Reality Straight Up!

Thoughts & Observations of a Free Range Astrophysicist

In a Shark’s Eye

Science and the experience of wonder

Alone, 100 feet underwater, with a shark in its element, I am overwhelmed by a mixture of awe, beauty, joy, and intellectual wonder at the world that brings us together. In that moment, I experience just what science is all about.

This article originally appeared in my Astronomy Magazine column, For Your Consideration.


Seen from above, the Bahama Banks are a spectacular sight. As I write this, I’m looking out the window of an airplane and taking it in. Ripples of color paint the ocean for miles on end. Bands of light green and blue give way to deeper turquoise. Beneath crystal clear water, undersea sand dunes formed by ocean currents stretch across vast expanses of flat-bottomed shallows. The Bahama Banks are the submerged top of the Bahama Archipelago, limestone grown by corals millimeters at a time over the past 100 million years or so.

But suddenly, the pastels give way to sharp-edged, soul-swallowing blue as dark as any the seas have to offer. This is the Tongue of the Ocean, a trench that drops as much as 14,000 feet to the ocean floor.

Bahama Banks

The Bahama Banks are ancient carbonate structures dating back to the breakup of the supercontinent of Pangea. The dark blue feature in the center, where the ocean floor falls abruptly to depths as great as 14,000 feet, is the “Tongue of the Ocean.”

Diving over the edge of the abyss.

The boundary of the Tongue of the Ocean is every bit as abrupt up close as it appears to be from 30,000 feet. I spent the past week with family scuba diving on the living reefs that built these islands. Some of the most spectacular of those reefs live right along the edge of the ocean trench where waves and currents keep nutrient-rich waters agitated, providing food for corals.

Even after three decades as an avid diver, I still find it eerie to be at the edge of the reef when the flat bottom abruptly gives way, becoming a vertical wall, covered in life. I can follow that wall down for about 100 feet before I have to stop. My dive computer reminds me that I can’t stay here long. If I do, the pressurized nitrogen in the air that I am breathing will turn my blood into deadly bubbles when I return to the surface. But the wall itself continues to plummet, vanishing into the depths. This is the abyss.

A passing shark is a reminder of who is at home in the depths, and who is not.

If the dive computer’s warning is not enough of a reminder that I am an interloper here, a large dark shadow materializing out of the gloom adds emphasis. It is far from the first time that I’ve encountered a shark under water. This is a Caribbean reef shark, an opportunistic feeder with a preference for an easily scavenged meal over the need to hunt.

We both know which of us is at home, and who has the upper hand. I am aware of the sleek form, hard muscles and keen eyes taking me in. I am also aware of the teeth. I have never really felt in danger around sharks, but let’s face it: There is a reason the divers who feed them wear chainmail!

Shark Dive

Spending July 4 on a shark dive in the Bahamas. From left to right, my son-in-law Casey Harrison, daughter Patricia, myself, and my wife, Vicki.

Sharks patrolling a reef usually have a slow, relaxed motion. Work at it and you can swim alongside for a time. But don’t imagine that means anything. As this shark swims past, something catches its attention. With no warning it flicks its tail, and before I fully register the change in behavior, the shark is easily 30 feet away and moving fast.

I think to myself about the evolutionary arms race that gifted the ancient and efficient shark with such bursts of speed, while also giving the fish that attracted its attention a fair chance of escape. How many countless billions of creatures lived or died over the millions of years that it took to evolve reactions so attuned to this environment?

Evolution offers me no such advantages here. My survival depends on training and the technology that I carry on my back. So why am I so at peace?

Experiencing the world as a scientist.

What I feel here calls to mind the first time that I looked at the rings of Saturn through a 3-inch refractor, or saw protozoans in a drop of pond water under a microscope. It is what I felt as a kid working on a wheat farm when at the end of the day I would shut down the tractor, lie down on the ground, and look at the spectacularly dark skies of northwestern Oklahoma.

What I feel hanging there with a shark in that column of saltwater is a sense of wonder. It is a sense of awe. It is a delicious blend of pure aesthetic experience heightened by intellectual understanding of the patterns and processes that shape the world.

And I remember why I am a scientist.

In a Shark’s Eye ^ Science and the experience of wonder  © Dr. Jeff Hester
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    When you live in small groups on the savanna, as our ancestors did for most of our evolutionary history, it pays to be suspicious of strangers. Other groups were competition. Strangers didn’t drop by for a cup of tea and a friendly chat about our emotional well being. We couldn’t afford to see a stranger as a real person at all.  It was an “us versus them” world. Fear and aggression were the only rational responses. People who did well in that world (AKA our ancestors, the people from whom we get our DNA), knew that the only safe thing was to beat strangers with a club first and ask questions later.

    Fear of “The Other” is hardwired, and talking about it doesn’t help.

    We may not live in small groups on the savanna any more, but our brains don’t know that. For better or worse we are stuck with our evolutionary baggage. Nothing is going to change that. When you encounter someone who your brain perceives as “other”– and by this I mean you personally, dear reader, as well as myself and every other human on the planet — all of that machinery jumps to life in milliseconds. Long before we are consciously aware of anything, our brains are screaming “Danger Will Robinson! Danger!”

    Call this tribalism. Call it racism. Call it in-group/out-group dynamics. Call it identity politics. Call it polarization. Call it whatever you like. It all comes down to the same thing. When we perceive someone as other our reactions are hard wired, preconscious, and impossible to turn off.

    Good intentions don’t matter. Get high and sing Kumbaya all night. Talk about it until the cows come home. Hold workshops. Post platitudes or scream about it on the internet. If you want to judge the effectiveness of those strategies all you have to do is pick up the paper. The louder the mob screams, the more ground they lose. We’ve tried those approaches. They make things worse, not better.

    Quoting Einstein’s famous parable, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

    There is only one solution: Humanize yourself by embracing the humanity of others.

    If you perceive someone as other you will respond to them as a threat. There’s nothing we can do about that. Or is there? Take a step back and the answer is obvious. We can’t change how we react to other, but we can change who we perceive as other.

    There is going on 70 years of really fascinating sociological, psychological, political and even neurological research that all supports the same conclusion: If you know and respect someone, it’s hard not to care about them. Break bread together, laugh together, talk deeply, listen, show respect (even when it’s difficult), build bridges, find common purpose and work arm in arm.

    I could dig into that research, but mercifully for you I won’t. Instead I am going to share an uplifting and illustrative story of what effective anti-racism really looks like.

    How did a Black musician change the hearts of hundreds of Klansmen?

    Daryl Davis is a Black blues and jazz musician with a very strange hobby. He goes to events like KKK rallies not to shout or protest, but to listen, shake hands, talk, and befriend. Literally hundreds of the Klan members who Daryl Davis has become friends with have renounced the Klan. He has a large collection of their robes, including the robe of a man who, when they met, was the Grand Wizard himself.

    Read that last sentence again. Then if you honestly care about fighting racism you owe it to yourself to invest 18 minutes and listen to Daryl Davis’s story in his own words.

    This is not your Woke friend’s Anti-Racism.

    It feels good to gang up and shout at people. The difference between the shouters and the shoutees makes it really easy to tell who is “us” and who is “them.” Our brains love that. The dopamine flows like a river.

    But that is not what Daryl Davis did. There was no shouting about racism. Terms like “White privilege” and “White fragility” were never used. Daryl Davis never complained about microaggressions or political correctness. DEI workshops were not part of the program. Mr. Davis did not wear his feelings on his sleeve. Quite the contrary, Daryl Davis listened even to open hatred and tried to understand where it was coming from. There was no talk of victims and oppressors. There were no social media attacks or calls for deplatforming. There was no virtue signaling about Wokeness.

    Instead, Daryl Davis treated those who were predisposed to hate him with dignity and respect. He listened. He questioned. He befriended. He humanized himself by seeing and acknowledging the humanity of others, including those with whom he deeply disagreed. In the process he did what few have ever accomplished. Daryl Davis changed the hearts of hundreds of the most committed racists in the nation.

    This is what real, effective anti-racism looks like. And as Davis mentions at the end of his talk, if he can do it, so can we.

  • 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.

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.
©Dr. Jeff Hester LLC, 5301 S. Superstition Mountain Dr., Suite 104 #171, Gold Canyon, AZ 85118