Neil deGrasse Tyson is kind of an unheralded dreamboat.

It’s very easy for a girl to obsess over Tom Hiddleston’s charm or Jeremy Renner’s butt or Ryan Gosling’s everything. We’re taught to put actors on pedestals. Musicians are put on posters. Entertainers in general are supposed to be the hottest people ever, which is really dumb. It limits the field of who we’re allowed to crush on. There are so many hot guys and gals out there who have nothing to do with performing. These people are smart, kind, talented, funny and they want to help others in the world.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of those insanely sexy, non-performer types and I think he needs more attention in the pages of teen magazines.

I came to this conclusion a few weeks ago when I was home alone on a Saturday night, drinking wine at 1:00 am and watching Nova on Netflix. It was a really great Saturday, thank you very much, and one day I hope to meet a man who prefers drinking wine at home and watching documentaries about the possibilities of colonizing Mars to, like, being out and about in the world actually meeting other human beings living on Earth on Saturday night.

But enough about how I neither want nor deserve your pity…Neil deGrasse Tyson was hosting this episode of Nova. In fact, he had been hosting both of the episodes of Nova I was watching that night. And I’d also seen him on The Daily Show telling Jon Stewart in the sweetest way possible that the Earth rotates in the wrong direction in the show’s intro. So, I knew he was fun and adorable and very, very smart. However, at some point where he was discussing how tiny bits of space debris could destroy a big, giant space ship, I realized that I had a big, fat crush on Neil deGrasse Tyson.

If you’re like, “Who?? I’ve never seen him hanging out with Justin Bieber,” then guess what? I hate you. Also, here is his wikipedia page. He’s a super brilliant and super famous astrophysicist who is the head guy at the Hayden Planetarium and he’s on television saying smart and funny things a lot. He’s kind of baller.

He’s also insanely smart, enormously witty and ridiculously charming.

I once had a crush on one of my college professors simply because he was really smart and really witty and really charming (and young and hot in a European way). I would tell my best girlfriends that the reason I liked him so much was because I could just imagine how delightful being married to him would be. He had interesting anecdotes and funny bot mots about everything. Could you imagine breakfast? He would probably have something amusing to say about burnt toast. And if there’s one quality I’m looking for in my future husband besides drinking wine and watching documentaries at home with me on a Saturday night, it’s that I want him to be able to say amusing things about burnt toast.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is the kind of man who can say amusing things about burnt toast. If you follow him on twitter, you already know he can say amusing things about just about anything.

Also, he’s kind of a rebel. He’s the guy who sort of started the movement to take away Pluto’s planetary status. So, that’s something your mother might not approve of if she’s a big fan of Pluto.

Yes, I’m aware that he wears vests with embroidered suns on them sometimes. I like the vests. I dig the vests. I admire the sexy confidence it takes to pull off “sun vests” on television. Like Dolly Parton once said in a gif-set I see circulating Tumblr a lot, “I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable, that’s the easiest thing in the world to do.” It takes Dolly Parton-like swagger to wear a sun vest seriously, and Neil deGrasse Tyson has that swagger. That sexy sun vest swagger.

Believe it or not, I’m not a big science geek. I’m much more of a science fiction geek. That said, I think the big reason I was never into science growing up was that come my tween years, teachers and television programs stopped making it fun and silly and joyous. It was all about the austerity of the cosmos and how alone we were in the universe and lighting bunsen burners on fire, and when I was twelve, lighting fires scared me. As did handling chemicals. As did discussions of black holes tearing galaxies apart. As did discussions of nuclear bombs and the best way to dissect a fetal pig.

When I watch Neil deGrasse Tyson on television, though, I’m taken back to where I was as a kid. Science was fun. It was exciting. It was about being curious about the world around you and using your human powers of intellect and imagination to figure out what was going on.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is a man who makes liking science fun and cool and sexy again for me, and to me that makes him a very fun and very cool and very sexy man.

Also, sun vest swagger is the best swagger.

Featured image via The Humanist.