Michael writes: “This is a tattoo of how our galaxy could look from a distance, with our solar system’s position marked by the red star burst. A map, if you will, so that I do not get lost. I need only let my foot guide me home.”
Carl: For the latest version of the Milky Way, see here.
Ryan writes, “I am a big astronomy buff and this is a depiction of an eclipse with the Eagle Nebula and one of the angelic spires within it.”
Carl: Check out this site at NASA for more pictures and some background about these staggering towers of light.
Lauren writes:
“I’m not a scientist by trade, but I am, in fact, a huge nerd. I study 18th-century British literature, including scientific literature. It was a wild time to be in science. It was also the heyday of the orrery, which provided the initial impetus for my tattoo. (Orreries, as it turned out, involve too many circles to make them feasible for inking on a large scale.) Then I discovered & fell in love with the comprehensive diagrams in Giovanni de’Dondi’s 1364 Il Tractatus Astarii–the plans for the first famous astrarium. My backpiece is of the Mercury wheelwork. Of course, you couldn’t track Mercury with it–de’Dondi followed Ptolemy–but I find his Astrarium a lovely & impressive testament to human ingenuity & curiosity.”
Carl: It took sixteen years for de’Dondi’s astrarium to be built, but it was later destroyed. See a reconstruction here. And read about de’Dondi here.
“Backstory: my parents met at a wedding on July 20, 1969, a very important date in the annals of human scientific achievement – the night humans first set foot on the moon. All my life, I have had a fascination with the moon not just as a tangible, graspable place (science fiction made real) but as a symbol for what the human race can achieve when we apply the best abilities of the best minds.”
Carl: The moon was science’s first glimpse of cosmic imperfection. For centuries, natural philosophers declared the heavens to be beyond decay and change. Everyone could see that the mooon was irregularly colored, but they explained it away in various ways–perhaps the reflection of the Earth itself, or the glint of sunlight bouncing off of celestial vapors. But when Galileo turned his telescope towards the moon, he saw clearly the moon’s pock-like craters, changing with the shifting shadows. The moon is not timeless, but mature, its battered face the sign of experience; astronomy no longer has the purity of mathematics, but the fascinating quirks of biography.
“Some history: My name is Skye, and I am a Chemist by trade, but in my spare time I am an stargazer and amateur astronomer.”
“This is an artist’s rendition of Frake Drake’s Solar Location Map on the Pioneer plaques. [CZ: Actually, I think it's Voyager] I’m an application engineer… A science fan that just wanted the aliens to know where to return me if I were to be abducted : )” –Matt
“My Mars tattoo, inspired by a close friend and the need for humans to go in to space. Well at least that’s the short answer.” –Walter Fruge
Niles writes, “My tattoo is the Pioneer Plaque.” Note from Carl: Here is some background on the Pioneer space missions.
Pax writes, “My Galileo tattoo. I’m in computers, but it’s a general sentiment.. I think it fits the thread.”[Note from Carl: See here for more on this quotation.]
A reader writes: “This is my friend, Ira Klotzko, he’s got a doc. in Physics and a great sense of humor. I won’t share his original plan for the depiction of Uranus…One we can share is how he jokes that the tattoo is really accurate because, as is the case with his waistline, the universe is always expanding.”
Andrew writes:
“I cleverly disguised my ‘science’ tattoo as yet-another-asian-character. I had the chinese words yu zhao tattooed over my spine just below the collar-line. Roughly translated (because as Inara says on that Firefly episode, “there are nuances of meaning) it means Cosmos. And just to really geek out – I got the idea from a report done on gravitation submitted to the International Geophysical Union.”
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"Celebrated curiosity monger"
Carl Zimmer writes about science regularly for the New York Times and magazines such as Discover, where he is a contributing editor and columnist.
He is the author of twelve books, the most recent of which is Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed. His website is carlzimmer.com and his address is blog at carlzimmer dot com .
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