Nahum Arav says, "There is nothing like astronomy to excite young minds about science."

BLACKSBURG -- Sitting in front of his gigantic Dell monitor in his Virginia Tech office, the associate professor of astrophysics cheerfully explained his ongoing relationship with NASA's astronomy image of the day.

"When I come in to work each day, one of my little rituals -- to put some beauty in my life -- is to look at the image of the day," Nahum Arav said. "They are so pretty that I often use them in my classes."

This simple gesture to connect his science, his life and his teaching is typical of Arav, an Israeli native who has just completed his first full year in Blacksburg and is focused on expanding astronomy education at Tech.

For Arav, public outreach and making astronomy visible in both the university and the general public is a critical aspect of his job. While research has more measurable outcomes, exciting students and the community about science is what makes research possible.

Beate Schmittmann, chairman of the Tech physics department, agreed and said Arav was recruited to Tech, in part, because of his dynamic approach, ability to communicate the value of research and his enthusiasm for promoting public outreach.

"We don't live in a vacuum," said Schmittmann, "and we have to share our successes and progress with society at large because they provide the tax dollars that fund our work."

At most large universities, Arav said, a physics department commonly has between 10 and 20 faculty members teaching astronomy. But until last year, when Arav came to Tech, there was only one astronomy professor, John Simonetti, whom Arav describes as "heroic" in his efforts to spread astronomy education.

At the University of Colorado-Boulder, where Arav completed his doctorate in astrophysics, as many as 1,500 students take astronomy and planetary science classes annually. At Tech, the number has traditionally been fewer than 200, which Arav said is unfortunate.

"There is nothing like astronomy to excite young minds about science," said Arav, whose personal passion has led him to study the chemical composition of supermassive black holes using the Hubble space telescope.

He's also done post-doctoral work at Cal Tech and Berkeley, but Arav is more than just a research scientist with a teaching position. For him, teaching and public outreach is a critical aspect of improving scientific understanding and advancing society.

To this end, Arav has offered public lectures on "The Paranormal Universe," in which he discusses science, psychology, sociology and the media and how that relates to phenomena such as crop circles and UFOs.

His position is simple: Science should investigate such phenomena with an open mind and people must be willing to accept the results, even if the findings contradict their beliefs.

In his lectures on the paranormal, Arav said he has found that people are often motivated by beliefs and don't want to accept scientific conclusions.

However, he said he sees the cultural clash between science and religion or personal beliefs unnecessary and detrimental to progress, pointing out that real science does not have a motive. It merely explains how the natural world works.

Arav said he would therefore like to see a popular embrace of science and stressed the need for scientists to reach out to the public, especially since the media often underreports, inaccurately relates or downplays scientific advances.

Take the case of Pluto.

According to Arav, scientists have known since the 1960s that Pluto did not fit the size requirements for classification as a planet. But no one wanted to touch the issue because three generations of textbooks affirmed Pluto was a planet.

A former colleague of Arav, Mike Brown of Cal Tech, forced the issue when he located an object outside Pluto's orbit that was clearly larger, which he named Eris. Arav said there may be 15 or 20 such objects orbiting the sun.

In other words, if Pluto is a planet, then Eris and the others must be as well.

"So what is a less bitter medicine?" he asked. "To force all the kids to learn 27 planets or demote Pluto?"

To fight misinformation and disinterest, Arav said scientists have to be proactive in their efforts to communicate effectively with the public through outreach programs, by embracing the media and making their work accessible to people.

In the long run, he said he hopes such efforts locally and nationally will lead to better educated decision-makers in government and business.

Arav encourages people to make a trip to the Virginia Tech Prices Fork Observatory. It is run by the astronomy club and open to the public on the first and third Friday of the month.

There is a 14-inch telescope and, Arav said, on a clear night you can see planets, star clusters and galaxies quite well.

On the Net: www.phys.vt.edu.