Hey Science, How YOU doin'?

(Originally written for Double X Science on June 22, 2012. Included here with additional thoughts.)

There have been and will be much more eloquent (and rage filled) responses to this video, but for now I just want to add my voice to the dumbfounded chorus of scientists who woke up to this insanity this morning: 



It's like the only way to correct the stereotype of science being done by old guys in white lab coats with bad hair is to yank the pendulum so far in the other direction and imply that science can also be done by preteens dressed like streetwalkers. Nay, not only can, but is!

Now while I have an admittedly large obsession with fashion, and shoes in particular, it's not representative of how most women dress for work. So why the hell should is it being touted as the new uniform for science?

The real shame is that this flashy (and hideous) video is now the public face for what seems to be a worthwhile, and even well-produced in places, campaign by the European Union to encourage more girls to go into science. There are currently twelve profiles of real women scientists at various stages in their career that are worth watching with any clever young girls you know. Just hit the stop button before the catch phrase/website address gets written in lipstick across the screen at the end of each one.

For me the most important take away is that there exists a spectrum of not only women, but people, in science. There is no mold. It's not a "guy thing," but it's not a "girl thing" either. Anyone with the passion, motivation, and dedication can become a scientist. I called my (neglected as of late) blog "Newtonianism for the Ladies" not because science needs to be dumbed down or spoon fed to women, but after a book by the same title written in 1737 by Francesco Algarotti. Algarotti wrote the book to help spread Newton's ideas on the nature of light and optics to women of the upper class who were only beginning to be educated. The book was also one of the main channels through which Newtonianism reached the general public in continental Europe.

And yet in the intervening centuries, we've gone from "science for all" to "science: it's a girl thing." And instead of science trying to attract girls, we've got girls trying to attract science like it's some kind of horny john. The defense that this video is just a teaser for the "real" campaign on the subsequent pages of the website (some of which aren't even up yet) is laughable. Based on the logo alone, it's clear that they are digging in their 4" heels on this approach. Which is just so damn frustrating when good intentions and good materials are likely to get lost in the backlash.

Just so we're clear, I have nothing against 4" heels. In fact, I own several pairs myself. One of my favorite moments as a teacher was when I taught a summer course on astronomy for 14 and 15 year olds in Cambridge, England. A total of nine students enrolled in my class, eight of them girls(!). I often wore heels to class because I enjoy fashion (see above) and I liked having the opportunity to challenge the scientist stereotype these students grew up with. One day I even brought in a girlfriend, and fellow astrophysicist, to guest lecture and we purposely both wore our new Pucci shoes from the British summer sales (it was a very good sale). On the last day of class, I handed out cardboard telescope kits and once assembled, my students turned their new tools into "yearbooks" by having everyone sign everyone else's.

This is what one of the female student's wrote on mine:

Transcription: "Summer, you are the coolest astrophysicist I know and the one with the best footwear by far, you'll so be my geru [sic] on my quest to be a rocket scientist with great shoes. I had such a blast in astronomy. DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING, it was perfect! Love, Caroline"

I love the spot I occupy on the scientist spectrum, and I know plenty of scientists who love their spots on the spectrum too. What I don't love is when people take one slice of a spectrum as representative of the whole. I would never assume my fellow scientists walked, talked, and dressed the same as me; that is an affront to an observer like me. In astronomy, you learn that if you look at an object in only one wavelength, you're ignoring any radiation it's emitting at other wavelengths and consequently, you're not seeing the whole picture. Without multi-wavelength astronomy (combining observations at more than one wavelength), we would only know a fraction of what we know about the Universe today. I think that's the message we should be sending to girls about science: each scientist is just a fraction of what you can be if you want to pursue science. That message is already out there in some form or another with the "I am Science" and "This is What a Scientist Looks Like" movements, but it would be really great to see it given a bigger platform with lots of resources to reach girls far and wide.

I'm looking at you, EU.

...Not because they are easy, but because they are hard

All the fuss over Newt Gingrich's plans for the Moon glosses over the fact that ambitious endeavors don't just happen because a politician wishes them so, they require the heroic efforts of thousands to tens of thousands of technicians, scientists, and engineers.

Twenty-six years ago today, seven of those heroes lost their lives in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Almost six months to the day before that tragedy, Roger Boisjoly, an engineer and employee of Morton Thiokol, the company that manufactured the Shuttle's solid rocket boosters, made a heroic effort to prevent it. This morning, Letters of Note tweeted the interoffice memo he sent to the company's Vice President warning of the now infamous O-ring failure:

"This letter is written to insure that management is fully aware of the seriousness of the current O-ring erosion problem in the SRM joints from an engineering standpoint.

The mistakenly accepted position on the joint problem was to fly without fear of failure and to run a series of design evaluations which would ultimately lead to a solution or at least a significant reduction of the erosion problem. This position is now drastically changed as a result of the SRM 16A nozzle joint erosion which eroded a secondary O-ring with the primary O-ring never sealing.

If the same scenario should occur in a field joint (and it could), then it is a jump ball as to the success or failure of the joint because the secondary O-ring cannot respond to the clevis opening rate and may not be capable of pressurization. The result would be a catastrophe of the highest order - loss of human life."

Despite these and other warnings, executives at Morton Thiokol did not stop the Challenger launch and the predicted catastrophe did occur. Even so, I think we should all be inspired by Mr. Boisjoly's efforts to make his voice heard and to ensure the safety of those he was helping to leave our home planet.

Sadly, Mr. Boisjoly passed earlier this month, but just under two years ago he gave his personal archive of papers, memos, and notes from his work at Morton Thiokol and his Congressional testimony on the Challenger disaster to Chapman University in Orange, CA. Road trip, anyone?

Stephen Hawking Turns 70

Stephen Hawking was given a few years to live when he was 21. He turns 70 today.

Until just a few years ago, Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) at the University of Cambridge. A most prestigious position previously held by Isaac Newton, Charles Babbage, and Paul Dirac.

I crossed paths with Hawking several times during my studies in England. The University of Cambridge is a funny place for those of us that study the Universe. It has three separate departments: astrophysics and cosmology at DAMTP, the Institute of Astronomy, and the astrophysics group in the Department of Physics's Cavendish Laboratory (where I was). Despite the divisions between these groups, bureaucratic and geographic, there is interaction. Specifically as a graduate student, I frequently attended seminars and colloquia in all three departments.

In my first year, my fellow students and I used to attend "Cosmology Lunch" at DAMPT, a brown bag lunch series to discuss current research being done in the field. To my utter surprise, at more than one lunch, the side door opened and Stephen Hawking was wheeled in by one of his graduate students. In fact, the first time this happened, I was sitting next to said door with a friend of mine who had put his wallet down on the table next to him. When Hawking's grad student had situated him properly, he pulled the table over to use for Hawking's lunch and my friend immediately whispered to me that Stephen Hawking just stole his wallet. As you can imagine, this became one of my favorite anecdotes from my time in Cambridge.

In contrast to this amusing episode is the seminar I attended at DAMPT where Hawking first announced that he was conceding his bet with Kip Thorne and John Preskill on the black hole information paradox. Hawking and Thorne argued that once an object was accreted onto a black hole, general relatively prevented any information about the object from being regained, i.e., you couldn't "back out" what went into a black hole by studying the radiation given off by the black hole. Preskill argued the opposite, i.e., that quantum mechanics guaranteed that you could. The loser of the bet had to buy the winner the encyclopedia of his choice, from which information could be obtained at will.

Hawking officially conceded the bet publicly at 17th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation, on 21 July 2004 in Dublin. However, prior to that, he announced his intention to concede the bet to the Cambridge community at a Friday General Relativity Seminar at DAMTP. The small room was packed and I will never forget the first time I got to see Hawking "speak." He did not work from a prepared text, rather composed his words on the spot to go with the slides he was presenting. As you can imagine, each thought took quite a while to compose. The seminar room was hushed between slides, anxiously waiting for his next sentence. What I remember most was his response to a two-part question towards the very end of the seminar. The audience member sat down after posing his questions and we all sat watching Hawking as he thought them over. After at least five minutes his answer finally came: "yes, and no."

For more on Hawking's current thoughts on the Universe, you can read or listen to him answering questions from the public here.

And to celebrate, I recommend you watch two of the best videos on Hawking and his research. The first is the wonderfully made, "A Brief History of Time," an 80 min. documentary on Hawking from 1991. I can still recall watching it for the first time in middle school. It was an important mile marker on my road to studying the Universe. The second is an epic rap battle between Einstein and Hawking. You heard me: epic rap battle. Happy Birthday, MC Hawking.



(Image credit: http://www.inquisitr.com/wp-content/2012/01/stephen-hawking.jpg)

Happy Birthday, Carl

(Originally posted on Maddow Blog, 9 November 2011)



Thirty-four years ago, NASA launched the Voyager 1 space probe as part of a Planetary Grand Tour proposed by scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The plan was to use the technique of gravity assists to exploit an alignment of the outer planets that would allow for a single probe to visit Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto using the encounter with each planet to slingshot it on a trajectory to the next.

The Grand Tour was eventually cut back, and Voyager 1 only visited Jupiter and Saturn before heading to the outer reaches of the Solar System and eventually interstellar space. The design life of the probe was approximately three to four years, just long enough to complete its primary mission, but once it became clear it would continue to function for some time to come, Carl Sagan proposed the turning the spacecraft around to take a last look at Earth. His purpose was more philosophical than scientific; no one had ever seen Earth from such a great distance before. He was more interested in the perspective such an image might provide to a species that had, for the most part, never been away from home.

In the spring of 1990, Voyager 1 sent a series of images back to Earth, one of which we now know as the indelible portrait of our planet from over 3.5 billion miles away. In honor of Carl Sagan's birthday, I thought it appropriate to revisit this unique view of all that we know in this Universe, all that we call home, the only home we've ever known.

Maddow Blog

I haven't posted here in a while for several reasons, one of which is that I've occasionally be writing posts for The Rachel Maddow Show over on Maddow Blog. But in the interest of alerting those of you that may only follow me here, I'm going to start cross-posting. Just wanted to let you know!

Godspeed

I've been obsessed with space ever since I first looked up at the night sky. My mom even has me on tape at 18 months or so trying to talk about the moon.

So as the space shuttle program comes to a close this month, I (along with many others) have been reflecting back on what it's meant to me. Essentially, the shuttle program and I have grown up together. It's been a major influence in my life and what I've chosen to do. Regardless of any political, economical, or even scientific arguments on the practicality of manned spaceflight, the sheer power of inspiration cannot be ignored.

I grew up just outside of Washington, D.C. and was lucky enough to be able to go to the National Air & Space Museum almost whenever I wanted. In 1985, my mom took me there to see The Dream is Alive, the IMAX film on the shuttle program, which was still in its infancy. If I had any doubt that I wanted to go to space before then, that film obliterated it. I can still close my eyes and replay it in my mind. I can hear the sonic booms at the start, retrace the camera sequence over the beach and marshes to the shuttle on the launch pad, and jump despite myself when the astronauts practice their emergency egress from the cockpit and zip down the escape lines.

I won't bore you with every space shuttle related memory I have (we would be here all day), but I'd like to mention someone who went out of his way to help me pursue my own space dreams. After college, I went to work at Orbital Space Sciences Corporation, in Dulles, VA on the X-34 Reusable Launch Vehicle Program. Somewhere in my first year, we got a new program director: ex-astronaut G. David Low. David was not what you immediately think of when picturing an astronaut; he was relatively small in stature and quiet in nature, not at all the outgoing fly-boy stereotype. I can still remember our first all-staff meeting in the high-bay where I had to strain to even hear him. Soon enough though, I got to experience what an amazing leader and mentor he could be.

One weekend when we were all working through a program review, I was grabbing a slice of pizza in the conference room and David mentioned to me that he had heard I wanted to be an astronaut. I never in a million years would have walked up to him and asked for advice, that's just the way I was at the time, but here he was actively volunteering to answer any questions and do what he could to help. In the summer of 2001, he helped me plan a trip to Johnson Space Center to meet with the head of the astronaut office and some of his former colleagues who were still active in the astronaut corps. Every single person I met welcomed me with open arms and spoke fondly of working with David. When I finally did apply to be an astronaut, David jumped at the chance to provide a reference.

I left Orbital to go back to school in the fall of 2001, but I frequently went back to visit my colleagues (most of whom are now good friends) and I always made a point of stopping in to see David. He had a way of making me feel full of potential, like I could do anything I set my mind to. He made everyone around him better. I'm speaking in the past tense because David passed away in March of 2008 due to colon cancer. I still miss him greatly and often come across things I wish I could share with him. I would love hear his perspective on the future of manned spaceflight given the crossroads we are currently at. I know he would say this is not the end, just a hiatus of sorts.

I like to think the same of my time with David. It didn't end when he died, it just got disrupted. He led and inspired others by example; something he and the space shuttle program have in common. Both have played important roles in my life and have made me who I am today. And I will carry both of them in my heart and my mind as I step into the future.

Godspeed G. David Low, wherever you are, and godspeed Atlantis.

Eratosthenes' Shadow

Some days the world feels really big and somedays it feels quite small, but as you might suspect, it doesn't actually change size. Here in the 21st century, we know the circumference, density, and other physical properties with great accuracy. However, back in 3 BC even the first of these was still a mystery. That is, until a man named Eratosthenes devised a simple yet elegant way to calculate the size of the Earth using nothing but the Sun and some mad geometry skills.

My friend, Gene Gordon, a high school physics teacher in upstate New York got me excited about the simplicity of Eratosthenes' original experiment. Gene had the great idea to use social media to get students all over the country (and even the world) to recreate Eratosthenes' experiment "simultaneously."

I'm going to let the one and only Carl Sagan give you the full background on Eratosthenes farther down the post, but in the spirit of Gene's lesson plan, I want to demonstrate how you too can determine the size of the Earth with a little help from your friends.

Now comes the math. I promise it won't hurt.

1) Calculate the angle the sun's rays hit your stick at solar noon using the equation given below. You and your friend should each do this separately. This will give you TWO ANGLES, one for the person at the higher latitude location and one for the person at the lower latitude location. [Hint: the function below is called "arctan" and appears on any scientific calculator.]

2) Whichever one of you has the smaller angle, subtract this from the bigger one. This is your THETA.

3) Find the distance in miles or kilometers between the LATITUDE of your location and the LATITUDE of your friend's location. (DO NOT find the distance as the crow flies.) This is your DISTANCE.


4) Now for the grand finale! Your THETA represents a portion of a full circle, a fraction of 360 degrees. Your DISTANCE is the equivalent fraction of the Earth's circumference. So divide your THETA by 360 and multiply by your DISTANCE. TA-DA! You've calculated the circumference of the Earth. [Note: your circumference will be in the same units as your stick and shadow so a little unit conversion may be in order.]


Eratosthenes actually had it easy, he already knew of a nearby city (Syene) where the Sun was directly overhead at midday on one day of the year - the summer solstice - meaning that all he had to do was measure the angle of the Sun in Alexandria, where he was.



Because the Sun is so far away from Earth, incoming light rays are essentially parallel. And thanks to geometry, we have a handy-dandy theorem for determining angles when two parallel lines are transected by a third line: alternate interior angles are congruent (or equal). In practical terms, this means that the angle measured by Eratosthenes in Alexandria is equal to the angular distance between Alexandria and Syene. To get the last piece of the puzzle, Eratosthenes paid a guy to actually pace out the distance between the two cities. E voila! He had all he needed to calculate the circumference of the Earth. And he was surprisingly accurate, coming well within 10% of the present day value of ~40,000 km (depending on historical interpretations).

But enough math for now! I'll leave you with how Carl tells the story of Eratosthenes, which is of course beautifully.