Inspiring Minds Series - Neil deGrasse Tyson

[Ron Schmit]

Attended Dr. Tyson's presentation last night at Beth El Synagogue. Spoke to a packed house of 1,500.

As I looked around the room last night, I saw a lot of familiar faces. The thought occurred that if a bomb went off, the astronomical community of the Twin Cities would have taken a drastic hit!

For those that attended, what did you think? Any favorite moments?

[Astrolaman]

I totally enjoyed the evening. I never saw anyone use the periodic table as a tool to illustrate societal commitment to science.

[SEmert]

It was fantastic! I wish everyone could have gone! There were many high points. His use of the Periodic table to illustrate when and by whom various elements were discovered was very interesting. His use of the world map illustrating scientific research funding trends was rather enlightening and disturbing at the same time (US currently performs a disproportionally large portion of scientific research, but the trend is that our proportion is shrinking fast, trending toward that of the third-world countries).

Probably my favorite part was at the beginning when Dr. Tyson asked for a show of hands, asking who is still upset about Pluto's demotion from planet status. The next slide was.... "Get Over It!", then he quickly ticked through the reasons for Pluto's reclassification. It set the tone for a humorous and very enlightening evening.

Illustrating the general decline in scientific and engineering knowledge in the US, he had some slides illustrating disasters resulting from poor engineering. Of course in addition to the New Orleans levee breaks after Katrina, he had a picture of... the I-35 bridge collapse.

Also, during the Q&A, someone asked which Twilight Zone episode was his favorite. He said he couldn't name just one, but two of his favorites were "To Serve Man" and the one where a housewife encounters some very small aliens and as the episode comes to an end, she is beating them to death, while you hear a radio transmission from one of the aliens, stating something to the effect of, "Houston, this is NASA spacecraft 2549, we are under attack by a huge alien monster..."

[Ricola]

I heard someone mention at Astronomy Day that there might be video available from this event. Anyone know more about this?

[Bryan]

I would love to see a video of this if there is a recording floating around. Staying tuned!