Doing Science, For Real

I WAS BORN nine days after Einstein died, and I have always felt the connection, and the gap. Throughout my life I have fantasized about some unknown law of nature, some migration of souls, wherein the soul of the recently deceased takes a bit of a break, say a little over a week, then finds a new reincarnative home, in the body of a new born babe. Yeah, that's me, Einstein, recycled. Poor Einstein. to have lived his life, and now to have lived mine, would, one must suppose, present quite the descent from the intellectually lofty to the intellectually, shall we say, mundane. No, not mundane... Mediocre? No, not that either. Eccentric? That I'll buy. Come to think of it, Einstein was a bit eccentric himself, so, well, you never know. By the time I was twelve I was an avid Einstein and science fan, and spent my teenage years in the back yard, with my telescope, looking for star clusters and making pencil sketches of Jupiter's horizontal stripes and moons. I recall my mother often ruining the research by remarking just how cute those precious little moons were, like tiny children, circling big mother Jupiter, never getting too far away, always there, always on the orbital move, changing their pattern relative to the big girl and good another. Now, in retrospect, her metaphor strikes me as cute. Such was my reenactment of Einstein. I never replaced nor added to his in science, but I evolved into a better person, and can now better appreciate my dear mother. During the nineteen eighties I made frequent visits to the air and space wing of the Smithsonian Institute. Again, my mother was there, and she thought it funny how transfixed I was by the gravity wave detector, a large silver cylindrical hunk of metal with a small hole through its long axis, with a wire strung through the hole, attached to a mount on either end. In a building full of scientific wonders and famous airplanes and spacecraft, I couldn't get away from a piece of metal with a hole in it and a wire through it. Such was my love of Einstein, and science in the abstract. The idea was that the subtle gravitational waves, which Einstein always insisted existed and would eventually be detected, would be detected by a very slight movement of the heavy hunk of metal as it moved on the wire, and could be measured. Problem was, it never happened. Finally, in 2015, it happened, using much improved detection devices, involving orbiting telescopes, lasers, and computers. The government had funded two such devices, called Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatories, (LIGOs), one in Washington state, the other in Louisiana. This time, the contraptions worked, and now we know that Einstein was, as always, dead on correct. All of this; my near miss of Einstein, my childhood of cute astronomical thrills, and Einstein's purely speculative theory proven true in my lifetime will make my heart smile unto my death. This makes me feel truly sorry for people who reject, ignore, or refuse to understand science. The climate change deniers, the good hearted folks who waste their lives dwelling in paranormal nonsense, insisting that the universe and the United States government are infiltrated with extraterrestrials with devious motives, and ignoring and rejecting real science; these poor benighted people are simply missing out on all the fun. Those who deny science and replace it with fantasy come from all sides of the political spectrum. The anti-vaccine people tend to be from the progressive end, and the conspiracy theory crazies and climate change deniers are overwhelmingly conservative. but either way,, the science deniers and paranormal freaks will never know just how totally cute Jupiter's moons are, on a warm summer evening, in the backyard, with your mother smiling approvingly at you.