Science Communication Compilation #1

Zach: I’m Zach Laycock, an undergraduate physics student at Western Washington University, and you’re listening to Spark Science.

[? Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]

?Here we go

? Neutron, proton, mass defect, lyrical oxidation, yo irrelevant
? Mass spectrograph, pure electron volt, atomic energy erupting
? As I get all open on betatron, gamma rays thermo cracking
? Cyclotron and any and every mic
? You’re on trans iridium, if you’re always uranium
? Molecules, spontaneous combustion, pow

? Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
? I’m every element around

Dr. DeGraaff: Welcome to Spark Science. This is Regina Barber DeGraaff. As many of you know, I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University and so does friend of the show, and NASA/Mars-Rover scientist: Dr. Melissa Rice. You might remember her from such episodes as our very first podcast, review of the film: The Martain, and the most recent show on exoplanets.

Dr. Melissa Rice and I recently created and taught a science communication course this past spring. The class taught undergraduate and graduate physics and geology students how to communicate with non-scientists and each other. We had the students create podcasts, write letters to congress, debunk common science myths, and pen a press release and a popular science article.

This episode of Spark Science will be the first of two compilations featuring amazing student-made podcasts. Subjects range from science education to research on binary stars to the societal impacts of stepping foot on Mars. I’m really proud of them all and I hope you enjoy listening to their work.

[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]

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Zach: Hey everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of “Science: Non-Fiction.” This week’s topic is science education, specifically how science education has changed over the last few decades, and where it is going. Science ed is something that everyone encounters at some point in their life. It has the power to shape the way we see the world. But for many, after the age of 18, how we are educating the newest generation of citizens on science is often pushed under the rug. It is my belief that improvement to our science education process at all levels will lead to a more scientifically literature and scientifically respectful culture as a whole.

On the show this week, I’ll be featuring 3 different interviews. These guests were chosen because they have very different science background, but all share respect and understanding for science education. First up is Megan McAndy.

Megan: So I am a student at Western Washington University. I study physics and astronomy and I teach labs here and I take the telescope out and show the public our night sky every once in a while.

Zach: I also interviewed Todd Thidell [sp?], a math and physics teacher at Avanti High School in Olympia, Washington.

Todd: I became a teacher in 1983, way back when Thriller was the #1 album, just to give you a reference of however long it’s been. In the 33 years I’ve taught, I would say two thirds of that has been in science, and a third of that in math. I live in Tumwater, Washington. I currently teach at an alternative high school. I’m the physics teacher, as well as I teach math and computer programming and music.

Zach: And finally, Jenny Brand, a language, literacy, and cultural studies major here at Western.

Jenny: I’m in the Woodring College of Education. I’m a language, literacy, and cultural studies major and I’m getting my English language learner endorsement.

Zach: How much longer do you have at Western?

Jenny: Just a couple more quarters, and then 3 quarters of student teaching

Zach: I asked each of them the same set of questions to better compare their thoughts and feelings on science education. First, to give us some background, I asked if they had a positive or negative experience with science during grade school.

Jenny: I think I had a negative experience. And it’s probably because of my attitude about it. I don’t remember being very kind to my science teachers in high school. I don’t remember showing much interest in science class in elementary school, I mean, unless it was hands-on, unless it meant getting to play with stuff, or, you know, whatever, because you’re a kid, right?

Todd: I don’t remember doing science in grade school. Keep in mind that was in the early 60s. So it’s not that I didn’t do it. I don’t remember it being a big focus.

Megan: During high school, I think it was good. I think the middle school/elementary age was just weird and confusing. There wasn’t a lot of structure in what we were learning.

Zach: Right.

Megan: Whereas in high school, you would take specific classes.

Zach: Right.

Megan: Like biology. And I actually took AP physics at the high school level and I really enjoyed it and I think honestly the most connection I’ve had with a lot of my professors and teachers in high school were my science teachers.

Zach: Right.

Megan: They would notice during the winter months. They’d be like: “Megan, you’ve been acting off.”

Zach: Did you always sort of know you wanted to do science or was it sort of a decision you made towards the end of high school?

Megan: I’ve kind of always considered science. I’ve relatively always been good at math. I’m dyslexic, and so writing and spelling have just been kind of off the table completely and entirely. From that, I have just kinda decided science and math, I’m good at that. I might as well continue looking into whatever that looks like.

Todd: As far as college goes, I didn’t start college until I was 22 because I went into the Navy. But I started out as a photography major because I liked taking pictures. But that didn’t last long. At the same time, I was taking some botany classes. So I was a botany major for the first 2 years, and then got a little bit bored with that, so they recommended I take chemistry because, you know, as any science major you have to have chemistry and physics and all. So I took chemistry and I really fell in love with that and then took physics and then fell more in love with that by the time, now you’re talking the end of my 3rd year of college. So I finally found something I was very passionate about, but didn’t have enough time to pursue it.

Jenny: I think that my attitude was affected by my religious upbringing. I can vividly remember moments in church where the leadership would discourage you from learning any scientific content that conflicted with a biblical perspective on certain things.

Zach: Did you have anybody on the other side of the pendulum who was encouraging you to study science?

Jenny: Yeah. I would say that my dad played a major role in getting me to just get my hands dirty and explore and be a kid. My father was a park ranger and I spent almost all my time outside. And most of the things that I know now about our temperate environment up here in the Pacific Northwest is because of my dad and you know, why devil’s fur isn’t a true fern, and stuff like that.

Zach: Jenny also shared with me a really awesome story about her first positive experience with science.

Jenny: It wasn’t exactly during class but it was just a really significant time. I remember science being exciting to me for the first time. It was a field trip. I was in 6th grade. And all of the 6th grade classes at my elementary school went to space camp, which was held at the Museum of Flight in Seattle. They simulated a space shuttle and a machine control room. So the classes were split up where one half went to machine control. The other half went to the shuttle. And the machine control job was to get the shuttle in space; we were going to Mars.

Zach: Right.

Jenny: And the shuttle’s job was to make sure they got there and survived. And it was pretty exciting because everybody had a different role. I think we must have spent a month studying all the things that you needed to know for your particular job.

Zach: Now, to get the meat of our interview, I asked them what they think works and doesn’t work right now in science education. I got two distinct and important answers to this question. First, Jenny and Todd answer this question very similarly.

Jenny: One of the main problems that I’m currently studying in Woodring right now is that we, as educators, have a tendency to teach tiny little details rather than focusing on a central concept.

Todd: I believe it was Feynman that said that knowing the name of a bird in many languages doesn’t know you know anything about what the bird does. And that’s the most important thing. I sort of felt like I was going down that road in botany. I was spending so much time on memorizing names and how to key things out and learn about what they’re called and not enough in the processes. So I’m glad that the science standards sort of finally caught up to the way I teach. Because, you know, I’ve never been really great at memorizing myself.

Jenny: You can probably remember back in elementary school. And you probably remember something about butterflies and the life cycle. And you probably got the little fireflies in the cups. And then when they were all grown up, you got to free them outside, which was all great. And you got to observe that. You got to investigate pretty cool stuff. But the point is that you don’t want them just memorizing each stage of the life cycle.

Although I would say that teaching children that terminology and using the academic language is really important. But you don’t want them to walk away just remembering “this stage, the butterfly is a larvae, and this stage, it’s a pupae.” But you want them to remember that all organisms have a life cycle. And it’s getting them to interact with a central concept that applies to science in general. It’s not just about the terminology.

Todd: To answer your question, I think what works is that we’re looking at science in sort of a practical manner. Now, the way the engineers look at it, the way life and physical science work together, and you know, so I really sort of like the new standards and how they’re trying to weave all that together.

Zach: But next, Megan also makes a really great point.

Megan: I think there’s a big stigma that there are science people and then there’s not science people. They usually call it like “math-brained” and then “not math-brained” and I think that’s something that really causes a lot of trouble. I think what works well is when you can teach students regardless of what their brain level and their capacity is; they can be curious and they can explore and that’s really what science is about.

Zach: Right.

Megan: It’s not about having the tools and being able to pick it up quickly, but whether or not you’re interested.

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Zach: I also asked Todd how science education has changed and his teaching has changed during the course of his career as a STEM educator.

Todd: There’s been quite a drastic change, I think. Right now, it’s much more data-driven. When I first started in the 80s, I taught physics. And I trusted the textbook authors to cover the proper standards. And I mostly just followed the sequence that I had in the book. And later I became more confident with the content and then I would find myself reordering a sequence that I thought was more logical. Chemistry teacher, for example, I had the students learn how to memorize and how to write chemical compounds well before we did stoichiometry because it just made the language a little bit easier to deal with.

So, in the old days, I really just think it was memorize and regurgitate. But now, you know, with the new generation science standards that are out now, it’s sort of getting away from pure memorization of content to systems and things like that.

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Zach: And finally, I asked them what they would change, if anything, about the way science is being taught right now.

Jenny: I think I would make it more inclusive for all different types of people at the top level. So, we think of big names in physics and astronomy. People think of Bill Nye, and we think of Neil DeGrasse Tyson and like Carl Sagan. Great, great guys. They’re all solid guys. To really, like, spark that change of “everybody can study science,” it has to start at the top. It has to start with big names, with people who are making a difference. And I think that’s just discouraging to a lot of females right from the get-go, because if you don’t see somebody who looks like you or is the same color as you in leadership roles in those positions as educators, then it’s more discouraging to not want to pursue those interests. Because why would I want to participate if I’m gonna be the one standing out?

Zach: How do you think that extended into college? Do you think it’s gotten better since you’ve came to Western? Or do you think it’s sort of the same?

Megan: Surprisingly, at the university level, I have had so many more female professors, and those are the professors I look up to the most. I think the field like physics and maybe hopefully science in general is shifting towards more of a balance in that, but I do know that it’s not always consistent. I went to a conference last fall and I met up with some women from a different university and they said they had zero female faculty. And, I don’t know, I just can’t imagine what my life would be like without those bad-ass women physicists who just like, know the science and they get it, and they make it so relatable. And so I just find that really empowering to see that here, and I hope it continues on.

Jenny: I would emphasize the importance of teaching overall big ideas. Teachers often teach disconnected facts and it’s sort of all jumbled; it’s not really making sense. “Why am I memorizing this?” A lot of kids say: “well, when am I gonna use this at any other point?”

Todd: Well, I think during grade school, students need to be allowed to investigate their curiosity more. Kids in grade school, they have a natural curiosity about things, and they need to be guided on how things work together. And they probably already know that.

Jenny: A lesson that I’m writing right now that is sort of how I would implement this and how it looks in a curriculum is: I’m teaching land and water; I’m having the kids build stream tables and we’re studying how runoff affects the land. I’m trying to place a higher emphasis on the practices, meaning having a claim, investigating, observing, creating an argument for your final claim. The overall idea is that erosion takes place over a long period of time. But I don’t want them walking away thinking “oh, well I know what a tributary is; I know what runoff means.” They’ve done the learning process. They’re walking away with the main point if you’re doing the science practices along with teaching the content.

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Zach: With the help of the relatively new next-generation science standards, science education in the US has been improving enormously. It’s a structure that encourages educators to not focus on the facts, but focus on the bigger and more important ideas. But science as a field can still be an unwelcoming place. Some students, from the day they step into science class, are put on the back-foot because of race, or gender, or even innate ability.

And if we as a country want to improve the way we educate our children in science and in all fields, we must work to make these fields as approachable as possible. This means doing away with archaic stereotypes and standards, and allow students of all kinds to explore the world as they’re meant to.

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Thank you Jenny, Todd, and Megan for being on my podcast this week, and sharing your thoughts and feelings about science education. And also I’d like to thank Western Washington University for giving me the creative space to create this podcast, and KMRA for publishing and giving access to all viewers.

And last, I’d like to thank Ben Sound for providing this great, royalty-free music that you’ve been hearing throughout this podcast. Check him out on his website at BenSound.com and you can find all these pieces and more.

That’s all for this week, everyone. Remember, the line between science fiction and science non-fiction for many children and students are supportive and welcoming science environments where they are encouraged to explore and communicate. Goodnight.

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[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]

? Dance in the trees
? Paint mysteries
? The magnificent droid plays there
? Your magic mind
? Makes love to mine
? I think I’m in love, angel

Zach: Hello everyone and welcome back to “Sci-to-Sci Interviews.” This week, we will be learning about some unique research that’s going on in the physics and astronomy department at Western Washington University. We are interviewing Dr. Jim Davenport once again, as well as undergraduate researcher Riley Clark. Jim and Riley have been working on a research project together for over 2 years now, with the hopes to find a new and simpler way to measure the age of stars.

In this interview, we will dive deep into their research and learn about stars, , binary star systems, wide binary star systems, and how the heck are we able to determine the ages of stars. So, to get things started, Jim, could you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your education and career as an astrophysicist.

Dr. Davenport: So yeah; I am a post-doctoral research fellow here at Western Washington. And then means that I’m funded by the NSF to come and do exciting research here in the physics and astronomy department. I got my Ph.D. in 2015 from the University of Washington in Seattle. Before that, I studied at San Diego State University down in California.

Zach: Awesome. Down in U-dub. You know, you’re not too far away from home, then.

Dr. Davenport: No. This is a short move, which was nice. We love the Pacific Northwest.

Zach: And Riley, could you introduce yourself as well to the listeners and talk a little bit about how you came to be a researcher, would you?

Riley: Yeah, so I started the astronomy sequence here at Western I think a little earlier than most people do. I started when I was a sophomore. I had always been interested in astronomy. I’ll admit it: I was kind of a sci-fi geek growing up, right, super into Star Wars, Star Trek, all that. So, space is already a subject of interest.

But when I took the astronomy course, you know, it was kinda like a whole new world. Like, realizing how all these different complex systems that make up this hierarchical structure of the universe actually work. And I thought stars and stellar evolution was one of the more interesting subjects that we learned about. So when I got the chance to . . . when I was in my junior year thinking about who I want to do research for, there was this new post-doctoral fellow who had just joined the faculty who was doing stuff with stellar flares and I was like, “Stars! Stars are cool. Yeah. I want to do that.”

Zach: So, could you tell us a little bit about the research you’re working on. You know, what are you guys hoping to find out?

Riley: Yeah, so right now Jim and I are working on a project involving age activity relationships in wide binary star systems. So this project initially began with teaching . . . so Jim wrote a program called Appaloosa, which basically is a machine-learning program that extracts flare information from light curves that we get from the NASA Kepler spacecraft.

And so the first kind of work that I did on this project was using a IDL suite called FBI, it’s just short for Flares By Eye.

Zach: Hah. Cool.

Riley: And actually clicking on features in the light curve that I thought looked like flares, that had this kind of characteristic spike and then energy decay.

Zach: Gotcha.

Riley: And by doing this taught Appaloosa what to look for in the light curves. And so then Appaloosa can look at hundreds of thousands of Kepler light curves and extract all that information for us. Then, eventually, after I had done that for a couple months, the project developed into specifically looking at wide binaries, because we wanted to think about: okay, so we have this flare information; what do we want to use it for? And wide binaries were a great opportunity to use flare information to try to celebrate stellar ages, since wide binaries are believed to be coeval components.

Zach: And could you quickly explain what coeval component is?

Riley: Right, so, coeval just means that both components are the same age. It’s widely believed that wide binaries form from the same collapsing molecular cloud.

Zach: Right.

Riley: Which would make them approximately the same age, yeah. And so the reason we’re looking at these systems is because one of the unsolved issues in stellar astronomy today is the difficulty in accurately celebrating stellar ages. Now there’s a handful of methods that have been used to celebrate stellar ages over the last couple decades. One of these is called gyro-chronology. This is a relation of the star’s rotation period to its age. As just like when you spin a top and it gets slower and slower and slower, just like when a star is born, it’s spinning very fast, and then it starts spinning slower and slower and slower as it ages.

Zach: Hmm. That’s a great analogy.

Riley: Yeah. So unfortunately this model isn’t ideal; it has about a 10% margin of error and we don’t always have reliable rotation periods for a star we might be interested in. But we also know that there’s a connection between the rotation of a star and it’s stellar flare activity, it’s magnetic activity. So if this connection exists, then our question was: well, since flares are so easy to measure, why can’t we just use the flare activity as a proxy measurement for the star’s age?

Dr. Davenport. The age of a star is a really hard thing to measure. And to do that, we’re using a new measurement of the star’s flare activity rate. So that’s what my big project has been over the last couple years is measuring these flares from stars. To do that, we’re using NASA’s Kepler mission and we’re looking for small changes in the brightness of the star over short (minutes to hours) timescales.

So, Riley is using what we call wide binary stars. And these are pairs of stars which are separated by much larger distances than the Sun and the Earth are separated. These are separated by tens of thousands of times greater distances than the sun and the Earth are separated. So these stars, you can see both companions. You can see what we call the A and the B star in each of these pairs. And we’re trying to measure the flare rates between both stars.

Zach: We have these pair. You know, they’re floating around. And they’re affecting each other gravitationally, as they are in a system with one another. So, does that gravitational effect have any overall effect on the activity that’s on the surface of the star via, like, solar flares for instance?

Dr. Davenport: So we think that these stars are too far apart to affect each other, what we would say, tidally. So the Earth and the Moon are quite close, and the moon causes tides on the Earth. If the stars were very close to each other, they would affect tidally each other. And that would modify the flare rate. We’d expect high flare rates when tidal forces are at work. But these stars are, like I said, they’re 10,000 times further apart than the Earth and the Sun are. So, at that distance, they are gravitationally bound in the same way that the Earth and the Sun are, or Pluto is gravitationally bound to the Sun. But they are not tidally interacting.

So as a result, we think that the flare rates between these two stars should be the same. They should roughly flare at about the same frequency. But they won’t flare in sync. These events are like earthquakes. They’re gonna be random explosions on the surface. So, to measure accurate flare rates for both of these stars, we need to study both pairs for long periods of time, like years. Because, like earthquakes, they happen randomly so you need to get a compile census of all the flare amounts on both the A and the B star.

The flare rates are a parallel way of looking into age. They don’t require a measurement of rotation periods. But we do use the rotation periods to inform us about what we think the rough age might be for these stars.

Zach: So that’s very interesting. So we’ve talked about how rotational periods can help determine age. But then there’s also your guys’ new measurement where it’s the number of flares. And is the number of flares also indicative of star spot activity?

Dr. Davenport: Yeah. This is the really interesting part from a physics standpoint. The flares happen on the star pretty close to, or at the same spot as the star spots. So both the star spots and the flares are products of what we call magnetic activity. And that is created by magnetic fields deep within the star. And it turns out that the star’s rotation actually is what is one of the main drivers of this magnetic activity. So a star that’s rapidly rotating is going to be a like a magnet that’s spinning really fast; you’re gonna get a lot of complicated magnetic fields and thus lots of star spots and also lots of flares.

Zach: So we have these quote-unquote “normal binaries” and they orbit really close to each other and then we have these wide binaries that orbit so far apart. What do we know about it? What might be causing these binary stars to be so far away?

Dr. Davenport: Well no one has a definitive model for how these wide binaries form. The most widely-accepted belief is that, during the collapse of the molecular cloud and as the stars are forming, some third star or massive planet comes along and perturbs the system, and actually enters an orbit with the 2 stars and injects angular momentum into the system, and this causes the 2 stars to gradually drift apart from each other. And it depends on a lot of initial parameters, whether, you know, how massive this perturbing star is, the mass of the 2 original binaries. And this results in them being separated from, you know, just maybe a couple thousand AU or a couple ten thousand AU.

Zach: If you find the results that you’re looking for and the evidence is clear and it’s strong, what is the next step?

Dr. Davenport: Well, so far the evidence is really strong that this flare rate is changing and decaying with stellar age. So, our early results so far, that we’re preparing right now from the total Kepler mission, seem to indicate that flare rates do, in fact, evolve with time, as we expect. And that’s really exciting. What I’m really interested is to see where Riley’s project goes. Now that we have these hundred or so stars that we can test this paradigm, I’m really curious to see how much uniformity we see. The early results from Riley’s work are suggesting that most stars in these wide binaries do, in fact, evolve together, that both the A and the B star have very similar flare rates. Everything seems to make sense with our model.

There is, however, a small fraction of stars that don’t obey the model. As in, one star has really active flare rates and one star doesn’t. And that may have really interesting implications in how these wide binaries form. They may not be perfect laboratories after all.

Riley: We had thought that these stars could be the perfect testing ground for this relationship, but what we found is: while some of the stars do obey this relationship just fine, it seems like, for a fraction of our samples, some third body is coming in, either during the formation scenario, or sometime after that, and totally screwing the relationship up by spinning one of the stars up to a rotation period that it shouldn’t have at that age.

Zach: That’s quite a finding in it’s own, really. You know, we had these assumptions that these things are more or less isolated systems, but, as you guys are looking into it, having a fraction of that be another unique subset with its own characteristics; that could be another project.

Riley: Yeah. Well and actually one of the reasons we think that this conclusion is a likely scenario is because when we look at a lot of the binaries, we see a lot of them actually turn out to be hierarchical triple systems, or even higher-order systems like quadruple systems. For example, our nearest neighbor, Aplha Centauri, isn’t a hierarchical triple. There are two stars, Aplha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, orbiting each other in a tight orbit, with a low-mass third component, Proxima Centauri, orbiting at a much larger orbital distance.

So we know that these hierarchical triple systems are pretty common in nature. So we think it’s a plausible scenario that this type of triple interaction could be the culprit for this asymmetry in flare rates.

Dr. Davenport: We just presented a poster at the Western Washington University Scholars’ Week. So there were more than a hundred posters presented from students around the campus and Riley’s won one of the top honors. So we’re really excited with how this project is going and also how Riley’s skills as a scientist and scholar are developing. And in about 2-and-a-half weeks, we will be flying to California for the NASA Kepler Science Conference where I’m very excited to see him present this work in front of both the Kepler team and a bunch of our colleagues from around the world.

Zach: That’s super-exciting. Wow. Congrats to him and congrats to you.

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You just listened to our interview with Dr. Jim Davenport, a National Science Foundation post-doc fellow conducting research here at Western Washington University and Riley Clark, a graduating senior in the Physics & Astronomy Department. I would like to thank both Jim and Riley for speaking with me and sharing their stories. If you would like to contact either of the researchers, you can find their information on the Western Washington University website. The music this episode comes from the artist Marcos H. Bolanos with a song called “Melancholic Kid.” Thank you all for listening to Sci-to-Sci interviews where we bring science-related topics and inquiries to you.

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[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]

? Take me back to Wonderland.
? Take me back to Wonderland.
? The grass grows inside
? The music floats you gently on your toes
? Touch the nose, he’ll change your clothes to tuxedos
? Don’t freak and hide
? I’ll be your secret santa, do you mind?

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Andra: Hello. This is Andra Nordon [sp?], bringing you the first episode of the all-new podcast series: “Geologic Intuition.” Today’s episode is entitled “From Myth to Milestone: How Will Advancements in Mars Research Change our World?”

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Humanity is known for its creative storytelling devices. People create stories to make sense of phenomena they are not necessarily equipped to explain in the form of myths. For example, the myth of the flat Earth was pervasive in the Middle Ages, as well as in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. However, after much navigational, cosmological, and scientific advancement, as well as increasingly better public education, the flat Earth myth was debunked, making it relatively rare in current society.

What could be said about the modern myths we now have in regards to Mars in our Solar System? Some believe in conspiracies such as pyramids and faces on Mars. Are conspiracy theories today modern myths? Darien Dickson and Catherine Winchell are students at Western Washington University conducting research under Dr. Melissa Rice. Dr. Rice is currently a participating scientist on NASA’s Mars curiosity rover team, who is helping to uncover the mysteries and secrets of our closest planetary neighbor. Darien, a graduate student, studying under Dr. Rice, studies the mineralogy of Mars. Catherine is an undergraduate student mainly involved in further researching data from NASA’s Spirit Rover. I took a moment to sit down with them to discuss their ongoing research.

Andra: Can you tell me more about the research you are currently doing on Martian geology?

Darien: Yeah. So I study mineral spectroscopy. And so what that is is: materials interact with light in a lot of different ways. Materials reflect light. Materials absorb light. The reason we see anything at all is because we’re seeing light reflected off of a surface. Something that’s blue reflects a lot of blue light. And so what I do is I look at either satellite images or minerals in the lab and I try and constrain the way different landscapes on Mars and different materials in the lab interact with light to help us make assumptions about what we’ll see on the surface, and give us clues as to how better use our instruments to be able to detect these sort of things.

Andra: So where do you want to see the Mars 2020 Rover sent?

Catherine: Yeah, so, I’m very torn on it. A lot of it is because of those 2 research photos that I did. There is a lot of really good evidence that there is a hydrothermal system at Gusev. There was one. So it would be really cool to get samples from that one region. There’s also a lot of volcanics that are in that area. And that would be useful to get a sample from, because, with that, you can date that part of the surface. But the Mars 2020 Rover is not just a sample-collector and nothing else.

Since we have already sent a rover to this area, there will not be any groundbreaking discoveries, most likely, I mean it could surprise us; we don’t know. But we already have a good idea of what the mineral composition is of this area. Whereas if you go somewhere entirely new, there will be a lot more that can be discovered for the first time by the other instruments that are on the rover. As far as sample-return goes, Gusev would be the best place just for sample-return.

Darien: There’s 3 landing sites now. And so I guess, realistically, I have to choose between those 3 [Andra laughing.], even though they’re not my favorites. But out of those 3, I would pick a place called Jezero Crater, which is this ancient crater on Mars that, at one point, was a standing lake, and so there’s actually 2 very clear inlet channels, preserved river channels that you can see running into the crater. And there’s an outlet channel as well, a channel leading out of the crater at this kind of part where the wall of the crater was breached, probably knocked over by flooding.

And so we see a lot of evidence that this place was infilled with water. It was a standing lake. And at the bottom of the crater to the west and north is these two huge old preserved river deltas in great shape. You can see a lot of the morphology of deltas. You can see some of the old channels in the delta. You can see different sections of it that we’re able to identify. So I think . . . I think it’s a pretty cool place because of that. It’s a very well-preserved, ancient, wet environment. We know this was a lake. We know it had rivers feeding into it. There’s not so much uncertainties about how it got there. I think with some of the other sites, there’s a lot of uncertainty about “why the heck is this stuff there?” But here is a place where we clearly see what the ancient environment was. We know what it was. We know there was, you know, so much water filling up this lake. So I think it’s a good place to go just because there’s a lot of questions already answered.

The spectrometers we have on the rover; they’re amazing. They’re really cool instruments. And it’s awesome that we’re able to take these spectrometers, these instruments that look at how light interacts with the surface, and put them on a rover and take them to Mars. That’s great. But there’s so many limitations of equipment that can operate on a rover. We have crazy cold temperatures on Mars. And it’s on a machine . . . it’s on a rover that has to power so many instruments. It has to drive. It has to send data back. There’s other instruments that do other things. There’s limitations of sending the data back to Earth. You have to wait for a satellite to pass overhead and then send the data through that and send that back to Earth. So there’s limitations in the amount of data you can acquire.

And if we had our way, if these limitations were gone, we would take, you know, pictures all day every day of tons of stuff all the time with the full capabilities of our instrument. But you can’t do that. There’s power limitations. There’s time limitations. There’s a whole host of things that make it difficult to do as much analysis as we want on any given target. So we kind of have to pick and choose and cut our losses sometimes on what we can do.

But if you bring something home, there’s no limitations. If you have a rock in your lab, that rock can live in some NASA researcher’s lab for years. There’s a lot we’d be able to tease out of this stuff that we wouldn’t be able to with just a rover.

Andra: How do you think the discovery of past life on Mars could change the world’s view of our place in the universe?

Darien: [Chuckling.] God, so much. I don’t know what would happen after that. It would kinda be . . . it would be mayhem, I think; hopefully good mayhem. But it would rewrite our entire perception of life and why we’re here, even if there is a “why.” We spend so much time philosophically thinking about our existence. And I think humans right now, even still in our modern era, we still have a very human-centric view of the universe and view of life, and we still kind of put ourselves in the center of all that there is, even if we don’t believe the Sun revolves around the Earth anymore. Still, in subtler ways, we put ourselves at the center of everything. And I think it would be a very humbling experience for us. It would be something that would change people’s perspectives on the universe around them when they realize: “Hey. A lot of stuff isn’t here for us. Maybe none of this is here for us. We’re just a part of it all. And that life can form elsewhere, maybe it does form elsewhere.” And that would just open a whole host of questions about how we conduct ourselves and how we think about the universe around us.

Catherine: I think that that would be one of the most important turning-points for human history. That’s gonna make us reevaluate a lot of things, probably change our idea of what life is, or maybe it won’t.

Andra: How has studying geology affected the way you view the world?

Darien: It’s affected the way I view the world a lot in a lot of ways, from things just like philosophical connections to the world all the way down to the fact that I litter less. Knowing about how the Earth operates and its systems and its histories, it’s really humbling. You realize that everything is kind of a web of processes and nothing exists isolated. And so, learning about geology, I now, like, view myself as more of a citizen of the world. And I have a duty to, in whatever way I can, make sure the things that I’m not doing aren’t reverberating and negatively affecting a whole web of processes. And that’s something I wouldn’t have realized otherwise.

[? Music playing ?]

Andra: Well it’s been really good talking to you today. Thank you for sitting down with me.

Darien: Yeah. No problem. Thanks for having me here.

Catherine: Yeah. You’re welcome.

Andra: How will major breakthroughs like astronauts stepping on the surface of Mars, or even discovering traces of past life on Mars change people’s view of our place in the universe? With modern social media and technology, the whole world will be watching for the next big discovery on Mars.

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[? Music playing ?] [Lyrics –

[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]

? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me thinks she left her underpants
? Take me back to Wondaland
? I gotta get back to Wondaland
? Take me back to Wondaland
? Me thinks she left her underpants

[? Music playing ?]

Megan: Hello science enthusiasts. I am Megan McAndy, a student at Western Washington University, and I am here today with a peer of mine, Holly Christiansen. She’s gonna tell us a little bit about some research she did last summer where she uses black holes as flashlights to look at ancient galaxies. Along with that, we’ll get a glimpse of what this experience is like as a female scientist.

Hi Holly. How did you get into studying astronomy?

Holly: So when I went to college, I wanted to be a biochemist. And I actually did some biochemistry and I really didn’t like it. The content was interesting but the lab work was just boring. I ended up taking an astronomy elective and I liked it so I took another astronomy class and I liked that, and I just sorta never left.

Megan: Wow. From wandering into a class for fun to doing important research on Damped Lyman Alpha Galaxies. What exactly are these galaxies and what makes them so important?

Holly: So the first thing to know about these galaxies is that they’re really far away. We don’t see Galaxie like that in the nearby universe. So they’re interesting to study because the light that we see from that has taken billions of years to reach us. So you can think of it as sort of like galactic archaeology. When we see light from those galaxies, we’re not seeing it as it is right now; we’re seeing the galaxy as it was billions of years ago. So, in that sense, it’s important for piecing together how the universe has changed over time and how it went from something that it was back then to what it looks like now.

The Damped Lyman Alpha Galaxy itself is pretty much just a blob of neutral hydrogen, as far as we know. And we care about neutral hydrogen because that is the stuff that you make stars out of. So if we have these galaxies that are far away, they have a lot of neutral hydrogen. And then in the more nearby universe, we have galaxies that have lots of stars. You can kind of connect the dots and say, “okay. That hydrogen probably became stars.” By what processes does that happen?

It could be that it’s a baby galaxy. How did that baby galaxy become something like our Milky Way that has lots of stars structure and it’s not just a blob?

Megan: So the reason we don’t find these galaxies closer to us is because they’re from the past and we can only see distant things from the past?

Holly: Yeah. That’s the thought. So if you have a galaxy that, as far as we know, is just a lot of hydrogen, it’s gonna go through some processes over billions of years, and eventually will look different. So the galaxies that we see nearby tend to have a lot of stars; they tend to have some structure. We don’t know anything about the structure of these DLA’s. They’re baby galaxies.

Megan: So if you’re looking at these big globs of hydrogen gas, how do you detect them? Can we actually see that?

Holly: Yes and no. So, these baby galaxies were discovered in the 1970s, and we still don’t really know what their actual structure is. I’m saying “blob of hydrogen” because that’s really what we know about them is that there’s a lot of hydrogen. That’s one of the questions we’re trying to answer is: do they have structure? To do that, we need to see light from that. The trouble is: that’s really hard. I’m mentioning that hydrogen gas is the stuff you make stars out of and these galaxies don’t have a lot of stars, so they’re not very bright.

So we didn’t actually discover these galaxies by seeing light from them. We actually found them because they absorb light from something else. If you’re looking at, say, a pair of headlights looking at you, you can tell if there’s fog between you and that headlight. So we do the same thing in astronomy. We look at some of the brightest objects in the universe, what you notice is that there’s some light missing. And it’s a lot of light missing. So if you look at how much light you’re receiving from these objects at different energies and there’s a chunk missing, that means something was there that absorbed some of that light. And that’s literally how these galaxies were discovered is by what was missing, and knowing that, because so much light was missing, there had to be a lot of stuff there. So the “Damped Lyman Alpha” part of their name just refers to the type of light that they absorb.

Megan: So if your research is detecting galaxies like fog through a headlight, what is the headlight that you use?

Holly: So the headlight is a quasar, which is short for “Quasi-Solar Object.” And these objects are, again, very distant. And they look kind of like stars except that they’re super-far away. So, quasars are a type of black hole. And they take in a lot of mass and they also belch back out a lot of light. And so, despite being black holes, they’re actually some of the brightest objects in the galaxy.

Megan: That sounds so counterintuitive to use a black hole as a flashlight! What is the main goal in looking for these galaxies?

Holly: So there’s a couple things I’ve mentioned about them that tie into this, one is that we don’t really know anything about their structure. When you’re looking at the light that’s missing from one of these quasars, all you can tell is that there’s a lot of hydrogen there. So we don’t know anything about the structure of these galaxies. So that’s my immediate research question, really, is: “Can we characterize the physical properties and structure of these galaxies?” In terms of a broader context, we’re interested in the structure of these galaxies because they’re baby galaxies and we think that they become something like our Milky Way. So, if we want to understand the processes by which that happens, how it gets from A to B, we need to understand it’s physical characteristics and its structure.

Megan: This is like discovering history on a galactic scale. Now you did all of this during a summer research program. What did you do on a day-to-day basis while there?

Holly: So I worked with Regina Jorgenson, who is the director of astronomy there at the Maria Mitchell Association. And really I had a lot of freedom. I met with Regina whenever I had something to talk about and, in between meetings, I wrote a lot of code. Yeah, it was a lot of staring at a laptop, to be honest.

Megan: I find it interesting that you’re doing astronomy research, but most of the time, you’re spending staring at a screen and not at the sky.

Holly: The thing with astronomy is that you take your data and that takes one night or a few nights or whatever and then a huge part of it is actually reducing and analyzing the data, taking raw data from the telescope and making into something you can actually interpret.

Megan: So the data you work with is from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. And you were telling me about the observatory uses Laser Guide Star Adaptive Optics. What exactly is that?

Holly: So what that means is adjusting your telescope in real-time constantly to try and reduce atmospheric effects. And you do that by shooting a laser up at the sky. You would expect that that laser is a point-source, just a little point of light on the sky. But because it interacts with the atmosphere, it gets blurred out. And the telescope can actually measure that blurring in real-time because it knows what that laser should look like compared to what it actually looks like. And it adjusts.

Megan: So after all of this, did you actually end up finding a galaxy?

Holly: Yeah, we did! So that was, in itself, like, kind of cool. So the thing with these baby galaxies is you know there’s a lot of hydrogen gas right in front of your quasar. But the part that we’re actually looking at when we do manage to detect it directly is the brightest part of the galaxy. And those two parts are not necessarily in the same place, the part that we’ve seen in front of the quasar and the brightest part. So, the brightest part is probably in the center of the galaxy. And there is some small amount of star formation happening there, which is why we can see it. And so it’s sort of a guessing game as to where that is.

So there were 4 sight-lines in this project. And I’ve only fully reduced the one of them. But I think that’s the only one where we got a hit. But that was a really fun day. So we got to the part where I had an image that was to the stage. We were ready to look for a galaxy in it. And I was trying to learn how to use the software. And I was in my advisor’s office and she was like “Oh. Here. Let me show you this trick.” And she did it and this, like, galaxy just popped out.

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Megan: To do this research, Holly, you were selected to go to Massachusetts for this program. Were you the only female undergrad or were there others there, too?

Holly: So I mentioned that the Maria Mitchell Association is named after and dedicated to America’s first female professional astronomer. The director of astronomy is currently a woman. And traditionally the observatory hires 6 interns every summer. And traditionally 4 of them are women. Partially that’s just due to housing reasons, but also to give young women opportunities in astronomy. There’s kind of two-fold, with the latter being the more important reason. So it actually was really great. I’m admittedly used to being in a minority, so it’s refreshing.

Megan: You said that you’re used to being in the minority. What is your experience like elsewhere?

Holly: Well, I guess here at Western, I think the physics major is between 20% and 25% women. It sort of fluctuates. I guess you just get used to being in the minority. And there’s something about that experience that I think your male colleagues never quite understand. They don’t experience the same, you know, quite the same things. And that’s, you know, that’s fine. Everyone has their different lived experiences, but it’s just different I guess to be in a group that’s mostly women and talking about physics. But yeah, it can be frustrating. It can raise communication issues. Or, you know, even just in a shared study space and people ask their colleagues or friends for input and they sort of just skip over you and you’re like, “Oh. Alright.”

Yeah, it’s those kinds of communication issues I think sometimes arise in a group setting. At least that’s in my experience, as much as I like and respect all my male colleagues; sometimes we just see things a different way.

Megan: Why do you think there’s such a huge disparity in the ratio between females to males in the astronomy field?

Holly: The further you go up the academic ladder, the fewer and fewer women there are. And I tend to think it’s more due to structural issues at the higher levels. You know, if you’re a grad student and . . . I don’t know, or a young professor, and you have a baby. Do you get good maternity leave? Does it damage your research? Does it damage your collaborations with your peers? Do you have good access to childcare? You know, that kind of thing.

When you don’t have as many women at the upper levels, the women at the lower . . . the more junior women are lacking role models and they’re lacking mentorship with people who understand their experiences.

Megan: Before we’re done, do you have any advice for young female scientists out there?

Holly: So I think what I would say to any young women or folks of any gender identity who are thinking about science or anything else that seems kind of scary, I would say: Don’t count yourself out of things. Don’t decide not to do things just because you think they’re hard or you think “they’re definitely gonna pick me.” A lot of the best things that I’ve done and a lot of the best things that have happened to me have happened because I did something that was scary or that I wasn’t sure about, and a lot of them are things that I almost decided not to even apply for, or, you know, not to put myself out there for.

Some of the things that are most personally rewarding and most worthwhile to do are things that were hard and things that you thought you couldn’t do. It’s good to prove yourself wrong.

Megan: That is some great advice, Holly. And thank you so much for taking out time for this interview.

Holly: Well thank you for having me.

[? Music playing ?.]

Megan: This interview was held in the Communication Facilty at Western Washington University. The interview was done by Megan McAndy with special guest, Holly Christiansen, and in partnership with Western Washington University and KMRE. I’d like to give a special thank-you to Gillicuddy for using their song “Springish” as long as my friends and housemates who helped me edit this along the way.

[? Janelle Monae singing Wondaland ?]

Dr. DeGraaff: This is Spark Science and we’ll be back again next week. Listen to us on 102.3FM in Bellingham or kmre.org streaming on Sunday’s at 5:00pm, Thursdays at noon, and Saturdays at 3:00pm. If there’s a science idea you are curious about, post a message on our Facebook page: “Spark Science.” This is an all volunteer-run show, so if you want to help us out, go to sparksciencenow.com and click on “donate.” This show is a collaborate between Spark Radio, KMRE, and Western Washington University. Our producer is Regina Barber DeGraaff. The engineer for today’s show is Andrew Norton, and sci-comm students: Derek Thidell, Zach Laycock, Andrew Norton, and Megan McAndy. Our theme music is “Chemical Calisthenics” by Blackalicious and “Wondaland” by Janelle Monae.

[?Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ?]
? Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
? Iodine nitrate activate
? Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
? Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in
? Careful, careful with those ingredients
? They could explode and blow up if you drop them
? And they hit the ground
[End of podcast.]

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