A week to miss astronomy

Tomorrow morning, I will tutor a Science Olympiad student on astronomy. The topics this year are stellar evolution and exoplants. 

It hits a bit close to home, as these were two topics I had spent most of my undergraduate and graduate studies contemplating (when I was actually contemplating astronomy). It should be relatively easy to coach the student on the quantitative aspects; she had already taken an intro astronomy class at Fullerton College, but didn't learn some of the equations required of her. Though much is taken, much abides.

I had forgotten that there is something attractive about being able, with relatively simple models, to characterize in broad strokes the habitability of a world, the warmth of a star, the importance of just the right amount of greenhouse gases. 

Time and Death and God 

Perhaps not quite. But death, and rebirth. The precious origins of metal. The cutoffs determining the fate of stars -- just numbers, but each painstakingly determined by the collision of theory and data. Lies, partially. Simplifications -- that's a better way of putting it.

In a minute there is time:

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Maybe, maybe, with a bit more math, or even just qualitatively, how to estimate mass limits using the wobble of stars. Maybe direct detection. Maybe gravitational lensing -- GR, which has stormed into the headlines, those waves just a tad late to the 100th anniversary party. And whispers of reflected spectra, and now hushed whispers of an oxygen detection, something that will dwarf even gravitational waves, perhaps not scientifically, but philosophically. Why else look for these other worlds? Why else hunt for a Second Earth? We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring will be

To arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

There will be no time, perhaps, to delve into the social history -- the female "computers" that gave us stellar classification, the racism and colonialism and amateurish arrogance that perhaps led to the dismissal of Chandrasekhar, the resignations and scandals. The funding fights. How so many NASA sites ended up in regions of the country that seem, now, to hate the agency so much.

No time for remorse, to miss the learning, even as I know I do not miss the work, or the life, that in spite it all, I am free to not care.

For thine is

I celebrate you friends who stayed, and thrived. It has been a good week for astronomy. It has even been a good week to miss it.

Again, the Cousin's whistle! Go, my Love.