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Sunday, October 6, 2024
As of late, it seems the media has developed a new hyperfixation on our "temporary second moon." I first saw it while scrolling through Instagram with a reel that mentioned the asteroid, 2024 PT5, and how it would orbit the Earth once between the months of September and November before leaving. Sure, it was an interesting factoid, and I assumed that would be the last I heard of it.
Then, one by one, the asteroid seemed to trickle onto my news feed. First, it was from the usual science sources in desperate need of content owing to the slow pace of cosmic events compared to our comparatively short lives. At a certain point, however, the news began to appear on the likes of CNN and CBS, making headlines worldwide as the next "big event" due to its rarity and attention-grabbing anecdotes. As the local astronomy nerd, friends asked me left and right about how we could see this astronomical visitor.
Long story short: no, we can't.
The position of 2024 PT5 in the sky at the time of writing.
Credit: The Sky Live (it's pretty useful for things like comets and such)
Technically, the asteroid is visible through telescopes. The only caveat is that no backyard telescope can even hope to see it zipping around through the skies. Consider that this "moon" is orders of magnitude smaller than our normal moon, and is so dim that only the largest ground-based telescopes can catch a glimpse.
To give a sense of how small it is, the name 2024 PT5 means that his asteroid was discovered this year, 2024.
Asteroids are elusive to modern astronomy because they're so hard to detect amidst all of the other stuff in space, both natural and artificial. NASA has an entire team dedicated to looking for near-earth asteroids just in case one decides to hurtle our way at some point as if out of Armageddon. The dinosaurs went out that way, and so could we.
Of course, we know the asteroid isn't going to kill us. Otherwise, the world would be freaking out right about now, and I wouldn't be writing this.
Of course, how silly of me to assume the news would have complete honesty when it comes to new information. Modern journalism is practically built on exaggeration and the obliteration of context. There's only so much astronomy someone can write about before running out of things to say. Either way, there has to be at least a single person out there who finds this information to be life-changing.
2024 PT5 is not even the worst-case scenario. For example, here's a news article I screenshotted a few years back:
Screenshot of a Jerusalem Post Article about an asteroid passing by. But also, what???
Let's set aside the obvious: In what universe does the comparison of 89 wolverines make any physical sense? I have no clue how large a wolverine is, and I doubt many others would know either. Are we considering baby wolverines? What about different populations of different sizes? What constitutes an average wolverine? Someone bring Hugh Jackman to weigh in on this!
Of course, most exaggerations aren't quite as. . . creative.
In my opinion, subtle embellishments are far, far worse.
College application season has been going on for some time. I'm pursuing a degree in astrophysics, and given my grades and credentials, I have a decent shot at some pretty good universities. I put a lot of thought into my essays, but it always seems to become more complicated with the "why this major" essays.
Why do I want to study astrophysics?
My initial answer was in response to some interesting developments that had been in the back of my mind since 2021: JWST and its concerning findings.
The media dubbed it the "Crisis in Cosmology."
JWST was designed as the successor to the famous Hubble Space Telescope, an instrument powerful enough to peer deeper into the vast reaches of space millions of years beyond anything previously possible. Literally.
JWST's image of Eta Carinae, one that I consider to be its most iconic (so far)
The speed of light is fast but finite. It takes 8 minutes for the light from the sun to reach the Earth. To see Saturn, the most iconic of the celestial spheres, that number balloons to over an hour. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri (part of the Alpha Centauri System), is around 4.25 light YEARS away. In 46 years of operation, the Voyager Spacecraft, the furthest object humanity has ever sent, is 24 billion kilometers (12.8 billion miles) away. That isn't even a light DAY.
To peer as far as JWST does, scientists look back billions of years into the early stages of the universe's formation. According to the Big Bang Theory and the universe's expansion, JWST can observe early light from the very first galaxies in the infrared spectrum. These galaxies were supposed to be small, disorganized, and only beginning star formation. Instead, as the first reams of data began to stream in from L2 (Lagrange 2, which is a topic worth an entire paper about), scientists saw something else.
Massive galaxies undergoing extreme star formation dotted the distant horizons: too many to be possible. Immediately, people began to scream anecdotes about how physics is irreparably broken, that science has failed humanity and everything we know must change.
To this, I roll my eyes.
Yes, the data doesn't align with theory, but it hasn't for decades. The theory was never supposed to align with observations. If it did, science as we know it would die immediately. There'd be nothing left to discover, nothing more to understand. There is no crisis because the entire purpose of JWST is to refine scientific models to be more accurate approximations of reality. All this label does is give newspapers a flashy headline and some great clickbait at the expense of accuracy, and this fact inherently makes the news dangerous. By oversimplifying a complex issue, people can get the wrong idea of what physics is and how humanity progresses. Misconceptions will thrive, mixing in with the truth until there's no way to tell what is real and what isn't.
Even Carl Sagan, by far one of the most influential modern astrophysicists in the popularization of science, decried the momentum of contemporary information as a "celebration of ignorance." And this was before the millennium even turned.
This isn't just annoying. It's downright counterproductive.
A picture of me at a local outreach event giving views of the full moon.
Let's take a step back.
Maybe I shouldn't completely disparage the journalists writing these articles (except Mr. 89 Wolverines; I'm not sure if anything can excuse that). The fact that astronomy is seeing a recent revival in public interest is something that makes me genuinely happy. I've done my fair share of volunteering work at astronomy outreach events. Astronomy and an appreciation for scientific research something that deserve to be known the world over.
If the spread of that information means the butchering of some information along the way, I'm willing to turn a blind eye in favor of the spread of science. Does that mean I will? Absolutely not.
The takeaway: Don't trust everything you read about astronomy, even if it sounds smart and looks legit. Chances are, it's being oversimplified. Still, those articles play a necessary part in the relationship between science and the public, one that can be extremely beneficial if done correctly.
So let's do it correctly. Please.
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