Oct 21 - Surviving the Misinformation Age

In the past, information was scarce, but generally high quality. Conversely, in the last 10-15 years, the amount of information produced by humanity has skyrocketed while simultaneously being made accessible to nearly every human being on the planet. Tonight, Professor David Helfand discussed the challenges that this firehose of data presents to society. 

The internet is full of mis-information that is easily accessible and appears vetted. Prof. Helfand told us about the tendency for people to cherry-pick data, i.e. selecting only evidence that fits their pre-determined argument, rather than assessing or even accepting all the available evidence. He also critiqued the "echo chamber" that can be created in online spaces. He urged the audience to be skeptical and listen to a variety of sources, and to search out the evidence behind claims they read or hear. Prof. Helfand's talk was based on his new book, "A Survival Guide to the Misinformation Age."

Despite the clouds, graduate student Aleksey Generozov and a team of volunteers showed off the big dome and telescope. On the 13th floor, undergraduate student Richard presented movies on our 3D wall. 

-- Stephanie Douglas (graduate student)

February 7: Five Billion Years of Solitude

We kicked off a new year of events with the help of local author, Lee Billings, who recently published his book Five Billion Years of Solitude on the search for life beyond our Solar System. The title actually refers to the expected "life span" of life on Earth and what we are going to do with our "moment in the Sun". Contrary to popular belief, life on Earth will end long before the Sun becomes a red giant (excluding anthropogenic factors) - in about 500 million years, in fact, when the carbon cycle comes to a grinding halt. Lee's talk focused on our efforts thus far to discover if we will spend our remaining time in the Universe alone. He presented up to date results from NASA's Kepler mission and discussed what exoplanet properties we can currently deduce from the data. For as much as we like to speculate about habitability, it turns out we are still a ways from being able to confidently tell if the ingredients for life are present yet. 

After the talk, audience members enjoyed the 3D wall run by undergraduates Varad and Claire, as well as an informal talk on gamma-ray bursts by Maria, a graduate student. Due to the harsh winter, only the Big Dome was open on the roof for observing and we instead brought our portable telescopes out on the plaza in front of Pupin for glimpses of Jupiter and the Moon. Thanks to Adrian, Emir, Jingjing, and Andrew for leading the stargazing charge. 

-- Summer Ash (Director of Outreach)

March 1: Martian Summer

We hosted author, Andrew Kessler, and approximately 80 members of the general public on Friday, March 1st to hear all about the people and the science behind NASA's Phoenix Mars mission. Kessler spent a year with the engineers and scientists who worked on Phoenix to learn what it takes to launch a spacecraft from Earth and safely place it on the surface of another planet. Phoenix landed near the north pole on Mars, the first craft to ever land in the polar regions of the red planet. It's mission was to study the history of water in the ice-rich boundary of the Martian arctic. To do this, the Phoenix lander was equipped with a robot arm that could scoop up soil samples for analysis by an array of instruments including a mass spectrometer, a wet chemistry lab, and a high resolution imager. Not only did Phoenix discover subsurface water ice, but it also found that Martian soil contained high concentrations of chloride which converts to perchlorate in the presence of sunlight. You can read all about the Phoenix mission and Kessler's experience in mission control in his book, "Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen, and My 90 Days with the Phoenix Mars Mission" and you can follow him on Twitter here.

After the talk, audience members toured our rooftop observatory (with the help of graduate students Jennifer Weston and Yong Zheng and undergraduate Jose Montelongo), viewed 3D movies (with undergraduate Bryan Terrazas), and listened to graduate student Steph Douglas explain the myriad of motions experienced by the Earth from our rotation around the Sun all the way out to the expansion of the Universe.

Join us for our next event on Friday, March 15th when post-doc Ashely Pagnotta explains how supernovae are used to understand the mysterious force known as dark energy.

--Summer Ash (Director of Outreach)