UNESCO and the International Year of Astonomy

2009 is being celebrated, including by UNESCO, as the International Year of Astronomy. This is the 400th anniversary of Galileo's obtaining a telescope and beginning to observe the heavens.

One of my students pointed out that one of the goals of the organizers of the celebrations is to renew peoples wonder at the heavens. Great point, great idea! For millennia people observed the night sky with wonder, a wonder we have largely lost in our light polluted urban skys. But today we know that there are somewhere between 100 and 1000 billion stars in our galaxy, and somewhere between 100 and 1000 billion galaxies in the universe; scientists are beginning to wonder whether there are other universes. That is a reality really worthy of wonder.

Another of the goals is to relate astronomy to development. My student focused on the role of astronomy in energizing the natural sciences which in turn energize technological advance. True. Think about atomic energy and the stimulus of atomic physics from the study of processes of the stars.

It may be more important to think about what we can learn from astronomy about climate. Climate is variable, and some climate phases are more inimical to civilization than others. It is now believed that many cultures have gone into decline during extended droughts or that the Norse expansion was enabled by an unusually warm climatic period. It turns out that some of these major climatic changes are best understood through astronomy, and the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, the shifts in the earths magnetic poles, and solar cycles. These are long term cycles, but we have been enjoying a very favorable climate for many decades and the bad times will come again; astronomy may help us to prepare for when they do.

The cultural impact of astronomy is enormous. Galileo, by demonstrating that the heavens were not perfect and that the not everything revolved around the earth or even the sun, had a dramatic impact on the credibility of the pronouncements of the church and on the need to observe nature. I think the revelations of modern astronomy will have equally profound effects in challenging the beliefs of biblical fundamentalists. It seems to me that the cultural attitudes engendered by an understanding of astronomy are much more conducive to social and economic development than are more traditional cultural attitudes.