NPR evidently ran this story last night on "All Things Considered," which I almost never listen to; but it tracked me down anyway on my tablet. A planetary conjunction involving Venus and Jupiter is happening, and in the great tradition of cheesy, cringey science journalism, NPR packaged it thusly:
"They've been coming in closer and closer for a little nighttime kiss," says Jackie Faherty, who's an astronomer at the American Museum of Natural History.
Of course in space the planets aren't really going to smooch. "They are actually 400 million miles apart," Faherty says. That's more than four times the distance than we are from the sun.
And since the Earth's orbit is actually between those of Jupiter and Venus, we are in the position of Lucky Pierre, is that cool or what? The writer, Michaeleen Doucleff, didn't have to come up with the "kiss" metaphor on her own: an actual astronomer provided it. Doucleff got creative herself, noting that tonight, Thursday, "The two planets will still seem quite close, continuing their celestial dance. But soon, they'll go back to arms length." Awww, can't this marriage be saved? It seems tragic that they're going to break up. Relationships just don't get the same commitment nowadays that they used to. Think of the children! Isn't it bad enough that the moon is going to leave the Earth in six hundred million years?
This sort of hyperbole is evidently irresistible, not only to science journalists ("celestial date") but to scientists themselves. Another recent conjunction was described by an astronomer as "like teenagers at a high school dance: They’re getting closer and closer together. It’s been a year of watching this, of them getting closer, and now they’re going to have a close slow dance." I suppose it's better than the religious language that physicists keep falling into (the "God Particle," for instance), but for me it's a turnoff, and I always wonder if the disappointment other laymen feel when the stars fail to perform as promised prevents any interest -- let alone enthusiasm -- for science and nature that they might otherwise have acquired.
P.S. This story from USA Today washed up on the Internet after I thought I'd finished this post, and it's much better than the stories I linked before. It manages to cover the Jupiter-Venus conjunction by providing factual information without tarting it up. Ironic, isn't it, given USA Today's reputation as a lowbrow rag, while the more prestigious NPR and its astronomer sources evidently felt that the rubes wouldn't be interested if the event weren't cast as a romance? It's even more ironic, since NPR's audience probably see themselves as devout believers in Science, Evidence, and Reason.
