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How once woman went from being a SAHM of four to a published freelance science journalist |
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I'm revising this intro after more than 15 years to better reflect my intention When I started this blog in 2004, I was a stay at home mom to two small children, a college graduate with a degree in English and Astrophysics. By 2007, I had four small children, ages newborn, 2, 4, and 6. For several years, Writing.com was how I kept my sanity. This blog began, first as a way of staying connected. Later, when I worked on a novel, I used it to stoke the writing fires as I plotted out short stories and the next step of my novel. Ultimately, I moved my writing preparation to "Invalid Item"  In 2010, I became a single mom who had homeschooled her children for several years. I had a 2, 4, 6 and 8 year old and had never had a "real" full time job, since I was married while in college. Everyone told me that I would have to buckle down and take on a "real" job. Instead, I decided to attempt to live my dream: to make it as a writer. I knew that if I didn't try then, I would never really dive in. I counted my money and set a deadline. If I hadn't began making a decent (defined) amount of money after so many months, I would suck it up and get a J-O-B. After some thought, I decided to play to my strengths. I served an internship at Sky & Telescope magazine while in college and enjoyed writing about space and astronomy. With an astrophysics degree, I thought I would be able to sell myself more easily, and a small niche should be easier to penetrate. It's been about ten years since I was first paid for an article on Space.com. In that time, writing - journalism - has been my primary moneymaker. I've often thought about setting up a blog on my website - www.astrowriter.com - but just haven't gotten around to it. There are a few things I would like to share for those who are interested in scientific journalism in general. Now that I'm back on WDC, there's no reason not to combine the two and use the site blog for that sort of interaction. There are certainly plenty of folks on this site interested in the publication process. So while I'll probably meander around some, that's the intention of of this blog: to share some of my struggles as a published journalist and to help answer oft-asked questions. |
| Writing Sprint! Set a timer for 10 minutes and write without stopping about whatever comes to your mind. I challenge you to deny your urge to edit yourself as you write. If you must, you’re allowed to edit, but only after you finish your ten minute sprint. Ready? Set. GO! Alexa, set a time for 10 minutes. See, who said Alexa was worthless? Oh wait, that's me. Today was a crazy day, two interviews and my brain is exploding. I'm trying to at least skim my way through a collection of something like 30 papers and I suspect that I am over-researching. On the other hand, it's an interesting subject - did ancient Mars once boast an ocean? I thought that it was something of a given but I've recently learned that I am incorrect on that front. So I'm interviewing several scientists who are for and those who are against, and apparently those who fall in between. I've been very fortunate in that many of the folks I've spoken to are very articulate and good at explaining things. "What?" you say. "I thought someone with a PhD would be articulate?" It's funny, but sometimes it seems the more people know the less they know how to explain it. Most of the time, folks who have been in the field for awhile, or those who are very involved in public engagement (often women, minorities, etc) do a pretty good to very good job. It's the graduate students and the post docs, those who are fairly new to the field, who often stumble. Sometimes I suspect that they get very technical not because they don't understand it but because they want to prove that they understand it. The result is often not understandable. However, I do occasionally get people who stay strongly in the technical camp, even after years of experience. Those interviews can be painful. The thing is, a good science journalist should have a decent grasp of the subject going in (see my concern about over-researching). At the very least, they would have read the paper. Bonus points for having at least skimmed if not read other papers on the subject, which can often be found in the references. So the dirty little secret is that 9:10 times, the journalist is looking for a good quote. That's why examples and metaphors, as well as colorful language, can be helpful. Personal stories also help. These can all help demonstrate the science better to the public. That said, there are things that I occasionally don't understand, and I will ask about them, no fear. I'll also ask you to repeat yourself if I think I misunderstood - which can give you time to correct me when it turns out I didn't! I always go in with a list of questions for my researchers, but I generally try to draw my interview questions from what they are saying. Now, for those of you who are interested in science writing. One of the first things you can do, which has the potential to scare you off the job - but shouldn't! - is actually read a research paper or two. Nature and Science often have some public access papers on their site that don't require purchase. If you're an astronomy fan, arxiv.org has a bunch of free-to-read papers. The first thing you will do when you pick up an article, if you don't have a phD or even a bachelors - and maybe if you do - is think, holy crap, is this in English?! It may be a challenge to understand every single part of the paper. Another dirty secret - there are parts under the methods that I am often like, say what? and maybe sometimes skim. However, if you are just getting familiar with the subject, the abstract, introduction, and conclusion are your best friend. Sometimes just before the conclusion is a discussion section, and it can also be helpful. The abstract will give you an overview of the paper. Think of it as the back or side cover of a book, except they will definitely spoil the ending. Which is good, because you don't want to spend your time reading a paper if you aren't interested in the results. The introduction was a huge help to me when I first started out, and remains a help today. Often, it will review the state of the field and discuss what the current thoughts are on the subject, and pros and cons to those. It might give you an overview of the planetary body or astronomical object type being studied. The middle section involves methods and calculations and experiments. These are good to review if you're writing an article, to check things like error bars and how the experiment was set up and the like. If you're just trying to familiarize yourself with the field you can skim these. I've been told that these are more important in medical research - how large was the sample pool, how are the methods - but I'm an astronomy journalist so it's usually "we pointed the telescope at this for this much time with this instrument. Then we did this, that and the other to the results." The discussion puts the results in context and the conclusion wraps it up and can also provide some context. Sometimes researchers will outline their next steps or how the results will translate to upcoming instruments like James Webb ("the next Hubble"). Even if you don't want to be a science journalist, I encourage you to go pick up a paper from Nature or Science's website and skim it. It will give you a little more appreciation for the scientific process! |
| Write about a fork in the road in your life, and how you made the decision to go the direction you did. What would have happened if you chose the other path? Ugh this is maybe not the best day for introspection of the sort requested. I had my third contractor over to give me an estimate about the cracks in my basement. Big numbers, baby, big numbers. Well, I suppose 'big' is in perspective; in this case, it's between half to a third of my annual income. That's big enough - or too big - for me. So the most obvious fork that leads from that is the one where I decided to buy this house, which my step-father (not a contractor) built. But I don't want to go that way. Instead, I'd like to take a look at the fork that brought me to science journalism. I've always said I wanted to be a writer. Like most people - especially on this site, I suspect - I leaned towards writing fiction. Fiction, most of you know, is a difficult world to break into, and so the dream remained just a dream. I started college as an English major (creative writing). After a semester, I decided to add astrophysics to the list and became a double major. When people asked me what I wanted to do, I would tell them that I planned to write about astrophysics, but that was never actually my goal. I intended to go into journalism, but found out after I arrived at the college that their journalism major was notsomuch. Hence creative writing. Then, between my junior and senior year, I took an internship at an astronomy magazine, Sky & Telescope (if you know astronomy magazines, you know this is one of two big deals, even back in the 90s). I found out that I really enjoyed writing about astronomy. Enter the first potential fork. I had just started dating a guy in Atlanta at the end of the school year. To be honest, I was in a funk after breaking up with my high school boyfriend, and went out with this guy specifically because I was going to be leaving Atlanta in less than a month to head to Massachussets for my internship. But then he followed me to Boston - not in a creepy way, but it was kind of sweet. I ended up hanging out with him a lot, and in truth I made a pretty poor showing at my internship. Long story short, we got married that winter, and not long after I graduated, I was a mom. I've always wondered what would have happened if he hadn't come to Boston. I think I would have made a better showing in my internship, and a lot of the interns wound up working for S&T, so I could have potentially parlayed that into a post-college job. I also think we wouldn't have gotten married, and that's a whole nother path to follow. But this also isn't the fork I wanted to dwell on. Fast forward ten years or so, and find me as a single mom with four kids. My ex and I had an amiable divorce - so amiable that a lot of our friends suggested that we should get remarried. They didn't understand that my mom and dad threw things at each other, with lots of screaming, and I barely saw my dad. Or that I didn't want that for my kids. So we worked hard to keep things generally on good terms. In the intervening ten years, I'd had a small job or two. I did babysitting, and then did the books, for a local gym. I did some medical transcription. Nothing huge. Not really a lot to put on a resume. So there I was, somewhat terrified of having to go out and be the sole breadwinner, minus child support, for my kiddos and me, having never had a 'real' 40 hour a week job. I sat down and started listing things that I would like to do and things that I would be good at. Some of that process was made using this blog, incidentally. I decided that I should take a chance and follow my dream, at last. I knew that if i didn't do it at that time, I most likely never would. I had no debt, because we'd paid off everything but the house and my ex took that because I couldn't afford it. I had a few thousand dollars in the bank from splitting our emergency fund. I planned out how long that would last and decided that I would give the writing things a try. If by the time I was approaching the end of the money, I still wasn't professional, then I would go and get a j-o-b. I had originally planned to write fiction, and wrote a novel in a (non-NaNoWriMo) month. However, I decided that fiction was a bit too speculative to head into without something else to feed me. Back when I was at S&T, I interviewed someone at the American Museum of Natural History who had told me that it was great to find someone with an English and Astrophysics degree, and that I should call him if I ever needed a job. I wound up volunteering to get their professional blog on their website back up and running for free for a period of three months, at which point we would re-evaluate and see if they liked it enough to pay me. In the meantime, I was generating clips of writing about astronomy, which I sent to Space.com. I wound up writing for them, and have gone on to write for other publications. The process, of course, took a few months, and things were shaky. A lot of people were very doubtful about this idea. Writing, as I'm sure everyone on this site knows, is a hard career to make it at. I had the benefit of a degree in astrophysics, which made the idea of writing about space and astronomy a bit easier to approach for me and easier to sell my editors on. Now, I don't even mention it when working with a new editor; instead, I send them links to my published clips, which are far more important. But the first few months were terrifying for me, and it didn't help to have everyone telling me to go get a 9-5 job. I knew that, once I did that, I would be too worn out as a single mom to try for my dream for quite some time. That's the fork I wanted to talk about. What would have happened if I did what everyone with any sense was urging me to do? Today, I have somewhere around 10 cover stories for print magazines like S&T, Astronomy, and Discover - I have honestly lost count - and am paid around $1/word (different sites pay different rates, of course). I don't work 40 hours, but I do track the hours I work, including things like looking for pitches and billing, and if I did manage 40 hours, I'd be making six figures. I probably should do 40 hours instead of 10-20, especially with things like my stupid foundation, but that's another discussion. Mind you, for many of the past 10 years, I've been homeschooling 4, then 3, then 2, now 1 of my kids (two are attending the public high school). I love my job. I love reading about the research. I really enjoy talking to scientists about their work, and hearing some great perspectives. I've interviewed several astronauts. I 'stole' Brian May (guitarist from Queen)'s sandwich (okay I had permission but still). I was at JPL with the folks who worked on Cassini when it dove into Saturn's atmosphere in its last moments. I rang in 2019 celebrating New Horizon passing its second target. I'm on first name basis with quite a few researchers and mission leads. I also enjoy the writing, making everything come together into one cohesive piece. Sometimes it makes me crazy. Sometimes I want to tear my hair out. But then it's finished and I love it. So what would have happened if I took a 40 hour a week? I'd probably still be there in Pennsylvania, or maybe I would have transferred down to Georgia still. I'd have a 9-5 job that I most likely would put down at 5 o'clock sharp, probably something at a bank or whatever. I'd think every now and then about being a writer, but I'd probably only now, after 10 years, start thinking about trying, now that my kids are older and go out every chance they get. I also want to point out that one of the reasons I was able to take the risk was because I didn't have debt. What if we hadn't decided to suck it in for a year and pay off my student loans and our credit card bills? What if we hadn't gone forward without those debts, building up an emergency fund that I wound up using half of to live on? I took a risk, but with four kids, it was a calculated risk. And I'm very glad I did. edited to add: while commenting on Cadie Laine   's post "30-DBC May 12 Let's Eat!" , I realized that I should have added one other caveat. One of the things before making this decision that I did was address what my worst-case scenario was. For me, the worst case scenario would have been my kids, homeless and without food. I realized that, thanks to my ex-husband's close-knit family, my kids would always have someone to take them in, even if both sets of our parents passed away, and my ex and I also passed away. My kids would always have a roof over their heads. At the same time, our church has one of the world's best welfare systems, which means that, even if the folks sheltering my kids couldn't feed them - unlikely - my kids would also have food to eat. That also gave me a little more freedom from fear in making my decision, because I could handle pretty much everything else. (I suppose the other issue was health insurance, but my ex had them on his job and is required to keep them insured until they are 18, so that resolved another potential fear.) |
| For today, I'm supposed to look at a photo from my youth. What, exactly, qualifies as youth? I mean, there was a great picture that I really think is appropriate for this blog as an astrowriter. And since youth = younger than me now, the photo comes from a few years ago, when I was attending one of many science conferences. In it, I am joyfully hugging a large round object with jets of mist coming from the top. The sphere is supposed to be Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn and one of the most potentially habitable spots in the solar system. And also the one easiest to check. Enceladus is venting material from its southern pole that comes from the moon's subsurface ocean. We know from sampling made by NASA's Cassini mission that the ocean is nutrient rich and ripe for life to evolve. Europa is a great place to fly by with a spacecraft designed to fly through the plume. Cassini flew through, but we didn't even know the moon had an ocean when Cassini launched. It's such a great place to explore and look for life on another planet. |
| Today's prompt, as befits Mother's Day, is to tell a story about my mom. Most of the stories about my childhood are not great to tell. My parents got divorced when I was four and my sister was three, and my mom was remarried soon enough that I actually used my step-father's last name when I enrolled in kindergarten. Then they split, and my mom struggled through several years with two, then three kids. My dad had trouble paying child support until my mom finally took him to court and had it automatically taken from his paycheck, and I'm pretty sure, for various reasons, my step-father never paid support for my brother. So my mom, who had been a high school dropout who finally got her GED & associates degree while single, struggled a lot financially. On top of that, she became a surveyor in the 80s, which was a male-dominated field. I don't know specifics about her troubles at work, but I do know that we would move pretty much every year, which suggests problems. Suffice it to say that we had financial problems for many years, that when my mom pulled out the bills and the legal pad, my sister and I would hide in our rooms because she would get both angry-upset and sad-upset and it was just better not to be around. By the time I graduated high school, things were a little better financially, and then of course she just had my brother, who was 11 years younger than me (9 less than my sister). Now that I'm a single mom myself, I can empathize a bit more with the stress she carried. I can't imagine coming as far as she has on my own. She had a difficult time with things, and had some temper issues, but now that she's older, she's mellowed a lot. I remember one day when I was in high school, she told us that she had had a serious revelation. She said that she would get mad at work, and then come home and take it out on us instead of complaining or getting upset at work. She said she wasn't going to do that anymore. I don't know if she changed how her work issues were handled or just took some deep breaths on the drive home, but that was a significant turning point in my life. I just wish it would have happened sooner. That's probably a better story than I meant to tell. The one I was going to tell was that, I strongly remember when I was five, my mom played with me and my sister outside. We played She-rah, and while I can't recall the specifics, what I can recall is that is the only time I really remember her playing with us. We never really played games or make believe or any of that, and now that I'm all grown up, I can better understand why she was so stressed and worn out. I made an effort to play with my kids. Now, maybe I'm wrong, and I'm sure when I was little she probably played with us kids to some degree. But I just can't recall a lot of instances. It's easy to criticize your parents, especially when they didn't do the greatest job. I mentioned in a previous post that I grew up in an abusive household, so it's not tough to read between the lines. I knew when I was young that the odds were strong that, having grown up abused, I would likely become an abusive parent, so by the time I was 16 I was resolved not to have kids. Things changed in my life and only a few short years later I was a mom at 22 (and then again at 24, 26, and 28 lol). I worked really hard not to repeat my mom's mistakes, at least the more obvious ones. My mom made me think hard about what kind of parent I wanted to be. I'm not "that" parent - I still have room for improvement - but I think I"m a better parent than I would have been if I just fell into it without thought and work. It was really hard to switch off my tendency for both physical and emotional abuse, but it did happen. It is a great joy to me that if I jokingly raise my hand, none of my kids flinch, and that none of my kids are scared of me. My dad likes to tell me that I should have used more discipline, but given that he only parented in short, rare batches, I really don't care about his opinion. Plus he isn't around kids. When my kids were all young, we received quite a few compliments from servers and from other diners about how well behaved our kids were - and this without distracting them with tech. Now that my kids are older, I think we did a dang good job, though there are things I wish I would have done better, especially as a single mom. Anyway, I'm wandering. Off to bed. I hope you had a happy Mom's day, and I hope you were able to learn something from your mother than could make your life better, whether your relationship with them was positive or negative. *Oh I do want to add that my mom has continued to work on her temper and change how she handles things. Perhaps most importantly, she has repeatedly acknowledged her guilt and failings and apologized for her past behavior. While both of my parents have proven lacking in many ways (oh wow they weren't perfect) only one has acknowledged their mistakes. That can go a long way towards forgiveness and affects our relationship significantly. |
| Well, it's my birthday, another year older, another year grayer. Actually, that's not completely true - after a scare last year where I found a single strand of gray in my hair a few weeks after turning 40, I have yet to find another. So just another year older! When my children were little - and sometimes even now - I would crawl into bed with them the morning of their birthday and tell them their birth story. Now I mostly do this with my girls because my boys are too manly to cuddle, or whatever. Earlier this week, I suggested to my oldest that they should learn my birth story and reciprocate. Instead, they called my mom, then walked in singing "happy birthday" with my mom joining on the phone. They made me breakfast in bed - cinnamon rolls and coke, mmm, so healthy! - and then my mom told my story. I'm going to slightly deviate from the prompt and re-tell it the way she remembers it, because, well, it's my birthday!! ;) I was supposed to be born in Virginia. My dad was sent to Georgia for basic training, having just joined the army. (According to my dad, and probably true, he joined the army because he wanted full time work and health insurance. Since I spent most of my childhood with him pointedly telling me that the only reason he stayed with UPS, his after-Army job, for 20 years was so that my sister and I could have health insurance, I believe him. But I digress.) My dad was assigned to the 82nd Airborne, and so he was wrapping up jump school at Ft. Benning. After passing his test or certification or whathaveyou, he proceeded to sprain his ankle on the last jump. As a result, he was kept at Benning instead of being passed on to Virginia. At the same time - and this information is new to me - apparently the military doctors had no idea when my due date was. When she first went to the doctor in Virginia, they gave her a due date of mid-to late May. At Benning, they used the size of the fetus to estimate my age, so they kept pushing back the due date because I was so small. When I was born, my doctor-official due date was August! !!! My mom woke up because her water broke. "At first I thought I wet the bed," she said, "but nope, it was my water." Awkward! They didn't have a landline, much less a cell phone, so my dad got in the car and drove up the road to the nearest payphone, where he called the hospital to let them know we were coming and called his work to let them know he would be late. I question the logic here, as I suspect the hospital had payphones he could have called from, but that's my dad. When he got home - my mom had made him breakfast. I didn't ask for a menu because I was flummexed. He said, "Shouldn't we go to the hospital?' and she said, "We should eat first." Besides, first babies take a long time, everyone knows. (I broke in here and went, But your water broke!! You're supposed to head to the hospital at that point.) Anyway, they eventually drove to the hospital and she spent some time walking the halls and then I was born! The doctors were concerned that I was premature because, after all, I wasn't due until August. But my mom said I had fingernails that were longer than hers are today and she thought they were nuts. They still put me in a little ICU thing for safety sake but apparently they finally realized I was a normal baby. To be clear, I was a whopping six pound baby. My sister wasn't much larger, as I recall. All of my parents stuff from the baby showers was in Virginia, so I spent my first few days home sleeping in a dresser drawer. My mom swears they never pushed it into the dresser while I was in it! Eventually we drove to Virginia, I suspect without a carseat because, 1979. Now, what do I remember? Nothing! Darkness! Memories are funny things. I have a lot of memories that my parents don't seem to have. I remember that we once had two dogs named Kermit and Miss Piggy. We were at the mall with the dogs in the car, and Kermit got out and was gone. Later, Miss Piggy got hit by a car. My parents swear we never had these dogs, but my sister also remembers them. Given that my dad literally forgot that he was at my (Catholic infant) baptism, I trust his memory very little, but I'm surprised my mom doesn't remember. I also have a memory of being at the hospital with my dad. All that I really remember is that he bought me a Payday candy bar, which I really like, and that we sat outside in a little park area. According to my parents memories, I was only at the hospital once (other than birth) during childhood. That was visiting my mom when my sister was born. Apparently my mom was really sad and missed me and was crying, and they wouldn't let me come visit her. So my dad brought me to stand outside her window so she could see me. This is all well and good, but my sister was born December 1980, making us 18 months apart. So apparently I remember something from before I was two. I guess it was a good candy bar. I don't remember my sister at all (which I suppose makes sense since I didn't get to see her.) My kids are here now and we're going to go hang out and eat lunch and whatnot. I hope you all have a good Mother's Day weekend. |
| Prompt: Pick your top ten values and rank them based on how important they are to you. Then, write about the values you chose and if any have changed throughout your life (list included) So today's prompt sends us to a list of no less than 400 values. Wow. Before I start scanning it, let me make a quick list of the ones I know right off the top of my head are on the list: faith, charity (as in, the pure love of Christ), education, family, kindness, service, individuality, gratitude, ?unmovingness? a willingness to stand up for what is right and not be swayed, I'm sure the list will give me a single word lol. That's eight. Now let's look at the list and see which ones jump out at me: achievement, amusement (maybe), awareness, commitment, compassion (that's similar to charity but not quite), consistency, courage, creativity, dependability, determination, discernment, discipline (especially self), efficiency, endurance, excellence, fortitude-maybe that's the long-word one, freedom, growth, holiness, humor, inquisitiveness, joy, learning, motivation, modesty, open-mindedness, persistence, passion, purity, reliability, resilience, resolve (also good for the ??), respect, reverence, self-control, service, sincerity, spirituality, sufficiency, tidiness, trust, trustworthiness, understanding, (did compassion make the list?), virtue. That's more than 10. Okay, let's take the first eight, at least, and then I'll pull out the other two from the list. Actually, let me start by saying that there are qualities that I value more in myself than in others, or at least desire more for myself than others. To some degree, I suppose that I still judge others by how much they do or do not have the same values, but then there are also things that I do and do not expect. It also varies by relationship: for instance, I'm going to value consistency and reliability more from a professional relationship than, perhaps, spirituality or faith. Faith: My faith is a key part of who I am, even if I don't always show it. In other words, sometimes I am good at putting it into action and sometimes I fail, but I suppose that is part of being human. I should expand that to say that I mean more my faith in God than, say, my faith in other people or in the sun rising or winning a million dollars. But, well, I also tend to have faith in other people to be who I expect them to be, perhaps sometimes more than I ought to for a given relationship. My faith in Jesus Christ has made a significant difference to my life; I came from an abusive household and had to work very hard to not repeat the mistakes of my parents on my own children. While I'm glad to take some credit for it, because I did work hard, I also spent a lot of time in prayer asking Heavenly Father to help me to change to something that I never had a strong example of, asking Jesus Christ to literally make me into a new person. Charity: I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often called 'Mormons'. We define charity as 'the pure love of Christ' and think it is key to becoming more like Him. True charity is not just making a donation but to seek out opportunities to serve and uplift. True charity means trying to love your enemies and those who hurt you as well as your friends. True charity means putting yourself in someone else's shoes. This is something I frequently struggle with but am trying to improve. It's hard to tell if a person is acting from true charity or just wants to be known for doing a great thing. The solution, of course, is not to judge at all and to accept it at face value. My boyfriend says that, when he just assumes everyone has positive intentions, it generally makes him happier. Of course that doesn't work all the time, but as far as charity goes, I don't think it's up to me to try to glean what is in other people's hearts. There may be a slight exception in trying to figure out a person that you hope to be with for the rest of your life, but again, that is more along the lines of trying to understand who they are versus who they appear to be. I'm sidetracked, so let's go to the next one. Education: That's a big one. I would also group curiosity, learning, and achievement with it. I've been amazed at how many people have complained about being bored during the COVID lockdown. If I didn't have to worry about work, there are so many things to learn and do, it would make me crazy. Of course, no one can be productive all the time, but I think trying to learn and grow and improve yourself speaks volumes about who you are. One of the goals I set when I started homeschooling was to teach my children to love learning; I think I've only managed that with one out of four. This is going a bit long, and dinner just finished, so I'm going to go. I'd love to hear about what you value, or what you think of my values! |
| I used to believe that I could blog every day but I'm beginning to doubt it! :D No but seriously, today's prompt is "Start your entry today with the words: “I used to believe...”", and my intro is as such. I'm trying to think about what I used to believe but no longer do - that's what 'used to' means, right? I could go serious with "I used to believe that people were intelligent but then people started worrying more about haircuts and less about life," but I'm not actually in the mood to rant. Okay, how's this: I used to believe that Pluto wasn't a planet. After the International Astronomical Society demoted it in 2006, I went along with the curve and argued their case. The reason Pluto was demoted is because, in the late 90s, we realized that it had neighbors. A lot of them. Some of them are roughly the same size, many of them are smaller. Pluto lies in the Kuiper Belt, a region of space at the edge of the solar system. In some ways, the Kuiper Belt - or Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt if you don't want to forget the Irish astronomer who also independently proposed its existence - is a lot like the better-known asteroid belt. Both contain the debris leftover from the early solar system. But while the asteroid belt is mostly rock, the Kuiper belt tends to be icy. Members of the asteroid belt are also more likely to crash into one another, so while we argue that asteroids like Ryugu and Bennu, both recently visited by asteroid-sampling missions Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx, respectively, are primitave, they are really only relatively primitave. The Kuiper Belt, however, is likely to suffer very few collisions. New Horizons' visit to Pluto and to the Kupier Belt Object (KBO) Arrokoth showed a surprising dearth of craters, which suggests that objects in the Kuiper Belt don't bump into one another as often, and haven't for some time. I must have spent too much time with Alan Stern, however, because I'm finding myself drifting back to the other side. There are plenty of people who argue that Pluto should be a planet because it always has been, at least since its discovery in 1930. To that, I quickly counter that Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, was considered a planet when first discovered for several decades before it was demoted to an asteroid, though it has regained some credibility now as a dwarf planet. And if you really want history to be your guide, well, the word 'planet' is Greek for 'wanderer' and the first planets included the sun and moon. I just don't think the historical argument is the way to go. So what's wrong with the official definition? Well, first there is the way it was passed. The IAU is the International Astronomical Union, which means that most of its members are astronomers rather than planetary scientists. A quick-and-dirty clarification: astronomers tend to study the stars, galaxies, supernova, etc, while planetary scientists tend to look at features of planets, obviously within the solar system. They are actually different fields, believe it or not, so it's like assigning zoologists to define a geology term. Or a geologist to define medical terms. Everyone would be like, WTF?! Additionally, the definition was passed during a meeting of the IAU but it was done on the last day, with little "hey we're going to be doing this" notification. I don't know if it's true for all professional conferences, which take place over a week or, for the IAU, over two weeks, but for all of the science conferences, the last day tends to be the day people are leaving so anything scheduled that day is sparsely attended. The lack of notification meant that few planetary scientists that might have shown up to vote even came to the meeting, and that even any astronomers who cared had most likely left. That's the politics of the situation. I will add that I was not a journalist at the time; that's the same year that my third child was born and I had a two and four year old, so I was busy being a stay-at-home mom. That means that the situation was explained to me, rather than taking it from my own experience. That said, I've heard the above facts repeated multiple times from various sources, most of them trustworthy, so I'm cool with them. Now let's get to the actual definition, or why you don't let geologists define medical terms. In order to be a planet, an object must 1) orbit the sun, 2) be round, and 3) be large enough that its gravity will clear away similar sized objects. 1) Orbit the sun: Nowadays, most people take this to mean 'a star', but the official definition of a planet actually says 'the sun'. The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992 and by 2005 we'd discovered under a hundred, each hard-won. To me, this is the biggest sign that the people defining a planet had no idea what they were doing. That means no exoplanets qualify. 2) Be round: Pluto also falls under this category, so go team. But I'd like to take a moment to point out that, for most if not all of the exoplanets, we most likely will never be able to verify this, leaving them in a stagnant undefined zone. 3) Clear their path: This is the main argument against Pluto being considered as a planet. Because it's nestled in the Kuiper Belt, and supposedly because it's small, Pluto can't clear enough of its fellow KBOs to qualify. But if you dropped Earth in the Kuiper Belt, it also wouldn't manage to clear things out. There's a couple other issues to be argued, but I'm now having a bunch of people yelling at me, so I have to go. |
| Hey all! The next couple of days are going to be scantily blogged because, like a fool, I mistimed things. Then again, there's not a lot of wiggle room in a bimonthly contest! As I'm sure you know, this weekend is Mother's Day. What you *don't* know is that Saturday is my birthday! I'm going to be a million years old. Well it feels like that. So I might actually have all four of my kids in my house for the first time in awhile. That seems crazy given that we're in the middle of a worldwide lockdown, so let me explain. My kids have some cousins-albeit-complex* that are roughly their age, just a few months younger. Those cousins also homeschool like we do. Since homeschooling in a nonpandemic world gives more flexibility to travel than public school, we often went to visit them, especially when they lived only three hours away. So both of my girls, at least, are close to their corresponding cousins, and have great relationships with the ones that are not as close to them in age. When they canceled college, but before the states went into lockdown, my girls decided to go visit their cuzes. My college daughter actually decided that if she was going to be out of school, she would rather be up there where she had space to work instead of down here. :( I am hoping that has to do more with her relationship with her dad and his family, since we have a great one. She also said that, after being on her own as an 'adult', she wasn't psyched about moving back home for 6+ months. :( So my girls were in SC when Georgia and SC both locked down. I did a terrible thing and drove to see them for my younger daughter's birthday. I don't think that broke either state, but I didn't stop for gas so it should be fine. A month later, they are coming down for my double days. They arrived this afternoon and will be here at least through Sunday. So I'll be somewhat incommunicado for those days, brief posts notwithstanding. This lovely post about my family and my descendants ties in very well to today's topic, which asks us to talk about something that isn't worth a lot of $$ but has a lot of value to me. Well, it specifically notes an object. That's probably a good limitation, because I could range from my kids to my talent to my testimony in God, but none of those would be considered 'objects' (I suppose in another age my daughters would but that's a different story). Of course, there are a handful of sentimental things. I'm not quite as crazy as my dad - I might even come back to that - but I tend to save things. Right now in my dresser sock drawer, I have a ziploc bag full of baby teeth from my kids, but don't worry, I won't talk about them. (Also, creepy murder story in my brain.) I have photographs and drawings from my kids. One of my favorites is a photo collage birthday card made by my oldest son; it's hanging on my cork board right now. But the thing I'm most excited about is a relatively new acquisition, only recently received from my aunt although I've had my eyes on it for years (and she promised to give it to me when she died [I didn't ask, she just promised because she knew I would appreciate it]). It's the wedding certificate for my grandmother's parents. When I was 18, the genealogy bug hit me hard, and I started digging into my family tree. The internet was helpful, but it was also fairly new at the time; like I said, I'm pushing a bazillion. I interviewed my grandmother and aunts and uncles and did all kinds of document digging. Most marriage certificates are pretty bland. They are about as fancy as your college or high school diploma. And most people don't frame and post them because, what the heck. So in that case, they are even blander than said diplomas. And for some genealogy stuff, a wedding record might be one line on a page of entries about the married parties. Not my great-grandparent's wedding certificate, though. I don't know if they paid extra or what, but it is a gorgeous, almost scroll-like document. Framed, it's just shy of three feet.tall, and maybe two feet across. It's beautifully decorated, with drawings of birds and ribbons. It's a family heirloom that is also beautiful. I have it hanging on the wall over my piano, and I love it. *Actually, it's not my kids' cousins but their father's cousins. Their father is 45 this year, and the youngest not-cuz is 9. (There are other, even younger, not-cuzes but they aren't part of this particular family.) My ex-mother-in-law was the oldest of seven kids. Her brother Joe is about 14 years younger than she is, and they have another sister who is only three years older than my ex-husband.No one ever believed them. Joe has five kids, some of them younger than my own. |
| Today is going to be a nod to the prompt. I haven't really read any news stories today. But I wrote one! Also, side note, I got to talk to Bruce Campbell today. Not the actor, the planetary scientist. I've interviewed him a couple times but I still giggle when I hear the name. Or say it. Hopefully only a small percentage of you are too young to get the joke. So, news story. Here's one that ticks me off. There was a story that went out of the LA Times about a mutant form of coronavirus that is, essentially, bubkus. The paper, not the COVID. The journalist is clearly not a science journalist, which lets me hit my age old rant. It's about knowing the field and knowing the subject and knowing the players. Sure, you can read a paper and report on it, but that's not always enough. As one of my editors said on Twitter, "Sometimes you just gotta know something about the subfield you're covering and how they operate, sorry." It's also helpful to have an established rep so that researchers are more likely to tell you if they think something is wrong. Additionally, you're more familiar with what's going on in the field and the technical vocabulary. Crap, I am so disjointed. |
| Today has been a pretty good day. Started off chatting with a researcher in Japan who I have worked with before; he's very expressive and clear. There's a reason I often describe my job as "translating for scientists", but he isn't part of it. I also sent off a few work pitches for nonfiction, including one to a new publication, Inside Science; the editor emailed back to say that he had to chat with his boss and see if they were accepting new freelancers to work with them. That sounds like a good sign as I would assume if he didn't like my pitch, he would just straight reject it. I also got an extension on the article that was due today, to tomorrow, which is good because apparently I massively failed. However, my editor had sent me a quasi-related press release on another piece of research, so I was able to sell it as a "talk to this person also" deal. /whew That means, overall, things are looking up. I have several assignments, some short term and some long. I have several interviews already lined up. I should probably go through tomorrow and check my status on each project, to make sure I accomplish something on each one this week. I'm also going to be giving blood on Wednesday. Plus, my daughters will be back in town; they've been staying with their cousins, who are roughly the same age, but will be back for the combination Mother's Day/my birthday weekend. What I will not be doing...is baking. The prompt for the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" asks us to describe our cooking or baking ability. After I finished laughing...no that's not really true. I don't particularly enjoy cooking or baking, but I like the results. Probably the last thing that I made that I was proud of was for my daughter's high school graduation. My younger (then 12 yo) daughter and I made graduation cap cookies and, thanks to the hysterical show Nailed It!, we also made face cookies of my oldest. They were definitely interesting! Another thing I've made in the past that I was proud of was planet cake pops. My youngest daughter - she's the big baker - helped me, and we made all nine planets. That's Pluto, if you were wondering. Both of those were awhile back, maybe a year and 18 months. More recently, I peeled apples last week while my boyfriend made apple pie. Oh my goodness, I am not an apple pie fan but I was in love. With the pie and the boyfriend. Delicious. |
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