I've fallen behind
in writing about the awesome space and science talks that I've
attended in the past week! Now seems like a good time to catch up and
let you all know about some cool happenings.
Relativity
 |
| Drs. Jeffrey Bennett and Dan Batcheldor - September 25, 2015 |
On Friday evening,
unrelated to but coinciding perfectly with a student career
preparation conference that I helped with, I attended Florida
Institute of Technology's monthly public science lecture series with
Dr. Jeffrey Bennett who last year published the book What Is
Relativity? I enjoyed conversing with my former professors prior to
the talk and ended up unexpectedly taking a front row seat. I'm glad
that I did!
Overall, I found the
couch-sitting interview-style talk to be informative, entertaining,
and even humorous, not what one would expect for a physics talk! I
have the advantage of a doctoral-level education in physics and an
interest in relativity since high school, so the concepts discussed
were well known to me. I could focus instead on the presentation
style and perspectives. I was surprised and even amused by the
analogous scenarios presented to explain some of the mind-bending
curiosities of relativity.
I did not previously know that
2015 is the International Year of Light. It has been approximately
100 years since Einstein's publications on relativity. One of Jeff
Bennett's goals is to address the misconceptions about space and
relativity. One misconception, a personal pet peeve of mine that my
own employer is guilty of, is being too casual with wording by
stating or implying that there is no gravity in space. There is
always gravity in space, anywhere in space, though gravitational
pulls may cancel to a net gravity of zero.
Other misconceptions
stem from the fact that when it comes to relativity, we don't have
any common sense. We have never traveled at relativistic speeds.
Similar to quantum mechanics, it's hard to wrap our minds around
something that we don't have any direct experience with. Yet
relativity does affect us every day. For example, navigational
satellites such as GPS use relativity in their calculations. We've
been testing relativity since the Michelson–Morley experiment in
1887. I and countless other physics students have replicated this
experiment in physics labs.
One interesting
point was that humans don't like being told what we can and cannot
do. Relativity tells us that we can't go faster than the speed of
light c. We immediately try to figure a way around this. Science
fiction writers usually don't even try to break c; instead they
speculate about loopholes such as inter-dimensional travel.
The conversation
covered gravitational lensing, black holes, determinism, multiverses,
and the “theory of everything.” One funny moment came when the
speaker stated, “I don't like determinism and I don't know why,”
and the moderator responded, “You have no choice.” Ah, geek
humor.
I was the first in
line to ask a question clarifying Stephen Hawking's latest black hole
theory. I was also the only female to ask a question in a long line
of curious males. I did see a few female students approach the
speaker after the talk, as if they were interested but didn't want to
stand up to be heard. Come on ladies, let's show the world that we
have brains and mouths!
Engaging Scientists
and Engineers in Policy
On Tuesday I
attended an American Association for the Advancement of Science
webinar on Engaging Scientists and Engineers in Policy by Dr. Rush
Holt, a physicist, the CEO of AAAS, and former New Jersey Congressman.
The title of this talk was mislabeled, or otherwise their wasn't much
meat in the talk about the topic at hand.
The majority of the
presentation was lamenting the lack of science understanding in the
general public, which I can totally get behind. The speaker was
preaching to the choir, in my opinion. He would often slip economics
understanding into the discussion, which seemed out of place, but was
obviously on his mind. One of my PhD economist husband's biggest pet
peeves is when non-economists act like authorities on economics while
ignoring or dismissing actual experts. It is the same in science.
Two of the speaker's
biggest concerns were students and news media. Both are not taught
well how to ask for evidence but instead take what is presented to
them at face value, blindly believing it. I see this all the
time in the general public, even among my friends. A
celebrity, a trend-setter, or a seeming authority makes a statement
or writes an article (or blog post!) about a scientific topic and,
without doing any research of their own, people blindly believe it.
It's no wonder that scientific understanding in our culture is so
poor when even our own journalists don't investigate to make their
own conclusions. This is the information age and the world is at our
fingertips – use it!
Approximately five
minutes of the 45 minute talk was actually dedicated to what
scientists/engineers can do in policy. The advice: take on a
fellowship to work a temporary position in Capitol Hill. I've been
hearing this advice since graduate school and it's so disconnected
from reality. Science-trained politicians and staffers are a
fantastic asset to our government and policy-makers, but the vast
majority of scientists are not able to pause their lives, disrupt their families, and move to
Washington, D.C. for a year (the term period for most of these fellowships). This just isn't feasible for 99.99% of
scientists, so what is the advice for the rest of us?
The biggest
take-away from the talk was that we as scientists can help others
learn to question. Science is within everyone's grasp and isn't just
for experts. Anyone can ask Why? How? What is the evidence? If
someone has a misconception about science, ask them probing questions
about what evidence was used to come to that conclusion. Make them
think. This advice wasn't really relevant to the talk's topic, but still very
good advice.
US Commercial Space
Industry
 |
| Dr. Roger Handberg - September 30, 2015 |
Yesterday,
coinciding well with a university mentorship program that I participated in on campus later
that day, I hung out with some of my former professors and colleagues
at the University of Central Florida for the Florida Space
Institute's lecture series. The talk was by Dr. Roger Handberg, a
political science professor. The topic: US commercial space industry.
Overall, the speaker
gave a good historical overview of the public-private partnerships in
the US space industry. More recent happenings and analysis is where
the speaker got a little stuck with lack of knowledge and mixed up a few
things. His assessments were very pessimistic, which is
actually a refreshing counter to the rah-rah advocacy so prevalent in
the space industry. I don't agree with all of his negative outlooks,
especially in the areas where his information is lacking, but my
skeptical scientist side did appreciate the alternative perspective.
He began by
speaking about the decline in government funding in the space program
and how that decline is stressing private industry, generally
speaking and not mentioning any particular government cuts. He didn't
give figures, but I'm curious to know what they are. If a reader
could point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.
He went over some
recent difficulties in the industry, such as the Virgin Galactic,
Orbital Sciences, and SpaceX accidents. He also discussed the current
challenges with politics forcing ULA to replace its Russian RD-180
engine. With ULA phasing out Atlas V and most of Delta IV, and with
the Blue Origin BE-4 engine replacement still in development, he
worried that SpaceX may become a national monopoly for government
launches. I think that this is highly unlikely, but time will tell.
He spoke about some
of the more successful space applications, such as communication,
navigation, and remote sensing satellites. Historically, I did not
realize that denial of satellite imagry to adversaries during wartime
was an actually strategy that the US military used. He said that it's
harder to do now with so much Earth observation competition. He also
touched upon some of the challenges in the satellite industry that
I'm less familiar with such as the limited number of receivers and
spectrum interference.
The bottom line is
that the cost to orbit is still the number one problem in the space
industry. Spacecraft reusibility may lower cost significantly but is
very difficult to achieve. High cost holds back tourism, as well as
safety concerns and the lack of reliable transportation. State
spaceports have popped up all over due to increased popularity and
enthusiasm after the 2004 SpaceShipOne X-Prize win, but lack of
progress and high cost hinders the industry. Space manufacturing and
space mining isn't economically feasible due to high launch costs.
The economics doesn't work unless the industry is government
subsidized, he said. It wasn't a positive outlook on the industry,
but probably more realistic than many would admit.
