Training our focus on four Dark Sky Festival luminaries 

The Dark Sky Festival is nine years old in 2019—not much in astronomical terms, sure, but as far as science festivals go, that’s light years of hard work.

Jasper’s Niki Wilson has been with the event since it was just a nebula. As the Dark Sky Festival’s science content advisor and festival host, she helps pick out the stars from the dark matter.

“We want to bring in people who are really engaging and have great ideas but also people who are evidence-based,” she said.

With Wilson’s help, the festival has once again accomplished that mission. Wilson said she’s not just thrilled to have a world-class festival taking place on the backdoor of her hometown, but she’s also proud of the festival’s progressiveness.

“I’m proud to work with an organization that’s tried hard to keep diversity in mind,” she says. 

Wilson, a trained biologist who made the leap to science communicator and journalist a decade ago, says science comes to life at Dark Sky through storytelling.

“I think being able to spin a good yarn, to be personable, empathetic and relatable is fundamental to any kind of communication,” she says.

The festival stars profiled below are shining examples of that.

Surfing the wave of scientific knowledge

Bob MacDonald was hooked on space from first contact. 

As a young boy in the 1960s, MacDonald watched in awe as the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union heated up. 

“I figured by the time I was old and grey I’d be taking holidays on the moon,” he laughed.

MacDonald might be grey these days, but the 68-year-old host of CBC’s Quirks and Quarks and one of Canada’s best-known science journalists isn’t exactly the retirement type. If he does take a holiday, it’s to explore the earth by land, sea and air. Ironically, it was by looking deep into outer space that helped him appreciate how incredible our home planet really is.   

“It’s a hostile universe out there,” he said. “Here we have this beautiful oasis that’s protecting us from deadly radiation from the sun. Ultimately the biggest lesson we get from astronomy is appreciating the earth.”

Thousand of conversations with some of the world’s most notable scientists have undoubtedly helped that lesson sink in. But regardless of how many Nobel Peace Prize winners he interviews, how many bestselling books he writes (his newest is An Earthing’s Guide to Outer Space) and how many awards he garners for his contributions to the public’s understanding of science, he knows that humans are only scratching the surface of what’s out there.

“I feel like a surfer, penetrating ignorance with science, surfing along as we learn new stuff,” he said.

On October 27, MacDonald will ride that wave into Jasper, where he’ll host Science For Breakfast as part of the Dark Sky lineup. 

MacDonald says the festival makes science interesting by bringing it to life.

“To be out in nature and to see it—not to be in a scientific laboratory or doing all these high experiments—to be out in nature, whether it’s space or the forest or wherever, that’s where the Dark Sky Festival to me really works.”

Hard work and sacrifice cornerstones of citizen-scientist’s meteoric rise

Dr. Shawna Pandya’s schedule was admittedly tightly booked last week.  

She had crammed in micro gravity parabolic flight testing directly after she wrapped up underwater experiments as part of protect NEPTUNE, a mission to test how body functions change over time in space-like conditions. 

“It’s about par for the course,” she smiled. 

Micro gravity parabolic flight testing is simply, she points out, a fancy way of saying testing space suits, but if it sounds like she’s shrugging off alternately spending five days underwater and then jumping in an aircraft which simulates zero-gravity by repeatedly nosediving from 30,000 feet, it’s because Pandya has her sights set much, much higher. The 34-year-old is building her skills and experience so she can someday go to space. 

“That’s something I’ve been training towards for a long time,” she said. 

That training has encompassed a spectrum of disciplines—from medicine to martial arts—but as a rule, it has been disciplined. Unequivocally, the 34-year-old credits her success to hard work and her parents’s sacrifice. In winter, 1981, the Pandya family moved from tropical India to minus-30-degree Brandon, Manitoba to give their kids a better life, as Dr. Pandya put it. 

“It’s the traditional immigrant story,” she said. 

Her own story is anything but traditional. Like the parabolic flight arc flown by the National Research Council Canada’s aircraft to simulate zero-gravity, Pandya’s path has been steep, accelerated and precise. She holds degrees in neuroscience, space studies and medicine. She is a licensed physician. She co-founded CiviGuard, a disaster-response system that helps citizens get in contact with first responders during emergencies. She’s a sky-diver, advanced SCUBA diver and holds a black belt in Taekwondo. She speaks three languages fluently.

So she’s used to her calendar being full.

“It’s been one adventure to the next,” she said.

But Pandya insists she’s not any more gifted or talented than the next person. What has set her apart, she says, is being driven, and being organized.

“Organization is one of those things that we think will come naturally as we grow up,” she said. “But just like discipline, time management and even happiness, these are things to work towards.”

Pandya approaches time-management the same way she approaches flying an aircraft (she’s also working towards her private pilot’s license). She plots her course—in this case, setting immediate, short, intermediate and long-term goals—and maintains a constant rate of scan as she progresses on her flight path. By checking in regularly with what needs to be done now, this week, this month, etc, she’s making sure she stays on course while continuing to serve the bigger picture. 

“We all have the same 24 hours in a day,” she says. 

On October 26, Dr. Pandya will share two of those hours with Dark Sky Festival audience members when she joins an illustrious panel for an in-depth discussion about the challenges and successes of the ongoing quest to land a a crewed mission on Mars. 

It’s another way for this citizen-scientist to inspire others while pursuing her goal of someday getting to space. 

In other words, par for the course.

Where imagination meets investigation

Dr. Seth Shostak was always interested in aliens. 

But that might just have been his DNA.

“There’s an evolutionary benefit to being interested in strange creatures,” Shostak says. “Humans are hard-wired for it.”

Even so, Shostak’s fascination with outer space was particularly acute. As an 11-year-old, he got a telescope. As an eighth grader, he remembers reading stories about UFOs and making goofy science fiction movies with his friends.

“I tested high on the imagination spectrum,” he said.

These days, he’s still interested in what, to some, might constitute as sci fi. Not to mention his telescope is a lot bigger than the one he had in 1954. As the senior astronomer for the SETI (Search Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) Institute, Shostak has made it his life’s work to try to locate evidence of intelligent life in space. By using high powered radio antennas to eavesdrop on outer space, he and his colleagues are listening for a signal from other life forms.

“We’ve only looked at a few thousand star systems,” Shostak said. “In the next 20 years that number could climb to a million.”

That leads Shostak to believe we will hear from intelligent extra terrestrials in the next two decades. Which, no matter how your DNA is constructed, will be of great interest to humankind. 

“It’s hard to imagine any story that could be more dramatic than that,” he said.

Science as rock and roll isn’t a moonshot

Jay Ingram may have been born in the wrong era. 

When the science writer and broadcaster looks back at Victorian England, he notes that lecture halls were regularly sold out for science presentations.

“People went to science lectures the way they went to the opera,” he said.

These days, despite the incredible discoveries that are taking place every day across the scientific world, science typically takes a back seat to politics, sports, weather and pop-culture. 

“People are missing out,” he says. 

But Ingram—who is best known for his 16-year tenure as the host of Discovery Channel’s Daily Planet—knows how to adapt. Part of communicating in today’s attention-deficient world is being an entertainer. 

Cue his latest project: Lunacy. In it, Ingram and a five-piece band take to the stage to explore humankind’s relationship with the moon. It’s a musical, visual and scientific performance examining our relationship with our closest celestial body.

“It’s an integration of information and the emotional quality of music,” he said.  

Lunacy will make its debut at the Jasper Dark Sky Festival. The show will orbit around the 50 year anniversary of man’s first steps on the moon. Not many people realized the designer of the rocket that took the crew of Apollo 11 was a former Nazi-turned American hero. Likewise, Ingram is excited to help people understand that current aspirations for making another lunar landing isn’t as easy as simply firing up up Buzz Aldren’s old rocket ship. 

“There’s a number of downsides to living on the moon. One “day” on the moon equals 14 days and 14 nights; there’s incredibly high radiation and cosmic rays coming from the sun, unfiltered by an atmosphere; it’s effing cold; and there’s no air,” he said. “Altogether it’s a recipe for a pretty unpleasant life.” 

Illuminating the…(ahem)…dark side of the moon is part of how Ingram and this band will put a different spin on the 50 year anniversary of the first moon landing. 

“It’s a little bit rock and roll,” he said.

No matter what era you should have been born in, festival goers should expect a full house. 

Bob Covey // https://bob@thejasperlocal.com