island’s major volcano off limits to science. Krauss:

The first inkling of the emerging emphasis of ideology over science in astrobiology came from the support by so many members of that community for the protests against the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. In 2000, the National Academies of Science had identified the project as a top priority for the US astronomy community, and they  recommended that it be built within the decade. Almost immediately, after the dormant volcano Mauna Kea had been selected as the proposed site, local protests began. In spite of the fact that Mauna Kea is the most sacred mountain in Hawaiian religion and culture and was known to Native Hawaiians as the home of Wakea, the sky god, numerous large telescopes had already previously been built on the mountain. Conflict between the priorities of the scientific community and Indigenous religious myths, which had erupted from time to time in the past in Hawaii, escalated after the construction of TMT was set to begin.

While the conflict between science and religious myth is ubiquitous, as witnessed most recently by efforts in New Zealand to teach “Indigenous Knowledge” on the same level as science in high schools, one might have expected the scientific community to support the TMT project more or less unanimously. However, a new generation of young astronomy activists has begun online efforts using the hashtag #ScientistsforMaunaKea, and they consider protecting the sacred nature of the mountain to be more important than the possible scientific benefits of this trailblazing project.

Krauss shows a tweet:

b.) Calls to “decolonize” astrobiology because somehow it’s associated with racism. I can’t quite see the connection, but it’s coming to dominate this field, to the extent that “astrobiology” often seems more about ideology than about science:

 I have written earlier about the emerging effort by young astrobiologists to “decolonize” the search for extraterrestrial life. The once-great science magazine, Scientific American, which has degenerated in recent years as social justice concerns have taken priority over science, published an article entitled “Cultural Bias Distorts the Search for Alien Life” (“‘Decolonizing’ the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) could boost its chances of success, says science historian Rebecca Charbonneau”). Therein she made the argument that the search for extraterrestrial intelligence might be “undermined by biases they only dimly perceive—biases that could, for instance, be related to the misunderstanding and mistreatment of Indigenous peoples and other marginalized groups that occurred during the development of modern astronomy and many other scientific fields.”

Here’s a Q&A from Charbonneau’s piece, so you can see the argument. Countries are building empires on other planets! Ceiling Cat help us if we encounter “aliens”, especially if we can enslave them. (It’s more likely to be the other way around.)

[Magazine] How does this apply to SETI?

[Charbonneau] Oftentimes when we think about colonialism in SETI, we do think of it primarily in metaphors, right? Space being “the final frontier,” first contact with aliens as a stand-in for encounters with Indigenous peoples—that sort of thing. But it actually is much more than a metaphor. Because space exploration is also an extension of our imperial and colonial histories. We know that space infrastructure, including SETI infrastructure, exists in remote locations, with places that often have colonial histories or vulnerable populations, particularly Indigenous peoples. And then space, despite our best efforts, is highly militarized. Nations talk about becoming space superpowers, building new empires and colonizing other planets. So it’s not just a metaphor. It’s actually happening in the world and off the world, and that’s why I think it’s a useful term when we’re talking about SETI. And SETI in particular carries a lot of intellectual, colonial baggage as well, especially in its use of abstract concepts like “civilization” and “intelligence,” concepts that have been used to enact real, physical harm on Earth.

Yes, because “civilization:” and “intelligence” are parts of white supremacy (see below).

c.) Unacceptable and ideological policing of behavior and language. Yes, this takes place in astrobiology, as it does in chemistry, physics, biology, and math. Krauss ends his piece with a new rule for this year’s SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) meetings. (He first notes that last year’s meetings voted to ban the use of the word “intelligence” because it was a “white construct”!)

Not to be outdone by last year’s nonsense, the organizers of this year’s Penn State meeting, which will take place in June, just announced a code of conduct related to unacceptable behavior. The behavior that might lead to exclusion from these conferences now is not confined to mere actions but also to promoting or even citing the work of any scientist the organizing group deems as being unworthy! The code of conduct includes the following explanation:

II. Unacceptable behaviour

[…]Promote the work of those who have violated Professional Codes of Ethics (e.g., the AAS Code of Ethics). Promotion of an author’s work includes any verbal or visual presentation including that person’s name or likeness. In cases where the participant’s work is sufficiently scientifically-independent from that of the person who has violated the professional code, the work may be presented so long as the presenter is not engaging in promotion. Citations are not violations of this policy, though all participants should weigh the necessity of presenting that citation with the harm that it could perpetuate.

That last phrase is particularly telling. In almost all fields of scholarship, not citing the previous work of other authors on which one’s own work is based is referred to as plagiarism. In astrobiology, citing such work can also now be considered harmful.

The notion that citing past scientific results in scientific papers can “perpetuate harm” may not signal the beginning of the end, but it doesn’t bode well for a field that needs to work hard to ensure the highest level of scientific standards if it is to mature as it attempts to address some of the most significant questions we can ask about our place in the universe.

Once you start seeing the word “harm” connected with a science, you better give it close scrutiny, for nearly all the time the word means “offense”, not actual “harm.” And it’s been used in every other science I know of, as well as in medicine, to stymie research. I’m not denying that harm has been caused in the name of science, but nowadays the connection between the two is almost nonexistent.

There’s a lot more in Krauss’s piece, so go read it at the link. I’ll finish by again plugging a paper I’ve written with a colleague arguing that ideology is laying waste to our own field: evolutionary biology. You’ll have to wait until the end of June, though.

The New York Times touts a fake amity between science and religion

March 23, 2023 • 9:15 am

I’m posting this new NYT article not because it shows that Jesuits are engaged in science, which is well known (there’s an observatory in the Vatican), but because of “lesson” the paper draws from this fact, a lesson outlined by me in red in the subheadline below. Jesuit astronomers show that science and religion are pals!

But of course nobody doubts that religious people, even priests, can do science or love science, and nobody doubts that scientists can be religious.  The real conflict between religion and science lies in their both asserting certain truths about the universe, but with only science having a way to determine which “truths” are really true. (If religion had a way of determining what was true, there would not be lots of religions making conflicting claims.)

Anyway, click to read:

The take-home lesson of the article is that a few asteroids have been named for Jesuit astronomers, and that’s all she wrote. A couple of excerpts:

Centuries after the Holy See muzzled and burned Roman Catholic stargazers for questioning the centrality of the Earth in the cosmos, Jesuit astronomers from the Vatican’s in-house observatory are increasingly writing their names in the heavens.

The Vatican, run by Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope in history, recently announced that three more Jesuit scientists from its Jesuit-run observatory had asteroids named after them as part of a fresh batch that included the 16th-century pope who commissioned the Gregorian calendar and a Tuscan pastry chef whose hobby is the firmament.

Jesuits, while not quite yet as numerous as the stars, have had more than 30 asteroids assigned to them since the space rocks began to be formally named in 1801. That “should not be surprising, given the often scientific nature of this community,” said the astronomer Don Yeomans, who worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and is now part of the group that gives official approval for the names given to asteroids.

This fact is taken as evidence that science and religion are not at odds:

The history of the observatory, which has been staffed by Jesuits since the 1930s, is a rebuttal to the notion that the Roman Catholic Church has always sought to stand in the way of scientific advancement, an idea perpetuated by high-profile cases like those of Galileo and Giordano Bruno at the hands of the Inquisition during the Renaissance.

“There are institutions like the Pontifical Academy of Science that tell the Vatican what’s going on in the world of science, but we actually do the science,” said Brother Guy Consolmagno, an asteroid honoree (4597 Consolmagno) and director of the observatory, whose website tagline is “faith inspiring science.” In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Brother Consolmagno said that part of the mission of the observatory was “to show the world that the church supports science.”

It’s telling that a former director of the observatory, the Jesuit astrophysicist Rev. George V. Coyne, who died in 2020, played a significant role in getting the Vatican to shift position and formally acknowledge in 1992 that Galileo might have been correct.

No, George Coyne is no relation! Note, though, that it was only in 1992 that the Vatican finally acknowledged that it treated Galileo badly: 350 years after the fact! If Catholicism were so down with science, why did it take more than three centuries for them to admit that they shouldn’t have condemned Galileo to house arrest for suggesting that the Sun doesn’t orbit the Earth?

The rest of the story is about how the asteroids were named, what rules are used to name them, and a bit about the three honored Jesuit astronomers.

As I said, if your view of the harmony between religion and science is that scientists can be religious or religious people can be scientists, then I’ll agree with you. Priests can even propose testable scientific theories: the Catholic priest Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) proposed early on that the universe was expanding and had originated in an event at a single point, now known as “The Big Bang”.

But when those astronomers walk to their telescope, they’re not using faith to find cosmic bodies, even though their search may be inspired by faith. They leave their religion at the observatory door.

And that’s the argument I make in Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible, available in fine bookstores anywhere, with the hardcover now only twelve bucks on Amazon.  Religion and science both make claims about what’s true in the universe, but the set of tools each “magisterium” uses to discern truth are different. Science uses reason, testability, doubt, empirical research, replication, predictions, and so on. Religion has three tools only: scripture, authority and faith.  Those three are incapable of discerning truth, which is why every religion has a different set of truths that are often incompatible.  For example, Jesus is God/the son of God in Christianity, but he’s only a prophet to Jews and Muslims.

By the way, the claim that religion makes no truth claims was part of Steve Gould’s “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA) idea: that the domain of religion is determining and enforcing morality, and the domain of science is empirical truth. Gould said that these domains did not overlap. He was wrong (see my critique here).

So if you think that Catholicism and religion are not at odds, ask a pious Catholic these questions, or related ones:

    1. Is there a God? If so, what is His nature?
    2. Was Jesus the son of God who was sent to earth to be resurrected, thereby giving us all a shot at salvation?
    3. Is there a heaven where we will go if we are good?
    4. Do we have souls? If so, what do they consist of?
    5. Was Jesus born of a virgin?
    6. In what way do wafers and wine literally become the body and blood of Jesus during the Eucharist?
    7. If you don’t confess your sins to a priest, will bad things happen to you after you die?

These are truth claims, some of them foundational for Catholicism, and there are many more.

(I know someone is going to point out that Jesuits may not believe in any of this stuff, but surely many of them do. If they said they didn’t, they’d be excommunicated.)

You get my drift: these involve truth claims of Catholicism, and those of a scientific mindset have no confidence in them because there’s no evidence for any of them. Thus the very same astronomers who peer through the Vatican’s telescope will go to Mass on Sunday, eat their wafers, go to confession, and accept the fact that Jesus was killed but came back to life, offering us salvation.  THAT is a conflict! For all of the questions and assertions above, the difference between science and religion rests on following up each “truth claim” with this question:  HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT? Science can give you a convincing answer; religion can’t.

My only question is why this article is using the naming of asteroids to show that religion and science are buddies. Lately the New York Times has been very soft on religion (viz., the mawkish Sunday columns of Anglican priest Tish Harrison Warren). Just once I’d like them to have a column by an atheist, or to consult with atheists when writing palaver like the column above.

Today: First public presentation of photos from the Webb Space telescope

February 7, 2023 • 7:30 am

Reader Sue called my attention to this event, which you can watch free simply by registering (name and email will suffice).  You’ll get a quick email back with the link. Click below to register and see some details:

It’s TODAY at these times:

7-8:30 p.m. Eastern time

6-7:30 p.m. Chicago (Central) time

4-5:30 p.m. Pacific time

And the format:

Professor of astronomy Alex Filippenko explores the first stunning images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Now at its destination one million miles from Earth, the 21-foot-diameter telescope was launched in December 2021.

Alex Filippenko is a Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at UC, Berkeley.

Presented in partnership with Wonderfest: The Bay Area Beacon of Science.

You’ll want to watch it if you’re available!

A bizarre Cornell course about black holes that conflates astronomy and ideology

January 19, 2023 • 11:00 am

I get notices of weird courses like this every day, but this one is special for two reasons. First, it sounds completely off the wall, combining black holes and race. Second, a colleague of mine, Luana Maroja at Williams College, asked an AI bot what the connection between the two areas was, and the bot produced an amusing response.

First, below is the class at the renowned Cornell University, whose description was sent to me by a colleague. It appears to be cross-listed in both COML (comparative literature) and ASTRO (astronomy), though I’m not sure where your course credits go, whether they can apply to the majors, and so on.  The distribution requirements below (LA-AS, ALC-AS, PHS-AS) imply that you can get credit for it in Literature and the Arts, Physical Sciences, and Arts, Literature, and Culture—all in the College of Arts and Sciences. I’m not sure if it really does fulfill a science requirement, but it looks like it.

Realize that I’m not familiar with Cornell’s curriculum requirements for an undergraduate degree, and maybe this course isn’t as bizarre as the description. But remember that course descriptions tend to be fairly accurate, and are written to attract students. Click on the course title to go to the page (the descriptions are identical; it’s just that the course satisfies two different distributions requirements).  

And the same course cross-listed in Astronomy

Here’s the course description and details from the online catalogue:

Black Holes: Race and the Cosmos

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2020-2021.

Conventional wisdom would have it that the “black” in black holes has nothing to do with race. Surely there can be no connection between the cosmos and the idea of racial blackness. Can there? Contemporary Black Studies theorists, artists, fiction writers implicitly and explicitly posit just such a connection. Theorists use astronomy concepts like “black holes” and “event horizons” to interpret the history of race in creative ways, while artists and musicians conjure blackness through cosmological themes and images. Co-taught by professors in Comparative Literature and Astronomy, this course will introduce students to the fundamentals of astronomy concepts through readings in Black Studies. Texts may include works by theorists like Michelle Wright and Denise Ferreira da Silva, authors like Octavia Butler and Nalo Hopkinson, music by Sun Ra, Outkast and Janelle Monáe. Astronomy concepts will include the electromagnetic spectrum, stellar evolution, and general relativity.

When Offered:  Spring.

Distribution Category (LA-AS, ALC-AS, PHS-AS)

Syllabi: none

  •   Regular Academic Session.  Combined with: ASTRO 2034

  • 3 Credits Stdnt Opt
  • 19548 LEC 001
    • MOnline Meeting
    • Feb 8 – May 14, 2021
    • Battaglia, N., Vaziri, P.
  • Instruction Mode: Hybrid-Online and In Person
    This course has two required meeting days.
    Enrollment limited to students who are able to attend in-person classes in the Ithaca area.

In this case the conventional wisdom is right: they’re called “black holes” because they appear black—no light can escape their terrific gravity.  So surely there is no connection between this and race except for the word “black,” but you know that’s enough to drag race into the mixture. This course is clearly part of an attempt to racialize everything, and it sounds like a disaster. Since there’s nothing but a semantic connection between the two areas, it’s probably a poor welding of physics and Black Studies, livened up with the tunes of Sun Ra and Janell Monáe.

It sounds exactly what we used to call a “gut course”, or, in the case of science, “football physics”—a course meant for those who don’t particularly want to learn anything rigorous, but want to have fun and perhaps get an easy “A.” Now of course some offended Cornell person is going to write in and tell me how rigorous the course is, or that I’ve completely misconstrued the contents. To the first beef I’d say, “No it’s not: you’re combining two wholly different and unconnected areas that should not be taught as a single course. You’re also trying to be trendy without rigor.” To the second I’d say, “Well, all I have is the course description, and if I were a student at Cornell who wanted to learn science, I’d run away from this course as fast as I could.” But we always have people to defend any course, no matter how weird it is.

At any rate, Luana decided to ask the ChatGPT about the connection. This is, you know, the AI bot site that students can use to get their essay written by AI. (See here for a NYT article about the bot and the problems it’s causing.) ChatGPT at the link is down at the moment: I’m not sure if it’s active only in the afternoons and evenings, which I’ve heard, or if it’s in abeyance (there are rumors of a lawsuit against it).

At any rate, the question Luana asked is in bold and ChatGPT’s answer is indented below that:

What are black holes and what is the relationship to race

Black holes are extremely dense regions of space that have extremely strong gravitational fields. They are formed when very massive stars die and collapse under the force of their own gravity. Nothing, including light, can escape from inside a black hole’s event horizon, the point of no return.

There is no relationship between black holes and race. Black holes are a scientific concept that is based on the laws of physics, and race is a social construct with no scientific basis. They are not related to each other in any way.

This would seem to make the Cornell course superfluous, wouldn’t it? It also tells us that ChatGPT is somewhat misinformed about “race”, which is not entirely a social construct (see here and here).

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 7, 2023 • 8:15 am

Send in your photos! I am sweating blood!

Two batches today: stars ‘n’ squirrels.  First, the three star photos come from Tim Anderson.  Click the photos to enlarge them:

M42, the Orion Nebula:

NGC3372, the Carina Nebula and NGC3532, the Wishing Well Star Cluster

And squirrel photos from Mary Barbara Vance Wilson:

I hit the cute diurnal squirrel trifecta at Collier State Park in Klamath County, Oregon, earlier in September 14.  Golden-mantled Ground Squirrels (Callopermophilus lateralis) are common sights in western parks.  These were busy stashing food for the winter.  They are often confused with chipmunks, which are smaller and have facial stripes.
The Yellow-Pine Chipmunk (Neotamias amoenus), one of the smallest chipmunks, were dashing so fast across the ground, up tree trunks, and over historic logging machinery that getting a photo was difficult.
The Douglas Squirrel  (Tamiasciurus douglasii) is only about as big as the ground squirrels but lacks stripes except for a short bar on the side.  It spends more time in the trees than the other two.