[Cross-posted from the IdeaFestival blog] This "Five Questions" interview with Astronomer Dr. Pamela L. Gay, also known as Star Stryder, was completed this week. I want to publicly thank her for taking time out of her schedule to answer these questions by email.
If you have any interest at all in astronomy and the deeper questions that surround the subject, I encourage you to check out her blog as well as her contributions to Astronomy Cast. She, along with Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams, are two of my favorite bloggers on any subject.
Wayne
What attracted you to Astronomy?
Sometimes a person doesn't outgrow their childhood passions. I've been interested in astronomy as long as I can remember. My earliest memories include taking naps so I could stay up and watch images of Jupiter and Saturn being sent back by the Voyager missions, and watching the contrails of the space shuttle going in for a landing at Edwards while living in Southern California when small. I remember looking through my dad's small telescope. As I grew up, my astronomy hunger was fed by Odyssey Magazine, Sky and Telescope, Science Fiction, and eventually even trips to Space Camp. When I started college, I didn't think I had the math skills to be an astronomer, and I declared an International Relations major in James Madison College at Michigan State University, and started taking astronomy and honors physics and calculus classes because I figured I get an astronomy minor and seek jobs as a science advisor in the Federal Government. At some point my freshman year I realized that while I loved my IR classes for their content, my cultural peers were the science folks in my astronomy classes. I am a science nerd, born and breed. I was doing well in science classes, so I redeclared as an astrophysics major. I guess, I just never knew when to stop trying to understand the stars.
Given the category-busting nature of dark matter and energy, could you describe how science approaches identifying and describing it? We seem to know what it's not. But what should it make of "nothing?"
It's a common myth that we know nothing about Dark Energy and Dark Matter. We actually no a fair amount. It's just not enough to make a definitive diagnosis of the cause. Think of it as that rattle in your car that only happens under specific circumstances that the mechanic hasn't found the cure for yet. You might know it happens only when it's above 50 degrees outside, when the car is going uphill, and your trying to turn right at 30 or more miles per hour. We know where dark matter (and to a lesser degree dark energy) effect things, and we know how it behaves in different situations. We just don't know the specifics of what it is the way we can say what electrons are and what planets are. We know it is built out of some new class of particles. (Dark Energy, well, different people think they know different amounts of stuff about that) We're working toward a full understanding, but it takes a long time to get all the way there. That's what makes astronomy interesting!
With the catalog of exoplanets continuing to grow, how likely do you think it is that we will have widely accepted evidence of an Earth-sized planet with water signatures in another star's habitable zone in the next 12-24 months?
Finding an Earth-sized planet is something we can currently only do around very small stars and by viewing them indirectly, by looking for planets to gravitationally lens background objects. Our only hope for seeing water vapor is to happen to find an eclipsing Earth-size planet. The star's light passing through the planet's atmosphere will allow us to see if there is water vapor in the planet's atmosphere. Unfortunately, the planet has to be close enough to a small star to allow liquid water. The probability of finding this is very low, but it isn't zero. I'd give a 5% chance of finding such a planet in the next 12-24 months. I think the next generation of space telescopes, such as Darwin, will allow us to start finding Earth-size planets around stars with a larger range of stellar masses. This will increase our probability of finding an eclipsing Earth-size planet. Any give 90% probability of finding such a planet within 2 years of the next generation of instruments going live.
The IdeaFestival emphasizes that the breakthrough innovation and creativity often happen at the intersection of disciplines. Can you compare astronomy to another area of inquiry? If so, what would that other discipline be and why is the comparison apt?
Astronomy is by nature multidisciplinary. In my day to day work I program computers, write book reviews, teach classes, solve math problems, and sometimes even operate telescopes. I have to understand chemistry and physics to understand my results. It all blends to a whole. It is hard to say we are like another are of inquiry when we incorporate so many areas into our work. Perhaps, while it is very different, philosophy and its search for a greater truth that explains our place in the cosmos,may be the most parallel field.
If the question well asked is half answered, what, lately, is the best question you've heard? What makes that question so good?
We get asked so many questions that it is hard to sort out what is best. As strange as it may seem, the question that most intrigued me asked simply: How long would Aristotle's lever have to be to allow him to move the Earth. I answered that question on my blog, starstryder.com.
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