Public Outreach in America: A Key to Unlocking The Quest For Science and Math

Dr. Jim Elliot: Discoverer, Teacher, Mentor and Friend (1943-2011)

Once in a lifetime someone crosses your path with the perfect combination of life skills, knowledge and passion. Jim Elliot was such a person. James Ludlow Elliot was born in 1943 and received his S.B. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1965 and his Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1972. Before returning to MIT in 1978, he was a postdoc and faculty member in the Astronomy Department of Cornell University where as a part of a team in 1977, discovered the rings around the planet Uranus. Their team watched as Uranus appeared to blink several times passed the planet then blinked the same amount of times. At first it was a very big surprise to the group.  Their first answer was that the equipment had malfunctioned. They later (after careful analysis) realized the blinking was caused by a band of rings surrounding the planet. These rings are very dark and narrow, unlike Saturn's, which are bright. Voyager II sent back many pictures that clearly show these rings. Elliot was also part of a team that observed global warming on Triton, the largest moon of Neptune. Dr. Elliot ended his career as  Professor of Physics and Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at MIT, and Director of the George R. Wallace, Jr. Astrophysical Observatory. Elliot used the techniques of planetary astronomy, particularly stellar occultations, to probe planetary atmospheres and the physical properties of small bodies in the outer solar system and beyond. Of particular interest to him was Pluto, Triton, Kuiper Belt objects and extrasolar planets. Dr. Elliot was good at it too. He, along with Paul Schechter and others at MIT and Harvard College Observatory, have constructed a CCD camera for the Magellan telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile. Elliot also worked with colleagues at the Lowell Observatory to build a high-speed imaging photometer for occultations (HIPO) for NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). 

To list all of the accomplishments for science that Dr. Elliot has earned would take more space than I have to type.  With that said,  all those accomplishments are nothing in comparison to the way he taught and nurtured the great minds that are  planetary scientists today. I asked Dr. Heidi Hammel , world renown planetary scientist and the first undergrad student of Dr. Elliot for a bit of a window into the man that was James Elliot.  She replied: One of Jim Elliot's gifts was this: he gave young students his trust, and thereby enabled them to do things they otherwise might never have tried. In my case, after I had graduated from MIT, he considered me a fully trained astronomer, literally. That summer, he sent me off to grad school in Hawaii with a letter stating that I was supposed to do his observations at the University's 88-inch telescope. It caused all kinds of trouble - this girl coming in who was not even yet a graduate student, saying she was supposed to use the a telescope on Mauna Kea. Why, they didn't even let graduate students use the telescopes without supervision! Jim was adamant that I do it, though; he refused to come to Hawaii. Eventually we worked out a deal that a postdoc would come with me to "supervise". It was cloudy, but that didn't matter. Jim had made his point, and I was fully empowered. I've heard many of his other students tell similar stories: sent off to who knows where with his utter confidence they were up to the challenge. And so, of course, they were. 

John of Salisbury wrote once: "We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours." Jim was one of the giants that  John mentions.  That really only scratches the surface of Jim as a Mentor.  He deeply cared about people,  his people in particular.  Dr. Michael Person of the MIT Planetary Astronomy Lab a research scientist directly under Dr. Elliot wrote in regards to Jim's caring nature: "I echo Heidi's impression of Jim as a mentor. He was certainly a great influence in my life. A true mentor in the classic sense, those of us who apprenticed under him were fortunate enough to not only learn our craft from a master, but to spend years with a man who cared as much about how his students progressed in their lives as he did in their research. As much friend as teacher and colleague, he will be sorely missed."Anyone who ever knew Jim or studied under him could echo these comments about this great man. Jim lives on in the people he has touched. His legacy is great for his techniques will be built upon as we study distant planets orbiting distant stars, or discover even more distant worlds in the far off frozen world of the Kuiper belt. Moreover, He has shown the value of empowering students to go out and take life by the horns and do the impossible. Those are truly great words to teach and live by.  Go peacefully into the night Jim. You have left this world in good hands.

Until next time,

Keep looking up!

Steve T

Dark Matter: Interperating Data Can Be a Very Hard Task for Scientists Including Galileo And Kepler

I just finished  with Galileo's Sidereal Messenger/ Kepler's Dioptics for the umpteenth time and I marvel at the discoveries made in those first few years after the invention of the telescope. Galileo got so many things right with his observations but the genius Galileo got a slew of things wrong too. Johannes Kepler  the wunderkind that came up Kepler's three Laws of Planetary Motion, got his share of stuff wrong. Some cases in point with these two giants are...

Galileo was trying to figure out why the edge of the moons disk appeared smooth and the rest of the Moon was littered with mountains and valleys.  Galileo wrote:  To this explanation may be added another, namely, that there is round the body of the Moon, just as round the Earth, an envelope of some substance denser than the rest of the ether, which is sufficient to receive and reflect the Sun s rays, although it does not possess so much opaqueness as to be able to prevent our seeing through it—especially when it is not illuminated. That envelope, when illuminated by the Sun's rays, renders the body of the Moon apparently larger than it really is, and would be able to stop our sight from penetrating to the solid body of the Moon, if its thickness were greater; now, it is of greater thickness about the circumference of the Moon, greater, I mean, not in actual thickness, but with reference to our sight-rays, which cut it obliquely; and so it may stop our vision, especially when it is in a state of brightness, and may conceal the true circumference of the Moon on the side towards the Sun. This may be understood more clearly from the adjoining figure, in which the body of the Moon, A B c. is surrounded by an enveloping atmosphere, D E G. An eye at f penetrates to the middle parts of the Moon, as at a, through a thickness, dia, of the atmosphere; but towards the extreme parts a mass of atmosphere of greater depth, E B, shuts out its boundary from our sight. Galileo, using the data he had acquired,  was way off base with this solution. Galileo also originally and erroneously thought  Saturn was a triple system with two smaller planets on either side of the planet.

This is from the preface of Kepler's Dioptics. : For if the earth were banished from the centre of the universe, some fear lest the water should leave the orb of the earth and flow to the centre of the universe ; and yet we see that in the moon, as well as in the earth, there is a quantity of moisture occupying the sunken hollows of that globe ; and although this orb revolves actually in the ether, and outside the centres not merely of the universe, but even of our earth, yet the mass of water in the moon is not at all hindered from cleaving invariably to the orb of the moon, and tending to the centre of the body to which it belongs. So Kepler thought that the Moon had water on it lots of water. Hmmm The Moon does have water but not where he said and not how much he said.

That is the problem with RAW data. The interpretations are as varied as the Universe itself. That might be a little over the top but you definitely get my meaning. They can be varied using the same science available to any thinking human being. This is where Dark Matter /Dark energy comes in. Can it be explained by just baryonic sources such as Brown dwarfs, black holes  and the like.  Or just maybe it is non baryonic in nature?  So if it is non baryonic,  is it cold,  warm or hot  Dark matter? If it is one of those three, could the particles be neutrinos super-neutrinos or even neutralinos. or maybe weakly interacting massive particles etc. or how about theoretical partcles yet to be found? By the way it could be a combination of some or all of the above... or none of it.


It could be one of several gravity theories floating out there (paradox intended) Modified Newtonian dynamics ie  MOND, TeVes, MOG NGT and back reaction theory etc. each one might include the some quantity of Dark Matter to shore up it's point. The latest MOG theory is stand alone in nature. there are many others out there clamoring to stay off the trash pile of dis-proven theories.

I have seen mandates that call for a solution in the next two years or science will have to reevaluate the whole Dark "stuff" scene. I have seen the Ether come up  to explain some of this circa 2006? Are you kidding me?  Do I have a favorite theory? Well, yes I do but my vote hardly counts. What does count  is the hard working scientist of this age striving to make sense out of the many Terra-bites of information continuing to be gathered by oh so many sources. Two years is a short time to sort out all of this.One thing is for certain these next couple of years are sure to be exciting! For the many theories that will go by the way side just remember you are in some very good company.


Until next time


Keep looking up!


Steve T

A World Record Length For Cosmic Yardstick!!!

Continent-wide telescope extends cosmic 'yardstick' three times farther into universe

NRAO

Now just looking at the title you have to giggle a little bit because three feet (yardstick) is well... three feet and hardly a world record. It is when we pull out the Cosmic Yardstick that things start to get real long  like 450 million light years long and yes folks that is a direct measurement!Using the super-sharp radio "vision" of astronomy's most precise telescope, scientists have extended a directly-measured "yardstick" three times farther into the cosmos than ever before.This has some very important implications for the hottest fields right now namely Determining the nature of Dark Energy and extrasolar planet searches. The continent-wide Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) also is redrawing the map of our home galaxy as I type and is on the precipice of delivering big  in these two fields and more.The VLBA provides the greatest ability to see fine detail, called resolving power, of any telescope in the world. It can produce images hundreds of times more detailed than those from the Hubble Space Telescope.  This power allows astronomers to make precise cosmic measurements with far-ranging implications for research within our own Galaxy and far beyond.

Via  the NRAO: New measurements with the VLBA have placed a galaxy called NGC 6264 at a distance of 450 million light-years from Earth, with an uncertainty of no more than 9 percent. This is the farthest distance ever directly measured, surpassing a measurement of 160 million light-years to another galaxy in 2009. Previously, distances beyond our own Galaxy have been estimated through indirect methods. "Our direct, geometric measurements are independent of the assumptions and complications inherent in other techniques," said James Braatz, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), who worked with Cheng-Yu Kuo, of the University of Virginia and NRAO. Fine-tuning the measurement of ever-greater distances is vital to determining the expansion rate of the Universe, which helps theorists narrow down possible explanations for the nature of Dark Energy. Different models of Dark Energy predict different values for the expansion rate, known as the Hubble Constant.

"Solving the Dark Energy problem requires advancing the precision of cosmic distance measurements, and we are working to refine our observations and extend our methods to more galaxies," Braatz said. Measuring more-distant galaxies is vital, because the farther a galaxy is, the more of its motion is due to the expansion of the Universe rather than to random motions.

REDRAWING THE MAP OF OUR GALAXY

Another ongoing project uses the VLBA to redraw the map of our own home Galaxy. Recent work has added dozens of new measurements to star-forming regions in the Milky Way, The direct VLBA measurements improve on earlier estimates by as much as a factor of two.

This improvement significantly aids in understanding the physics of the young stars and their environments. It also has changed the map of the Milky Way, indicating that our galaxy has four spiral arms, not two, as previously thought.

"Because we sit inside our galaxy, it's difficult to actually map it. These precision distance measurements are our most effective tool for learning about the structure of the Milky Way," said Mark Reid, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Earlier work by Reid and his colleagues showed that the Milky Way is rotating faster than previous estimates had indicated. That measurement in turn showed our galaxy to be more massive, equaling our neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy, in mass.

Reid's team also is observing the Andromeda Galaxy in a long-term project to determine the direction and speed of its movement through space. "The standard prediction is that the Milky Way and Andromeda will collide in a few billion years. By measuring Andromeda's actual motion, we can determine with much greater accuracy if and when that will happen," Reid said.

TINY WOBBLES WILL REVEAL PLANETS

A long-term, sensitive search of 30 stars seeks to find the subtle gravitational tug that will reveal planets orbiting those stars. The VLBA's precision can reveal a "wobble" in the star's motion through space caused by the planet's gravity. A four-year program, started in 2007, is nearing its completion.

"This study tracks stars smaller than our Sun, seeking evidence of planets the size of Jupiter or smaller," said Geoffrey Bower, of the University of California, Berkeley. "We want to learn how common it is for these low-mass stars to have planets orbiting them at relatively large distances," he added.

The project uses the VLBA along with NRAO's Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia, the largest fully-steerable dish antenna in the world. Together, these telescopes can detect the faint radio emission from the stars to track their motion over time.

Early results have ruled out any companions the size of brown dwarfs for three of the stars, and the astronomers are analyzing their data as the observations continue.

Astronomers reported on the new measurements and ongoing projects at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation, operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc.

So what have we got here? a possible new way to find  extrasolar planets , A much bigger Milky Way Galaxy than previously thought and narrowing down the solution to the Dark Energy problem ... Not bad VLBA not bad at all . I may have a new hero!