Welcome to It's Okay To Be Smart.
Today we're gonna look at the Big Picture.
[music]
So I've been preparing for a couple big science conferences recently and I've been thinking
a lot about the importance of images to communicating science.
Whether it's YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr, so many of the ways that we communicate today
highlight images over words.
It's not that I think actual words on paper are dying off, in fact those same digital
tools are giving science writing something of a rebirth.
But the value of images of images as cultural currency is skyrocketing.
Of course this is nothing new to us in Science Land.
Throughout the history of science photos and illustrations have not only captured key moments
IN science, but they've served as first "shots" inw hat Thomas Kuhn would call "scientific
revolutions" where paradigms are shifted, theories are realized, new fields of science
are born, and minds are generally blown.
In that spirit I've collected a few of what I think are the most important images in science
history.
In 1543 all it took to change the world was seven circles.
This is the so-called Copernican model of the solar system in which Nicolaus Copernicus
permanently demoted Earth from its position at the center of the universe, in his book
De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, which is just really fun to say.
Now this was not actually a very popular book, people did not take to the streets and riot
calling for Copernicus' head.
But it did change the world, no pun intended.
In fact, he wasn't even the first person to think of this idea, that honor goes to a Greek
named Aristarchus nearly 2,000 years earlier, which we have talked about before.
But the real impact of Copernicus' work was that it changed very way we look at the universe.
Not only was our position in it not special, it meant that the laws of nature that we observe
here would be the same everywhere else in the universe, and although that sounds simple,
that might be the most important scientific principle that we can take from his work.
This is a flea.
A flea is very small.
You'd think it would be too small to change the world on its own, but you'd be wrong.
This one did just that, it comes from Robert Hooke's Micrographia, a collection of illustrations
he put out in 1665 that became the world's first scientific best-seller.
It was hugely popular.
About a half a century after people like Galileo were turning lenses to the stars to bring
them closer, Robert Hooke turned the telescope around to bring the microscopic world to life.
Now this drawing would be a work of art in its own right, but that intricate detail and
the perfect matching of form to function on this wee beastie, it began to challenge notions
of design in nature, and shattered the idea that humans were the most perfect living form
on Earth.
That beautiful illustration of a flea inspired naturalists for the next two centuries to
begin to ask WHY these forms, at every scale of nature from the smallest bug to the largest
tree, matched up so well with the needs of those creatures.
One of those scientists was this guy.
Worked out pretty well.
Einstein's general theory of relativity was a revolutionary concept when he introduced
it, but scientists had relatively few ways of actually testing it.
One of the consequences of Einstein's theory said that light should be bent by gravity
as it approaches an object.
Now that means for stars behind the edge of our sun, we could actually see them because
their light would be bent around it.
Unfortunately our sun is so bright that we can't see those stars around the edge, but
in 1919 an eclipse took place that was particularly long and dark.
British astronomers Andrew Crommelin and Arthur Eddington went to South America to capture
it on film.
With the sun blocked out they were able to measure the bending of light waves around
a massive object for the very first time, and Einstein's theory of relativity was proven
correct, and he became the celebrity know and love today.
In their 1953 paper describing the double-helical nature of DNA strands, Rosalind Franklin,
with the help of James Watson and Francis Crick, well, they, they changed everything.
This simple sketch showing these two ribbons, antiparallel and complementary bases in between,
it outlined the molecular nature of genetics and described the universal information carrying
molecule for all life on Earth.
That's kind of a big deal.
I think my favorite part of this one is that it looks like it was sketched on the back
of an envelope.
Although it was one of the most important scientific findings of all time and it appeared
in one of the most prestigious journals on Earth it was so simply drawn that anyone could
understand it.
This is what you get with 23 days of exposure on the Hubble telescope.
You see galaxies one ten-billionth as bright as the limit of the human eye.
In this image we can see galaxies nearly 13.2 billion light years away, that light has been
traveling since nearly the beginning of time itself.
Countless planets and stars might exist inside them, it's time travel in a photograph.
On Christmas Eve 1968 as Apollo 8 came out from behind the moon, they saw Earth rising
above the lunar horizon.
This picture's a role-reversal of sorts.
Instead of this barren white moon rising above us, they saw this delicate jewel, a blue,
living Earth rising before their eyes.
When that image hit the magazines and newsstands and TV screens back on Earth, it changed the
way that we view our living planet.
Galen Rowell called this "the most important environmental photograph ever taken."
So why are pictures so important to science?
Our minds seem to be built for images, vision is our primary sense.
Words and numbers are invented languages that can enhance our communication, but I think
that images are a universal language, something whose meaning and importance we understand
from birth.
Our minds are also limited.
In his book "Cosmic Imagery" John Barrow says that images allow us to capture something
memorable without it needing to be remembered.
The way I look at it, capturing a moment is just another way of saying "observation" and
that's what science has been built on from the very beginning.
I only picked a handful of my favorite images from science history, so I know I missed a
ton of great ones Why don't you leave me a comment with your favorites.
Who knows, maybe I'll feature some of the best over on my Tumblr.
Thanks a lot for watching, and stay curious.
Thank you all so much for helping to make my science of kissing video the second most
viewed video I've ever made.
A few commenters pointed out that this kissing research only focused on hetero male-female
couples, which is actually something we talked about in the video, but so much psychological
research has this bias.
We tried to find more to put in the video, but it simply wasn't there.
Psychologists, if you're listening, we need to represent more people out there.
So we'll keep an eye on that.
Thanks to everyone who enjoyed the science fiction as science fact episode from last
week.
You've already pointed out a bunch of great science fiction that I missed.
I hope you've also watched our collaborators' videos over at Idea Channel and the main PBS
Digital Studios page.
Lots of people left comments saying that some science fiction is so good at predicting actual
science because scientists are people too, and they read science fiction, and they might
be inspired to make what they see into reality.
And I absolutely agree.
We actually had a line in the episode exactly about that, but I decided to pull it out so
you'll just have to take my word for it.
It's one of those unique intersections of science and art that I think feeds into many
parts of our brain and helps us create things that we wouldn't be able to do otherwise.
We have some really special episodes coming up over the next couple weeks.
I ran a marathon for science, and then we've got one that's a little bit Dr. Seuss and
a little bit chemistry, so make sure you subscribe so you don't miss those.
Links to the email, twitter, tumblr, everything else down below and be sure to leave me a
comment if there's something you'd like us to tackle in a future episode.