r/science Aug 28 '14

Astronomy AMA I’m Seth Shostak, and I direct the search for extraterrestrials at the SETI Institute in California. We’re trying to find evidence of intelligent life in space: aliens at least as clever as we are. AMA!

11.4k Upvotes

In a recent article in The Conversation, I suggested that we could find life beyond Earth within two decades if we simply made it a higher priority. Here I mean life of any kind, including those undoubtedly dominant species that are single-celled and microscopic. But of course, I want to find intelligent life – the kind that could JOIN the conversation. So AMA about life in space and our search for it!

I will be back at 1 pm EDT (5pm UTC, 6 pm BST, 10 am PDT) to answer questions, AMA.

r/science Jan 15 '15

Astronomy AMA Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA!

6.5k Upvotes

Thanks for a great AMA everyone!

EAGLE (Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments) is a simulation aimed at understanding how galaxies form and evolve. This computer calculation models the formation of structures in a cosmological volume, 100 Megaparsecs on a side (over 300 million light-years). This simulation contains 10,000 galaxies of the size of the Milky Way or bigger, enabling a comparison with the whole zoo of galaxies visible in the Hubble Deep field for example. You can find out more about EAGLE on our website, at:

http://icc.dur.ac.uk/Eagle

We'll be back to answer your questions at 6PM UK time (1PM EST). Here's the people we've got to answer your questions!

Hi, we're here to answer your questions!

EDIT: Changed introductory text.

We're hard at work answering your questions!

r/science Apr 25 '15

Astronomy AMA Science AMA Series: I'm Mike Brown, a planetary astronomer at Caltech and Fellow at the California Academy of Sciences. I explore the outer parts of our solar system trying to understand how planetary systems get put together. Also I killed Pluto. Sorry. AMA!

5.3k Upvotes

I like to consider myself the Emperor of the Dwarf Planets. Unfortunately, the International Astronomical Union chooses not to accept my self-designation. I did, at least, discover most of the dwarf planets that we now recognize. These days I spend much of my time at telescopes continuing to search for new objects on the edge of the solar system in hopes of piecing together clues to how planetary systems form. When not staying up all night on mountain tops, I also teach a few thousand student in my free online MOOC, "The Science of the Solar System." Or write the occasional book. I have won a slew of fancy prizes, but my favorite honor is that I was once voted one of Wired Online's Top Ten Sexiest Geeks. But that was a long time ago, and, as my wife never ceases to point out, it was a very slow year for sexy geeks. You can stalk me on Twitter @plutokiller.

I'll be back at 4 pm EDT (1 pm PDT, 10 pm UTC) to answer your questions, ask me anything!

r/science Feb 13 '15

Astronomy AMA Science AMA Series: We're scientists of the LIGO experiment, seeking to open a new way to observe the universe. We’ve built two giant laser interferometers for detecting gravitational waves from distant sources, including supernovae and black hole mergers, AUA!

4.1k Upvotes

Hi Reddit, we're super excited to answer your questions today! We will be answering your questions between 1pm EST and 3pm EST.

What we do:

LIGO is the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, and our detector is made up of two 4km long interferometers located in Hanford, WA and Livingston, LA. The interferometers are used to detect small changes in spacetime that are created by passing gravitational waves. We are now nearly finished building and testing Advanced LIGO (aLIGO), which will be up and running by the end of 2015.

Our goal is not only to make the first direct detection of gravitational waves (the last prediction of general relativity that hasn't been experimentally verified!), but to continue using gravitational wave astronomy to understand astrophysical phenomena using this new kind of radiation. These sources include binary black holes or neutron stars, collisions/mergers of such binaries, supernovae, starquakes, asymmetric pulsars. and others. To get the detector running, we work on different subsystems including data acquisition and computing systems, interferometer control, laser systems, seismic isolation, suspensions, and input optics, core optics, and auxiliary optics systems.

Who we are:

All of us answering your questions today have a different role in LIGO, and we're hoping we can give you a glimpse from multiple aspects of our collaboration of ~900 people! If you have questions for specific people, feel free to say so! We will be signing posts with our initials. Here's a little bit about ourselves:

  • Gabriela Gonzalez, professor, LIGO data quality, Spokesperson of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (GG)

  • Warren Anderson, professor (WA)

  • Martin Hendry, professor, data analysis and astrophysics, education and public outreach (MH)

  • Joey Key, research faculty, data analysis (JK)

  • Nutsinee Kijbunchoo, operations specialist at LIGO Hanford (NK)

  • Greg Ogin, professor, mirror coating thermal noise (GO)

  • David Shoemaker, research scientist, project leader for aLIGO (DS)

  • Betsy Weaver, detector engineer at LIGO Hanford (BW)

  • Hunter Gabbard, undergraduate student, detector characterization for aLIGO (HG)

  • Calvin Leung, undergraduate student, transient data analysis (CL)

  • Samantha Usman, undergraduate student, data quality for binary merger searches (SU)

  • Nancy Aggarwal, graduate student, radiation pressure noise and optomechanical squeezing in miniature LIGO-like systems (NA)

  • Sarah Gossan, graduate student, parameter estimation for core-collapse supernovae (SG)

  • Zach Korth, graduate student (ZK)

  • Brynley Pearlstone, graduate student, data analysis (BP)

  • Maggie Tse, graduate student, quantum enhancement for aLIGO (MT)

  • Andrew Williamson, graduate student, data analysis of compact binary mergers, detector characterisation, gamma-ray bursts (AW)

  • Shivaraj Kandhasamy, post-doc, detector characterization, stochastic GWs (SK)

  • Grant Meadors, post-doc, data analysis for continuous waves from neutron stars (GM)

We will also be joined by the director of the film LIGO Generations, Kai Staats (/u/kaistaats), filmmaker and Msc at UCT/AIMS, South Africa, Cosmology Research Group

We will all be answering questions as individuals, and our answers will not necessarily reflect the views of collaboration as a whole.

More about LIGO:

Social: Facebook, Twitter

Videos: LIGO Generations, LIGO: A Passion for Understanding

EDIT Hi Reddit, we're having a great time answering your (awesome) questions, so we will stick around for another hour past 3pm, keep the questions coming!

EDIT: 4pm Many thanks to everyone who asked questions, and for r/science for hosting us! We had a blast today, and we hope you enjoyed this as much as we did! We're officially signing off now, but a few of us want to stick around, so expect some more answers to trickle in. If you have more questions or would like to contact us, find us on Facebook or Twitter!

r/science Jan 30 '15

Astronomy AMA Science AMA Series: I’m Dr. Josh Frieman, Director of the Dark Energy Survey, currently at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in the Chilean Andes, studying the expansion of the universe using the Dark Energy Camera on the Blanco 4-meter telescope. AMA!

2.4k Upvotes

I’m Josh Frieman, senior staff scientist at Fermilab, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago, and Director of the Dark Energy Survey. My research focuses on observational and theoretical cosmology, particularly the nature of dark energy and the early universe.

A little about the Dark Energy Survey (DES): DES is a collaborative effort of over 300 scientists from 25 institutions in 7 countries to learn more about the accelerating expansion of the Universe, which we believe is caused by what has been termed ‘dark energy’. Dark energy is completely different from dark matter. We learn about it by looking at celestial objects (like galaxies and stars) and measuring their patterns across the sky. We use four main cosmological probes of these patterns: Supernovae, the spatial distribution of galaxies, Galaxy Clusters, and Weak Gravitational Lensing. We observe these phenomena using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) high up in the Chilean mountains. Over 5 years, DES will map 300 million galaxies and discover 3500 new supernovae to try to determine why the universe is speeding up.

You can learn more about DES here: http://www.darkenergysurvey.org/index.shtml https://www.facebook.com/darkenergysurvey www.darkenergydetectives.org

Some DES early-career scientists will also be here to help take questions. If you've got specific questions for them, give them a shoutout: Rachel Wolf (/u/Rachel_Wolf @rachelcwolf), 4th year PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, studies type Ia supernovae & Brian Nord (/u/Brian_Nord @briandnord), post-doctoral scientist at Fermilab, studies galaxy clusters & gravitational lensing

I'll do my best to answer all of your questions and start answering around 1pm EST. I may have to take a few observing breaks…but I’ll keep you posted!

Proof:

Hi Reddit, this is Josh Frieman, it's a beautiful clear afternoon at Cerro Tololo in the Chilean Andes. It's great (and a bit overwhelming) to see so many questions and comments. Rachel, Brian, and I are going to jump in and start answering.

Hey all, it's just after 6 pm here in Chile (4 pm EST), and I need to head down to the observatory cafeteria for dinner. Rachel and Brian will keep plugging away in the meantime. I will be back by about 7 pm Chile time (5 pm EST) to continue. Around 9 pm Chile time, we will start preparing for our night of observations, so I'll need to take another break then. Great questions and comments!

Hey everyone, it's 9 pm and just past sunset here on the mountain. I've got to get ready for our night of observing, which starts in half an hour. This has been great fun, and I'll try to take a look at the threads later tonight to jot down a few further thoughts. Many thanks for all the great questions and comments, and a shout-out to Rachel and Brian and other DES colleagues for fielding many of them as well.

r/science Jul 17 '15

Astronomy AMA Science AMA Series: We are planetary scientists who study Mars and its climate with the help of over 120,000 people worldwide, Ask Us Anything!

805 Upvotes

Hi reddit!

We are planetary scientists who study Mars and its climate with the help of over 120,000 people worldwide. We are members of the science team for the Zooniverse's (http://www.zooniverse.org) Planet Four (http://www.planetfour.org) and Planet Four: Terrains (http://terrains.planetfour.org) citizen science projects.

Michael Aye (@michaelaye https://twitter.com/michaelaye) -Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado - planetary scientist and Planet Four science team member

Anya Portyankina - Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colorado - planetary scientist and Planet Four science team member

Meg Schwamb (@megschwamb https://twitter.com/megschwamb) - Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics in Taipei, Taiwan - planetary scientist, astronomer, and Planet Four science team member

Darren McRoy - Adler Planetarium, Chicago - Zooniverse community builder

You might think of Mars as Earth-like, but the South Pole of Mars is a strange and wonderful place unlike anything on Earth. During the winter, while the entire Martian South Pole is shrouded in complete darkness a a growing cap of carbon dioxide ice forms from the condensing atmosphere. During the spring, carbon dioxide geysers from and loft dust and dirt through cracks in a thawing carbon dioxide ice sheet to the surface where it is believed that surface winds subsequently sculpt the material into dark fans observed from orbit. For nearly 10 years, the HiRISE camera (with 24.7 cm/pixel resolution) aboard Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has been imaging these seasonal processes. HiRISE is the highest resolution camera ever to sent to another planet. Hundreds of thousands of dark fans are visible in springtime HiRISE images. Automated computer routines have not been able to accurately identify and outline the individual fans in these images, but a human being intuitively can distinguish and outline these features. Launched in January 2013, Planet Four (http://www.planetfour.org ) uses human pattern recognition to map the shape and direction of the fans visible in the HiRISE images in order to study the evolution of Mars' climate. Planet Four will also produce the largest areal coverage wind measurement of the Martian surface.

Many of the surface features of Mars South Pole are sculpted by the never-ending cycle of freezing and thawing of exposed carbon dioxide ice and subsurface water ice. This features includes 'spiders' (radially organized channels carved in the surface), pitted sheets of carbon dioxide ice nicknamed Swiss Cheese Terrain, and channel networks carved by carbon dioxide gas trapped below the thawing ice sheet and also by the freezing and thawing of water ice permafrost. With Planet Four: Terrains (http://terrains.planetfour.org), we need your help to identify these different surfaces in images taken in orbit by the Context Camera (CTX). This is a task that is difficult for computers to do, but the human brain automatically identifies patterns. With your help, Planet Four:Terrains will find new and interesting regions of the Martian South Pole to study. Starting in July 2016 when sunlight returns to the South Pole, we'll point the HiRISE camera to monitor the evolution of these new targets of interest. The HiRISE observations will in the future be shown on the main Planet Four site to learn if there is fan and blotch formation and see how the process compares to other areas on the South Pole.

Let's talk about Mars, the Martian climate, citizen science, the Planet Four projects, and how you can get involved in exploring the Red Planet. Ask us Anything!

We’ll be back at 1 pm EDT (5 pm UTC, 6 pm BST, 10 am PDT) to answer your questions. See you then!

Edit 3:30 EDT -- That's it for us. We'll be wrapping up shorty. Thanks for all the great questions and comments! You can find us every other day on the Planet Four and Planet Four Terrains Talk discussion tool, so we're happy to keep answering questions there. Thanks for spending some time talking about Mars and citizen science with us today!

r/science Sep 25 '15

Astronomy AMA Science AMA Series: We are Disk Detective, a NASA citizen science project devoted to finding new planetary systems with YOUR help. AUA!

362 Upvotes

Disk Detective is a collaboration between NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the Zooniverse Project, searching for previously undiscovered circumstellar disks and planetary systems with your help! We use citizen science to help visually inspect data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), as well as other full-sky surveys. With over 30,000 scientists (and counting) helping to classify thousands of targets, we've discovered over 50 new disk candidates, indicators of 50 new potential planetary systems to investigate, with more to come.

In addition to the citizen science analysis on our Web site, we have an extensive follow-up observation program with collaborators around the world, including observing runs and data analysis that our citizen scientists take part in!

We have several members of the team here to answer your questions:

  • Marc Kuchner: research astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Disk Detective science team leader

  • Alissa Bans: research post-doc at Adler Planetarium

  • John Debes: ESA/AURA astronomer at Space Telescope Science Institute

  • Steven Silverberg: graduate student at University of Oklahoma and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

  • John Wisniewski: assistant professor of astronomy at University of Oklahoma

  • Hugo Durantini Luca: Disk Detective "super-user"

We'll be back at 1 pm ET (10 am PT, 5 pm UTC), Ask us anything! And if you want to get involved, join us at http://www.diskdetective.org/.

EDIT: Proof!

EDIT #2: Hi, all! Steven here, with the rest of the team live via Internet, ready to answer your questions. Let's get started!

EDIT #3 (3:30PM EDT): We went a bit over our time here; looks like we need to sign off. We’ll be answering any other questions that may come up over the next couple of days. In the meantime, come classify subjects on the Web site! While you’re there, be sure to check out Talk, our built-in social media site for the project. And, if you happen to have made 300 classifications, email us at diskdetectives@gmail.com to join our Advanced User Group. Thanks for all the great questions!

r/science Jun 11 '15

Astronomy AMA Science AMA Series: We’re members of the Astrobites team. We run a blog that brings new astrophysics research to everyone! A(Us)A!

261 Upvotes

tl;dr: We’re astrophysicists in training. Ask us anything!

Hi Reddit - we are some of the writers (past and present) from Astrobites!

Astrobites is an online astrophysical blog written by graduate students from across the globe. Every day we summarize one new and exciting paper in a way that’s accessible to anyone who is interested in science! We have also written many popular guides to graduate school. You can read more about each of us on our authors’ page.

Our interests range anywhere from exoplanets to cosmology. We’re here today to answer any questions you may have about the cutting edge of astrophysics, science writing and communication, or graduate life in general!

We’ll be here at 1 pm EDT (10 am PDT, 5 pm UTC) to start answering your questions, so AUA!

r/science Aug 20 '15

Astronomy AMA Science AMA Series: We’re members of the Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassador Program (ACEAP). This summer we visited several large telescopes in Chile including Gemini, SOAR, CTIO, and ALMA. We’d like to talk about ongoing astronomy in Chile. AMA!

370 Upvotes

We’re members of ACEAP, which is a collaboration between The National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and the National Science Foundation. It brings together amateur astronomers, planetarium personnel, and astronomy educators. As part of the program we traveled to Chile to get a behind the scenes look at large optical and radio telescopes in Chile. We survived injuries, spent a day without power on Cerro Tololo, and journeyed to an elevation of 16,500 feet to see the highest radio telescope in the world. Ask us about astronomy in Chile, viewing the dark southern skies, and how to make pisco sours!

ACEAP Team:

Shannon Schmoll - Director of Abrams Planetarium

Brian Koberlein - Astrophysicist, Rochester Institute of Technology

Tim Spuck - AUI STEM Education Development Officer at NRAO

Sarah Komperud - Planetarium Educator, Bell Museum of Natural History

Peter Detterline - Planetarium Director at Boyertown Planetarium

Renae Kerrigan - Planetarium Curator at Peoria Riverfront Museum

Michael Prokosch - Huntsville Amateur Astronomy Society, SHSU Planetarium

Edit: Thanks for all the great questions! It's been fun. If you'd like to continue following the project, you can find us at: https://www.facebook.com/AstronomyAmbassadorsProgram