STAR POWER

He8217;s the Carl Sagan of this century and the cosmos is his universe

The first time Neil deGrasse Tyson got a good look at the universe, he thought it was a hoax. He was 9 years old, visiting the Hayden Planetarium, and when the lights went down, a tour of the night sky began, an ocean of stars twinkled overhead.

Yeah, right, he thought. 8220;I grew up in the Bronx, and I8217;d never been in total darkness before,8221; he says. So I had a kind of urban view of the universe. I remember thinking, 8216;Nice show, but this is not the real universe. I8217;ve seen the real universe, and it has 12 stars in it.8217; 8220;

Once Tyson learned otherwise, he was smitten. He8217;d talk about the universe, read about the universe and, whenever possible, stare at the universe through a telescope. Whenever anyone asked what he8217;d do when he grew up, he had an answer, one that he had trouble pronouncing: 8220;I8217;m going to be an astrophysicist.8221;

Which is what he became. Tyson is the author of eight books on all things intergalactic, most recently, Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries, just released in paperback. He is a TV host, a lecturer, researcher and a TV pundit whenever the heavens make news. Tyson has inherited the job created by Carl Sagan: pop culture8217;s public brain for all cosmos-related matters.

On this day, Tyson is outside the Lab School in Chelsea, where he is about to speak before sixth-graders. This is the science class of his daughter, Miranda, one of whose classmates greets him when he walks past the school8217;s gates. 8220;Where have you been!8221; he shouts. 8220;The universe,8221; Tyson replies with barely a hint of irony, 8220;has needed my attention.8221;

When he stands before this sixth-grade class, the geek in Tyson comes out, but so does the showman. 8220;I brought a piece of the universe with me,8221; he says at the outset. Ooohs all around. The piece is a dark, jagged chunk of an asteroid. It is 5 billion years old and weighs 12 pounds. The kids have questions. 8220;What would happen if you touched your hair with dry ice?8221; asks a girl. 8220;It would get brittle and you could snap it off,8221; Tyson says. 8220;If your ears get frozen, you could snap them off like potato chips.8221; Ewwww!. 8220;How old do you have to be to buy dry ice?8221; asks another lad. 8220;If you knew how to order it, I8217;d sell it to you,8221; says Tyson, briefly.

Tyson is one of those rare scientists who seeks out TV appearances. Time magazine this year picked him as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. People magazine once named him 8220;Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive8221;. Tyson describes his principal calling as feeding the national appetite for information about the universe8212;and occasionally encouraging more scientific rigour from Hollywood. Tyson remembers watching Titanic and noticing that the stars over Kate Winslet8217;s head as she floated in the ocean were a fictional hodgepodge of constellations8212; and that the right half of the sky simply mirrored the left. 8220;That8217;s just lazy,8221; Tyson grumbles. 8220;A 50 software programme would show you exactly what the night would have looked like.8221;

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When Tyson later met director James Cameron at a NASA conference, he picked this nit. Tyson still remembers Cameron8217;s reply: 8220;Last time I checked, Titanic sold 1.3 billion worth of tickets worldwide. Imagine how many more tickets we would have sold if we8217;d gotten the sky right.8221; Touche.

But when the 10th-anniversary edition of the movie was being readied for release on DVD, Cameron8217;s company called Tyson for advice. Rent Titanic now and take note of the sky.
-David Segal LAT-WP