Once in while I run across technical media that is extremely well produced. What that definition is, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. But for me, the primary criteria is the successful sharing of technical ideas and concepts to non-technical people. This has been a huge challenge for scientists and engineers for hundreds of years. Even scientific luminaries (such as Galileo and Copernicus) have struggled with this challenge.
The particular media I have in mind is produced as a joint venture of NASA and ESA (European Space Agency) and is known as the “Hubblecast”. These well produced shorts show the general public the fabulous views of the universe provided by Hubble and other space instruments with simple explanations of scientists’ “best guess” of what the images are telling us terrestrial mortals. Produced in HD, they are simply head and shoulders above many similar efforts. They are available to view on the website Hubblecast or available as free podcasts in the Apple store.
For years, much of government run efforts to study space have been the exclusive province of the scientific community, with an occasional grainy picture and discussion thrown out to the general media. The Hubble telescope itself, by virtue of its initial execution failure, was initially perhaps the most media centric of any of the NASA/ESA projects, and not in a good way. When launched in 1990, scientists found that the main mirror had been ground incorrectly, severely compromising the capabilities of the telescope. However, after a space shuttle based service mission in 1993, the telescope was modified and brought up to its design specifications. That event got far less coverage than the highly publicized failure.
Whether driven by its initial PR disaster or Simple Subsequent Enlightenment (SSE), Hubble’s governing agency has since appeared to bend over backwards to make this marvelous bit of science available to all. Hubble’s orbit outside the distortion of Earth’s atmosphere allows it to take extremely sharp images that are stunning in their clarity and drama. Hubble’s Ultra Deep Field image capability, for instance, allows for the most detailed visible-light images ever made of the universe’s most distant objects. Many Hubble observations have led to breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe, the presence of “dark matter”, and other significant discoveries. Here are a couple of links that may be of interest:
and saving the best for last– http://www.spacetelescope.org
Now for a little personal philosophy–being a technologist who has always tried to communicate with and relate to non-technical folks, I hope this is a sustainable trend amongst the scientific and technical community. Sometimes technical people get a “bad rap” for not relating well to others, and frankly, much of the time they deserve it. It’s about time that we lose that stereotype, and better communicate our knowledge, our passion, and our humanity.
Until next time…
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