Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson Ambassador Blog
By Piper
This week I heard astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson speak. It was my first time seeing him and I wasn’t sure what to expect from a scientist at a performing arts center. It turned out to be a fascinating lecture with a few tangents, a fair number of jokes and several terms and explanations that may have gone over my head.
I welcomed guests and held doors for them as they arrived at Ticket Sales. While the majority of guests were adults, I was pleasantly surprised to see a few kids as young as elementary age! Once I got to my seat with the other DPAC Ambassadors, we debated what this performance would actually be. Dr. Tyson provided a Table of Contents which included interesting topics such as Stuff That Will Kill You, Mexican Alien Mummies and Multiverse. Those topics immediately caught our attention! He then began to explain how Earth and the Universe want to kill us…
Considering this was a science lecture, Dr. Tyson was awesome at cracking jokes in an engaging way. He bantered with an 8 year old sitting in the front row, told stories he’s accumulated through his work and utilized famous paintings. My favorite story he told was of a student who asked if a painting of the K-T Extinction (The dinosaur extinction) was an actual picture (no, there were no cameras or humans during the time of dinosaurs).
The science itself was super complex. He posed thought provoking questions about how we know if we’re in a simulation or not and taught us that galaxies in the universe will never touch because they’re on different planes. Although my brain cells fired as fast as they could, I couldn’t quite seem to capture everything Dr. Tyson said.
What interested me the most was the idea of a Simulated Universe. It was a little like the Matrix and Inception where there was an original world with real people who decide to simulate a universe. Then, the simulated universe decides to simulate a universe, then that simulated universe decides to simulate another universe and it goes on and on. How do we know if we are the original universe that hasn’t discovered how to simulate a universe and hasn’t started the chain, or we’re the most recently simulated universe that hasn’t learned how to simulate a universe yet. If you’re disturbed by this, don’t think about it too long, Dr. Tyson says there’s a 1 in 2 chance we’re real. (“Simulate” word count: 9).
In conclusion, I was fascinated and even though I didn’t understand it all, I was impressed. I would recommend going to see Dr. Tyson because although it may not seem like it’s for everybody, it definitely sparks interest, and his show will 100% have something for you.
