For the most part, I have narrow, parochial tastes when it comes to the blogs I read. Most of them are about Earth and things happening here on this one, single blue speck of a planet.
That’s part of why I also read Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog — to remind me that there’s a lot more going on in the rest of the universe. Plait is an astronomer, and he really knows his stuff, but he’s also very good at writing about science for a general audience — for non-scientists like me. Bad Astronomy reminds me of Astronomy Without Math — the survey course for non-science majors that Doc Bradstreet taught at my college. (I mean that as very high praise, but now I’m worried that I’m making Plait’s blog sound too educational. It is educational, mind you, but in the fun way, not in the eat-your-vegetables way.)
What I’m trying to say there is that Plait contracted a terminal case of boom de yada, and it’s contagious. Lots of this sort of thing:
Wonder what that is? Phil Plait will tell you, and then you won’t have to wonder what it is, but you’ll still wonder at it. Wonder is good. Wonder is holy. And wonder is appropriate because, again, just look at that.
Phil Plait is a scientist who doesn’t stop wondering — in both senses of that word. I look at some of those pictures he posts and say, “Wow.” He’s saying “Wow,” too. And then he explains in more detail what it is we’re looking at and we both say “wow” again. It’s astronomy in the model of Richard Feynman’s famous remarks on flowers: “Science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don’t understand how it subtracts.”
The Bad Astronomy blog is also sometimes more down-to-Earth (literally). Plait also covers the climate beat, delivers some delicious smack-downs to anti-vaxxers and carbon-denialists, and he’s my go-to source for news about Things Falling From the Sky. (There’s more news in that last category than you might think.)
It’s good to be reminded that the big picture is way, way bigger than we can comprehend. Bad Astronomy regularly reminds me of that, It’s also one of my favorite sources of wow — and who couldn’t use a little more “wow” every now and again?
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