NEWS: Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: Reach Out to the Stars

GEEK: Wil Wheaton's Geek in Review: Reach Out to the Stars

Last night, my wife and I walked our dogs though our neighborhood shortly after dusk. While we walked up our street, I gasped and pointed at the sky.

“Yeah,” she said, “Venus is huge and bright tonight, isn’t it?”

I blinked and looked at her. As far as I know, Anne isn’t nearly the science nerd I am.

“Hey,” she said, “I learned it by watching you.”

“I love that.” I said.

Have you ever stopped to really think about how vast the universe is, and how small we actually are, in comparison?

Have you ever gone outside at night, looked at the stars, and thought, “I’m actually looking back in time, because the light that I’m seeing left those stars millions of years ago"?

Do you ever feel the warmth of the Sun on your face and think, “Holy shit, man, that’s coming from a star that’s just 93 million miles away”?

If you do, you’re probably a stoner or a science nerd. I am the latter, and I have been all of my life, starting with my earliest memory, looking at the moon with my parents.

We lived in the Northwestern San Fernando valley, in a converted chicken coop on my grandparents’ property, which was one of many one-acre farms that shared space with weird-o hippie communes from the late sixties through the mid-seventies.

My dad was excited as he took me and my mom out of the house to stand beneath the walnut tree. Once outside, he didn’t even need to tell us why. There, rising over the pasture behind our house, was the biggest moon I’ve ever seen in my life. It was yellow and full and covered the entire horizon, like a drawing from a science fiction pulp novel. It was nighttime, but the glow of the moon lit up the ground in front of us as far as I could see, turning the leafless trees at the back fence into bony hands, reaching into the sky.

I stood between them in my OshKosh B’Gosh overalls, mom holding my left hand and dad holding my right, and stared at it while it slowly climbed into the sky. Though I was too young to understand the concept of beauty, I was still impressed; it was the biggest thing I’d ever seen in my life.

My dad picked me up and held me close to him. “That’s the moon,” he said. I can still hear the awe in his voice. In that moment, my life long love affair with space and science began.

A few years later, we moved to Houston so my dad could go to medical school. My grandmother came with us to help out my mom, and she bought me a series of books called the National Geographic Books for Young Explorers. They were big, colorful tomes filled with pictures and fairly sophisticated (for a five year-old) explanations of scientific phenomena. My favorite was called Let’s Go To The Moon, and it was all about the Apollo missions. I sat in the deep shag carpeting of our living room, Goodbye Yellowbrick Road playing on those giant black headphones with the mile-long curly cord, and read it so much, I cracked the spine. I wanted to ride in a rocket! I wanted to go to the moon! I wanted to feel weightless and eat mysterious astronaut food that stuck to an upside down spoon!

My parents must have sensed my growing love for science and especially outer space. They took me to the Johnson Space Center so I could see the real places that were pictured in my book. When we got back to Los Angeles (after a stop at Meteor Crater in Arizona on the drive home,) they took me to the Griffith Observatory and the Museum of Science and Industry, and to see a movie set in space called Star Wars. While the kids in my elementary school all wanted to be firemen or policemen or athletes, I wanted to be an astronaut. If I couldn’t be an astronaut, I wanted to be Luke Skywalker . . . which I guess I sort of pulled off ten years later.

I continued to love science, even when I was a rebellious teenager (of course, being a science fiction nerd helped) and can thank authors like Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku for affirming and challenging my developing brains. But nothing affected me as much as words spoken by Carl Sagan in 1996, which inspired his book The Pale Blue Dot:

To this day, I can not read those words aloud without getting choked up. The photograph that inspired him to write those words was taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990. All the way back in 1979, that spacecraft flew past Jupiter, and returned some of the most stunning photos of our solar system that had ever been taken. My great grandparents, who knew how much I loved space, opened a savings account for me at a long-defunct bank in the Valley because it was giving away a package of the photos as a premium. Those photos were precious to me, and I kept them in pristine condition and treated them with the same care that I’d treat my comic book collection when I was in high school. Sadly, I think they were lost in a move sometime in the mid-90s, but their threads are clearly visible in the tapestry of my life.

In 1999, the Leonid meteor shower was at a massive peak. Astronomers expected that we’d see hundreds an hour if we could get under dark skies, so I convinced my wife that it was a good idea to take our kids out of school, drive to the desert, and stay up all night to watch the celestial fireworks. This time, it was my turn to be the awestruck parent, sharing the wonders of the universe with my kids. A few days later, when I heard Ryan – who joined Mensa when he was 16 – explaining to his friend across the street that we saw too many meteors to count, and that the meteors were just tiny bits of dust from an old comet, it was my turn to be the proud parent. Ryan starts college in a couple of months, and he wants to study neuroscience. If he follows through with that, it will most likely be the result of the butterfly effect, started by the Moon Illusion I saw in 1974, and maybe one day, he'll hold his own son in his arms, point into the Autumn sky, and tell him, "That's the moon!"

Wil Wheaton has been riding the pale blue dot for about twenty billion miles.

And hopefully, your grandson might be able to point to the sky and tell his son, "That's Earth, where I was born!"
That's a wonderful article, Wil, I know exactly how you feel!

I live and die for this stuff.

My girlfriend loaned me her copy of Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" when we started dating. We do the whole romantic star-gazing thing with a pretty serious Mr. Wizard bent.

My girlfriend is incredibly hot.

I love just looking up at the night sky on the way home its one of the most peaceful things. Now living in London I miss seeing the stars overnight and being guided home by the Southern Cross back in Australia but on the odd clear night when the stars shine it always makes me think of home and what home is on such a small place in a big universe.

Really do enjoy all your articles Will keep em going!

this reminds me that I must, must, must get up to Griffith Observatory now that it has reopened here in Los Angeles...

I grew up feeling the same way and still do. I spent my formative years on the coast of Florida, just 45 minutes from Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. At least one field trip a year would be spent there, and my parents, brother and I would often drive to the beach to watch launches, including the Apollo-Soyuz mission in...damn, 1975?

My best friend's dad was the guy that would push The Button, destroying any rocket that strayed off its intended course. How cool !

So I saw the first shuttle, Columbia, when it first rolled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building, and I saw its first launch on site through my telescope. And I wanted to be an astronaut, too; it didn't happen, but I haven't given up on making it into space just yet.

I might never make it into space, but I've never given up my love of cosmology and thinking of just how enormous it all is. How cool !

-TTm

Huzzah! to the science nerds!

Astronomy is humbling. Recognizing that there are things larger than us, and doing something that you know you can't control are very good for the soul.

I visited a friend my hometown several years back, and he gave me a ride to my mom's house after we had dinner. In the driveway, I was surprised at how clear the sky was - I immediately started pointing out stars and constellations and planets - we even saw the space station pass overhead. I got very excited and went on and on about astronomy and space travel, etc. He got very quiet and smiled.

"What?" I asked.

"You're dangerous." He replied.

Truly, one of the finest compliments I've ever gotten.

Last week, while working a science event at my part time job, a scientist and I were discussing my future career as a teacher and how kids love science and how much fun it is to do experiments with them, etc. Just before we parted, he said, "You will make a great teacher, because you're not afraid of science."

I wanted to be an astronaut, my mother says, because I loved to watch shows like Star Trek TNG, and talked about visiting other planets. My goals have shifted, but my fascination hasn't. I hope I'm able to pass that on my children and students.

One of the things I love best about living five miles outside of town is that, on a clear night, the South Dakota sky is fucking filled with stars. And I don't know about the rest of the world, but here the sky comprises about 2/3 of everything you see.

Needless to say, I also thought it was the best joke ever when I was looking through my NASA Images calendar for this year and noticed that the month of August features a lovely image of the Earth, and that it is labeled "Big Blue Marble." ^_^

To paraphrase a fine novel, "In my heart, I'm a science nerd. It's only the brains that's letting me down."

Always have been a science nerd, and always will be a science nerd.










And proud of it

I've longed to leave the bounds of this world since I was tiny thing and saw the aforementioned tale from a long time ago and a galaxy far away. If Galactus showed up I'd be out of here in a heartbeat.

What really hit me like a slap in the face was this: Ryan starts college in a couple of months... Will's only about a year older than me and the idea that someone my age could have a child that old really hits me hard, especially since I have no kids of my own. Just one of those "if I had taken that left turn, way back when" moments I suppose.

My favorite moment is when I'm in a remote area, staring at a clear sky and after a while you start to feel like you can actually perceive depth in the stars. I know it's not possible, but sometimes I really feel like I'm seeing the space between the stars. I love that.

Yeah - total science nerd.

Carl Sagan was the man. His "Cosmos" series warped me good as a young boy, and the book was my favorite until I lost it in a move. lying under the stars has been a litmus test for every girl I have ever dated. if she could stand to listen to me babble on and on about the stars, she was a keeper...

Another well-written piece. The Sagan quote definitely gets me misty-eyed. Gazing out into space gives utter satisfaction to someone longing for beauty, truth, and mystery at once. When I look at a full moon on a dark, clear night, I am amazed that people don't worship it, instead of something they can't see. And I love how we can see stars that died millions of years ago. Just gives me chills, in a good way.

that was such a beautiful and humbling article, Will. Good luck to your son! Sounds like the apple didn't fall too far at all...i echo ericwine's sentiments, concerning your future Grandson...may he be able to look at this planet from a far, and think of you and your dreams as a young man, and be able to inspire his own children with them...

Wil, that was beautiful! Got me all reminiscent... damn you!

That is the one thing I miss the most about home. From the porch on my farm in Hitchcock, SD it feel like you can see everything. Best times ever spent in my 23 years there were spent looking up at the sky... not so much here.

This is a beautiful article in the way it expresses the infinite smallness of the life of a human and the infinite massiveness of a parent. As always a great article Will!!

Sigh,

I miss Sagan. I don't have very many heroes. He was one of the few. My parents gave me Cosmos as a gift when Voyager passed Jupiter and its inspired me for all these years.

It's funny how the romantic impressions our parents pass on to us can influence the pursuit of science.

Well said Wil, well said.

"We are all star stuff."

-Carl Sagan

That made me think of that one anti-drug commercial.

"How did you know that was Venus?"

"FROM YOU, WIL! I... I learned it from you."

Wow!

You have created my youthful sense of wonderment that science in general, and Astronomy specifically instilled into my growing lobes during my early formative years...

I can still remember back 38 years ago at the age of 9, when at the local Observatory the resident grad student was running out of things to quiz me on from the selection of star charts and celestrial photos at the Dome. He pulled out a dusty wooden box and reverently took out an obviously old, tarnished Brass object which i quickly announced was a Sextant. That floored him, but I made my late father proud as I also said it was used to fix terrestrial latitude and longitude from stellar objects and (of course) accurate timekeeping.

Oh, Oh! I also remember the first Star Trek episode I saw in first run was "Mudd's Women", which at the age of six set the tone for my love of... ummm... Gene Girls! lol

I enjoyed your onscreen time as Wesley; but now, I am really getting into your lit here at Geek in Review! With so many simularities in our youths relating to learning and yearning about science, I will hazard a guess you too were floored by Ender's Game.

Wes, thank you for reminding me, and many others here that we have forgotten our youthful interests and sense of wonder!

/applaud

...So many fond memories of time spent just looking up at the stars, watching Hale-Bopp Streak across the Skies over a period of several months. My first love though was and always will be the moon. I hope to see us there on the moon, and taking our first steps on Mars besides. Space truly has become (once again) the Final Frontier -- let's get out there!

I watched Cosmos religiously as a child. My dad was much more a business type. When he saw my budding science nerdiness he not only helped me learn, but learned things himself so we could enjoy it together. My folks got me the DVD box set of Cosmos for Christmas when it was released. I also bought some extra sets to store and give to my niece and nephews when they are ready.

I met Carl Sagan when he spoke at SMU in Dallas. My dad and I were taking a science extension class for faculty and staff. I was the only 14-15yr old in a class of staff and professors. Talk about heady stuff. Carl Sagan came to the class and we all ended up just chatting for a couple hours. I don't even remember the question I got up the courage to ask, but he addressed my question just like anyone else's.

Do you remember the BBC series "Connections"? It was shown on PBS when I was growing up. IIRC, it was hosted by James Burke.

Crushing moment - my little brother didn't believe me when I showed him a picture of the earth from space. He was probably 4-5. He didn't see any of the lines showing national borders or colored countries that he saw on maps and globes.

Earth... the Alabama of the universe.