Why I Am an Astrophysicist [for paul]

A reader writes: What inspired Jeff Wing to become an Astrophysicist? – Demonstrably Disquisitive in Downtown Diner

Dear Demostrangmuh…
Dear Reader,

Thanks so much for your question. I don’t know how many of your fellow villagers are aware of my Astrophysicist status. Your published question makes it easier for me to broadcast this bit of personal triumphalism without the awkwardness of a sandwich board and bullhorn. Am I proud and pleased to be an Astrophysicist? Well, wouldn’t you be? 

As for the origins of my cosmic circumbendibus (forgive my fancy astro talk), like any Astrophysicist worth a thimbleful of star dirt, I came early to the profound questions that have long haunted our species. Let me explain my journey, that it may inspire you to reach for your own stars while providing me the opportunity to talk about myself at length. 

Drawn Inexorably

As a young man (I’m still quite young but was even younger back then, if you can imagine) I found myself drawn inexorably to the Mystery of Existence. It turns out that eight minutes or so pondering the Mystery of Existence is pretty exasperating, and looking to the stars for answers is about as effective as asking a rock for cooking advice. Despite the utter silence of the void, my yearning heart soldiered on. Why? Because a deeply embedded spirit of exploration infuses our very DNA. Hence the double-helix with its handy rungs and the little guy at the bottom yelling through cupped hands “CLIMB! CLIMB YOU SONOFAGUN!” 

You see, ever since Cave Man Times, when our hunched and repulsive forebears sat staring at the heavens in wonder, we have plumbed the depths of our collective imagination to understand all those twinkling lights and stuff. No, we didn’t get very far at first. Our stone age bafflement and frustration was such that we would often stalk angrily into a cave and furiously paint pictures of our own hands for, like, hours. From these embarrassing beginnings we began to fashion a crude cosmology, based largely on our hands, and on stick figures surrounding poorly drawn bison. We continued to stare upwards through the vast, starry vault to little avail. 

A Glint of Silver

It wasn’t until 1963 and The Outer Limits episode “The Zanti Misfits” that the cosmos began to yield her previously hidden secrets, and I was stirred by the first spark of what it is to be an Astrophysicist. In the episode, Bruce Dern and his girlfriend (played by the strange and angular Olive Deering) drive carelessly into a restricted desert area, having just robbed a bank. A glint of silver descends through the sky like an inept special effect. It comes to rest on a hilltop, and Dern leaves the car and his date to shamble up and have a look. 

So it is that Dern quizzically approaches the smallish, silver conical spaceship, a little door pops open and out marches a not terribly threatening platoon of ants the size of prairie dogs, each with a little nose and attractive little kewpie doll lips one might find adorable if they weren’t affixed to ant heads.

The invaders step out onto conquered Earth in a stop-action goose step and kill Bruce Dern just by walking on his arm. It develops these guys are criminal Zantis from the planet… wait for it… Zanti. It’s that same ill-conceived sci-fi TV convention that gives us Vulcans from the planet Vulcan – a bit of screwy extraterrestrial nomenclature that would have people of our home planet called ‘Earths.’

Our Leaders Have Agreed with their Leaders

By previous arrangement, our leaders have agreed with their leaders (you know the drill) to allow the Zanti prisoner ship to land in a remote location where the Zantis will be provided a desert cordon in perpetuity. We probably also told them this g*dforsaken baked hill in the middle of nowhere was a popular beauty spot here on Earth, keeping Hawaii and La Jolla secret. “Secure for us your most beauteous place for exile, Earths!” Okay, you dumb ants. Here are the coordinates. Happy landings! 

When the Zantis realize they’ve killed Bruce Dern by just walking on his arm, they are emboldened. They fly their little ship to a nearby army base and attack! What the Zantis don’t realize is that – though they are frightening menaces on the planet Zanti,  on this planet their kind are picnic pests squashed in their thousands as we drowsily chew baloney sandwiches. They are thus quickly defeated by young NCOs in khaki, who waste no time dispatching the uppity space bugs with pistols, grenades, clubs, and (yes) the soles of their army-issue shoes. 

By episode’s end we have learned – through the exhausting exposition of a distant Zanti explainer on the short-wave space radio – that the Zanti prisoners were sent here deliberately by their overseers to be killed by we bloodthirsty humans. It seems executions of even the most hardened criminals are illegal on the awkwardly named but comparatively merciful planet Zanti, where delicate little lips are considered wildly menacing – one of a handful of cultural presuppositions that made the Zanti jailbreak a short one.

“Humans are expert executioners,” the smarmy Zanti Leader says on the radio, causing Olive Deering to take a pull on her cigarette in foreground and say “expert executioners” with an arch little leer of judgement. Whose side are you on, Deering? Yet again Earth’s hapless accountants, ball players, chefs, thoracic surgeons, and polo champs – the whole sorry lot of us, that is – get thrown under the bus by a “Leader.” It’s a template.  

What we Astrophysicists know is intergalactic invasion. I’ve spent a lifetime studying Zantis, Triffids, towering Martian tripods, Body Snatchers, and Michael Rennie in silver underwear. These deep-space boobs are always asking to be taken to our “Leader.” It’s always “Leader” this, “Leader” that. I don’t know what the sitch is out there on the planet Zanti (*sigh*), but down here our Leaders are inevitably the least of us, conferring in back rooms, daubing their chins with makeup, instructing us who to hate, eating takeout with saturated fats, and throwing us into thefray.This is the lesson we Earths only vaguely absorb, even as the heavy machines clear the smoldering rubble away for the umpteenth time. 

Reader, thanks again for your question. As your resident Astrophysicist I feel I have the expertise and authority to offer this piece of advice regarding intergalactic diplomacy. Next time some hotshot space squid in a crash helmet descends the ramp of his ship and haughtily asks to be taken to your leader, you know what to say.

“You’re looking at him.”