As a woman with that level of enthusiasm about niche science info (I got a degree as a science communicator, because I literally can’t help myself sharing interesting info when it seems a good time to do so)…
It’s very very difficult to find people who aren’t intimidated by it, or put off by the enthusiasm about something they don’t begin to understand/care about. Of all the people I talk to randomly, maybe 1 out of 30 people actually likes the enthusiasm past the first 5 min. And even that 5 min can be a stretch. That is to say, they tolerate it, they don’t tend to engage with it or encourage it. Mostly you get “oh, that’s neat”. Which is a great way to shut the entire conversation down, cuz where do you go from there?
I tend to agree that enthusiasm is interpersonally attractive, it’s why I make small talk by asking what thing the other person finds interesting that they learned recently. (Not something they think I want to know, something they are interested in). I don’t think the majority of the population views it that way, though. They only think enthusiasm is good if it’s a subject they already care about in some way. And they don’t want to share theirs in case it’s not something you are interested in, even if all you actually are interested in is whatever sparks their passion.
I guess it could be my area, but I’ve been a lot of places (mostly within the same country ofc) and found about the same whether rural or urban, north or south. Also I don’t think my observation is because I’m a woman, but it could be a contributing factor, idk.
Well, as much as I hate to say it, most people are so busy looking for their turn to talk that it wouldn’t matter how interesting what you’re saying is.
Which, I get. I’m not immune to eventually losing attention to unfamiliar material. But that’s why you listen; you pay attention and ask about what they just said if you aren’t familiar with it. If nothing else, let your brain perk away while you listen and wait for it to ring the bell of association! Until you get into some really arcane subjects, there’s almost always going to be a point where something relates to something you already know, so it’s just a matter of being patient.
But, sadly, I think you’re right. Women simply get ignored, even by other women. Doesn’t matter how much they know, how high their degree of expertise is. People tend to rank anything coming out of a woman’s mouth as less important. It certainly isn’t the entirety, but I would agree it contributes, as you said.
Clearly so, as you taught me a new definition - vulgarization - the act or process of making something, or of something becoming, better known and understood by ordinary people.
I appreciate that. Thanks! :) in that definition (and the more traditionally used one) I’m a vulgar mf!
Unless you want to know about like magnetic tornadoes on the sun or how sponges are colonies of cells often using glass/silicate compounds in various shapes as a common skeleton (wouldn’t want to bathe with those!! But each species has their own unique structure!), I haven’t much off the top of my head without a good conversation to spark some back-of-the brain latent info that’s stored and conversationally relevant. I’m a steel trap for niche science stuff, and it often takes a good conversation to bring it out. How else do you know what info is worth sharing?
Astronomy is one of my bigger interests, but I don’t know about magnetic tornadoes on the sun. Is that a regular occurrence ? Is the naming a callback to regular tornadoes because they form the same way or something ? I would suppose they’re magnetic fields that take on a helicoidal shape. Is that possible ?
Concerning sponges : just like coral !!
How else do you know what info is worth sharing?
I wouldn’t know… when you send me off on an interest of mine, I lose all track of social cues, and I tend to go on and on and on,…
They aren’t uncommon persey, it’s just another form of solar prominance, or material lifted above the surface by magnetic field liness. However, the tornado-like appearance rather than a full arc of material that connects to the surface in 2 places is rather uncommon, and it’s even possible that it’s an artifact of the way the sun is photographed (the lenses filter based on temperature, essentially, and material further from the surface may cool to the point it doesn’t get picked up with any of the filters, making it effectively invisible), or the angle at which the photos are taken in relation to the prominence (if we are looking at it head on, we wouldn’t see the second anchor point).
How they form is an ongoing mystery with many models, like all solar prominences, and it probably isn’t disconnected on one end like a cyclone would be, but visually it resembles a tornado, and the material does seem to rotate around the magnetic field lines, much the same way a tornado rotates in air. We see the same rotation in more typical coronal loops, which are what cause coronal mass ejections when it releases. They are absolutely massive when they do form, 10+ stacked earths in size, and can last days, weeks, months.
It’s one of my go-to water-testing facts because almost everyone likes the sun, is at least vaguely familiar with tornadoes, and can envision a “10 earth tall tornado of plasma on the sun”. Which is a damned cool image to envision - the reality is also spectacular but a bit less so.
The one linked below is actually from March this year, which is neat! I didn’t even know it happened again! This one was 14 earths high and exploded at the end of its cycle! How cool! I hope they got some really good data on how it works! I’ll have to do some looking :)
Mesmerizing… the pictures in the article are breathtaking too. I remember looking at a real time feed of the sun as shot by a specialized telescope in southern France,-which was always pointed at the sun during the day- and learning that it rotates faster around the equator than it does near the poles. Before then, my mental picture of the sun was that of a naively solid object, like a rocky planet.
Observation biases like you mention are fascinating. Because in astronomy we can never move around to see things from an angle, or remove an obstacle from our field of view, we have to get exceedingly clever. I assume if the sun ejects matter in our direction, and then this matters gets cold, there’s no way to observe it? -isn’t it going to get overblown by the sheer power of the sun surface behind it?
Yeah, the coolest thing about the sun, imo, is that while a particle of light only takes a few minutes to reach earth, it can take millions of years to escape the tumultuous interior of the sun to radiate in the first place. That activity is what prevents the sun from collapsing under its own gravity.
We can’t change our earthly perspective, no, but we do have numerous satellites that do have the ability to see certain angles we can’t currently on earth. We can’t see the backside of it (from our current perspective, it rotates and we orbit so we do see all of it), really, because we’d never get good signal from our craft, but we can get some decent side angles.
We just don’t necessarily have the tools to see what we want to know with those specifically, but we put out great new tools on a regular basis, so it’s very possible they will make new tools just for that purpose.
As for the other question about not being able to detect it - not really. The stuff we have focused on the sun mostly works with hot material, but the universe itself is very cold, and we can detect things from every wavelength we are aware of, it’s just a matter of what’s usually focused on the sun specifically to catch these things.
(Disclaimer for anyone who might read this: do not ever look at the sun through a telescope without a certified solar filter, you will burn out your eye. Guaranteed.) If you have a telescope, on a sunny day you can watch the sun indirectly by facing the eyepiece toward paper or a wall. It works like a projector. It’s black and white just because it’s bright out when you project it, but you can watch sunspots and stuff. :) and now is a great time to do it a we are approaching the solar maximum, when the most interesting things tend to happen.
Ah, right. (There’s also the fact that we can take avantage of the parallax caused by our orbit. Just remembered.)
I guess we’d need some sort of relay if we really wanted to communicate with a craft orbiting opposite to us relative to the sun.
Yeah, the coolest thing about the sun, imo, is that while a particle of light only takes a few minutes to reach earth, it can take millions of years to escape the tumultuous interior of the sun to radiate in the first place.
Whaaat ! you mean photons bounce about inside the sun for this long?? but how would we measure the time it takes for a given particle to escape it? I imagine this number comes from a theoretical model?
It’s not about them though, it’s about you, and you can’t expect science enthusiasts to submit to the will of ignorant bullies and hide who they are and what they care about to appease other people.
In fact, people like you have fallen for the ruse that science has to submit to ignorant people in hopes of convincing them to not be ignorant, and you can’t see how deeply you’ve been manipulated. It’s a power play. They do it to emotionally blackmail you into not correcting them so they can have power over the conversation.
I’ll take being called a know-it-all arrogant ass than allow obviously abusive, manipulative people to push your’s and society’s buttons in an obvious social dominance power play so they can do and say whatever they want without any consequences.
You misunderstand my understanding that most people don’t care, for being deterred from doing it.
No no. It’s a compulsion. I don’t have a choice but to share things, even at my own social detriment. I mean obviously I could subvert who I am fundamentally for the comfort of society, but that’s a lot of work I’m not willing to do when sharing is more fun, and more rewarding when it does hit. That’s why I got the science communication degree. To facilitate sharing whatever I know with whomever I meet in a way they can relate to. I take that skill very seriously. I was good at it before I got the degree.
I know some people stop sharing when beaten down by society, but I’m not one. When things get awkward I say “my bad I’m a science communicator by trait and training and have trouble not sharing cool stuff as a result” to diffuse the social pressure to conform. It works well enough.
It makes building real relationships more challenging than I assume your average individual has, but the connections that are made under those conditions tend to be really good ones so tradeoff I guess.
Okay, you’ve got the right spirit. Just wanted to be clear.
Most American intellectuals are beaten down through years of emotional manipulation and abuse they’re never educated on the true nature of, both because most people don’t truly understand it and those that do don’t want others to so they can’t be stopped.
All good friend. I wouldn’t call myself an intellectual, though… I’m just a person with specific interests like everyone else. Separating people by, essentially, educational attainment… is a mistake. I barely learned shit in college, I just got a piece of paper saying I was good at what I was already good at so I could get a job (which I haven’t yet, and it’s been a solid while becaue corporate bs is bs and heaven forbid you have gaps! but I can tell people what my degree is for and that’s enough for conversation).
My life has been a series of traumatic events that forcibly removed most of my blinders, and I see things as clearly as anyone really can, washed with propaganda as we all are… and it’s fucking miserable enough to wish I was entirely ignorant. So much easier.
But the rock has been the scientific method, it’s an amazing thing that gives us the tools to share things confidently! And I love telling people about the most recent thing I learned that was based on it. It is so helpful to say “hey what about this cool thing!” And when they go “hmm idk” you can describe the study and results, like being a living scicomm book, and then show them the actual study.
As a woman with that level of enthusiasm about niche science info (I got a degree as a science communicator, because I literally can’t help myself sharing interesting info when it seems a good time to do so)…
It’s very very difficult to find people who aren’t intimidated by it, or put off by the enthusiasm about something they don’t begin to understand/care about. Of all the people I talk to randomly, maybe 1 out of 30 people actually likes the enthusiasm past the first 5 min. And even that 5 min can be a stretch. That is to say, they tolerate it, they don’t tend to engage with it or encourage it. Mostly you get “oh, that’s neat”. Which is a great way to shut the entire conversation down, cuz where do you go from there?
I tend to agree that enthusiasm is interpersonally attractive, it’s why I make small talk by asking what thing the other person finds interesting that they learned recently. (Not something they think I want to know, something they are interested in). I don’t think the majority of the population views it that way, though. They only think enthusiasm is good if it’s a subject they already care about in some way. And they don’t want to share theirs in case it’s not something you are interested in, even if all you actually are interested in is whatever sparks their passion.
I guess it could be my area, but I’ve been a lot of places (mostly within the same country ofc) and found about the same whether rural or urban, north or south. Also I don’t think my observation is because I’m a woman, but it could be a contributing factor, idk.
Well, as much as I hate to say it, most people are so busy looking for their turn to talk that it wouldn’t matter how interesting what you’re saying is.
Which, I get. I’m not immune to eventually losing attention to unfamiliar material. But that’s why you listen; you pay attention and ask about what they just said if you aren’t familiar with it. If nothing else, let your brain perk away while you listen and wait for it to ring the bell of association! Until you get into some really arcane subjects, there’s almost always going to be a point where something relates to something you already know, so it’s just a matter of being patient.
But, sadly, I think you’re right. Women simply get ignored, even by other women. Doesn’t matter how much they know, how high their degree of expertise is. People tend to rank anything coming out of a woman’s mouth as less important. It certainly isn’t the entirety, but I would agree it contributes, as you said.
Please nerd out over here, I could bathe in vulgarization all day
Clearly so, as you taught me a new definition - vulgarization - the act or process of making something, or of something becoming, better known and understood by ordinary people.
I appreciate that. Thanks! :) in that definition (and the more traditionally used one) I’m a vulgar mf!
Unless you want to know about like magnetic tornadoes on the sun or how sponges are colonies of cells often using glass/silicate compounds in various shapes as a common skeleton (wouldn’t want to bathe with those!! But each species has their own unique structure!), I haven’t much off the top of my head without a good conversation to spark some back-of-the brain latent info that’s stored and conversationally relevant. I’m a steel trap for niche science stuff, and it often takes a good conversation to bring it out. How else do you know what info is worth sharing?
_
Astronomy is one of my bigger interests, but I don’t know about magnetic tornadoes on the sun. Is that a regular occurrence ? Is the naming a callback to regular tornadoes because they form the same way or something ? I would suppose they’re magnetic fields that take on a helicoidal shape. Is that possible ?
Concerning sponges : just like coral !!
I wouldn’t know… when you send me off on an interest of mine, I lose all track of social cues, and I tend to go on and on and on,…
They aren’t uncommon persey, it’s just another form of solar prominance, or material lifted above the surface by magnetic field liness. However, the tornado-like appearance rather than a full arc of material that connects to the surface in 2 places is rather uncommon, and it’s even possible that it’s an artifact of the way the sun is photographed (the lenses filter based on temperature, essentially, and material further from the surface may cool to the point it doesn’t get picked up with any of the filters, making it effectively invisible), or the angle at which the photos are taken in relation to the prominence (if we are looking at it head on, we wouldn’t see the second anchor point).
How they form is an ongoing mystery with many models, like all solar prominences, and it probably isn’t disconnected on one end like a cyclone would be, but visually it resembles a tornado, and the material does seem to rotate around the magnetic field lines, much the same way a tornado rotates in air. We see the same rotation in more typical coronal loops, which are what cause coronal mass ejections when it releases. They are absolutely massive when they do form, 10+ stacked earths in size, and can last days, weeks, months.
It’s one of my go-to water-testing facts because almost everyone likes the sun, is at least vaguely familiar with tornadoes, and can envision a “10 earth tall tornado of plasma on the sun”. Which is a damned cool image to envision - the reality is also spectacular but a bit less so.
The one linked below is actually from March this year, which is neat! I didn’t even know it happened again! This one was 14 earths high and exploded at the end of its cycle! How cool! I hope they got some really good data on how it works! I’ll have to do some looking :)
https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-video-solar-tornado-plasma-2023-3
Mesmerizing… the pictures in the article are breathtaking too. I remember looking at a real time feed of the sun as shot by a specialized telescope in southern France,-which was always pointed at the sun during the day- and learning that it rotates faster around the equator than it does near the poles. Before then, my mental picture of the sun was that of a naively solid object, like a rocky planet.
Observation biases like you mention are fascinating. Because in astronomy we can never move around to see things from an angle, or remove an obstacle from our field of view, we have to get exceedingly clever. I assume if the sun ejects matter in our direction, and then this matters gets cold, there’s no way to observe it? -isn’t it going to get overblown by the sheer power of the sun surface behind it?
Yeah, the coolest thing about the sun, imo, is that while a particle of light only takes a few minutes to reach earth, it can take millions of years to escape the tumultuous interior of the sun to radiate in the first place. That activity is what prevents the sun from collapsing under its own gravity.
We can’t change our earthly perspective, no, but we do have numerous satellites that do have the ability to see certain angles we can’t currently on earth. We can’t see the backside of it (from our current perspective, it rotates and we orbit so we do see all of it), really, because we’d never get good signal from our craft, but we can get some decent side angles.
We just don’t necessarily have the tools to see what we want to know with those specifically, but we put out great new tools on a regular basis, so it’s very possible they will make new tools just for that purpose.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Artificial_satellites_at_Earth-Sun_Lagrange_points
As for the other question about not being able to detect it - not really. The stuff we have focused on the sun mostly works with hot material, but the universe itself is very cold, and we can detect things from every wavelength we are aware of, it’s just a matter of what’s usually focused on the sun specifically to catch these things.
(Disclaimer for anyone who might read this: do not ever look at the sun through a telescope without a certified solar filter, you will burn out your eye. Guaranteed.) If you have a telescope, on a sunny day you can watch the sun indirectly by facing the eyepiece toward paper or a wall. It works like a projector. It’s black and white just because it’s bright out when you project it, but you can watch sunspots and stuff. :) and now is a great time to do it a we are approaching the solar maximum, when the most interesting things tend to happen.
Ah, right. (There’s also the fact that we can take avantage of the parallax caused by our orbit. Just remembered.)
I guess we’d need some sort of relay if we really wanted to communicate with a craft orbiting opposite to us relative to the sun.
Whaaat ! you mean photons bounce about inside the sun for this long?? but how would we measure the time it takes for a given particle to escape it? I imagine this number comes from a theoretical model?
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I’ll keep that in mind if I’m ever your way :)
Because paradoxically, if you were actually the least interesting person, that would be pretty interesting.
It’s not about them though, it’s about you, and you can’t expect science enthusiasts to submit to the will of ignorant bullies and hide who they are and what they care about to appease other people.
In fact, people like you have fallen for the ruse that science has to submit to ignorant people in hopes of convincing them to not be ignorant, and you can’t see how deeply you’ve been manipulated. It’s a power play. They do it to emotionally blackmail you into not correcting them so they can have power over the conversation.
I’ll take being called a know-it-all arrogant ass than allow obviously abusive, manipulative people to push your’s and society’s buttons in an obvious social dominance power play so they can do and say whatever they want without any consequences.
You misunderstand my understanding that most people don’t care, for being deterred from doing it.
No no. It’s a compulsion. I don’t have a choice but to share things, even at my own social detriment. I mean obviously I could subvert who I am fundamentally for the comfort of society, but that’s a lot of work I’m not willing to do when sharing is more fun, and more rewarding when it does hit. That’s why I got the science communication degree. To facilitate sharing whatever I know with whomever I meet in a way they can relate to. I take that skill very seriously. I was good at it before I got the degree.
I know some people stop sharing when beaten down by society, but I’m not one. When things get awkward I say “my bad I’m a science communicator by trait and training and have trouble not sharing cool stuff as a result” to diffuse the social pressure to conform. It works well enough.
It makes building real relationships more challenging than I assume your average individual has, but the connections that are made under those conditions tend to be really good ones so tradeoff I guess.
Okay, you’ve got the right spirit. Just wanted to be clear.
Most American intellectuals are beaten down through years of emotional manipulation and abuse they’re never educated on the true nature of, both because most people don’t truly understand it and those that do don’t want others to so they can’t be stopped.
All good friend. I wouldn’t call myself an intellectual, though… I’m just a person with specific interests like everyone else. Separating people by, essentially, educational attainment… is a mistake. I barely learned shit in college, I just got a piece of paper saying I was good at what I was already good at so I could get a job (which I haven’t yet, and it’s been a solid while becaue corporate bs is bs and heaven forbid you have gaps! but I can tell people what my degree is for and that’s enough for conversation).
My life has been a series of traumatic events that forcibly removed most of my blinders, and I see things as clearly as anyone really can, washed with propaganda as we all are… and it’s fucking miserable enough to wish I was entirely ignorant. So much easier.
But the rock has been the scientific method, it’s an amazing thing that gives us the tools to share things confidently! And I love telling people about the most recent thing I learned that was based on it. It is so helpful to say “hey what about this cool thing!” And when they go “hmm idk” you can describe the study and results, like being a living scicomm book, and then show them the actual study.