The ever-fabulous Ian O’Neill hosts this week’s Carnival of Space #144. There are lots of great astronomical highlights from this week, but I’m particularly in love with this gorgeous multi-wavelength image of NGC 1068:
Check it all out at Discovery News this week!
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This past weekend, I batted my eyelashes at Tim to go to the Hayden Planetarium with me once I discovered it was a few blocks away from a wedding we were attending. We took all of Saturday afternoon to catch the latest planetarium show and browse the rest of the American Museum of Natural History. He had never been there, and I gravitated towards my favorite parts of the museum. We wandered around the Rose Center (mostly the Space part) and I rambled on and on about subsections of the exhibits, pointing out where our friends’ research projects lie, and that nice blank part of the universe’s timeline where the epoch of reionization and dark ages research will help fill in. Then, we went straight for the dinosaurs on the fourth floor, because, who doesn’t love dinos?! We wandered around the fossils, dodging kiddies and their overzealous picture-taking parents. There’s only so much of the mass of information that one can hope to absorb in any one visit, and I’m just trying to keep my sauropods and theropods and ornithischians straight. However, I did notice a subtle theme in many of the exhibit commentary. Here’s an example (check out the yellow box in particular):
Maybe I’m just paranoid (especially since Tim didn’t pick up on this until I pointed it out) but there were a number of displays asserting that the science doesn’t tell us the truth, or we’ll never know the answers, because the fossil evidence in incomplete or because the animals are not here to study directly. Although it’s a fair point to say that science doesn’t prove any theory beyond a shadow of a doubt, and that extracting answers from the tiny bits of fossils we do find is excruciating, tedious, and not exact, it was an odd point to be hammering home in a science display. After all, I personally marvel at what knowledge we can glean from incomplete evidence and at the self-correcting nature of science. That’s the kind of message I would send, especially in this era of mistrust and misunderstanding of science by so many people.
So, after we got our fill of dino fossils and expensive but admittedly delicious museum food, we headed to one of my other favorite areas, the Hall of Human Origins. I love to wonder what life was like for early hominids, including for those of our own species who were physically identical, but living in a totally different world 150,000 years ago. I marvel at the tenacity of Homo erectus who populated the Earth for 1.5 million years, whereas we’ve been here for a fraction of that. Anyway, as I was browsing, I noticed that the displays read differently than in the fossil halls:
It asks a question, states that we don’t yet know, but that it is an area of active research. It puts forth a guess based on the best of our knowledge and leaves the reader wondering what we’ll find out next. This, I think, is far more exciting and educational and doesn’t do the whole process of science a disservice.
This was the first time that I looked beyond the information in an exhibit to the style of the presentation. It is important to know who your audience is and what message you want to send whenever doing science outreach or teaching. Students and museum patrons are probably not going to retain much specific information. Good teachers are aware of this and try to get across a general message about science and have to be cognizant of what that message is. It’s not easy to do this, but having a goal is a good start. You can tell that the designers of the different exhibits have different goals, or at least different opinions on what it is about science they want to convey. For what it’s worth, I think the latter example is going to be much more helpful in conveying the true nature of science to those who don’t live it everyday. And after all, isn’t that important? Isn’t that kind of transparency and understanding just what science needs?
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Jeffrey Bennett, astronomer and author, once told us that a typical astronomy textbook has about as many vocabulary words as a typical foreign language textbook. So, in addition to teaching physical and astronomical concepts, we’re teaching a whole new language! Jargon is incredibly useful for making detailed communication within a specific field efficient and convenient, but you have to be aware of it when teaching students or talking with people outside your sub-field. So, I’m going to attempt a weekly series of astrophysics jargon, inspired by the Geology Word of the Week on Skepchick. I’ll try to demystify some terms that you may hear astronomers bandying about!
This week’s jargon is one of my favorites, and it’s one that gets the most quizzical looks when it slips out in a tutoring session. AGN stands for Active Galactic Nucleus (or Nuclei). It is literally when the nucleus, or center, of a galaxy, or vast collection of stars, is active, or really, really bright.
There is a whole zoo of subclassifications within the grouping of AGN, mainly due to the various methods by which these galaxies were discovered. However, the basic principle lies with the giant that is at the heart of every major galaxy, a black hole that is millions (or billions) of times the mass of the sun! One of the fascinating results to come from the Hubble Space Telescope is that, everywhere we look, every galaxy (with an appreciable central bulge) has a black hole in its center.
Although we don’t yet know where these super-massive black holes first came from, we do know that they can get bigger if mass falls onto them and becomes part of the black hole. Turns out, this is a really, REALLY energetic process. Black holes have a lot of mass packed into a (relatively) tiny space, so any gas that gets close enough to fall in doesn’t do so right away, but settles into a disk around the black hole to spin around a bunch of times before finally crossing the “point of no return.” The material in the disk gives off a LOT of energy, thus powering the active galactic nucleus.
How much energy? A moderate AGN gives off approximately 20 times the light output of a galaxy like the Milky Way! And the light is spread out over all wavelengths, from x-ray and ultraviolet through visible and infrared, and even some in the radio. Because they are so bright, they are powerful probes of the universe at large distances. They may also be intimately involved in the life history of a galaxy, as this bright light from the galaxy’s center has an impact on the environment around it. Also, powerful jets of particles moving at almost the speed of light may be generated near the black hole and affect the galaxy and the galaxy’s environment in a violent way.
There are so many cool and interesting subclasses of AGN, and so many structures within and related to the AGN, that it’ll probably take a whole sub-series itself! But I hope this introduction gives a clearer picture of what astronomers means when they say, “That’s my favorite AGN!”
Posted in AGN, astronomy, black holes, jargon, science | Leave a Comment »
So, I just finished watching, and being very entertained by, “The Pluto Files,” a NOVA special by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Go watch it. Seriously! I’ll wait…
There was a part where Clyde Tombaugh’s son was showing off some of his father’s homemade telescopes, including one that had an axle of a Buick. And I thought, where have I seen something like that before? Ah yes, in good old Green Bank…
Grote Reber’s famous home-made radio telescope had wheels from a Model T Ford on the azimuth track. And I realized, oh my goodness, there are SO many stories about the birth and history of radio astronomy that have not made their way to the public, even the astronomically interested public! I’m not sure if it is because radio is less relatable than optical astronomy, or if the field is just too young. But there are so many tales and stories of do-it-yourself, swashbuckling radio astronomy that deserve their own TV specials. The engineers-turned-astronomers, the new windows on the universe, the quirky characters and finicky equipment and crazy ideas that turned out brilliantly… they all make for some seriously entertaining story-telling.
Karl Jansky, the discoverer of radio waves from space, came upon this rather serendipitously, as my advisor explains in a 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. Grote Reber took up the field all on his own with a homemade dish, mapping the entire galaxy at night while still working his day job. The NRAO archives overflow with every scrap of note paper and every little bolt that this brilliant and obsessive man collected and kept. Some of the older astronomers fondly tell Reber stories over dinner. Ruby Payne-Scott gave the male establishment the old “poo-poo to you” and blazed a trail for radio astronomy in Australia after World War II. The Green Bank Observatory alone is chock full of interesting tales, which have been conveniently pulled together in a book, “But It Was Fun” which you can of course pick up in the gift shop (or borrow my copy!) I was lucky enough to have a radio astronomy graduate class that was taught in part by Jim Condon, who can tell all of the most fascinating tales and stories, including how the 300-foot telescope collapsed while taking his data. And, oh my gosh, anyone who has seen the infamous 140-foot telescope construction video, you know that’s fodder for laughter and terror all at once.
There’s so much to be told here, and only a few in the “in-crowd” are privileged to hear the tales, sometimes right from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. So, you know, all of those filmmakers or aspiring filmmakers who read this blog (all 0.2 of you), this stuff is entertaining! Or anyone who wants to teach me how to properly shoot and edit web video, you know, let’s do lunch.
Posted in astronomy, history, media, nrao, outreach, telescope | 3 Comments »
A couple of weeks ago, Daniel Loxton wrote a really interesting post on Skeptiblog titled, “Never Say Anything that Isn’t Correct.” In it, he makes the case that skeptics should work super, extra hard to get their facts correct when acting in a public role. Although it’s impossible to be perfect in this, there is some responsibility to do your homework if you want to be seen as a good resource and skeptical authority. And, he quotes Spiderman, so that’s a win in my book.
That same week (they must be conspiring) Jeff Wagg wrote “Skeptic, Be Not Proud” on JREF’s Swift blog. In it, he points out that skeptics have a right to be proud of the fact that they do their homework and get the facts right, but that we should “CROW IT FROM THE RAFTERS” when we ARE wrong, because surely we’re going to get things wrong from time to time, through our own mistakes or if we’re weighing in on a field that isn’t as well settled as we had thought.
From this, skeptics have two solid tools for combating pseudoscience and anti-science: striving for correctness and admitting when you are wrong. I’d like to add a third important tool to that toolkit, and that’s the ability to say, “I don’t know.”
One of the growing pains of becoming a scientist is becoming comfortable with uncertainty. Scientists have to push the boundaries of what we know and test questionable hypotheses all the time. We work with theories and data and instruments that are on the cutting edge. We ask questions to which no one yet knows the answer. And I say that this is a growing pain since many of us came through an education system where there always was an answer, and we could get to it easily.
Being able to say, “I don’t know” is similarly important for teachers at all levels. Unlike with research, this may not be because no one knows, but because a teacher has such a wide range of topics to cover that he or she cannot know them all with incredible depth. At some point, one of your students is going to ask a question to which you do not know the answer, and you’re on the spot. And it’s quite alright to say, “Well, I don’t know, but I can look into it.”
In order to foster the credibility of public skeptics and the movement as a whole, I think it is important for skeptics to use both of these instances of uncertainty properly. We all have opinions and biases, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But when asked for “the skeptical viewpoint” of some topic or event, it’s okay to admit that you just don’t know. Maybe you aren’t familiar with the literature, or maybe it never came across your radar before. Either way, it’s okay, even advisable, to withhold judgment until you can find out where the data lie. That has to be distinguished from “we don’t know” or “no one knows” which is certainly a valid answer for some questions (i.e. What is dark energy?).
So, relax, fellow skeptics. As much as we info-junkies want to know everything, we cannot and will not be able to weigh in on every topic and controversy. Even if you are pretty well educated on some arena (say, UFOs), this doesn’t mean you are going to be able to solve every case (like when your friend describes some lights he saw in the sky… Explain that, skeptic!) on the spot. It’s just fine to say, you know, I’m not sure, let me look that up because that sounds interesting. But remember that just because YOU can’t explain something, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t someone out there who can.
Posted in opinion, skeptic | 2 Comments »
The Carnival of Space #143 is up at Next Big Future!
Get it? I love… 143? When I was in high school, before cell phones were popular, everyone (but me) had a beeper. We used silly little codes to each other… and 143 meant “I love you.” And my boyfriend’s name at the time was Eddie, which could be spelled out upside down, so I would send him “143 31003″ from our school’s payphone… yeah I’m a dork.
Anyway, that’s far less interesting than the cool stories about Mars avalanches, bad science movies, the sun, and more over at this week’s carnival!
Posted in astronomy, carnival, random, space | Leave a Comment »
Symphony of Science has done it again…
Wow. Yeah, what they said.
Don’t forget to check out the first four: A Glorious Dawn, We Are All Connected, Our Place in the Cosmos, and The Unbroken Thread.
(via Bad Astronomy)
Posted in Dawkins, Sagan, art, music, science | 2 Comments »
… with a not-so-little Saturn V. Starring Pluto Little Dippy, last semester’s mascot for Dark Skies, Bright Kids.
We’re doing a kickoff party today for a new school, yay! If you don’t hear from me in a few days, it’s probably because I’ve been trampled by 80 over-enthusiastic kidlets. Wheeeee!
Posted in education, ksc, moon, nasa, outreach, space, technology, videos | Leave a Comment »
A Pikachu-tastic Carnival of Space is up at Astroblog. Travel down under to read about spaceflight, the solar system, galaxies, and more!
Also, while you are browsing, check out this cool chart of the planets and moons of our solar system and the molecules that have been discovered in their atmospheres! This came up in our seminar on the Atacama Large Millimeter Array which is going to be a boon to astrochemistry.
Posted in astronomy, carnival, chemistry, space | Leave a Comment »
The Solar Dynamics Observatory launched last week for the thrilled scientists and engineers who have worked for years on this mission, some happy #SDOisGO TweetUp participants, and countless other space fans around the world. (The who? The wha? Oh, pretty!)
SDO’s EVE instrument (Extreme-ultraviolet Variability Experiment) is particularly interesting to me since these EUV photons from the sun are what drives the Earth’s ionosphere. The ionosphere is the outermost layer of the Earth’s atmosphere and consists of ionized, or charged particles. As new low frequency radio telescope capabilities have been coming online at the VLA, GMRT, LOFAR, LWA, MWA, and, my home, PAPER*, the ionosphere is gaining more attention, and not the good kind. Just as the lower levels of the atmosphere cause all kinds of scintillation and “twinkling” to annoy visible light observers, the ionosphere refracts and distorts light coming in at low radio frequencies. (Well, low for astronomers, that is… less than a few 100 MHz!) This is particularly troubling since all of these telescopes are interferometers, or systems of multiple radio antennas linked together to make one telescope. Images are made by measuring the difference between the arrival of light at different antennas, and this difference can be skewed by a turbulent ionosphere. And the ionosphere changes in density and turbulence, based on the solar output! See, it all ties together.
I have to admit, of course, there are more pressing concerns than radio astronomy. The ionosphere will also have an effect on GPS signals. As we start the upswing in the solar cycle, more turbulence in the ionosphere will mean larger position errors and even times when the signals cannot propagate at all. Monitoring systems can do their best to account for changes in the ionosphere, but an early warning system will help those who have to make very precise GPS measurements (not just you and your TomTom) plan their activities. EVE will measure the extreme-ultraviolet output of the sun on 10-second time scales, 30 times better than previous instruments could. Therefore, solar physicists will be able to better understand the signs and signals of a sun that is about to make our ionosphere dance around.
That’s it, for now, for my sciencey SDO posts. I can’t wait to see what new discoveries start rolling in when science operations begin. I’ll probably have one more SDO post soon, about the TweetUp itself!
Posted in astronomy, paper, science, space, sun | 3 Comments »
Nicole
Tim