Astrobiology Rap — who’d a thunk it?
I was reading some techie sites today and they mentioned the LHC Rap had more hits than the Astrobiology Rap. So naturally, I had to check this out.
Jonathan Chase loves rap and has melded it with his love of science. Even his rapper name, Oort Kuiper, is a nod to his passion for science. Anyway, according to several articles that I read (here and here), he was commissioned by NASA to develop an Astrobiology Rap for the latest edition of NASA’s Astrobiology Magazine European Edition. Luckily for us, the Astrobiology Rap is now on YouTube.
It’s rather nice to see that scientists and those who understand science are reaching out to the younger audience to hopefully get them interested in the wonders and beauty and the big questions that make science so fascinating.
Are we the only sentient race in the universe? I don’t think so — the universe is just so big there has to be another spark of life out there somewhere. The trick is to find it and to recognize it. If what we do on earth is any indication of how we’d treat sentient lifeforms — we just redefine life so that the newly found one doesn’t qualify. We constantly do that here on earth. Don’t believe me? Think about how the definition of sentient life has changed as we discovered some animals use tools, that when taught a language we can understand (American sign language), we decided that just because they made up words out of what they already knew for new items and that people could read their signing it wasn’t “real” language. Evidently, when we’re threatened with not being unique we move the bar and make it harder for anyone/any species other than ourselves to qualify.
Anyway, enjoy the rap. Normally, I don’t care for rap (who wants to be sworn at for 3 minutes), but this one is rhythmic and and has a story to tell.