Dawn sees the Sun rising over the horizon in the East, arcing across the sky, and through the course of an Earth day, slowly sinking into the west. One could assume, if they were living under a rock and had never had a thought process that went deeper than wondering if the Duck Dynasty brothers ever trim their beards, that the sun orbits the earth.
A quarter of all Americans don’t get it. They truly think that the sun orbits around the Earth.
This shocking finding comes from a survey of more than 2,200 people in the United States, conducted by the National Science Foundation in 2012. The survey, done every two years, tests the public’s knowledge of basic facts in the physical and biological sciences.
It may have its roots in the heliocentric theory which positioned the sun as the center of the universe as many believe, but when it spews CME’s at us (Coronal Mass Ejections) and threatens our very usage of the cellphone as entertainment and diversion we disavow its life-giving nurture and pull back to a simpler time in our lives when the words ‘Honey’ and ‘Boo Boo’ were separate and distinct.
We don’t wish to think of our sun as a celestial parent, angry at our transgressions and willing to punish us with a CME for example, for texting while driving. We’d like to take the word of those who call themselves ‘scientists’ whether or not they have graduated from a school that has the words ‘American’ and/or ‘Institute’ and/or ‘Not a Diploma Mill’ in its title.
We tend to believe what people tell us, like the one about Pluto not really being a planet but a large rock in the Kuiper Belt. (Note to self: Thanks to Hubble Space telescope’s discovery that Pluto has 5 orbiting moons there are astronomers that are pushing for it to be back as our 9th Planet, and no, it wasn’t named after the Disney character, but the Roman god of the underworld.)
OK, we can ‘let it slide’ that many believe that ‘belief equals science’ the Earth came into existence 6,000 years ago when God said ‘Pffft!’
These people can tell you the winner on ‘America’s Biggest Loser’ and with authority state that the president was born in another country because they heard it on TV.
We didn’t co-exist with the dinosaurs either. Contrary to popular opinion, the ‘Flintstones’ were not based on a true story.
