Today we hosted Phil Plait for our annual Rorschach Lecture (see here), a series in honor of Bud Rorschach dedicated to public outreach and science policy. He kept us fully entertained with his Death from the Skies! talk, with a particularly amusing litany of (a small subset of) the scientific flaws in "Armageddon". There was a full house in our big lecture hall - there's no question that astro has very broad popular appeal (though it did bring out the "Obama should be impeached immediately because he's not protecting us from possible asteroid impacts!" crowd).
The impeachment crowd was a very surreal addition to what is normally a pretty sedate event. The speaker was more than gracious in his handling of it.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't seem like much of a crowd to me, only two audience members who had similar 'questions' to Phil. Although i was rather amused and curious to see how Phil dealt with such people, others in audience did seem to not care for the long-winded incoherent ranting.
ReplyDeleteAstronomy is the queen of science.No doubt about that!
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