The Curious Case of Alex Filippenko
First things first. Alex Filippenko is a highly regarded and highly visible cosmologist and professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley.
Now, if you’ve watched as many documentaries about space as I have (you haven’t, trust me) you’d come to find two things strange about Mr. Filippenko (Or Captain Supernovae as I like to call him, and I’d like to think he wouldn’t mind that I do):
1. The man doesn’t age. I have watched docs from the early 90s straight through to 2 months ago. He’s in 70% of them. He looks EXACTLY the same.
2. He smiles. All the time. And not just a weird “Hey I’m on TV smile” but a deep and genuine “SPACE IS AWESOME” smile. I would describe the man as the heretofore undiscovered “Jolly Scientist”. He can and will map out the literal end of the universe with a certain gravity (jazzhands), sure, but I guarantee you he’s smiling while he explains it to you. Moreover, he’s probably using helpful props to help you understand how you’ll die.
Hypothesis: Alex Filippenko is the undiscovered Cheshire Cat of Cosmology.
Now, whether he’s alive or dead is up to Susskind.
