That's no moon!!!

As you may be aware the White House has an official petition site where citizens can submit petitions for anything they feel like.  Some are serious, some not so much. A few months ago a petition was started demanding that the US invest in building a Death Star...which of course seems perfectly reasonable.  The petition got 34,000+ signatures putting into the realm where the White House issues a formal response.

Here is the OFFICIAL response from 1600 Penn.  Well played government, well played.

"Official White House Response to: Secure resources and funding, and begin construction of a Death Star by 2016.

This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For

By Paul Shawcross
The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:

• The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
• The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
• Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?

However, look carefully (here's how) and you'll notice something already floating in the sky -- that's no Moon, it's a Space Station! Yes, we already have a giant, football field-sized International Space Station in orbit around the Earth that's helping us learn how humans can live and thrive in space for long durations. The Space Station has six astronauts -- American, Russian, and Canadian -- living in it right now, conducting research, learning how to live and work in space over long periods of time, routinely welcoming visiting spacecraft and repairing onboard garbage mashers, etc. We've also got two robot science labs -- one wielding a laser -- roving around Mars, looking at whether life ever existed on the Red Planet.

Keep in mind, space is no longer just government-only. Private American companies, through NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office (C3PO), are ferrying cargo -- and soon, crew -- to space for NASA, and are pursuing human missions to the Moon this decade.

Even though the United States doesn't have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, we've got two spacecraft leaving the Solar System and we're building a probe that will fly to the exterior layers of the Sun. We are discovering hundreds of new planets in other star systems and building a much more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope that will see back to the early days of the universe.

We don't have a Death Star, but we do have floating robot assistants on the Space Station, a President who knows his way around a light saber and advanced (marshmallow) cannon, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is supporting research on building Luke's arm, floating droids, and quadruped walkers.

We are living in the future! Enjoy it. Or better yet, help build it by pursuing a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field. The President has held the first-ever White House science fairs and Astronomy Night on the South Lawn because he knows these domains are critical to our country's future, and to ensuring the United States continues leading the world in doing big things.

If you do pursue a career in a science, technology, engineering or math-related field, the Force will be with us! Remember, the Death Star's power to destroy a planet, or even a whole star system, is insignificant next to the power of the Force."

Paul Shawcross is Chief of the Science and Space Branch at the White House Office of Management and Budget

Newsflash! Facebook saves science!!!

Okay, so maybe that's a bit of an over-dramatization but the reality is that 2012 was a great year for science gaining a more public face through the use of social media. 

I've already talked ad nauseum about my fandom of the @SarcasticRover Twitter feed but there are tons of other great Tweeters out there too.  The @MarsCuriosity account is a nonsarcastic view of what our new favorite robot is up to and you can follow along Curiosity's driver @Matt_Heverly as well.  Bill Nye the @ScienceGuy and @neiltyson (Neil DeGrasse Tyson), arguably the two most media visible scientists out there, are regular Tweeters.  My new personal favorite is Canadian Astronaut @Cdr_Hadfield who is currently Tweeting from the International Space Station and basically giving a blow by blow account of what it's like to live and work in space along with some phenomenal pictures.

Facebook has been another science success story with the shockingly popular I Fucking Love Science page.  This page is run by a young lady finishing up her PhD and currently has 2.3 MILLION followers.  It's a treasure trove of science tid-bits presented pretty much entirely as photos with links to articles, cartoons and science memes.  It's silly, sarcastic and fun.  Some of my other favorite Facebook science pages include Science Cosmos, NASA (duh), and Star Talk Radio.  I clearly lean towards the space side of things but all of the sciences have pages with large numbers of followers on them.  Hell, even the Higgs Boson has it's own page; just don't call it the God Particle....physicists hate that.  Science and attractive biologist merge to create Dr. Carin Bondar - Biologist With a Twist.

 Youtube has been in the mix as well with 52 million people streaming Felix Baumgartner’s supersonic sky dive from space.  There's probably some Instragram science stuff as well but since my daughter constantly points out that I use it wrong since I pretty much just use it to make it look like I can take a decent picture I'm not really sure.

So what does it all mean?   If nothing else it means that people are interested in science and possibly more importantly that science is finding a way to make itself known to them.  Not very many people are willing to sit down and read a paper in a peer reviewed journal (I don't even like doing it) but there are now ways for cool stuff to be made public in an easily understood and interesting format. 

As an example of how important it is to write science journalism in a plain understandable manner take a look at these two articles about physicists creating a gas capable of going below absolute zero.  First this one from Livescience, a normally pretty good place to get science news.  Pretty fucking hard to follow, huh?  Then from this one from the journal Nature, linked to by I Fucking Love Science.  Makes a lot mores sense now doesn't it?

Happy New Year science, go forth and do amazing things!