By Grom D. Matthies
This is the final GAM article for the Diverse Universe Week, Monday 18 to Sunday 24 April 2016. This week's posts on the GAM Blog will focus on the diversity of the global astronomy community.
Everything has an end, except sausages which tend to have two. As such, this year’s GAM is also coming to an end after plenty of activities and events have been realised throughout the entire month and all around the world.
The world in the year 2016 and locations there activities were unfold during the Global Astronomy Month. Curiously and quite unexpected, the subtropics are the most contributing regions. The number of events, as well as the number of countries participating clearly suggests that there is still a lot of room and need for more. (Credit: Google, GRM/NUCLIO)
Quite a lot of other astronomy oriented outreach activities happened in April, though not necessarily yielding a banner of GAM or even aware of this global effort and initiative.
The motto of Astronomers Without Borders - One People, One Sky – surely is met during GAM, bringing enthusiasts together worldwide and creating bonds between them.
All the other initiatives apart from GAM certainly do their own contribution in raising awareness for the sky, our universe and how it works, or at least, how it looks.
All together that deems to be a good thing.
Hardly ever before in history astronomy and all its up-to-date content has ever been such widely spread and readily available for immediate or delayed consumption. Observing sessions, speeches, workshops, training and education, citizen science projects and internet sites in all colors and rectangle filling shapes, there is an overwhelming amount of sources and resources.
Competition is good for business, at least it is for businesses. Most unfortunate, spreading scientific culture and awareness is not a business. Stars are just so tough to sell or put in a shelf, for that matter. Most activities are also free to attend. So, all these initiatives, being it during GAM or any other time, are dependent on funding, which is right out insufficient, and lot of self-inflicted, no-charge-taken workload.
This manifold presence of astronomy and companions seems good. For the public and the interested ones certainly is.
Does that mean all goals for AWB and GAM are met? Shall initiatives like these shut down and get collaborators earn some money for their effort rather than giving freebies all around? Sure no. No way.
Yet, let’s suppose that they were met. We can’t stop. What good would it do if we had scientific or astronomy-related awareness raised amongst most pupils in schools and some adults who attend outreach or educational events if we were to stop? It would mean, for a long time to go until the current pupils turn old enough to occupy decision making positions (funds or otherwise), that things would fall back into the dark-ages, not the historical ones, but those just a few years back, when stars were, for many people, some apple sized, sunshine reflecting somethings in the sky.
They still are, at least it seems so, on decisions between funding either a proposal for scientific outreach/education or some more mind distracting but glamourous, career boosting spectacle that attracts many more people.
Let’s be blunt, not only students need scientific education. Adults do need awareness about earth, universe and what makes it tick (or may stop it in a glance) even more. Awareness is knowledge, knowledge is culture, culture makes a country develop. Scientific culture tends to help people understand things and ramifications more clearly. It helps doing smarter decisions, being tolerant or more supportive concerning the direct surrounding. This does potentially and practically prevent cliché-, faith- or ignorance-based actions, which, one way or the other, so often do real harm to inhabitants of one nation or one other nearby.
As any uncensored newspaper in the world proves daily, there is still a long way to go before there will be really One people – One sky. Well, at least one sky is ensured for the time being. More help is needed to get the other part, all the people, into the spirit.
So, GAM will be and must be back in 2017. If you can’t join us, fund us!
Grom D. Matthies is a funding needed member of NUCLIO, the national coordinator of AWB in Portugal. Creating and testing learning-efficient, involving, quality content for education or outreach occupies most of the time, keeping track of tons of unhatched ideas the remainder. Like solar panels, his workflow and happiness flourish mainly then subjected to sunshine. Thus, the sun- earth relationship is one of the bigger interests of this earthling.
