Podcasts about Lick Observatory

Sarah Al-Ahmed holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in astrophysics from the University of California at Berkeley. After some time as a data-taker for a supernova research team using instruments at Lick Observatory in Mt. Hamilton, California, she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in science communication. Sarah spent six years as a museum guide, writer, and show producer at the historic Griffith Observatory. She was a monthly contributor to Griffith Observer magazine and a content creator for All Space Considered, the observatory's monthly astronomy news program. Sarah joined The Planetary Society as Digital Community Manager in 2020, using her science communication skills to cultivate The Planetary Society's online communities. In 2023, she became the host and producer of Planetary Radio, The Planetary Society's weekly podcast and radio show. She continues to share the human adventure across our Solar System and beyond each week. Please check out these links from the episode: Planetary Radio The Planetary Society Griffith Observatory Welcome to Dice in Mind, a podcast hosted by Bradley Browne and Jason Kaufman to explore the intersection of life, games, science, music, philosophy, and creativity through interviews with leading creatives. All are welcome in this space. Royalty-free music "Night Jazz Beats" courtesy of flybirdaudio.

On this episode, astrophysicist Sandra Faber joins Nate for a wideview cosmological conversation on the development of the known-universe and the moral implications for humanity's role within it. We are the first generation with the ability to truly understand the history of the universe and the extreme bottlenecks that Earth and life as we know it had to endure over the last billions of years. This understanding of where we come from gives us insight into who we are - and could perhaps give purpose to those searching for meaning in the vast universe. From the Big Bang on, how did the necessary conditions come together to create the environment so many of us take for granted today? How do the laws of physics restrict everything that has ever happened in the universe - and everything that ever will? Could a deeper understanding of the cosmos shift our culture towards one that values human's survival into deep time - and incentivize biophysically and ecologically aligned systems? About Sandra Faber Sandra Faber is an American astrophysicist known for her research on the evolution of galaxies. She is the University Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and works at the Lick Observatory. She has made discoveries linking the brightness of galaxies to the speed of stars within them and was the co-discoverer of the Faber–Jackson relation. Faber was also instrumental in designing the Keck telescopes in Hawaii. At UCSC she focuses her research on the evolution of structure in the universe and the evolution and formation of galaxies. In addition to this, she led the development of the DEIMOS instrument on the Keck telescopes to obtain spectra of cosmologically distant galaxies. On August 1, 2012 she became the Interim Director of the University of California Observatories. Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/04jg5--t8RQ  Show notes, and more info: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/111-sandra-faber 

Episode 165 In this episode we continue our special series on Historic Observatories as we talk with a Staff Astronomer of the Lick observatory, Paul Lynam. Paul Lynam Contact: plynam@ucolick.org Lick Observatory https://www.lickobservatory.org/ For more information you can visit the ALPO web site at: www.alpo-astronomy.org/ You can also support this podcast at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ObserversNotebook Listen to the podcast on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/observersnotebook Subscribe on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/observers-notebook-the-alpo-podcast/id1199301885?mt=2 Subscribe on our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AssociationofLunarandPlanetaryObservers I want to thank the Producers of this podcast, Steve Siedentop and Michael Moyer for their generous support of the Observers Notebook. Our Patreons: Jerry White Jason Inman Matt Will Steve Seidentop Stephen Bennett Michael Moyer Shawn Dilles Frank Schenck Damian Allis Carl Hergenrother Julian Parks Michael McShan Michael Blake Nick Evetts Rik Hill Stan Sienkiewicz

Was there ever life on Mars? Where can your passion for astronomy and cosplaying take you? And what the heck is a Light Sail? To get the answer to these and other questions, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome Sarah Al-Ahmed, host of The Planetary Society's podcast, Planetary Radio. As always, though, we start off with the day's joyfully cool cosmic thing: a new ice-filled hole on Mars! Thanks to data from the Mars Insight Lander and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, we know now that the disturbance that occurred on Mars on Christmas Eve of 2021 wasn't a marsquake at all, but a meteor strike on the Red Planet. And the ice didn't originate on the surface, but was kicked up by the impact. And now that we've arrived at Mars, we might as well dive in. Sarah talks about the value of staged investigations of Mars, and why we shouldn't send humans to Mars just yet. (Can you say contamination?) The conversation quickly turns to whether humans should colonize Mars, or explore it, at least at first. For our initial student question, Anthony asks Sarah, “What date would you expect Mars to be habitable?” which we take to mean either, when was it habitable, if at all, and also, when will it be habitable? Sarah talks about the samples and science we've done with Curiosity, Perseverance and other missions to Mars, which point to Mars having been habitable 2-3 billion years ago, before some catastrophic change caused it to lose its atmosphere. As to the future? Sarah optimistically predicts we could have humans living in small-scale habitats within a hundred years, but it's unlikely that we could ever make the whole planet habitable again. Moving on, Chuck asks Sarah about her career. She talks about getting her degree in astrophysics at UC Berkeley, operating a telescope at Lick Observatory, and working with – and learning from – Alex Filippenko, noted astronomer and one of the leading scientists involved in figuring out the amount of dark energy in the universe. She followed her passion to the Griffith Observatory, where she spent 6 years sharing her love of astronomy with people of all ages from all over the world at the world's most-looked-through telescope. Thanks to its location in Los Angeles, the Observatory is also one of the most frequently depicted in TV, and Chuck and Sarah swap stories about its appearance in Wonder Woman (the Linda Carter series) and Star Trek Voyager. Sarah also shares another aspect of her geekdom: she's a gamer and a cosplayer! She shows off the Razor Kitty Kraken 2 headphones and Carina Nebula JWST-image dress she's wearing (sorry podcast listeners – they're really cool!) and talks about how she “recharges her happiness batteries” by going to cons and cosplaying. Convention name dropping and Doctor Who citing ensues – and of course Chuck talks about The LIUniverse's deep ties to New York Comic Con. Check out our two live Science of Sci-Fi panels from 2021 and 2022. Next, it's time for our second student question, from a different Anthony: “How does astronomy impact you as a person or the way you look at life?” Sarah's answer is so powerful and empowering, we wouldn't dream of spoiling it here – watch or listen for yourself! (Chuck's response is pretty cool, too.) Finally, Sarah talks about her gig at The Planetary Society, where she now hosts their Planetary Radio podcast, and all of the cool projects that are coming to fruition. You'll learn about their new Member Community Digital App and the new Planetary Academy membership program for kids 9 and younger. Chuck and Sarah discuss the importance of The Planetary Society and its legacy. (For those of you who don't know, Carl Sagan was one of its co-founders, and their current CEO is Bill Nye the Science Guy.) And you'll find out about the Society's Near-Earth Asteroid Scout mission, a solar sail cubesat that was launched on the recent Artemis 1 mission and is designed for asteroid detection and planetary defense. Sarah also gives us an update on the Society's Light Sail 1 and Light Sail 2, the first fully crowdfunded space mission in history. If you'd like to know more about Sarah and The Planetary Society, visit planetary.org. You can find Planetary Radio wherever you get your podcasts, or on Twitter @planrad, where Sarah will be tweeting. We hope you enjoy this episode of The LIUniverse, and, if you do, please support us on Patreon. Credits for Images Used in this Episode: – New ice-filled crater on Mars – NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona, Public Domain – Artist's impression of Mars 4 billion years ago – ESO/M. Kornmesser/N. Risinger, CC BY 4.0 – Lick Observatory in Santa Clara County, California – Thomson200, Public Domain – Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California – Plane777, Public Domain – Concept art for the Near-Earth Asteroid Scout mission – NASA, Public Domain – LightSail 2's view from orbit – The Planetary Society, CC BY-SA 3.0

For William Campbell and his team from Lick Observatory, it had been a long journey. It took months to sail from California to Australia, travel the full width of the country, then sail to a remote beach on the western coast. It took weeks more for the team of 30 men and five women to set up its equipment. And all of that to see five minutes of darkness — a total solar eclipse — 100 years ago today. Campbell and his team were trying to confirm observations made during an eclipse in 1919. If they were successful, they'd provide key proof of Albert Einstein's theory of gravity. Einstein published his theory in 1915. Among other things, it predicted that stars and other massive objects would “warp” the space around them. The effect could be seen during a total eclipse. Astronomers would measure the positions of stars that appeared near the Sun. If Einstein was right, there'd be a tiny shift compared to the usual positions of the stars. Observations in 1919 confirmed Einstein's theory. But there were questions about the results. So astronomers tried again in 1922. Campbell's team was one of several to make the attempt. And it was the most successful by far. Its pictures showed more than a hundred stars around the Sun. Painstaking analysis confirmed that the light of the stars closest to the Sun had been deflected by the Sun's gravity — once again proving Einstein right.  Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

Heber Curtis didn't set out to become an astronomer. In fact, he wasn't interested in astronomy at all. At the University of Michigan, he studied classical languages. And he taught Greek and Latin at both high school and college levels. Yet Curtis eventually became one of the leading astronomers of his time. And he took part in one of the most famous events in astronomy history: the Great Debate. Heber Curtis, 1918 Curtis was born 150 years ago today, in Muskegon, Michigan. After his foray into classical languages, he switched to math and astronomy. And in 1902, he joined the staff of Lick Observatory, in California. There, he took part in several expeditions to view solar eclipses. And for five years, he led the observatory's station in Chile. Mostly, though, he studied “nebulae” — objects other than stars or planets. At the time, their nature was poorly understood. Some astronomers thought that all of them were motes of matter inside our own galaxy. That meant the Milky Way made up the entire universe. On the other hand, Curtis and others thought that some of the nebulae were separate galaxies of stars outside the Milky Way. In 1920, Curtis and Harlow Shapley debated the subject in Washington, D.C. Most observers thought Shapley won. In the end, though, Curtis was proven right — greatly expanding the universe. Curtis directed several observatories during the remainder of his career. He died in 1942 — an astronomer who knew his Latin.  Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

Many people celebrate their birthdays under the stars. But when Ambrose Swasey turned 89, he celebrated under a machine his company was building to study the stars — the first telescope for McDonald Observatory. Swasey was born 175 years ago today, in a small town in New Hampshire. He quickly showed a knack for designing and building things. As a teenager, he went to work in a machine shop, where he met Worcester Warner. They formed their own company, Warner & Swasey, which they soon moved to Cleveland. The company mainly built machine tools. But both founders were interested in astronomy, so they started building telescopes and their protective domes as well — work that made the company well known. Warner and Swasey built a big new telescope for Lick Observatory in California, and a bigger one for the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory — still the biggest telescope of its type in the world. In 1923, Chicago astronomer Otto Struve named an asteroid discovered with the Yerkes telescope in Swasey's honor. Later, Struve became the Yerkes director. And when Chicago signed a deal with the University of Texas to operate its new McDonald Observatory, Struve became its director as well. He hired Warner & Swasey to build it, including its first big telescope — the second-largest in the world. The telescope has moved down the rankings since then. But it's still in service — one of the legacies of Ambrose Swasey. Script by Damond Benningfield   Support McDonald Observatory

Lick Observatory, the first continuously inhabited mountain-top observatory in the world, has been doing ground-breaking research since its opening in 1888.  30 years after Lick Observatory established itself as a leader in astronomical research, the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic hit the United States.  Research, while hampered by the conditions at the time, continued with the dedicated efforts of some of the notable astronomers of the day.  In 2020, the Observatory was hit by both the current pandemic and one of the worst Northern California wildfires in history.  Dr. Gates compares how astronomers in 1918 and today have coped with these challenges.  [By the way, the public can help these efforts; go to http://bit.ly/lickfriends ]  Dr. Elinor Gates is a staff astronomer at Lick Observatory.  Her current research interests are studying quasars and their host galaxies, discovering dust-obscured quasars, and measuring the masses of central black holes in distant active galaxies.  Asteroid (2650) Elinor is named in Dr. Gates' honor.

Many observatories are built in beautiful locations — atop mountains, where they’re surrounded by trees and fields. The high ground puts them above much of Earth’s blurring atmosphere, giving them a sharper view of the universe. But there’s also a downside to the locations: fires. In recent years, big fires have threatened, damaged, and even destroyed observatories. The most recent threat came last August. A massive wildfire outside San Jose, California, threatened Lick Observatory. The fire was started by lightning. It consumed hundreds of square miles. And it almost got the observatory. Flames up to 200 feet tall advanced toward its telescopes. The fire destroyed a house on the property, and damaged a few other buildings. But the big domes and their telescopes survived. Lick isn’t the only observatory to face the flames. In 2011, for example, our own McDonald Observatory was surrounded by a fire. The blaze eventually burned more than 300,000 acres, and forced the observatory to close. But controlled burns and other efforts kept the fire at bay. An observatory in Australia wasn’t so lucky. A 2003 fire burned five telescopes, the administration building, and several houses and other structures. Only one telescope survived. The observatory has since been rebuilt. Our changing climate is forecast to make wildfires even more common in the decades ahead — perhaps putting even more observatories in peril. Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

Many observatories are built in beautiful locations — atop mountains, where they’re surrounded by trees and fields. The high ground puts them above much of Earth’s blurring atmosphere, giving them a sharper view of the universe. But there’s also a downside to the locations: fires. In recent years, big fires have threatened, damaged, and even destroyed observatories. The most recent threat came last August. A massive wildfire outside San Jose, California, threatened Lick Observatory. The fire was started by lightning. It consumed hundreds of square miles. And it almost got the observatory. Flames up to 200 feet tall advanced toward its telescopes. The fire destroyed a house on the property, and damaged a few other buildings. But the big domes and their telescopes survived. Lick isn’t the only observatory to face the flames. In 2011, for example, our own McDonald Observatory was surrounded by a fire. The blaze eventually burned more than 300,000 acres, and forced the observatory to close. But controlled burns and other efforts kept the fire at bay. An observatory in Australia wasn’t so lucky. A 2003 fire burned five telescopes, the administration building, and several houses and other structures. Only one telescope survived. The observatory has since been rebuilt. Our changing climate is forecast to make wildfires even more common in the decades ahead — perhaps putting even more observatories in peril. Script by Damond Benningfield Support McDonald Observatory

The state's apocalyptic blazes have burned 2,000 square miles in 10 days. Here's how they almost claimed a 130-year-old astronomical icon.

Listen Now to Future News 9.01.2020 Certainly one of the most creative things we’ve seen this week is what the planet Venus would look like if it had oceans comparable to those found on our planet, Earth.  The mind runs wild observing the myriad of islands and large land masses seen, imagining names for all the new places to be discovered on this planet almost identical in size to our own. Meanwhile Mrs. Future and I are still evacuees, hoping to return home soon to our piece of paradise in Boulder Creek, which survived the ravaging wildfires of our area, this week.  We did jump at the chance to see an uncrowded Yosemite National Park this week, albeit a bit smokey, but well worth the trip! This week we have a report from wildfire tracker Frank Schwartz on the conditions of the Bay Area’s wildfires, including our local CZU fire. Smoke is a big concern of many right now and Frank shares what he knows how the topic. Our science correspondent, Bobby Wilder, also joins us this week to discuss the latest info on Covid-19, and what happening with Science and Space News. as well as the big Neuralink demo this last week.  Enjoy! The Planet Venus with Oceans  

I've continued to find comfort and enjoyment in the mixes guest deejays have shared on SOUNDWAVE. Today's show is significant to me because our guest deejay is musician and producer, Robert Rich. I've been a fan of Robert since first hearing his music on the From Here To Tranquility Volume 2 compilation album way back in 1993. I was excited to interview him for solipsistic NATION and share his performance at Fort Mason and the Morrison Planetarium and I'm equally excited to share Robert's mix with you today! You can read Robert's show notes below. Join us again next week when our guest deejay will be Kirk Markarian, who composes music for video games, film, animation, stock music, and other projects. Forrest Fang “The Bridge of Chan​-​Chou III. Falling Stones (Kuan Yin)” Amoeba “Origami” Robert Rich “Cantus For Hospitality” Lou Harrison with Gamelan Si Betty “Gending Max Beckman (Unreleased recording from Lick Observatory concert 17 July 1992)” Arturo Salinas “Munamukami” --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/soundwavemix/message

Halley's Comet comes around once every 76 years. You might have missed its last visit in 1986, but it'll be back in around 40 years...What is a comet? Why do a lot of people really only know about Halley's? and how did we learn a whole lot more about another comet a few years ago. Who remembers the gutsy little comet lander called Philae?Get comfy, grab a coffee in your favourite reusable cup, and check it out.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special content twitter.com/CosmicCoffTime You can request a topic for the show! Email it to cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

Wherein we discuss the passing of UC Santa Cruz benefactor Jack Baskin, a better flu shot, killer asteroids, recognition for a new book on Chicanx art, a $1 million gift for Lick Observatory, and killer fishsticks. Staffers Gwen and Dan go over all the latest news from UC Santa Cruz.

So Einstein's theory of general relativity predicted black holes, or more specifically, that gravity could warp spacetime. But how could we prove it? Here's a ripping yarn about some astronomers who travelled across the world in 1922 to test Einstein's theory during a solar eclipse in far north western Australia.Get comfy, grab a coffee in your favourite reusable cup, and check it out.Follow Cosmic Coffee Time on Twitter for some special content twitter.com/CosmicCoffTime You can request a topic for the show! Email it to cosmiccoffeetime@gmail.com

You'll be glad to know Albert Einstein was right. Astronomers at the Lick Observatory in San Jose confirmed it by examining photos of a 1922 eclipse. How did that confirm Einstein? We asked an astronomer at the Lick Observatory. Originally published April 12, 2019. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, I talk about why 3 is my favorite number, my recent astronomical observing experience at Lick Observatory, the bibles of my research field, and how I met my current PhD advisor in graduate school.

You'll be glad to know Albert Einstein was right. Astronomers at the Lick Observatory in San Jose confirmed it by examining photos of a 1922 eclipse. How did that confirm Einstein? We asked an astronomer at the Lick Observatory. Plus: The curse of the mummy’s tomb! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dan and Eric talk about the Lick Observatory, Winchester Mystery House, Ford cars, R. Lee Ermy, Harry Anderson, Vern Troyer, Bob Dorough, Michelle McNamara, Golden State Killer, Bill Cosby, Southwest, exploding engine, racism, Starbucks, plastic eating enzymes, David Copperfield, Instagram, Opportunity, iPhone, Apple Park, Flicker, Whole Foods, LG, Sony, The Expanse, Justice League, Quiet Place, Westworld, Downrange, sleep, Joe Rogan, doctors

A discussion on the evolution of technology from the past to the present. Also, the formal application for the Lick Observatory trip for Astronomy C10. 

A discussion on the evolution of technology from the past to the present. Also, the formal application for the Lick Observatory trip for Astronomy C10. 

Feature Guest: Pawel Artymowicz Star Wars fans will be familiar with the planet Tatooine and its two suns. But as it turns out the majority of stars in the Milky Way galaxy live with a companion. And that’s led scientists to study how multiple star systems form and develop, and whether they can host habitable planets. To help us understand the behaviour of binary star system and the even more fascinating domain of supermassive binary black holes, the results of merging galaxies, today we're joined at The Star Spot by Pawel Artymowicz   Current in Space Anuj shares new evidence that has pushed back the origin of life by hundreds of millions of years. Tony explains what measures scientists are using to predict the likelihood that newly discovered exoplanets are in fact habitable. Dave updates us on NASA's big water on Mars discovery with new analysis which is leading us to believe the red planet was much warmer and wetter than we had thought. And The Star Spot goes to the movies... off to Mars to be exact as Denise reviews The Martian. About Our Guest Pawel Artymowicz is Professor of Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. He received his Undergraduate degree in Astronomy from the University of Warsaw and his PhD from the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Toronto he was Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Stockholm in Sweden. He was the most cited astronomer in Stockholm from 1994 through to 2004. He has also worked as a Research Assistant at the Space Science Telescope Institute and the Lick Observatory in Santa Cruz, California.

Professor John T. Clarke discusses the goals of the Mars Maven Mission.TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1:You're listening to KALX Berkeley 90.7 FM, university of California listener supported radio. And this is method to the madness coming at you from the Public Affairs Department here at Calex, celebrating the innovative spirit of the bay area and beyond. I'm your host. Eileen is r and today we're lucky enough to have with us professor John Clark from Boston University. Hello professor. How are you? Speaker 2:Hello. Good, thanks for having me on. Speaker 1:And Professor Clark, uh, happened to be here in Berkeley and so we got him on the show to talk about, um, [00:00:30] and innovation of his that is now, um, orbiting the planet Mars. The is shell spectrograph. So we want to talk about this and learn a little bit more about it. But first, um, I always start the show talking to someone who's invented something with the same question. What was the problem statement that you trying to solve? Speaker 2:Uh, okay, so this goes back quite a ways. Um, I trained as an astrophysicist and I built experiments to fly in space and try to analyze the data to answer particular [00:01:00] questions. Uh, the system that is flying now at Mars addresses one question, but it started about 25 years ago. Um, I was using another telescope to look at the atmosphere of Jupiter and there was something that we didn't understand and we used that instrument in an unusual way that it wasn't designed really to do. And we were able to figure out what was going on there. So I got the idea and then I built a prototype for this, a shell [00:01:30] spectrograph, um, to fly basically on a test bed on a rocket that just goes up in the space and comes right back down. You only get about five minutes of data. That's called a sounding rocket. Speaker 2:So let me back up a step. A spectrograph is a device that disperses light into the different wavelengths, the spectrum of colors and a usual, a normal spectrograph would have a certain resolution that refers to how much the light is spread out in wavelength. And a shell was a particular [00:02:00] kind of system that uses a different kinds of dispersing optic called an a shell grading. And it spreads the light out a lot more than a usual system. And to do that, you only get a look at a small part of the color spectrum, but you'd get a very good resolution on the different colors or wavelengths. Speaker 1:Now are there different, um, can you see all parts of the spectrum, just basically what it's trained on or is it only a certain part of the spectrum that it can see? Is there a specific thing you're looking for with the magnification [00:02:30] it gives you, Speaker 2:yeah, I mean, I can do an analogy here. If you are up on grizzly peak looking to her mouth, Tablo Pius low resolution system would see from Mount Tam to San Francisco and Michelle was zoomed in on the peak of Mount Tamela pious and get good resolution on that, but not be able to see anything else. Speaker 1:Ah, okay. So the problem statement of the shell spectrograph is to get deeper into the analysis of certain parts of the atmosphere by magnifying it. Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly. It actually magnifies spectrum, [00:03:00] the color spectrum rather than the atmosphere itself. Speaker 1:So as a, as a scientist, um, when you, you recognize the need for this, um, how do you go about, you know, starting to build something like this and now you started this 25 years ago. So I want to kind of go through the story and understand how we've gotten from there to here. But when you first understood, wow, there's a need for this, how do you go about, do you have to go get grant funding or how does that work? Speaker 2:Well, yeah, you start out writing a proposal and maybe calling the person at NASA who would be able to find you, have [00:03:30] a conversation about whether they would be a light to see this kind of a, of a proposal. And I did that when I was assistant professor back in the late eighties and they agreed and then it took several years to develop the system and fly it. And it flew several times on these sounding rockets before we had the opportunity to propose it for this mission to Mars. Speaker 1:Hmm. So, uh, taking a step back real quick. So let's talk a little bit about your background. So your astrophysicists, where did you do your studies? Speaker 2:[00:04:00] Well, I went undergraduate at Denison University in Ohio. I went Grad School in Physics at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. And from Hopkins I came out to Berkeley to the space sciences lab up on the hill for my first job after Grad school. What were you doing up there? I was doing the same general kind of thing I'm doing now, but I was doing it from ground-based telescopes. I spent a lot of time at Lick Observatory and Mount Hamilton in the South Bay. Speaker 1:Okay. And so, uh, from that point you got, did you became an assistant [00:04:30] professor and you saw you were working with a, uh, a telescope that was looking at Jupiter, is that right? Speaker 2:Yeah, so this was a NASA facility. There was an, a very high orbit around the earth. It's called the international ultraviolet explorer. And that's where I got the idea from Jupiter and then I realized I could apply the same kind of instrument to other planets and other problems. Speaker 1:And so, um, you started to build it, you did some space flights or I'm sorry, some, um, some tax space test space flights [00:05:00] to test the feasibility of it. And um, and this seems like it was a, it's like all kind of a lifetime project, right? You're, you're going to balance it, you know, teaching and doing your regular stuff. And this is a long term project. So take us from the time that you start doing the sample flights to now it's on the, this latest, um, mission to Mars who, tell us about that process. How do you get from kind of the samples to actually getting it onto, I'm sure lots of scientists are trying to bolt things onto something that's going to get orbit Mars. Speaker 2:Yeah, [00:05:30] it's very competitive. Um, and this is not the only thing I was doing research wise, but it was one thing kind of on the back burner for awhile. Um, in 2005, I joined the small group of people from University of Colorado and from Berkeley who were planning to propose for a small, relatively small mission to Mars. Um, so we started meeting in 2005. Uh, it was accepted in 2008 and it was launched in 2013 and it arrived at Maurice this past September and [00:06:00] we're now getting data back. So it's a long process. There's no guarantee it's going to go and there's no guarantee it's going to work even if it's funded. And, and they agreed to launch it. Speaker 1:So what is this? It's called the Maven, right? The via in it. Exactly. What is the a, the Mars Maven Maven Speaker 2:as a mission that stands, it's an acronym. Stands for Mars atmosphere. Volatile evolution experiment. So this is basically a global climate change mission for Mars to try to learn about how Mars has evolved [00:06:30] over its lifetime. In what ways have may be similar to the earth or have been similar to the earth when it was young. And in a nutshell, we think that Mars started out like the earth oceans of water. There is a lot of evidence on the surface of Mars today. You can see what looks just like river channels in flowing patterns, but it's dry. It's very dry today. Any water that's there is locked up in the polar ice caps or maybe into the surface itself like a permafrost. So the purpose of Navan [00:07:00] is to not land. There's no, um, rover a maven. It's orbiting around and through the atmosphere of Mars and trying to figure out the detailed physical principles by which the atmosphere of Mars is changing today. And then we could extrapolate back in time and understand what Mars was like in the past. Speaker 1:So is the hypothesis that, um, we can, um, try to understand better how to head off our own potential losing our oceans [00:07:30] by studying Mars or what, what's the, is it, is there that much of a analog that we can draw between that planet and our planet? Speaker 2:Well, you're painting a very particular picture there and worth looking more at a big picture. If we went to understand how planets in general work, we'd like to understand Mars that could teach us something about the earth. We're not really trying to save the Earth by sending a mission to Mars. Uh, we'd like to understand more of these principles to understand these exoplanets that are being found today around other stars. Speaker 1:[00:08:00] Yeah. And tell us about those exoplanets. What are, what are those that are being found today? These new discoveries, right. Speaker 2:There are new discoveries. The, um, technique by which these are found is the reflex motion of the star response to the gravity of the planet. So the first ones that were found were giant planets that were very close to the star. And now as the method improves, we're finding smaller planets farther away. We're not yet at the point of finding an earth, but it's getting close. Speaker 1:So we're, we're speaking with Professor John Clark, uh, [00:08:30] um, from, uh, Boston University who's, uh, luckily here in Berkeley to talk to us about, uh, the shell spectrograph that he has developed that is on the Mars Maven, um, and is, uh, helping to analyze the atmosphere of Mars. So I have one, you know, as a layman who knows nothing about this stuff, there's one thing I don't understand at all is the time lag between information gathered by Maven, right. And coming back to Earth, like how long does that take? Speaker 2:[00:09:00] Uh, well, it's minutes. It's not hours. Um, it's, uh, on the order of maybe 10 minutes. It varies a lot depending on where nick, the, uh, Mars and the earth are in their orbits around the sun. The distance can change dramatically, um, from one time of the year to another. Speaker 1:What's the mechanism through which the information is sent? Speaker 2:It's just a radio transmitter, just like Cadillacs, a little more, well, not probably not more powerful, but it's beamed back toward the earth and their large dishes on the earth, they pick up the signal. [00:09:30] So we send commands to the spacecraft and we get the data down. Speaker 1:Same Way. Wow. So it's, it's, it's, I'm much faster than I would've thought I would have. Like you hear about like these telescopes that go into deep space and, and you know, they're sending images back, but you don't even know if that telescope still exists. But I guess this is totally different because some closer away. So, um, what are the, it's, it's been orbiting Mars for the last six months or so, right? Correct. So what, what are, what are, what are you guys finding? Speaker 2:[00:10:00] Um, we're just, uh, still in the early phases of, of learning about Mars. When you first get a mission to another planet, like this one, the first thing you do is turn everything on and test it out. And you test your ability to command it, to have the onboard computer, do things in the right order and at the right time. And there's always a process of a few months where you understand how it works and, and, and fix things basically. Um, fortunately Neva is working very well. There've been some little hiccups, but basically everything's working. [00:10:30] Uh, we then get getting data back and we're now getting into more of a routine mode where we do the same thing every orbit around Mars. And then we can build up measurements over the course of a Mars year, a Mars orbit around the sun, and start to understand some of these physicals, Speaker 1:the principles. So, um, the, uh, and how long has a Mars year? Last year was about two or three years to earth years. So, and is there a, an expected lifespan of the Maven? Um, uh, is, [00:11:00] is it just called? It's, it's a satellite spacecraft. Yeah. Speaker 2:Yeah. It is a satellite. Um, it's expected to last for five to 10 years. It's built to last a long time. The prime mission for Maven is one earth year around Mars, but we expect that it would be continued for a second earth year to get one full Mars orbit around the sun. And the science team would like to go longer than that. Speaker 1:And so how did, like your involvement, cause you have one part portion of it. Yeah. Um, how, um, how does it work? Is [00:11:30] Do you have like a, I don't, I suppose you have like an iPhone app that's giving you data. I mean, where do you guys collect the information and is it, can you be constantly harvesting the information from your computer or is there different feeds coming from my phone? It's on air book. Nice. Speaker 2:Um, I mean the data come down, they go to the Lockheed's plant south of Denver and then they come to the science centers. And I would like to point out that the lab at Berkeley, the space sciences lab built several of the instruments that are on maven and several of the instruments were built, the University of Colorado. [00:12:00] And I have one channel of one instrument building Colorado. Speaker 1:Okay. And so your, your channel is, the shell spend should respect it is which is a sending back data. And what exactly in the atmosphere as the shell spectrograph looking at in Mars? Speaker 2:That's a good question. The shell spectrograph was designed to measure the ratio of deterioration to hydrogen in the upper atmosphere of Mars. So deterioration is like heavy water. It's a proton with a neutron in it and it has twice the mass of [00:12:30] a hydrogen atom. Um, the, the quick picture here is that when Mars was young, we think it had a lot of water. We think a lot of that water boiled off in the space. The gravity of Mars is only about one quarter of the gravity of the earth. So we think it lost a lot of its atmosphere. They just floated away. Well, it didn't float. Some of the atoms have enough velocity in their head pointing up. They can escape the gravity. It's a small fraction. But if that happened and water was lost water, we break up into hydrogen and oxygen [00:13:00] and about one and a 10 or a hundred thousand of those hydrogens would be deterioration. Now the hydrogen would boil off faster than the deterioration because it's half the mass. So if you lost a lot of water over time, there'd be more deterioration. And the ratio of those two gives you an idea of how much water was lost over the history of the planet. How long do you Speaker 1:thank you? It'll take to, to um, collect enough data for you to have enough to do your extrapolation that you want to make? Speaker 2:Well, we have [00:13:30] a quick look. Now we know that it's working. We're measuring deterioration and hydrogen. Now we get down into the gritty details of exactly how you analyze that and how accurately you can pin down, um, the numbers. But we don't want to just measure it to turn into hydrogen at one time. We want to look at Mars at different latitudes over the course of its seasons and find out if there are variations in the amount of deterioration in the atmosphere. Speaker 1:Now as an astro physicist, um, what is your, um, opinion of, you know, it seems like [00:14:00] the NASA has shifted years under the Obama, one of his big access to stop the space shuttle program and focus on, uh, more of these types of scientific endeavors. Is this the right move for, for us to be doing right now is going further out and looking at Mars and potentially further exploration? Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean if you ask a scientist, they'll say that robotic exploration is the way to go. It's much less expensive. You don't put anybody's life at risk and we can build very [00:14:30] good instruments to send to the other planets. But a lot of people also believe in and support, um, human space flight and getting away from low earth orbit. And that's another thrust of the current, uh, NASA space program. Speaker 1:So, uh, and so the robots like those rovers on Mars and, and Maven is communicating with those rovers. Right? Speaker 2:Uh, it's not, it's just with the earth. Speaker 1:Oh, okay. I thought that there was a relay is there's an ability for it to really, Speaker 2:ah, right. So you're ahead of me here. So maven was built by NASA [00:15:00] with a relay, so that in the future, after the maven science is more or less complete, they will change the orbit and then use the maven spacecraft to relay data from landers on the ground back to the earth in both Speaker 1:after it's kind of primary or first mission is complete. Right. So tell them, tell me a little bit, you know, and we're talking to professor John Clark from Boston University who is a part of the, uh, Mars maven team about the mission to Mars and the Michele spectrograph, [00:15:30] which he invented to help, uh, understand the atmosphere of Mars and climate change on Mars. So tell us a little bit about, um, just the, the scale of building something like a satellite that goes to Mars to figure out this problem. Like, we talked a little bit about it, but how long does it take? How many people are involved? Seems like a really big endeavor. Speaker 2:It is a big endeavor. We started out in 2005 with maybe a dozen, 15 people around the table thinking about how [00:16:00] we'd write the proposal. Um, it ended up with probably at one point a a hundred, 200 people. I'm working on developing the spacecraft and the instruments and testing them. Uh, the instruments were built at different labs around the country. Um, and then they were put together at Lucky's plant, south of Denver. The whole thing was tested. Um, and there's a lot of testing that goes on, um, with these missions cause it's, uh, you know, you launch these things, you can't go back if anything goes wrong. It's like building a car to [00:16:30] last for 10 years without ever changing the oil or filling the gas tank and you know, things can go wrong. Um, so there's very thorough testing on these things. Speaker 1:What's the failure rate of these types of, I mean, I'm sure that the level of testing is beyond what anybody could really imagine, but is what's the failure rate of these types of missions? Speaker 2:Well, if you run it long enough, something will fail 100%. What you want to do is make sure that it's built to last longer than what you need it to do. And this [00:17:00] has gotten very good at this. Um, Lockheed builds very good spacecraft. NASA builds very good instruments. The, um, so you think about a timeline for these things and how long they're going to go. And, um, I'm thinking of a, of an anecdote. I worked for NASA when I was younger and I was at the space flight center in Huntsville, Alabama where Wernher von Brown worked and they still told stories about him and they asked him, how do you make these, these rockets, you know, how do you make them work? It's very risky. Hard [00:17:30] to do. He said, well, we design it and we build it and then we tested until it breaks and then we figure out what went wrong and we tested again and we do that until it doesn't break and then it's ready to fly. So it's the testing program that's more important than trying to figure out everything that can go wrong. Speaker 1:Yeah. And so I'm, I'm a software, so I understand testing software and coming up with, you know, unit tests and system tests and really, really running through that rigor. But I would think that the level of rigor on something like this [00:18:00] must be much, much, um, greater than, than I could imagine. Is there a certain protocol that, you know, NASA puts everything that's going to go into space through that, you know, it has to pass, you know, 50 million checklists or whatever it is, or how does that work? Speaker 2:Right. There is a protocol. You will test it by vibrating the instrument, simulating the vibration of launch. You'll put it through a temperature cycle, hot and cold, more than the range you think we'll experience in space. You have to put it in a vacuum [00:18:30] to simulate the vacuum of space. There are all kinds of things like that. But the other trick that the aerospace industry and NASA use is to try to use things that have flown before that worked and not try something that's brand new, you know, improve the technology gradually and not just start from scratch. Speaker 1:So there's this, there's learnings from the 1960s missions that are kind of baked into, we just continually improve, improve, improve. Speaker 2:Yeah. But there's probably not much left from the 60s, I hope. [00:19:00] But it is Speaker 1:gradual process. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Well, um, you know what, one question that I wanted to ask you about is, uh, the, there's a certain, um, it seems like the, you know, our, um, humanities race into spaces evolved quite a bit. You know, if I Harken back to the 60s, you had a big competition, but now it seems like there's a lot more collaboration. Is that, is that from an, from a layman's perspective, that's the way it looks. Is that accurate or, we have this, you have just one [00:19:30] international space station and everybody kind of shares. And, um, so is there other other countries involved on the Maven or is it this is a NASA, Speaker 2:we have several European co-investigators. Scientific co-investigators. That's correct. Yeah. And A, we have a couple of people from Japan who are participating in the science, uh, but there's still somewhat of a competition between nations. Okay. The, uh, the Chinese who are trying to do things on their own without getting help from other countries. And, uh, I think that if China landed [00:20:00] on the moon, that might help us in terms of getting this country behind, going back and doing more things in space. Speaker 1:So do you think that there's still much to explore on the moon? We've, we've kind of given up that, uh, before we, we've given up that mission before you really figured out everything and we should've, Speaker 2:well, to me, we've learned a lot about the moon and we should be moving on and doing other things. Um, but I support, um, human space flight. Um, I personally suspect that the future of human space [00:20:30] flight is more in private companies. It might be space x, Elon Musk going to Mars, um, before the government does. And partly I say that just because companies are willing to take on more risk and do things less expensively than the government is. Speaker 1:Yeah. And, and uh, and be more disruptive but potentially be, um, more dangerous. You know, that, that's the scary part of that too. Is that what kind of, there's probably no regulation of space level or maybe there is, I don't know. Speaker 2:Well, the more risk [00:21:00] you take, the more accidents there will be. I think that's true and I expect that things will go wrong. Um, but we know a lot already in terms of building rockets and flying things, launching things into space. And private companies today can take advantage of that history of knowledge and hopefully things will go well. But in the early days of aviation, there were accidents and people got hurt, but they kept going. And that's, I think, the kind of spirit that you need to have. Speaker 1:Yeah, sure. I mean, all great explorers. [00:21:30] They're all gonna eat to cat or yeah. Serious risks with a life and limb. Yeah. I'm the worst. We're speaking with Professor John Clark from Boston University here. Kayla likes Berkeley 90.7 FM. He's a part of the Mars maven team. Uh, it's a satellite that's now orbiting Mars that is, um, uh, sending back information about the atmosphere and climate change on that planet. Um, and Professor Clark also teaches, uh, actively teaches at Boston University. What, what are you teaching there? Right now? Speaker 2:I'm in the department of astronomy. [00:22:00] I teach planetary science, uh, intro astronomy all the way from non-science major undergraduates to advanced Grad students. Speaker 1:Okay. Well I wanted to ask you about, um, you know, as someone who's studied this as a career, what is the, um, you know, in our lifetime we were to say like the next 50 years, what would you say are the big milestones in terms of space exploration that are attainable for us as a race? Speaker 2:Wow. 50 years is kind of a long horizon. Um, [00:22:30] and it's hard to predict. I th I expect that robotic missions will continue to fly over that time period. Um, I think that human space flight will develop, there are a lot of people who have decided that Mars is the place for human beings to go next. It's, um, it's very risky. There's a lot of questions about radiation, about keeping people healthy. Um, it's not going to be an easy thing to do, but I can see that happening in less than 50 years. Yeah. Now, another thing that I find [00:23:00] more interesting in the shorter term, like 10, 10 ish years, is these, um, these things like virgin galactic where they're building ways to take people up into space and come right back down. And I think that, um, a lot of people alive today will have the choice of the cost will come down as they do it more and more. I think they'll have the choice of buying a car or flying in space. It'll be at that cost level. Speaker 1:But flying is patients on a Lark just to experience zero gravity or to actually [00:23:30] go from one part of the planet to the other. Speaker 2:So when I go into a room with a bunch of students, I ask them if you could spend 20 k and flying the space, how many of you would do it? And I wait about three seconds. And then I say, if your hand isn't up, you're not going to do it. If you're thinking about whether it's a idea, yeah, you're not the ones who will be on these first slides. Speaker 1:So it's going to be some kind of a, a something for the Uber rich kind of like to say, Oh yeah, I've been in space. That kind of thing. Speaker 2:A lot of people can afford to buy a car and they might prefer to ride the bus and have the experience [00:24:00] of flying in space. Speaker 1:Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Um, what about, um, as we find these more exoplanets, um, what is your, what is your feeling on what's out there? Is there, is there life out there that we're going to be, um, able to, I know it's the million dollar question by you, someone who's studied this your whole career probably. So what's your feeling? Speaker 2:Um, well I don't, I won't give you any feelings, but I thought about it. We see so many other stars, so many other galaxies and now we're finding so many planets [00:24:30] around nearby stars. It's become clear that most stars have planets around them. They're very common. They're just, if you look at the numbers that are going to be so many of them out there, that there have to be a lot of them that are similar to the earth. And there may be forms of life that we have not dreamt of that could be on other kinds of planets. So if you just look at the numbers, the Azar, there's life all over the universe. So that's the good news. Now the other news is that as far as we know, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light [00:25:00] and at that speed there may be life all over the universe and we'll never find it just because of the distance. It's going to be hard. It may be close by. Okay. I'm not saying it's impossible, but most of it we will probably never be in contact with. Speaker 1:Do you think we'll ever be able to really know? You know, explain it. I mean this is the big question. You know, you have like religion versus science and there's this big leap of faith. You kind of have to take it either way. Like you're saying there, it's probably out there, but how are we ever going to know [00:25:30] unless they come? Someone does can travel faster than the speed of light and show up in our doorstep. Speaker 2:Well, what I described is what we understand today. Now I'm willing to change my mind that the drop Speaker 3:you're a scientist, Speaker 2:it's been, you know, very dangerous to assume that you know too much, uh, throughout history. Speaker 1:Yeah. You know, I always think about 'em, um, as again, someone who is not an astrophysicist about star trek, which is a lot of my understanding of this. And they have the, um, the premise that there's [00:26:00] higher, um, forms that are watching us waiting for us to be able to unlock some secrets of interstellar travel. And once we do, then they show up and say, okay, you know, now you have to learn how to responsibly travel. And you know, perhaps that's uh, that's out there cause there's potential to have so many different kinds of life forms up there. So Speaker 2:it's fun to think about and there's a lot we don't know. But another thing that scientists talk about is a thing called the Thermi paradox. And Rico fare made decades ago said, if there's other life in the [00:26:30] universe, where is it? How come we don't know about it? Why haven't they come here and contacted us? And that's a different way of looking at the same question. Speaker 1:Yeah. So, um, uh, in closing the professor John Clark here from Boston University and on KLX Berkeley in 90.7 FM, if you were to kind of wave your magic wand and get your wildest dreams from this maven exploration and the shell spectrograph that you put on it, what would you, what would you find out? What would be the big, you know, victory for you? Speaker 2:We would learn everything we need [00:27:00] to know about the escape of water into space from Mars to be able to go back 3 billion years and know what Mars was like when it was young. Was Mars earth-like and for how long was that earth-like? Long enough for life to begin on Mars, a questions like that. Speaker 1:All right, well hopefully we'll find that out and it's not, it's going to be pretty quick like in the next couple of years. Right. This is the great, well, best of luck. Thanks so much for the exploration you're doing for all of us. Hopefully we'll all get to learn about it. And you can follow, um, [00:27:30] the Mars may even, there's a page on NASA I believe, that you can find. You can just Google a maven and you will see that. And thanks so much for joining us, professor. Speaker 2:It's a pleasure. Thank you. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Feb. 26, 2014 Dr. Alex Filippenko (University of California, Berkeley) Lick Observatory, the first mountain-top telescope facility in the world, was founded in 1888, but continues to be a vibrant research facility and an important site for student and public education. Dr. Filippenko discusses some of the most exciting research being pursued at Lick -- including supernovae, exoplanets, and supermassive black holes. He also explains the funding crisis facing Lick, what is being done by local citizens, and how you can help.

Most of the universe is incredibly hostile, it's a vacuum, it's freezing-cold space or burning hot near a star. The first habitable planet found outside our solar system is in a habitable-zone orbit; it's a place of refuge from the unbelievable harshness of the universe. Steve Vogt, a UC Santa Cruz professor of astronomy and astrophysics, takes you into the Lick Observatory, where he has devoted years of research to find earth-like planets Series: "Onward California" [Science] [Show ID: 24476]

Most of the universe is incredibly hostile, it's a vacuum, it's freezing-cold space or burning hot near a star. The first habitable planet found outside our solar system is in a habitable-zone orbit; it's a place of refuge from the unbelievable harshness of the universe. Steve Vogt, a UC Santa Cruz professor of astronomy and astrophysics, takes you into the Lick Observatory, where he has devoted years of research to find earth-like planets Series: "Onward California" [Science] [Show ID: 24476]

Most of the universe is incredibly hostile, it's a vacuum, it's freezing-cold space or burning hot near a star. The first habitable planet found outside our solar system is in a habitable-zone orbit; it's a place of refuge from the unbelievable harshness of the universe. Steve Vogt, a UC Santa Cruz professor of astronomy and astrophysics, takes you into the Lick Observatory, where he has devoted years of research to find earth-like planets Series: "Onward California" [Science] [Show ID: 24476]

Most of the universe is incredibly hostile, it's a vacuum, it's freezing-cold space or burning hot near a star. The first habitable planet found outside our solar system is in a habitable-zone orbit; it's a place of refuge from the unbelievable harshness of the universe. Steve Vogt, a UC Santa Cruz professor of astronomy and astrophysics, takes you into the Lick Observatory, where he has devoted years of research to find earth-like planets Series: "Onward California" [Science] [Show ID: 24476]

Steve Vogt, Professor, Astronomy and Astrophysics, UC Santa Cruz, shares how he got his start in astronomy and gives a tour of the Lick Observatory. Series: "Onward California" [Science] [Show ID: 24475]

Steve Vogt, Professor, Astronomy and Astrophysics, UC Santa Cruz, shares how he got his start in astronomy and gives a tour of the Lick Observatory. Series: "Onward California" [Science] [Show ID: 24475]

Steve Vogt, Professor, Astronomy and Astrophysics, UC Santa Cruz, shares how he got his start in astronomy and gives a tour of the Lick Observatory. Series: "Onward California" [Science] [Show ID: 24475]

Steve Vogt, Professor, Astronomy and Astrophysics, UC Santa Cruz, shares how he got his start in astronomy and gives a tour of the Lick Observatory. Series: "Onward California" [Science] [Show ID: 24475]

In 1998, two independent teams of astrophysicists discovered a baffling phenomenon: the Universe is expanding at an ever-faster rate. The current understanding of gravity can’t explain this cosmic acceleration. Scientists think that either a mysterious force called dark energy is to blame or a reworking of gravitational theory is in order. Travel to the University of California’s Lick Observatory to learn how astrophysicists use distant stellar explosions to observe the expansion of space. Then watch a team at Fermilab assemble the Dark Energy Camera, a new device researchers hope will find compelling evidence of what’s propelling the Universe to expand at an increasing pace.