confession of a physicist

So, I wrote my last post in response to the dVerse prosery prompt, which was to write up to 144 words of prose including  the line “I am bombarded yet I stand”. Then I thought I’d better actually read the poem by Adrienne Rich, “Planetarium”, that the line comes from.  And I wrote this as my proseyness instead: 

XXXXXX

XXXXXXI have a confession:

I don’t like astronomy. I find it really boring.

Go on, gasp in horror. Judge me soulless.

It’s like I’m saying koalas are ugly – because astronomy is the koala of the sciences, that everyone coos over and says “wow! amazing!”.

(Ever seen koalas mating? It’s violent. And they carry chlamydia…   Just sayin’)

This is the most interesting astronomy “fact” I could find: 10¹¹  neutrinos from the sun pass through every square centimetre of me each second. I am bombarded, yet I stand. In fact, I .don’t. .even. .bloody. .notice.

Yet if you take away my phone (thankyou solid state physics – the phytoplankton of the science world, unnoticed but crucial to everyday life), I’ll be on my knees begging you to give it back.

(…hmmm….  and how come so many of my astronomer friends look kinda like koalas?)