by 
There’s a simple wonder and joy from observing the depths of time and reality and contemplating your place in the infinite vastness of creation, and I’m damned if I’m going to let you just enjoy it.
You always get these science poseurs coming out of the woodwork whenever a telescope has a hit image, but let me tell you, I’ve been into exoplanet observation since before it was cool.
Yeah, I get it. Fancy pictures back into the dawn of time showing entire galaxies which have guttered and died since their light set off to reach us might get all the trendy kids into the observatories, but prove you’re a true fan by naming three exoplanets with identifiable Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the atmosphere.
I thought not.
You’ve got the famous picture as your screensaver, but you didn’t go through the early days of making out scratchy, grainy images trying to identify pulsars and red shift on dwarf stars.
You can’t call yourself a proper fan if you can’t tell the analysis of WASP-96 b from 51 Pegasi b. Is that on your T-shirt? Well it’s on mine, right behind the Bolognaise sauce I spilled down it last week.
Anyway, can I buy you a drink sometime? You’re really attractive.
Hello? Come back?
This joke was shamelessly nicked (with permission) from Tom Chivers’ excellent article here.
