{"id":789804,"date":"2024-10-02T02:42:56","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T07:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=789804"},"modified":"2024-10-02T02:42:56","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T07:42:56","slug":"teaching-the-science-of-climate-change-through-astronomy-101-short-wave-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=789804","title":{"rendered":"Teaching the science of climate change through Astronomy 101 : Short Wave : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n Astronomy professors across the country are integrating climate change lessons into one of their most wide-reaching and popular courses: Introduction to Astronomy. \n <\/p>\n
Mark Garlick\/Science Photo Library\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Astronomy professors across the country are integrating climate change lessons into one of their most wide-reaching and popular courses: Introduction to Astronomy.<\/p>\n
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Mark Garlick\/Science Photo Library\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
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Introduction to Astronomy is a college class usually filled with excitement and a lot of questions about outer space. Questions like: What are black holes? Are there planets out there that are habitable? Why is Venus’s climate so different from Earth’s even though the planets started out so similar?<\/p>\n
It’s perhaps because of this that the course lends itself to discussing the realities of climate change here on Earth.<\/p>\n
It also might be the last science class that non-STEM majors will take \u2013 their last chance to learn the science to understand global warming. “That’s part of the reason why we’re motivated to teach climate change in our courses,” says Travis Rector, a professor of astronomy at the University of Alaska Anchorage. <\/p>\n
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