When science communication goes viral

This astronomer is spreading little-known knowledge through animations on social media.

By Maria Lovato

Earth and Jupiter to scale | James O’Donoghue @physicsJ

When Dr. James O’Donoghue created a simple animation showing Saturn losing its rings in order to explain the concept to a journalist, he didn’t expect an animation that only took a weekend of free time to make to end up leading the article on the New York Times website.

O’Donoghue, a planetary astronomer at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and formerly at NASA, had been making animations just for fun and to explain basic-level astronomy to friends and family. But after the positive impact of the Saturn animation, he realized that there was a gap in visual explainers of already-existing science topics.

“It’s actually like an outlet for me to share one of my passions … It’s a fun way to communicate, and I didn’t expect it to go this far, to be honest,” O’Donoghue said in a phone interview.

Now, O’Donoghue shares his animations on YouTube and Twitter to his more than 90,000 followers. He targets his content to reach everyday people, and many of his animations have been viewed millions of times. He’s been retweeted by Elon Musk and his animations have appeared in publications like Business Insider and the New York Times.

“I think my target audience is everyone,” O’Donoghue said. “I’ve always been trying to get the people that are not as engaged into it with some kind of hook. And so, if people are scrolling down their feed and there’s some video, usually people stop.”

O’Donoghue believes that most scientists should be doing some kind of science communication. He points out that in many cases, the public is paying for scientific research through taxes. And, O’Donoghue said, important astronomy topics are not usually taught in primary and secondary school. He creates animations that he thinks will fill this information void, and interacts with his audience on Twitter to create animations that answer questions people have.

Putting out animations on social media is a more effective way to reach people than other, more traditional forms of outreach, O’Donoghue said. And he found that working to explain science that isn’t new allows him to avoid the typical PR avenues that scientists usually have to go through to disseminate their work.

“Normally, with any kind of animation or illustration, when you do a science press release, you really have to wrestle with your department or university or agency,” O’Donoghue said. “So, I just decided to do it myself.”

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