A teenage science writer strives to inspire curiosity

Saanich, British Columbia –

Nathan Hellner-Mestelman seems like an ordinary teenager walking down the hall of his high school, until he shares his extraordinary appreciation for static on the radio.

“It’s the radiation left by the Big Bang,” smiles the 17-year-old young man at the hum emitted by the stereo. “The sweet music of the universe.”

It's a kind of enduring song, composed almost 14 billion years ago.

If you ask Nathan about the start of his science journey, he'll tell you about the time he was 12 and took a brief break from observing a lunar eclipse to refuel.

“While I was having a cookie, an asteroid hit the moon,” Nathan explains. “And I didn’t see it obviously.”

While the impact seemed smaller than the smallest cookie crumb, Nathan learned that it was actually large enough to have leveled a city block.

“So I wondered what was going on in the universe that we don't think about because we're here on Earth eating cookies,” Nathan says.

Nathan's curiosity led him to be accepted by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada at age 12, to create science fair projects too advanced for judges to understand at age 15, and to become the one of the most extraordinary students Neal Johnson has taught in nearly 30 years.

“He reminds me so much of young Carl Sagan,” Neal says.

Just as the iconic astronomer gained worldwide fame for captivating the imagination of ordinary people, Nathan wrote articles for international scientific publications and a book about our place in the universe called Cosmic Wonder, which proved so accessible that he received numerous offers from book publishers.

“I think Nathan is going to change the world,” Neal says. “Because of his ability to tell stories that touch people.”

Whether he volunteers to share his knowledge with visitors to astrophysical observatories or writes to inspire a global audience, Nathan hopes that by encouraging us to look beyond the cookies in front of us, we can realize how much how connected we are to everything around us.

“If you stop seeing people for nationalities, cultures or religions,” Nathan says. “And you start to see people as atoms, and we are just atoms, which really helps dissolve some of the social constructs that we have developed that divide us.”

A unifying message — inspired by wonder and curiosity — sometimes accompanied by the soundtrack of the birth of the universe.

“It’s my favorite album to listen to,” Nathan says, laughing at the static on the radio. “Big Bang!”