Imagine the Stars

So imagine you’re 8 years old. You are flipping through channels and you hear something that catches your attention-except you can’t see it! You did catch something, though- a name, a title, the two words: Black Hole.

So you furiously flip through the channels looking for it again because you swore you saw this furiously out-there looking CGI depiction of a scene in space. Now you’ve never heard of a black hole before until you see there’s an episode playing and now a man named Michio Kaku is on the old Toshiba television talking about them. These things are really out there and it isn’t until the picture of the black hole at the center of the galaxy M87 is taken in 2019 and retaken in 2021 that I truly realize this childlike wonder is permanent and perhaps, simply human.

Astronomy seems to be one of those phases we get into as kids like zoology or biology. Kids are always switching career choices like astronaut, veterinarian, marine biologist or doctor- but I wanted to be an astrophysicist. The only thing I wavered on was what substudy of physics I wanted to study. Don’t get me wrong, astrophysics was always my first choice! My interests include many studies under astrophysics such as astro-particle physics, astrobiology, stellar astrophysics, heliophysics and astro-chemistry. Studies outside of the astronomy zone interest me too like some material sciences and biochemistry. The sciences have always fascinated me. So when I grew up and saw that there was an (unnecessary) astronomy class at my college; I took it.

Of course my mental health being up and down and the fact that I have a terrible sense of direction (I couldn’t remember the constellations for the life of me!) I ended up failing the course. And later became the head of the astronomy club. And then subsequently moved across state lines. I took it pretty hard. To me, all I could think of was what that kid said to me in 8th grade: “if you’re so smart why do you have a C in chemistry”. I had doubts and more setbacks. Now as an adult, that wasn’t the rudest thing someone has said to me since then let alone to my face. But it also wasn’t the last time someone, especially a guy, thought I was a perfect target for their personal issues regarding me being a female interested in STEM. In high school I actually was trying out biomedical sciences at an academy I got into and I was getting vitriol for wanting to be a nurse practitioner instead of a doctor. I realized two things: I didn’t have the emotional tank for if a patient dies on me, and in physics, life or death isn’t in the job description. So back to astrophysics for me! That human wonder only welled up and overflowed after high school and it just replenished in college. To this day I itch to use a telescope or observatory. Fear however, will come now and again.

I recall what Dr. Kim Coble warned me about as I watched a bit over halfway through “Picture a Scientist”- an excellent documentary on the experiences of some fantastically intelligent female scientists. They detailed their horrific encounters of sexual harassment. It dawned on me that the decades in which these incidents happened may have been different, but the behavior? Not so much. The experience I had with my male colleagues with an “Our Solar Siblings” project was excellent. But that isn’t the same as working in a lab or an observatory. It isn’t even the same working remote or online than in person (the project was held in a moodle class) and while we went through the scientific process- collected data through a website connected to an observatory and gathered our references for our interpretation of the results, who’s to say my next colleagues will be as pleasant as they were hardworking?

But oh do I long for that sense of accomplishment and excitement when I email a team member about the progress in a scientific manuscript-the one we never finished. Despite all the setbacks, future, past, present, I will always wonder about my curiosity. Not just about black holes but what makes them so fascinating to the human brain. Sten Odenwald surmises that cosmology and brain evolution is tied and not just lunar cycles and seasons- but our neurophysiology itself is tied to cosmological concepts. So because I have an ever-replenishing well of curiosity, I bought the book by Sten Odenwald that I read that information from as I perused a Half Price Books.

Sten states that the brain has to have a sense of “self” and then “identify this ‘self’” uniquely from its environment. This is done primarily in the temporoparietal junction which works with the limbic system and thalamus. In his book “Cosmology: Everything You Need To Know To Master The Subject In One Book” on page 10 it clearly outlines this in a section titled Cosmology and Brain Evolution where it goes into fascinating detail about the Posterior Cingulate and the Posterior Superior Parietal Lobule, describing how in order to create cosmological concepts these parts of your brain must function at the basic level as “much of prehistoric science is only a minor extension of the basic knowledge shared by migratory animals…” (Odenwald, Cosmology, pg. 11) Despite misconceptions, having similar instinctive drive as animals didn’t mean our ancestors were as intelligent as migratory animals. In fact on page 10 it’s stated that we share the same intellectual capacity! They knew what the observations were. Their stories however told were just different interpretations of what I call their ‘field journals’ such as tools or art. Abstract thought throughout human history is well documented as seen by the discovery of Neanderthal Art that was found to be 73,000 years old in the Blombos Cave in South Africa which you can read about here. Evidence in Sten’s book include a lunar calendar carved into bone shown on page 12 and the nebra sky disk on page 13. All of this explained as if it were human nature that I fell in love the moment I heard "black hole".

And just like that, my love for astronomy and apparently very human curiosity, outweigh my doubts and any fears. I won't let astrophysics or any STEM that I choose be unwelcome for those behind me. Because I will be right there, in the doorway holding out a hand for anyone and everyone to shake. With my ancestors smiling. My stumblings will be a story of inspiration for those similar, my issues will become others' strengths, and my time? My time will be spent staring at the void and being fascinated with its black holes.