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What's Cool?

Entry 897, on 2008-11-24 at 21:56:10 (Rating 2, Science)

Today I listened to a podcast in the Skeptics' Guide to the Universe series where they discussed the perception of science in different areas of the world and what was considered interesting and worthwhile by different people, as well as the effort required in getting involved in the different areas of human knowledge.

Most people considered science was worthwhile and that it gave us a lot of benefits, but they also thought it was impractical to get involved with because it was just too hard. I think there is a certain amount of truth in this. There's no doubt that every field of human knowledge has its own challenges and that a person's personality will affect which things he finds easy or difficult, but in general I think science is harder than other areas such as the arts or commerce.

But is it worth it? Of course it is. New scientific discoveries and new technology are the coolest things of all when you understand them. I agree that the creativity of the arts are something we would never want to give up and that complements science nicely. But actually I have nothing positive to say about commerce so let's just forget about that now.

So what is cool about science? Probably the most extreme and fascinating area is cutting edge physics and astronomy. Its unfortunate that the Large Hadron Collider needs to be repaired but I still think its the greatest achievement of the human race so far - assuming it is fixed and works, of course! The new physics which is likely to be discovered is even more interesting than the machine itself, but we will have to wait to see what it discovers next year. Whatever it is, it will be cool!

Astronomy has been a long term interest of mine so I find that particularly fascinating. The recent imaging of planets circling other stars is amazing. Being able to actually see planets orbiting another star may not seem like a big deal to anyone without knowledge in this area but its an amazing achievement when the technical difficulties are understood. The planet is a billion times dimmer than the star and apparently so close that it is almost invisible in the glare, so separating the two objects has been impossible until now. We already knew the planets existed but there's something about actually seeing them that is extra cool!

The incredible difficulty of cutting edge science is what makes it so compelling. One measurement which has always impressed me is that involved with stellar parallax. This is a method of determining the distance to stars by using their apparent change in position as the Earth orbits around the Sun once a year. Even though the Earth's orbit is 300 million kilometers wide the distance to stars is so much more that the apparent movement of the star is tiny: equivalent to the width of a coin about 100 kilometers away. Getting a measurement like that is cool!

Progress in technology is more engaging to most people than pure science. The new technology coming from labs is amazing but its the application of that technology to everyday life that I enjoy. Yes, I'm a technology geek but I don't just have my "toys" for the sake of it. I use these devices extensively so they are really something genuinely useful to me. The Internet is the background technology which makes a lot of this stuff possible, but its the devices which use the Internet (my Mac laptop, my iPhone) which have the real cool factor.

So science and technology are cool, even though many people don't realise it. The arts are also cool for totally different reasons. And I'm sorry, but politics, business and the other mundane details of life are not cool. They need to just get out of the way and let the coolness happen!

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