And We’ll Get Back There Again

For all you non-chemists in the crowd, did you know that life on Earth began with a sort of “starter yeast” of carbon-bearing compounds and other species of molecules that came from space? It’s true.

Naturally occurring ones Interstellar chemical labs contributed the iron that flows in our blood, the calcium that makes up our bones and the carbon-based molecules that make US up. And all that stuff came from stars that lived and died long ago. In the dying, they contributed elements built up over eons of time in stellar cores and atmospheres. Eventually those elements found their way to Earth, and into other chemical stewpots.

In a sense we are really the ashes of old stars, brought to life through massive and eons-long chemistry experiments. We began in stars like the ones that died to produce the Helix Nebula (left, a planetary nebula formed when a star like the Sun died) or the progenitor star that created the Crab Nebula (right) blew up more than 7,000 years ago. Near these two objects, clouds of gas and dust are scattering the chemical precursors of life. Someday perhaps they’ll combine to create new life forms.

Some 5 billion years from NOW, our Sun will start to expand and engulf the inner planets. That means that Earth (and by extension) all life upon it, will be vaporized; in essence, returned to the gas and dust from which we came. All that we were, plus all that the Sun will exhale in its dying days, will rush out to space to provide fodder for yet MORE new life, should there be places where it can form. So, while I’m not a religious person, I do find it interesting that in an astronomical sense, we are truly ashes to ashes, and dust to dust. We’ve come from space and we’ll be headed back, one way or another.

Right?

I just got through writing an article about the biochemical origins of life for a research institute. It’s a summary of a symposium I attended in March and features comments from chemists, astronomers, planetary science folk, and geologists. One of the scientists I interviewed is a biochemistry researcher. We had a few rounds of email about her work and then got to “chit-chatting” about non article-related stuff. She regaled me with the tale of doing some shopping a while back and she noticed a window ad for mineral cosmetics. The ad said something like “Our new powder makeup contains no chemicals, only pure minerals.”

Who here doesn’t see the faulty thinking in that ad copy?***

Here’s a chance to do a little critical thinking and apply it to ad copy–something we should all do, particularly when it comes to claims of “scientific formulas” that are guaranteed to do this or that to make you look younger, have more hair, lose weight “overnight” and so forth.

***If you figured it out immediately that minerals ARE chemicals, give yourself a pat on the back and indulge in a few moments of unalloyed smugness.

And over Here… z =50

I’m working on an exhibit project for another science museum. I get to write labels and captions and descriptions that go along with visual depictions and videos and samples of the subject matter I’m writing about.

The first one I did was for Griffith, and then I did another for a children’s museum near where I live. This one’s pretty large, and the institution is well-respected and has a lot of good people working there.  So, I flew in to visit with them, and spent yesterday talking with the exhibit designer and a museum curator and another writer about the subject, hopefully nailing down more details so that I can do what needs to be done. It will be a lot of work, and challenging, but that’s life.

Back when I did my first science exhibits, I thought a lot about museums and their purposes. Yeah, we all go to them on field trips in school, and as family outings on holidays, and we all know they’re supposed to be educational and uplifting.  But now that I write exhibits, I am quite a bit more clued into nuances like style, level of writing, the "tone" of the writing, and the grade level that the writers want to reach. And, it’s made me more aware of how important it is to engage people in what the exhibits are talking about. This means NOT talking down or TO people, but WITH them. It’s not easy.

I’ve seen some really good writing at science museums and centers and some writing that left me scratching my head. It’s tough to put science on exhibit.  There are a lot of concepts that you just have to experience for yourself, and reading about them on a 50-word panel is a challenge. But, some things can be taught in the science center environment through exhibits, especially if they’re written well. Then, they spark peoples’ imaginations. At least, that’s MY aim when I write exhibit copy.

But, I have also seen some very murky writing at science centers here and there, and when I stand in front of such panels and look at writing that makes me go "Huh?" I wonder what the writer had in mind. And, I also question what the scientist/curator/marketing department/education department folks who stood behind the writer and directed the writing were thinking.

One thing for sure, when I think about how I want to write MY captions and labels, I use both the good and bad examples as object lessons. Ironically enough, that’s as much a part of the scientific method as it is a life lesson!

Galaxies Change the Universe

We live in a stellar city called the Milky Way Galaxy. It’s a collection of hundreds of billions of stars. Some of those stars (the really old ones) were formed in the infancy of the universe in the first clouds of hydrogen to coalesce after the Big Bang. The younger ones are being born in clouds of gas and dust interspersed through the Milky Way, but mostly in the spiral arms.

There are other galaxies out there, and astronomers want to know if they “tick” the same way ours does. So, they launched the Galaxy Evolution Explorer to study all kinds of galaxies and track how they change over time.

Now, you don’t just look at galaxies in visible light. To make a good survey of a galaxy’s stars and starforming (and star death) regions, you need to survey it in different wavelengths.

So, GALEX looked at the Southern Pinwheel galaxy (M83) in ultraviolet wavelengths. UV light is given off by energetic regions, such as starbirth clouds. This composite image shows ultraviolet light emissions from the central disk and assorted starbirth regions coded in blue and green, and an extended set of arms as seen in radio wavelengths (coded in red) by the Very Large Array radio telescope in New Mexico. It shows where the star-forming action IS in the galaxy. It also shows that the hydrogen clouds that feed starbirth are extending far out into space. Now, if you look closely, you can make out bright blue and green dots in the extended arms of the galaxy. These are star-forming regions full of baby stars, which is a stunning and completely unexpected thing to find 140,000 light-years away from the center of the galaxy. Just for reference, we are about 26,000 light-years away from the center of our own galaxy, and we’re more or less out in the galactic sticks. So, these stellar nurseries are in the equivalent of a galactic outback. What’s fascinating about these baby stars is that they’re forming in more-or-less pristine hydrogen clouds, not the kind of clouds our solar system formed in, contaminated with heavy elements from older, long-dead stars. The newborns in the Pinwheel are being born under conditions that are a LOT like the conditions in the early universe, when the first stars were being born. So, astronomers are excited about this find because it’s giving them a second chance to check out what it was like when stars first started forming more than 13 billion years ago.

Who IS that Narrator, Anyway?

Because I write scripts for planetarium shows and science-type documentaries and vodcasts, I always have a number of strands that I weave together to make the final show. First, there’s the subject matter, which has to be impeccably accurate and interesting to the public. Then, there are the visuals (which can be stills, animations, etc.) that tell the story. And, of course, there’s the voice. Telling the story out loud is as important as the visual interpretation. Mate that good voice to some good music and you have what you need to tell a memorable story.

So, that means I need somebody to “talk it” and that’s where the role of a narrator/voice-over talent comes in. That person has to be able to take the words I’ve written and tell the story in a believable manner. It doesn’t matter to me whether that voice is male or female, young or old, as long as the person can make it “real” for the audience.

We’ve worked with a bunch of different voice actors over the years (you can hear samples of them at the Loch Ness Productions web site), and each one brings a special ’something’ to the performance. We send them well-annotated scripts and work with each actor in the studio to get the best performance. If we are lucky (and we usually are) we get somebody who is a consummate “pro” — someone who anticipates the nuances and really works them. When that happens, it’s like magic in the studio.

So, a few years ago, I got interested in seeing my scripts from the actor’s viewpoint. I took a couple of workshops with a local voice actor who does a lot of work in both commercial and documentary scripts. It really opened my eyes to the work an actor does to create a role. Whether it’s a bagel commercial or a NOVA documentary or one of our shows, that VO actor has to work the words, pull out the meaning, and convey with “voice” to the audience. It’s more than just walking into the studio and putting on the headphones and reading the copy. In fact, I’ve learned that if you’re reading it out loud, you’ve only just started the work. It’s similar to writing. I’ve often been told (sometimes by people who should know better) that “oh, anybody can write.” That’s true… anybody CAN write. But, doing it WELL, that’s where you need talent. It takes artistry to tell a story that engages an audience; to write down words that are meant to be read aloud and heard by an audience. You have to get inside the story and figure out ways to tell it that mean something to people. Same with voice acting.

Last weekend I took an interesting side-trip on the voice-over trail. I had the opportunity to get the inside story on animation voices from an actor who has done many of them over the years. His name is Bob Bergen and, among other things, he’s the voice of Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, and many other animated characters, as well as a voice-over for longer narrations and commercials. It turns out that no matter what the person is giving voice to, the same principles of acting apply — whether it’s Tweety or as the announcer for a chain of pharmacies. It’s all part and parcel of “telling the story” or “keepin’ it real” that helps audiences “get” something — whether it’s a planetarium show about a trip to Mars or a story of a cat who goes to the Moon or even something as simple as a look at the night sky.

So, the next time you go to a planetarium show or listen to a radio show like “Prairie Home Companion” or play a video game or watch cartoons, really LISTEN to the voice of the narrator and the voices of characters. They’re doing something with the words that help you get the story inside your head. It’s an art and a lot of fun!