Shari Rudavsky

shari.rudavsky@indystar.com

Interviewing Neil deGrasse Tyson can leave one feeling more than a little starstruck.

After all, Tyson — host of the updated version of the "Cosmos" science TV series — is more than just a latter-day Carl Sagan.

He doesn't talk about "billions and billions of stars," the Sagan catchphrase, but people have been listening to what he says — some of it controversial. Tyson, the director of the Hayden Planetarium at New York's American Museum of Natural History, has become known for saying what he thinks on topics ranging from race to evolution.

More than 2.3 million people follow him on Twitter (@neiltyson) for his pithy insights on life, the universe and a wide range of other topics.

On Oct. 22, he will speak at the University of Indianapolis on "This Just In: Latest Discoveries in the Universe." The speech is part of the university's Blanche E. Penrod Lecture Series.

Tickets to the free event will be made available to the general public at 11 a.m. Sept. 9. Seating will be limited, and tickets will be restricted to two per customer in person at Ransburg Auditorium, 1400 E. Hanna Ave., by phone at (317) 788-3251 or online at www.uindy.edu/ETC.

In advance of Tyson's appearance here, we posed some questions to the scientific superstar.

Question: What do most people see when they look up at the night sky?

Answer: First, I think most people never look up. So we have to solve that challenge first. If you live in a city, the sky does not call to you. Since most people live in city environments or near a city, most people do not have the occasion to be distracted by anything that's going on in the sky, so it's not their fault.

When people go on vacation to a place where there is no light pollution, it's one of the first things they comment on — "The sky was amazing!"

Q: And what do you see when you look up?

A: I'm no different in that regard. When I was 9, we visited The Hayden Planetarium, the one I now happen to be director of, for the first time. They turned out the lights and the stars came on, and I said, "Wow!" I thought it was a hoax.

I later traveled to the Caribbean and central Pennsylvania and saw the night sky as nature intended, and from then on, it was as though the universe had called me. I had no say in the matter. I was helpless in the presence of the universe calling my name.

Q: Is there something spiritual about the night sky?

A: I find it intriguing that almost every civilization that worshipped gods, the gods they worshipped are not on the ground. In most religions, the gods were always up above their heads. No one is worshipping the gods under your feet. So there is something about up that captures our interest more deeply and spiritually than things down, and I'm intrigued by that.

Now that we don't have a relationship with the night sky, we have a relationship with other things, like a flat-panel television. I don't mind people doing all of the rest of this. What concerns me is if you do it and you have never seen the night sky.

Q: Would something change in our society if more people did this?

A: I pretend that I have an answer to that. When you look up, not only with the unaided eye but with binoculars and telescopes, you gain what we in my field call a cosmic perspective, and the cosmic perspective is an objectively honest assessment of our place in the universe.

You learn how vast the universe is. The Earth is just one of many planets. The sun is just one of many stars. These are the points of view that you gain upon spending any amount of time studying the universe. And I'd like to believe that if more people did this, you'd now turn back to Earth and say, "You're fighting over what?"

The Earth from space has no resemblance to the schoolroom globe that we grew up with. That globe has color-coded countries. From a cosmic perspective, Earth is just ocean and land and clouds. I'd like to think that if more people had the cosmic perspective, we'd treat each other better.

Q: Do you dream of going into outer space?

A: Terra firma is not overrated. On Earth, I can breathe the air and pluck fruit off trees and eat it. Sure, I would love to go into space, but not in the way we think about space.

Let's go back to the schoolroom globe. Where is the space station orbiting if the whole world were the size of a schoolroom globe? No one gets the right answer to this. It's three-eighths of an inch above the surface. To me, that's not space. Space is when you're going somewhere.

Do I want to go into space?

Sure, provided you send me somewhere and I can take the whole family. I'll go to Mars, but I want to make sure there's enough money to bring me back.

Q: Are people more or less interested in astronomy today than when you went into the field?

A: I think science has been trending in the past couple of years. I have various measures of this, all circumstantial. The No. 1 sitcom on television is "The Big Bang Theory." It shows scientists being geeky. Imagine pitching that show 20 years ago.

The fact that "The Big Bang Theory" is as successful as it is means more than geeks are watching it. The scientists of the past were not characters you would ever care about. They were there behind the lab table; you didn't know if they had kids. This was a way of dehumanizing scientists.

Q: If you had not gone into astronomy, what might you have done?

A: I would write more, and I would write songs. I would have to be born with a different set of talents and interests, but I deeply embrace songs that convey emotion and content, such as what you would find in a Broadway musical.

Q: Why did you start tweeting?

A: I just tweet random thoughts that come in my thoughts each day, and it turns out that people really get into it. I have 2.3 million Twitter followers, and I keep saying to myself each morning, "Have I told you guys that I'm an astrophysicist?" So I'm flattered and honored, and I see it as an awesome responsibility to serve the interest of that community of followers.

I think I am awakening or stimulating some interest that many people didn't even know they had. I'm awakening their inner geek, and I think that can only be a good thing.

Call Star reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her on Twitter: @srudavsky.