Geek in Review: Reach Out to the Stars

This week's Geek in Review is all about my love of science, especially astronomy, beginning with my first memory, looking at the moon when I was two or three years-old:

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.

By happy coincidence, I traded some e-mails with Phil Plait, better known as The Bad Astronomer, while I wrote my column, and I asked him if he could explain why the moon appeared to cover the entire horizon in my memory. He said:

You are a victim of The Moon Illusion!

You caught me in an expansive mood; I'm full of coffee and I just wrote 11,000+ words about black holes for my next book. So hang on.

The illusion is just that: an illusion. It can be really amazing, but in reality, even in your head, the Moon only looks two or three times bigger. This can be amplified by memory; some people swear they remember the Moon eating up the whole sky as you do (remember it, I mean, not that you eat the whole sky).

The illusion is a combination of two things. the first is the Ponzo illusion, where your brain interprets things as being bigger if it thinks they are farther away.

Second, the sky is not exactly hemisphere-shaped to our brains, it actually looks like an inverted bowl. Think of it this way: clouds overhead are maybe two miles up, but clouds near the horizon are a hundred miles away. So the sky looks bowl-shaped.

So when the Moon is on the horizon, your brain thinks it's farther away than when it's overhead. The Ponzo illusion kicks in, and your brain gets fooled into thinking the Moon is HUGE. As it gets higher, the illusion vanishes. If you actually observe the Moon with binoculars or with a 'scope, you can see it is no bigger on the horizon. In fact, it should look smaller because it's a few thousand miles farther away than when it's overhead.

It has nothing to do with foreground objects, atmospheric refraction or anything like that. it's a plain old illusion. I wrote a whole chapter about this in my first book, matter of fact. It was tough to research since people argue so vehemently over this topic. Fun though.

Phil's comments, and my ability to ask him for them, are yet another reason why we are so lucky to be alive at this moment. At what other time could I so simply and easily ask an astronomer such a noob question, and get an answer back so quickly?

This was one of those columns that easily could have turned into 5000 words, and I'm not entirely happy with the way I cut it down to keep it readable. I love science so much, and I am so fascinated by astronomy, that once I get going, it's hard for me to keep things brief. I didn't even get into Hyperspace (fish scientists FTW!) and all the stuff I learned about black holes and quantum physics when I was in my early twenties. I totally suck at math, and I've never taken anything higher than Algebra 2, so the fact that I can get even an elementary understanding of these subjects speaks volumes about the people who've written books about them.

If you're of a scientific mind, and you can communicate scientific ideas to guys like me, please keep on doing it. We're assaulted by pseudo- and anti-science on an almost daily basis, it seems, and enlightening the ignorant is the only way we're ever going to get off this planet before we destroy it.

Comments

[LokiDeCat]

That moon illusion played hell in a photography class I was in. She warned us about "the moon" but wanted us to find out what would happen.

It never quite comes out the way you want it to. On film it's SO teeny tiny, even if you have this monstrous, lunging, kick-ball of a harvest moon on the horizon.

[Tara]

I love your writing. I love the way you can take any topic and relate it to life. You brought your love of astronomy and made it a story about so much more. I was a story about family. Thank you:)
~~TARA~~

[prof_rocko]

Believe me, Wil, we do try (I am an astronomer/physicist at a southeastern university).

Sometimes it's difficult, even in the classroom, to convince folks what science is/isn't because of the popularly negative view (distrust?) of science/scientists in general. I'd like to think this view was on the way out, but I get the sense that it's come back into vogue due to political trends in the past 7 years.

I have even encountered difficulties when two very different people have convinced themselves that their "version" of science is correct. (The debate on global warming, for instance, inspires a lot of tension between many intelligent, science-minded people.)

[Eric]

(Hah, it's Rocko (it's me Eric from FFS!).)

Anyway, it was Phil's book that turned me into a skeptic several years. You should pick up a copy.

Or you two could do a book swap. Or whatever you author type people like to do. :)

[Thomas]

I recommend Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. It's one of my favorite books of all time. It explains a large number of scientific theories from different disciplines in an entertaining way. The other great thing it shows is how the history of scientific knowledge is filled with old dogma continuously being replaced with new accepted facts that contradict the old ones. The struggle of new discoverers fighting with the establishment is both inspiring and discouraging.

[SeeJane]

Geez, Wil. This is the 3rd or 4th GIR in a row that's made me tear up some (or a lot). Thank you.

[The Bad Astronomer]

Thanks for the linky lurv, Wil. I remember, years ago, seeing Orion rising over a parking lot, looking like it would take over the sky...

Photographing the Moon is *hard*. It really is incredibly small on a typical image. Unless you have a good telephoto you won't see much detail.

[prof_rocko]

(Hi Eric, fancy meeting you here!)

Wil, I highly recommend a trip out to the Mt. Wilson Observatory if you haven't already... You've not seen anything if you've never seen the sky from a professional observatory... I tell my students that it's no wonder the ancients knew so much about the sky without light pollution around!

[Freeman]

To me it is the SIMPLE facts of science that are so fascinating. Why are astronauts in orbit "weightless"? Because they and the space shuttle are both falling to earth at the same speed of gravity. Why do we have four seasons? Because the earth not only spins on its axis, it also wobbles back and forth. So simple but yet so awesome.

[Carol]

I LOVE that Carl Sagan quote. Makes me tear up every damned time. That's why I am beyond jazzed that I'm a secretary at JPL. There are very few places where I would work an office job. JPL is at the top of a very short list.

Speaking of which, I'm going to ask what is possibly a silly question, Wil - you have been to JPL's Open House, haven't you? Because if not, you MUST go next year (we just had this year's last month).

[Kristy]

That is one of the sweetest little stories ever. Now I can't wait to have children of my own to be able to tell them things in an awed voice. (In the meantime, teaching definitely helps with the communicating-love-of-science bug!)

[Proto]

Excellent corollary. Too bad you threw in the vanity claim that we could destroy this planet. It would destroy us first.

[Kristen]

Love, love, LOVE this post! It gets me excited about going back to school in the fall and about studying for physics and astronomy classes. I honestly cannot wait until I have a gazillion degrees in Astrophysics!

I had an interesting experience this past March up in the UGA observatory. I was using the massive telescope to find the Whirlpool Galaxy, but I couldn't see the faintest trace of it in the eyepiece. Then I took a minute-long exposure of the area with the nifty $10K CCD camera, and BAM, there was a picture of the Whirlpool Galaxy, clear as day, on the computer screen! No trace of it using our natural, built-in eye technology, yet we know it's right there. How can that NOT encourage anyone to explore further? Hmph, I wish there were as many people passionate about science as there are about religion.

Oh, and I am totally psyched about the new edition of "The Physics of Star Trek" that comes out in a few days!

[mrfrodothefluffy]

"...and enlightening the ignorant is the only way we're ever going to get off this planet before we destroy it."

I don't know whether to laugh or not because that statement is so true. Global warming.... lawlz!

[Belial]

This brings back old memories for me, too. I was such a science geek as a kid, and still am. But I unfortunately never got the basic math education that I would need to truly excel in the hard sciences (nor, honestly, did I make much of an effort to educate myself). But I can still enjoy it.

On the information from a true astronomer, we truly live in a wondrous time. Once, finding knowledge like this would have necessitated a trip to the library, digging through card files, searching for books or periodicals... now all it takes is a quick googling. I'm excited about the possibilities this holds for my kids. I just hope that I can instill in them the love for geekery (science, gadgets, scifi, etc) that I grew up with.

[Myshtuff]

Yeah astronomy is awesome. I took a year long class on it this past year in high school. We learned alot of awesome things like supernovas, red giants, white dwarfs, and the stages that stars go through. Wil, did you know that in another 5 billion years the sun will become a red giant and engulf the first 3 planets of our solar system? Yes, including us! Its fascinating stuff.

[angie k]

Nice GIR. I'm feeling the astronomy/physics love in the room. :) Oh, I long to be an astronomy student again. It's a shame I never excelled at math & physics in college (or got a good tutor). Your stories remind me of my own. Entirely different circumstances (It was that report I did about the Challenger in the 6th grade, not the moon, that hooked me on science and space science. (And science fiction, of course.)) but same feeling.

Great GIR. Thanks for writing!

[Kate P]

No science just nostalgia.
I vividly recall a harvest moon rising over a midwest river valley as a friend and I stood on a highway overpass in the late fall. He was from upstate New York and the site of that enormous orange moon made us both stop and stare until it moved out of the "illusion zone".

[Oz]

About the huge moon illusion. Apparently (I have not tried this personally) a good way to prove it is an illusion is to hold something at arms length that just covers the moon when it appears huge (a paper cut-out or something). Then, when the moon is high in the sky and looks small / normal, you will find that the same object held at arms length still barely covers the moon.

[starshine_diva]

OMG, LokiDeCat ,
that photography experiment sounds like a blast. Next time I see a huge moon... I'll take my camera out. It's too bad that I can't paint, because it would be interesting to see the difference between the two images.
I'm not sure if you were shooting digital, but once you took the picture and held it up against the moon in the sky... did the moon still look as big?

Just curious.

[starshine_diva]

And about GiR:
Beautiful, as always. And touching. And inspiring. And I should stop using "and" so much at the beginning of a sentence, but I wanted to mention that I'm super impressed with Ryan, and that I'm sort of proud of him - and you - too... A weird feeling, to be proud of someone you don't know.

Still, you played a big part in his life, it's true. And (damn, there it is again!) I'm sure Ryan is going into neuroscience not just because he finds it interesting, but because you and Anne fostered an environment where he could discover things like the stars and the moon without feeling too geeky ;)
Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course...

[GeekPride]

Proto's point is well-put. We will likely have destroyed ourselves before we have a chance to blow apart this planet. I wonder if the dinosaurs ever thought their reign would end. You know, the scientist dinosaurs warning the newsmedia dinosaurs that the corporate dinosaurs needed to stop eating all the little dinosaurs and conserve the trees and water but they just kept on eating and eating and getting bigger and more dangerous. All the other dinosaurs ignored what was uncomfortable to hear and decided that since they had been around a long time, they would always manage to survive -- deus ex machina. Besides, the new GameDino was out and Jessica Allosaurus had just been released from jail so there was little space left in the headlines for science.
Note to self: stop watching so many cartoons.

[SarahD]

For some reason I don't see a link to the complete Geek in Review. Can anyone help me out?

[SeeJane]

SarahD: http://suicidegirls.com/news/geek/

[spacewriter]

It's all true what you say, Wil. That same sense of wanting to know what's out there is what led me to become a scientist/science writer, too. Nowadays I just do the science writer part, but nothing beat the feeling of standing at the "edge" of the universe when I was a researcher, just waiting to know what was out there!

So, did you ever get to Griffith Observatory, as I suggested when you came to Boston last summer? I know it's kind of a pain to get up there (what with the shuttles and all), but it's worth the trip. (And not just because I worked on it ;) )

I blog about science, astronomy mostly, nearly every day.

http:www.thespacewriter.com/blog.html