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Watching Rome Burn & Hell Freeze
The fun physics of global cataclysmPosted in For Your Consideration
What do record fire seasons in the West, record hurricane seasons in the Atlantic, record winter storms in the South and the hottest years in history have to do with each other? Everything.
This article originally appeared in the December 2019 issue of my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Schools in the Time of COVID
The Decision Will Ultimately Make ItselfPosted in Thoughts
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. Yes, schools are desperately important to kids. No, COVID-19 doesn’t care, and COVID is making the rules right now. Attempts to open schools this fall will fail of their own accord. The relevant question is how to meet the needs of children, families and the community in the face of that reality.
COVID-19 Arrives
The Humanitarian Disaster is HerePosted in Thoughts
Currently new cases of COVID-19 in Arizona are doubling every 7 days. ICU beds in the state are already full. The rest of the country isn’t that far behind us. You do the math.
Correctly Predicting Failure
It’s time for scientists to get loudPosted in Thoughts
Now is not the time for scientists to be circumspect and silent. We are on the short end of a battle over whether truth even matters. If scientists do not stand up for what is real, who will?
Typhoid Mary on Two Wheels
Spreading COVID one lap at a timePosted in Thoughts
The morning cyclist in my neighborhood may not be standing in the Michigan Statehouse carrying a gun and demanding her right to spread contagion far and wide, but she may as well be.
Pine Boxes
Invest now, the numbers are going upPosted in Success & FailureThoughts
You know those nice charts and graphs that make it look like we are over the hump of COVID-19 and that things are about to get better? Those predictions are dead wrong, with an unfortunate emphasis on “dead.”
Scientists Stuck Inside
Curiosity in the Time of COVIDPosted in For Your ConsiderationThoughts
Imagine three gregarious scientists, each with the gift of the gab, all coping with stay-at-home orders. Of course we started a livestream/podcast talk show! What else would we do? Welcome to the kickoff episode of Scientists Stuck Inside.
After COVID’s First Wave
No getting back to normalPosted in Success & FailureThoughts
Even after COVID-19 kills hundreds of thousands in the U.S. over the coming weeks, we will still be almost as vulnerable to the pandemic as we are today. We’d all love to “get back to normal” after that, but the price could be a second wave, worse than the first. Some see us facing either economic Depression or allowing vast numbers of preventable deaths, but that is a fool’s choice. There are better options if we have the will to find them.
COVID-19
Cutting through the confusionPosted in Success & FailureThoughts
There is a lot of information about COVID-19 out there, much of it misleading. When looking at the future, start with what the science really says.
Great Deceiverism 101
Explanation or Theory? Therein lies the rub.Posted in For Your ConsiderationUnreasonable Faith
If someone can’t tell you how they would know that they are wrong, they don’t have a clue whether they are right.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
One Step at a Time
The not-so-mysterious origin of lifePosted in For Your ConsiderationUnreasonable Faith
Once seemingly incomprehensible, the origin of life no longer seems such a mystery. Most of what once appeared as roadblocks are turning out to be superhighways.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
The Mind’s Siren Call
Being certain is a primrose pathPosted in For Your ConsiderationUnreasonable Faith
Being certain lights up our brains like a junkie’s next hit. Literally. Unfortunately, being certain and being right are two very, very different things.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
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Watching Rome Burn & Hell Freeze
The fun physics of global cataclysmPosted in For Your Consideration
-
Schools in the Time of COVID
The Decision Will Ultimately Make ItselfPosted in Thoughts
-
COVID-19 Arrives
The Humanitarian Disaster is HerePosted in Thoughts
-
Correctly Predicting Failure
It’s time for scientists to get loudPosted in Thoughts
-
Typhoid Mary on Two Wheels
Spreading COVID one lap at a timePosted in Thoughts
-
Pine Boxes
Invest now, the numbers are going upPosted in Success & FailureThoughts
-
Scientists Stuck Inside
Curiosity in the Time of COVIDPosted in For Your ConsiderationThoughts
-
After COVID’s First Wave
No getting back to normalPosted in Success & FailureThoughts
-
COVID-19
Cutting through the confusionPosted in Success & FailureThoughts
-
Great Deceiverism 101
Explanation or Theory? Therein lies the rub.Posted in For Your ConsiderationUnreasonable Faith
-
One Step at a Time
The not-so-mysterious origin of lifePosted in For Your ConsiderationUnreasonable Faith
-
The Mind’s Siren Call
Being certain is a primrose pathPosted in For Your ConsiderationUnreasonable Faith
-
What do record fire seasons in the West, record hurricane seasons in the Atlantic, record winter storms in the South and the hottest years in history have to do with each other? Everything.
This article originally appeared in the December 2019 issue of my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
You don’t tug on Superman’s cape. You don’t spit into the wind. Yes, schools are desperately important to kids. No, COVID-19 doesn’t care, and COVID is making the rules right now. Attempts to open schools this fall will fail of their own accord. The relevant question is how to meet the needs of children, families and the community in the face of that reality.
Currently new cases of COVID-19 in Arizona are doubling every 7 days. ICU beds in the state are already full. The rest of the country isn’t that far behind us. You do the math.
Now is not the time for scientists to be circumspect and silent. We are on the short end of a battle over whether truth even matters. If scientists do not stand up for what is real, who will?
The morning cyclist in my neighborhood may not be standing in the Michigan Statehouse carrying a gun and demanding her right to spread contagion far and wide, but she may as well be.
You know those nice charts and graphs that make it look like we are over the hump of COVID-19 and that things are about to get better? Those predictions are dead wrong, with an unfortunate emphasis on “dead.”
Imagine three gregarious scientists, each with the gift of the gab, all coping with stay-at-home orders. Of course we started a livestream/podcast talk show! What else would we do? Welcome to the kickoff episode of Scientists Stuck Inside.
Even after COVID-19 kills hundreds of thousands in the U.S. over the coming weeks, we will still be almost as vulnerable to the pandemic as we are today. We’d all love to “get back to normal” after that, but the price could be a second wave, worse than the first. Some see us facing either economic Depression or allowing vast numbers of preventable deaths, but that is a fool’s choice. There are better options if we have the will to find them.
There is a lot of information about COVID-19 out there, much of it misleading. When looking at the future, start with what the science really says.
If someone can’t tell you how they would know that they are wrong, they don’t have a clue whether they are right.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Once seemingly incomprehensible, the origin of life no longer seems such a mystery. Most of what once appeared as roadblocks are turning out to be superhighways.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Being certain lights up our brains like a junkie’s next hit. Literally. Unfortunately, being certain and being right are two very, very different things.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
Over his 30 year career as an internationally known astrophysicist, Dr. Jeff Hester was a key member of the team that repaired the Hubble Space Telescope. With one foot always on the frontiers of knowledge, he has been mentor, coach, team leader, award-winning teacher, administrator and speaker, to name a few of the hats he has worn. His Hubble image, the Pillars of Creation, was chosen by Time Magazine as among the 100 most influential photographs in history.

Pulsars and Neutrinos
The history that LIGO forgot
Gilding the lily makes everybody look bad. When the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory detected ripples in the fabric of space-time from a pair of merging black holes, it was a technological and scientific accomplishment without peer! But LIGO did not “discover” gravity waves.
This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.
T wo black holes spiraled together in a cataclysmic event that converted three times the mass of the Sun into pure energy. That energy traveled outward through space as ripples in the very fabric of the universe. More than a billion years later, those gravitational waves swept past Earth and were detected by the most extraordinary measuring device humankind had ever built.
By directly detecting gravitational waves, LIGO has given us a whole new way of observing the universe. That extraordinary technical accomplishment and the discoveries it promises are awe-inspiring. We had been blind, but now we can see!

Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor confirmed that the orbit of a binary pulsar was decaying just as predicted by Einstein’s theory of relativity, making them the first to discover direct evidence of gravitational waves. (MPIfR/M. Kramer)
Hulse and Taylor won the 1993 Nobel Prize for discovering gravitational waves.
Of course, astrophysicists had already known that gravitational waves exist for four decades before the LIGO announcement. LIGO scientists recount that history in the opening paragraphs of their own 2016 paper in Physical Review Letters: “The discovery of the binary pulsar system PSR B1913+16 by Hulse and Taylor and subsequent observations of its energy loss by Taylor and Weisberg demonstrated the existence of gravitational waves.”
In 1974, the binary pulsar was the test of Einstein’s theory that everyone had been waiting for. Had the orbit of the binary pulsar not decayed as predicted, the headlines would have read, “Einstein wrong! Gravitational waves don’t exist!” And LIGO would never have been built. Hulse and Taylor were awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. Isaac Newton famously said, “If I have seen further than others it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” For LIGO, those giants included Hulse, Taylor, and Weisberg.
It takes chutzpah to ignore three Nobel Prizes in the same press conference!
During the gravitational waves press conference, Rainer Weiss, a LIGO co-founder, seemed about to tell that story. He set it up beautifully, talking about the rapid orbital decays of collapsed objects like black holes and neutron stars. The next words out of his mouth should have been “Hulse and Taylor.” Instead it was as if a chapter had been eliminated from a book. In the narrative, suddenly it was 2015 and LIGO was confirming Einstein’s predictions for the first time.
Another surprising omission came later. When Kip Thorne, black hole expert and fellow LIGO co-founder, took his turn at the mic, he enthused, “All of our previous windows through which astronomers have looked are electromagnetic!” In the process he ignored not one but two Nobel Prizes. The 2002 and 2015 prizes both recognized neutrino astronomy, which not only confirmed our fundamental understanding of the workings of stars and core-collapse supernova explosions, but also provided the first hard evidence of a failure of the Standard Model of particle physics — neutrinos were supposed to be massless.
Why would LIGO choose to gild the lily?
Maybe I’m just being a curmudgeon. Events like the LIGO press conference are about sharing the excitement of a moment. Believe me, I get it. I was among those who addressed the American Astronomical Society in January 1994, celebrating the successful repair of the Hubble Space Telescope. Sometimes you have to shout “we’re number one!” and spike the ball in the end zone.

The twin LIGO interferometers, LIGO Handford in Washington state, and LIGO Livingston in Lousiana. (NSF, Caltech, MIT)
Certainly stretching the truth a bit at a press conference is nothing new. A few years after Hubble was repaired I attended a colloquium about some lovely ground-based observations of elliptical galaxies. The speaker closed with a tongue-in-cheek remark. “Just remember, when Hubble discovers this, you saw it here first!” The room roared with laughter!
Then there is realpolitik. Back in the day, then Hubble project scientist Ed Weiler had a favorite saying: “Congress doesn’t read The Astrophysical Journal. Congress reads The New York Times.” He was right.
As the most expensive project ever supported by the National Science Foundation, LIGO faces that same reality. Press conferences are important. They are scripted and rehearsed, with PR types directing the show. That’s fine. But when crucial things like the binary pulsar and neutrino astronomy aren’t mentioned, it is usually because someone worried they would “detract from the story.” That’s not OK.
Credibility for dollars is always a bad trade.
Maybe an example best illustrates my concerns. When then presidential candidate Rick Perry ridiculed climate science, he would typically sidestep the science itself and instead attack the credibility of scientists. “There are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects,” he claimed in a speech to New Hampshire voters in 2011.
Those attacks were unfounded, but a lot of people were (and are) predisposed to believe them anyway. Perry was tapping into and reinforcing a common perception that scientists routinely gild the lily in their all-consuming quest for publicity and funding. He marginalized solid and important research by painting scientists as hucksters.
Over the years I’ve heard that sentiment more times than I can count. “Hey Jeff, what’s this new thing? What’s the spin? How much of it is real?” Is the LIGO press conference to blame for that perception? Of course not! But, if only in small ways, LIGO did play that game.
The detection of gravitational waves from merging black holes was a truly profound and triumphant event. A few spoken sentences placing LIGO in its proper historical and scientific context would only have added to the celebration of such an extraordinary accomplishment.
Pulsars and Neutrinos ^ The history that LIGO forgot ©
Dr. Jeff Hester
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