Galactic Interactions

Hello Time! Please mention Nathan Smith, Robert Quimby

Posted on December 12th, 2007 — permalink

Time has their own personal list of the top 10 scientific discoveries of 2007. Seven out of the ten are in biological related fields— although a couple are paleontology, that is related to the history of life on earth. One is chemistry, and two are astronomy. Of the two in astronomy, one was really just continuing discoveries that have been ongoing for more than the last decade (the discovery of hot jupiters).

The other astronomical “top discovery” is about Supernova 2006gy, the most luminous supernova ever recorded, and the supernova of a star that was more than 100 times the mass of the Sun. Stars this massive are extremely rare. Your routine supernova (which only happens about once per century per galaxy) comes from a supernova more like 8-10 times the mass of the Sun.

As I was browsing through these, though, I hit this story and realized: hey, I know about that one! And here’s what bugs me about this a little bit. We live in a culture where hero-worship is key. Individual scientists win Nobel Prizes, even though huge numbers of them contribute to the discovery. Name recognition in the media and amongst your colleagues is of tremendous value and import, especially as resources to fund science get more scarce. University administrations will be in love with scientists who pull lots of positive press to themselves, but (as I know from personal experience and watching Vanderbilt’s administration suffer rectal defilade when thinking about other groups in the Physics department) members of collaborations who aren’t seen as “the leader” are highly undervalued by administrations and (at least in astronomy) funding agencies alike.

As such, it was sad to me that no names were attached to this. The original paper has a list of authors including some (Craig Wheeler, Alex Filippenko) who are not at all suffering for any kind of public recognition. However, the first author (Nathan Smith) is a post-doc… and post-docs are in a truly vicious world where any lost opportunity for recognition is a slight. I’m also personally familiar with Robert Quimby, who was a “post-bach” working with the Supernova Cosmology Project between undergraduate and graduate school, and who went on to graduate school at the University of Texas. The discovery of this supernova came out of searching related to his thesis work. So while it may sound great to say that the Chandra Space Telescope observed (allowing the reader to infer “discovered”) this, in fact there was effort from a lot of people, including people at the low end who are going to be fighting for recognition and resources in a vicious world of individual hero worship.

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NPR’s Science Friday, live, in Second Life

Posted on December 7th, 2007 — permalink

Drop by today at 11AM PT to Science School in Second Life to be part of the live studio audience of Science Friday. If you don’t have a Second Life account… make one! A basic account is free!

This is one of the really cool things that happens in Second Life. NPR’s Science Friday has been part of it’s Talk of the Nation show forever. For the last couple of months, they’ve had a live studio audience in-world. What this means is that between 40 and 100 Second Life avatars (usually including Prospero Linden) show up to listen to the show. The audio stream attached to the land is Nashville’s WPLN (I had nothing to do with that, but appreciate it!) . There is an avatar in-world, Ira Flatley, to represent Ira Flatow… although since the real Ira is broadcasting live on the radio, it’s actually a member of his staff running the avatar. Those of us sitting around have a lively conversation in text chat about what we’re hearing on the radio. (Sometimes the conversation wanders a bit from there.) Basically, it’s sitting around with a bunch of fellow science fans all together listening to this national science broadcast. (Well, really, it’s international, since the stream works anywhere, and many of the people who show up aren’t ‘from the USA.) Also, Ira Flatley is listening to the comments and questions we ask, and occasionally one will be read by Ira Flatow on the radio. There was a week when he said “Prospero Linden in Second Life asks….”

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Dinosaur soft tissue preserved!

Posted on December 3rd, 2007 — permalink

This is like the coolest thing ever. It’s a dinosaur that had been (somehow) naturally mummified… preserving soft tissue in addition to bones. We have all these fossilized dinosaur skeletons, but the other stuff we hang on them in our drawings and speculations are based on some combination of general biological principles and fancy (and, I don’t doubt, deduction from indirect clues in the bones). But here we’ve got a bit of a dinosaur where some of the rest of it was preserved!

Cue “Jurassic Park” theme music.

When I was a kid, until about age 8 or 9, I was going to be a paleontologist. I mean, lots of kids are dinosaur freaks, but I was a dinosaur freak. I was known for it at school. Somewhere starting around age 9 I started to really get into space, though…. Not totally out of that phase. (The computer phase started at about age 11 or 12, and I’m not out of that one either.)

(Hat tip: BoingBoing.)

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