Science Slam: Keynote Katie Mack

University of Nebraska–Lincoln Author

04/16/2018 Added

17 Plays

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Science Slam keynote speaker Katie Mack.

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[00:00:03.440]So I'm going to talk about science communication
[00:00:07.630]a little bit because that's sort of
[00:00:08.780]what I was asked here to talk about.
[00:00:10.730]But I usually just talk about space.
[00:00:12.470]So I'm mostly going to talk about space
[00:00:15.100]and I'm going to talk a little bit about science
[00:00:17.550]communication and about sort of how talking about space
[00:00:23.110]can reach people and that connects to
[00:00:26.450]how talking about science in general can reach people
[00:00:28.470]because we as humans are just a curious species.
[00:00:31.680]And I'll talk a little bit about the
[00:00:34.094]kinds of things that I've found to be very
[00:00:37.873]effecting of people and why that's important.
[00:00:41.880]So I'm going to start with a little story.
[00:00:45.242]A couple of years ago I was asked
[00:00:47.114]to appear on a podcast for children called Tumble.
[00:00:51.760]And this podcast, it's a science podcast
[00:00:55.130]where children ask questions and then they bring
[00:00:57.140]scientists in and have them explain the answers
[00:00:59.970]to these questions in ways that
[00:01:01.290]children will be interested in and understand.
[00:01:04.790]And I was asked about the edge of the universe.
[00:01:07.720]What is the edge of the universe,
[00:01:09.290]or how do we find it, or what's beyond that?
[00:01:13.130]And so I was doing this interview for the podcast
[00:01:16.060]via Skype and so I had this Skype video thing
[00:01:19.120]with the person and I was explaining how
[00:01:22.785]we don't think there really is an edge to the universe,
[00:01:25.870]at least nothing that we've seen.
[00:01:27.470]And the universe might go on forever in space,
[00:01:32.580]but there is kind of an edge to
[00:01:33.890]our understanding of the universe.
[00:01:38.034]And as I was going through this,
[00:01:39.330]I started talking about the sort of distant future universe
[00:01:42.670]and what's going to happen in the future
[00:01:44.810]and I got into a sort of discussion about dark energy.
[00:01:48.710]And you know, there are galaxies in the universe,
[00:01:53.690]we live in a galaxy.
[00:01:55.510]This is a picture from the Hubble Space Telescope
[00:01:57.640]of tens of thousands of galaxies.
[00:02:00.520]There are a couple of stars in this picture too.
[00:02:02.870]If you're an expert, you might be able to spot them.
[00:02:05.000]That's one.
[00:02:06.960]Pretty much everything else in this picture is a galaxy.
[00:02:09.880]That's a galaxy, that's a galaxy, that's a galaxy,
[00:02:11.930]that's a cute one, that's a galaxy, I like that one.
[00:02:15.500]So our universe is huge, it's full of galaxies,
[00:02:18.560]full of stars, and when we look at images
[00:02:22.090]of distant galaxies, we notice something interesting
[00:02:24.840]which is that the universe is expanding.
[00:02:28.090]And we can sort of map out how the universe is expanding
[00:02:31.310]and the way it's expanding is that galaxies
[00:02:33.830]are getting farther from each other.
[00:02:35.720]So this is my very high tech animation of that.
[00:02:38.100]They're not getting bigger themselves,
[00:02:39.710]but the distances between galaxies are getting farther apart
[00:02:42.590]and the way that's happening is really weird.
[00:02:46.050]It has to do with something we call dark energy.
[00:02:49.633]Basically, the space between galaxies
[00:02:52.240]is getting bigger and bigger all the time.
[00:02:54.300]And based on our previous understanding of the universe,
[00:02:57.960]it should be that the expansion should be slowing down
[00:03:00.880]because the expansion was kind of set off by the Big Bang
[00:03:03.793]and over time the gravity between galaxies
[00:03:07.830]should kind of try and pull things back together.
[00:03:09.560]So the expansion should be slowing down.
[00:03:11.080]And for several billion years, it was.
[00:03:15.030]But somewhere around five billion years ago,
[00:03:16.740]it started speeding up and we don't know why that happened,
[00:03:20.823]but we call it dark energy.
[00:03:22.550]Whatever is making the expansion speed up,
[00:03:24.640]we call that dark energy.
[00:03:26.670]And based on our understanding of dark energy,
[00:03:29.415]in the very distant future, the galaxies are going to get
[00:03:33.560]so far apart from each other that every galaxy
[00:03:36.120]is going to become more and more isolated.
[00:03:38.453]Our galaxy is going to become
[00:03:40.502]more isolated from other galaxies.
[00:03:42.881]This doesn't count the Andromeda galaxy
[00:03:45.920]because the Andromeda galaxy is actually coming toward us
[00:03:47.930]and it's going to collide with us in about
[00:03:49.410]four billion years and that's going to be really exciting.
[00:03:50.970]But beyond that, other than that,
[00:03:53.160]all of the other galaxies are moving away.
[00:03:54.870]And after the Andromeda collision happens,
[00:03:57.556]our galaxy will get mixed up in that
[00:04:00.292]and a couple of other little galaxies nearby.
[00:04:03.351]But then over time, we're going to be more and more alone.
[00:04:08.080]And all the galaxies are going to be more and more alone
[00:04:10.210]and if dark energy keeps going the way it seems to be going,
[00:04:16.470]then the universe will get more and more empty
[00:04:18.810]and more and more cold and each galaxy will be isolated
[00:04:22.890]and it won't be able to form new stars 'cause there won't be
[00:04:25.880]any new gas coming in to form new stars.
[00:04:28.550]And so the stars that are in each galaxy
[00:04:30.920]will kind of start to fade away and die
[00:04:34.260]and then particles will disintegrate
[00:04:37.230]and the universe will be this very cold,
[00:04:40.328]very empty, very dark, lonely place.
[00:04:44.600]So I was explaining this to the presenter for this podcast
[00:04:49.800]and I was getting really caught up in the science of it,
[00:04:52.670]the excitement, and I looked at the image on the screen
[00:04:57.240]and she had this look on her face like.
[00:04:59.500]And she said very quietly, she said,
[00:05:01.876]I don't think this is suitable for children.
[00:05:04.599](audience laughing)
[00:05:06.939]And I felt really bad and I was like, oh,
[00:05:10.586]I didn't even think about that, I'm so sorry.
[00:05:14.220]And it didn't help that this is a really long time from now
[00:05:19.540]and you try to explain like, by the time this happens,
[00:05:23.460]the sun will already have swelled to red giant phase
[00:05:27.200]and engulfed Mercury and maybe Venus
[00:05:29.180]and it will boil off the oceans of the earth
[00:05:30.437]and the earth will be a lifeless husk, and you know,
[00:05:32.700]that doesn't help, that doesn't make it better.
[00:05:36.470]Or you know, you and everybody
[00:05:39.140]and probably all humans will be dead.
[00:05:40.830]It doesn't help.
[00:05:43.044]And it's funny because as a physicist,
[00:05:47.480]my work is equations and mathematical models
[00:05:50.810]and stuff like that and so it doesn't always occur to me
[00:05:54.000]that instead of being this kind of dry,
[00:05:57.610]boring thing a lot of people think of physics as,
[00:06:00.580]it can be something that's so emotionally affecting
[00:06:03.380]that it's dangerous to talk about in certain company.
[00:06:08.810]But the thing is that
[00:06:12.056]we care about the universe.
[00:06:15.200]We look into the sky and we see the motion
[00:06:19.530]of our planet reflected in the apparent
[00:06:22.480]motion of the stars and the galaxy.
[00:06:25.479]We see other stars, we see distant galaxies,
[00:06:29.044]we peer into this vastness and it affects us.
[00:06:32.410]It makes us feel things.
[00:06:36.010]We look at other planets and we imagine going there.
[00:06:39.260]We send probes to take incredible pictures and we stare at
[00:06:44.630]these things and we get really personally caught up in it.
[00:06:50.430]We look at this and we see a heart on the face of Pluto
[00:06:54.380]and people have feelings about Pluto.
[00:06:57.040]Very strong feelings about Pluto.
[00:07:01.880]And then we want to reach out and touch these things.
[00:07:06.520]We want to be part of that.
[00:07:08.080]We have, as human beings, an instinct
[00:07:11.614]or a basic fundamental need to explore,
[00:07:15.764]to learn about the world around us,
[00:07:19.630]to learn about the universe, to learn about
[00:07:22.230]where we come from and where we're going.
[00:07:25.050]And we take that very personally,
[00:07:27.400]even if it's stuff that has no effect on our life
[00:07:31.760]in the little span of years that we're on this planet.
[00:07:35.310]We care about where we came from,
[00:07:36.740]we care about where we're going.
[00:07:38.040]We care about the beginning of the universe
[00:07:40.590]and the end of the universe, just fundamentally as people.
[00:07:44.950]And asking the questions of where we came from
[00:07:48.500]and where we're going and asking the questions
[00:07:50.040]of how it all works, how does the universe work?
[00:07:53.800]What are the basic rules of existence
[00:07:56.660]and what's fundamentally going on?
[00:07:59.207]Asking those questions fundamentally
[00:08:01.330]changes us and changes our outlook.
[00:08:06.010]This is one of my favorite space images.
[00:08:09.540]This is from Apollo 17,
[00:08:11.740]which was the last mission to the Moon.
[00:08:15.580]And it's one of the most distant images
[00:08:17.950]of our planet ever taken by a human.
[00:08:23.300]When astronauts go into space, they come back
[00:08:27.080]and they sometimes talk about something
[00:08:28.490]called the overview effect, which is this thing
[00:08:32.360]where seeing the earth from space
[00:08:35.810]changes how you feel about humanity, about existence.
[00:08:41.830]They say that it gives you a sense of connectedness,
[00:08:45.140]a feeling of bliss and timelessness.
[00:08:49.150]They say that it makes you see how we're all together
[00:08:52.731]on this beautiful little oasis in the darkness
[00:08:58.308]and they describe it as kind of
[00:09:00.130]an interconnectedness or a euphoria.
[00:09:03.670]And that's just from seeing our planet
[00:09:07.270]in a different context, from changing our perspective.
[00:09:11.140]And as an astrophysicist, I can't send people to space.
[00:09:16.570]I can't even send myself to space,
[00:09:18.360]I've been trying really hard.
[00:09:20.510]NASA has not accepted my application yet.
[00:09:24.620]But I can sometimes try and give people that feeling
[00:09:30.160]in a little way just by showing them
[00:09:33.880]more about sort of where we are in the universe.
[00:09:37.510]I can try to, I love this picture.
[00:09:41.270]I don't know if anybody knows, but this is Kyle Hill.
[00:09:45.546]He's got a very popular YouTube channel
[00:09:49.590]where he talks about science of pop culture and stuff.
[00:09:53.270]This was an occasion where we were at
[00:09:55.780]a science communication conference
[00:09:57.170]and somebody brought a huge pair of binoculars
[00:10:00.250]and I said oh, we should go look at Jupiter.
[00:10:03.080]And so we went and looked at Jupiter
[00:10:04.590]and we could see the moons around Jupiter.
[00:10:07.500]So you can see in binoculars, you don't even need like
[00:10:09.880]a big telescope, you can see the four Galilean moons
[00:10:12.540]of Jupiter, the biggest moons.
[00:10:15.687]And
[00:10:17.560]I was explaining how
[00:10:20.010]when Galileo observed the moons of Jupiter
[00:10:23.090]and saw them on different nights
[00:10:25.840]and saw that they were in different positions,
[00:10:27.270]this was one of the first observations
[00:10:29.640]that really showed we're not the center of the universe,
[00:10:32.403]that there's stuff moving around something else.
[00:10:35.610]And he showed by showing that the moons
[00:10:37.470]are moving around Jupiter that we can't be the center,
[00:10:40.810]we can't be the center of all motion in the cosmos.
[00:10:45.320]And that changed his perspective on the universe.
[00:10:49.430]And we can see that ourselves, we can look into the sky
[00:10:52.350]and see that and sort of feel that.
[00:10:56.320]So I can try to show people that.
[00:11:03.930]But I can't send people to space,
[00:11:05.930]but there there is this sense that
[00:11:10.530]understanding where we are in the universe
[00:11:12.280]and understanding our place in the cosmos and sort of
[00:11:16.050]changing that perspective can change how we feel.
[00:11:18.930]So there's a talk that I give a lot
[00:11:21.300]when I visit schools and stuff.
[00:11:23.927]And I gave this talk at my mom's church awhile back
[00:11:26.380]which was an interesting occasion
[00:11:29.163]because I realized that some of the things
[00:11:31.210]I was saying might be kind of heretical.
[00:11:33.730]But it starts with the Copernican Principle,
[00:11:37.820]which is an idea sort of popularized by Copernicus which is
[00:11:41.673]that we do not occupy a special place in the universe.
[00:11:46.320]This is the part that might be heretical.
[00:11:49.123]There's nothing special about where we are.
[00:11:51.283]In particular, there's nothing
[00:11:52.630]special about any particular place.
[00:11:54.030]But for us, we're not the center of our solar system.
[00:11:59.084]The planets go around the sun, we're somewhere
[00:12:02.144]sort of in the middle of the array of planets.
[00:12:05.948]Nothing's revolving around us except the moon
[00:12:08.820]and a whole bunch of satellites.
[00:12:11.120]We live in a galaxy, we're not the center of the galaxy.
[00:12:13.840]We're kind of out on the edge.
[00:12:15.020]This is just an illustration,
[00:12:16.250]we can't take pictures from outside our galaxy,
[00:12:19.690]but we're something like 26,000 light years
[00:12:22.850]from the center of the galaxy.
[00:12:24.830]There are
[00:12:27.470]billions of other galaxies out there.
[00:12:30.240]We're just one of many.
[00:12:32.610]And we can actually map out where the galaxies are
[00:12:36.950]in the universe from surveys of galaxies.
[00:12:40.070]This is one of these surveys.
[00:12:41.160]This is data from the Sloan Digital Sky survey,
[00:12:44.710]zooming through the data as though we're zooming away
[00:12:46.800]from earth and seeing all these galaxies flying by.
[00:12:50.520]And these galaxies are real galaxies.
[00:12:52.140]Each one of these things flying by is a real galaxy
[00:12:54.890]that's been mapped by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
[00:12:58.040]And in this survey, they can't see the whole sky
[00:13:02.630]in the survey, so they look in kind of slices.
[00:13:04.780]So that's why there's this sort of slice
[00:13:06.300]along the center there and you'll see these
[00:13:07.990]sort of fan-shaped slices in other places.
[00:13:10.480]But they're trying to map out the
[00:13:12.467]large-scale structure of the universe,
[00:13:14.743]sort of how these galaxies are laid out in the cosmos.
[00:13:20.350]And when we map this stuff out and when we correct for
[00:13:25.030]the fact that we have a certain
[00:13:26.860]perspective based on where we're at,
[00:13:29.000]there is nothing special about where we are in the cosmos,
[00:13:32.220]in this larger scheme of things.
[00:13:36.120]Galaxies appear to be distributed
[00:13:38.520]along a kind of cosmic web, this sort of spongy structure
[00:13:42.214]which you can see in each of these slices.
[00:13:46.420]We can simulate this, actually,
[00:13:49.530]and see that structure better.
[00:13:52.480]So this is a simulation of the structure of the universe,
[00:13:55.960]where in this simulation, each of these little bright points
[00:13:58.160]might be a galaxy, so you have sort of a cluster
[00:14:00.190]of galaxies in the middle.
[00:14:02.060]And in these simulations, we can zoom out
[00:14:04.510]in a way that we can't in real life.
[00:14:07.280]And we can see that on the very largest scales,
[00:14:12.030]the universe looks kind of the same everywhere.
[00:14:14.490]And there's nothing special about this part over here
[00:14:17.516]or this part over here, they all look more or less the same.
[00:14:23.170]And we can look out into the universe and see these
[00:14:26.770]structures and we can see really distant objects,
[00:14:31.170]even beyond some of the galaxies
[00:14:34.390]where we can actually see nice pretty pictures of galaxies,
[00:14:37.200]we can see other objects that are
[00:14:38.710]bright shining things far away.
[00:14:41.600]These blue dots in this picture,
[00:14:46.900]they're central black holes of galaxies
[00:14:50.370]that are so far away that we can't even see the galaxy.
[00:14:52.300]But we can see that there is stuff falling into a black hole
[00:14:55.073]and the stuff that's falling in gets really really bright
[00:14:57.080]so we can see them very far away.
[00:14:59.280]And some of these little blue dots
[00:15:00.480]are billions of light years away.
[00:15:05.150]So a light year is the distance
[00:15:08.670]that light can travel in a year.
[00:15:11.780]And we use light years as a measurement,
[00:15:16.790]sometimes we use other related measurements in astronomy.
[00:15:22.260]But we use those kinds of measurements
[00:15:23.630]partially because it helps us to understand
[00:15:26.980]not just how far something is,
[00:15:28.690]but how far into the past it is.
[00:15:31.110]Because when we look at images of distant galaxies,
[00:15:34.070]we're looking into the past,
[00:15:35.680]into the distant past of our universe.
[00:15:38.680]This is because as light takes time to travel,
[00:15:41.840]if you see something far away, you're seeing old light.
[00:15:44.270]You're seeing light that's been traveling for awhile.
[00:15:46.500]It turns out that light travels
[00:15:48.120]about one foot per nanosecond.
[00:15:50.640]So if I'm looking at the front row,
[00:15:52.250]I'm looking at maybe 30 nanoseconds ago.
[00:15:55.640]So you're in the past.
[00:15:57.230]In the back, you're way in the past, 100 nanoseconds maybe.
[00:16:01.000]If I look at the sun with proper eye protection, of course,
[00:16:05.194]I'm looking at eight minutes ago.
[00:16:07.420]If I'm looking at the nearest star other than the sun,
[00:16:10.120]I'm looking at four years ago.
[00:16:12.000]And if I look at a distant galaxy,
[00:16:13.470]I might be looking at billions of years ago.
[00:16:16.830]And because the universe is more or less
[00:16:18.270]the same everywhere, if I look at a galaxy
[00:16:22.270]that the light left at billions of years ago,
[00:16:24.380]I'm looking at what the whole universe
[00:16:25.850]was like billions of years ago.
[00:16:28.620]And so I can learn about the past of our universe
[00:16:31.650]by looking at distant objects.
[00:16:33.747]And you might sort of think well, okay,
[00:16:36.185]the universe isn't infinitely old.
[00:16:38.360]We know the universe had a beginning, the Big Bang
[00:16:40.890]just about 13.8 billion years ago,
[00:16:43.270]so what happens if you try and look too far?
[00:16:46.750]What happens if you look before the first galaxies?
[00:16:52.010]There's a nice diagram of this that NASA put together.
[00:16:56.800]Where, okay, you have the Hubble Space Telescope there
[00:17:00.130]and there are different sort of images
[00:17:01.820]of distant galaxies and they're looking at the age
[00:17:05.150]of the universe when it was much younger.
[00:17:07.050]So some of the most distant galaxies we can see
[00:17:09.318]existed when the universe was only half a billion years old.
[00:17:12.840]It's at 13.8 now.
[00:17:15.330]But we can look beyond that.
[00:17:17.330]What happens if we look all the
[00:17:19.560]way to the time of the Big Bang?
[00:17:22.690]The Big Bang theory is the idea that
[00:17:24.905]in the very distant past, the universe was
[00:17:27.320]hotter and denser than it is now.
[00:17:31.010]The universe was smaller and it's been expanding
[00:17:33.220]and when it was smaller it was hotter,
[00:17:35.980]all the radiation was concentrated
[00:17:37.960]and the whole universe was kind of
[00:17:39.689]this fiery plasma in the beginning.
[00:17:44.400]And so if you look far enough away,
[00:17:48.720]you can look at a part of the universe
[00:17:50.550]that's so far away that the light left it so long ago
[00:17:54.710]that from your perspective, it's still on fire.
[00:18:00.070]It's still in that hot plasma state.
[00:18:03.310]And we can do that, we can look into the universe
[00:18:05.507]and we can see in every direction,
[00:18:07.832]we can see radiation coming from a time
[00:18:10.630]when the universe was still on fire.
[00:18:12.740]And we can map out that radiation.
[00:18:14.960]And we can put it into this zoom out map
[00:18:18.167]and we can see it as this sort of hazy glow
[00:18:20.680]around the edges of our observable universe.
[00:18:25.320]And we can map out where it's a little bit hotter
[00:18:29.120]or a little bit colder where parts of the universe
[00:18:33.170]in the very beginning were a little bit
[00:18:35.200]more dense or a little bit less dense.
[00:18:38.030]And we can put that into a stretched out map
[00:18:40.300]like we do for maps of the earth.
[00:18:43.280]And we can say okay, this part over here was a little bit
[00:18:45.650]more dense, that part was a little bit less dense.
[00:18:47.880]Let's take this map and let's sort of zoom in on parts of it
[00:18:52.350]and put it into a computer and let gravity
[00:18:56.670]happen in this computer simulation.
[00:19:01.470]And over time on this computer simulation,
[00:19:05.470]we get the cosmic web.
[00:19:07.530]So we can look at the Big Bang itself.
[00:19:12.261]We can look at the time when the universe was hot and dense
[00:19:14.310]and glowing with heat and plasma
[00:19:16.547]and we can map that out and then we can put all of that
[00:19:19.380]information into a computer and we can get
[00:19:21.410]the large-scale structure of the cosmos
[00:19:23.070]that we actually see in our telescopes today.
[00:19:26.320]We can make all of those connections.
[00:19:28.450]One of the things we find when we do this
[00:19:30.864]kind of simulation when we look at the patterns
[00:19:35.160]and the cosmic microwave background, that plasma,
[00:19:37.870]sort of distant plasma glow,
[00:19:41.910]one of the things we find is that none of this works out
[00:19:45.110]unless most of the matter in the universe is invisible.
[00:19:49.804]And then we have other evidence for that too,
[00:19:51.270]but it seems that most of the matter in the universe
[00:19:53.810]is something called dark matter.
[00:19:55.380]So it's probably some new kind of particle
[00:19:58.010]that just doesn't interact with light,
[00:19:59.890]but it's got gravity and it holds galaxies together
[00:20:03.320]and it underlies this whole structure of the cosmic web.
[00:20:07.168]And most of the matter in the universe,
[00:20:09.120]like 80-85% of the matter in the universe
[00:20:11.210]is this invisible dark matter.
[00:20:12.630]But we have really good evidence it's there
[00:20:15.410]from things like how galaxies move around
[00:20:17.320]and from simulating the
[00:20:21.827]progress of building a structure in the universe.
[00:20:25.920]So most of the matter in the universe
[00:20:27.325]is this invisible dark matter.
[00:20:29.410]And we also know from the expansion of the universe
[00:20:31.393]that dark energy is a lot of what the universe is made of
[00:20:34.525]and we don't know what dark energy is at all.
[00:20:37.020]We call it dark because we can't see it
[00:20:38.220]and we don't know what it is, but it's something
[00:20:40.290]that's making the universe expand faster.
[00:20:41.867]But we can also use the cosmic microwave background
[00:20:45.250]and simulations to map out how much dark energy is out there
[00:20:48.880]and we find something really disconcerting,
[00:20:52.070]which is that if you make a pie chart
[00:20:54.020]of everything that's in the universe,
[00:20:56.326]the vast majority of it is dark energy.
[00:20:59.480]And then most of the matter is this dark matter
[00:21:02.730]that we also don't understand and can't see.
[00:21:05.310]And then there's this little 5% slice
[00:21:09.520]that encompasses everything we can see
[00:21:12.380]and touch and interact with in the cosmos.
[00:21:15.430]We are part of this little 5% slice.
[00:21:18.290]So when I talk about the Copernican Principle
[00:21:21.990]about how we're not in a special place
[00:21:23.880]and we're not special in the universe,
[00:21:26.700]like we're really not special.
[00:21:28.610]Like, we are so insignificant.
[00:21:32.760]We are not even an important part
[00:21:36.020]of this little tiny 5% slice of the universe.
[00:21:41.160]One of the pictures that I think illustrates this a lot,
[00:21:44.690]even though it's only visible matter in this picture,
[00:21:46.700]is this one, which you might be familiar with.
[00:21:49.600]This is the Pale Blue Dot.
[00:21:51.880]So this is a blow up of that there.
[00:21:53.840]This is just a couple of pixels in an image
[00:21:58.031]taken by the Voyager spacecraft from
[00:22:00.980]four billion miles away from the earth.
[00:22:04.420]And Voyager was looking back toward the sun
[00:22:08.810]to try and catch a picture of the earth from that distance
[00:22:11.770]as it was sort of floating away from the solar system.
[00:22:16.610]And it managed to capture this picture of the earth
[00:22:21.580]as just a tiny little dot in space,
[00:22:24.780]sort of in this little sunbeam
[00:22:29.957]from the sun.
[00:22:31.806]We are a speck of dust on a speck of dust.
[00:22:35.350]We are vastly unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
[00:22:39.221]And
[00:22:41.470]this might be a depressing idea.
[00:22:44.210]It might be a depressing idea that the universe
[00:22:46.900]is going to end and also we're really unimportant,
[00:22:49.250]we don't matter in any way that makes any sense at all.
[00:22:53.520]But I find it the opposite, I find this really inspiring.
[00:22:58.000]Because yes, we are a speck of dust on a speck of dust,
[00:23:01.830]we are vastly insignificant, but we can learn about
[00:23:06.672]the universe, we can see the Big Bang itself,
[00:23:12.050]we can learn about the existence of dark matter
[00:23:14.210]and dark energy, these things that are vastly important
[00:23:17.140]in the universe but we can't interact with directly,
[00:23:19.590]but we know all about them.
[00:23:21.250]We know how much of it there is,
[00:23:23.170]we can map out where the dark matter is,
[00:23:25.350]we can map out how dark energy has been working over time,
[00:23:30.370]we can look at the Big Bang and we can use our mathematics
[00:23:35.500]and our physics and our computer modeling
[00:23:37.570]and we can see how you get from this faint glow
[00:23:41.670]of microwaves at the edge of our perception
[00:23:45.051]and create the entire universe
[00:23:48.600]and all of the galaxies and clusters that we see today.
[00:23:51.909]We can do that calculation, we can understand so much more.
[00:23:57.510]We can understand about the beginning of the universe,
[00:23:59.430]we an speculate about the end of the universe.
[00:24:02.140]Even though we are these completely unimportant
[00:24:06.670]little beings who have just a little span of years
[00:24:10.430]on this tiny little planet that has
[00:24:14.070]no significance in the cosmos at all.
[00:24:16.920]So I find that inspiring and I think that
[00:24:20.930]it's good to talk about
[00:24:27.320]how your perspective can change when you learn about the
[00:24:31.050]universe, when you learn about science and how things work
[00:24:34.290]and how that doesn't have to be
[00:24:36.050]this dry sort of tedious thing.
[00:24:39.940]We can have feelings about science in a big way.
[00:24:43.790]And as science communicators, we can share those feelings
[00:24:47.150]with other people and we can have the joy of seeing wonder
[00:24:52.300]in someone else and we can express
[00:24:55.010]that wonder in ourselves and let people share that.
[00:24:57.820]And I think that's a lot more important than
[00:25:02.620]getting across facts and figures and numbers.
[00:25:06.080]People talk about science literacy as
[00:25:08.890]do people know this thing or do people know that thing,
[00:25:13.010]facts about
[00:25:15.497]space or about physics or about geology or whatever.
[00:25:19.940]And I don't think that's the important part
[00:25:21.860]of science literacy, I think that what we want
[00:25:26.430]as science communicators is for people to understand
[00:25:29.150]why we do science and how we do science
[00:25:32.240]and how science can make us feel
[00:25:34.550]and how, even though thinking about this stuff
[00:25:38.010]is not going to make a car go faster,
[00:25:40.570]it's not going to make anybody any money,
[00:25:43.869]it still can be something that fulfills a basic need
[00:25:46.780]that we have as humans to understand the world around us
[00:25:50.347]and to understand the universe.
[00:25:51.620]And that's something that everybody can share.
[00:25:54.222]You don't have to be a
[00:25:58.800]sort of privileged, educated person
[00:26:00.840]to share in the wonder of discovery
[00:26:05.122]and understanding because that's something that
[00:26:07.760]everybody feels and everybody needs.
[00:26:09.950]And I think that it's important to
[00:26:13.570]make that available.
[00:26:16.880]And to make it available in a way
[00:26:19.180]that people have access to, not just like,
[00:26:22.930]well my article is publicly accessible, therefore,
[00:26:27.133]I'm sharing my science with the world.
[00:26:30.830]We can make an effort to say not everybody has the same
[00:26:35.470]background and education and we can talk about
[00:26:37.450]these things and share in ways that lets
[00:26:41.480]people actually access these ideas.
[00:26:43.980]I think that's really important as well.
[00:26:45.990]Not everybody needs to do that,
[00:26:47.310]not everybody is good at that or wants to do that.
[00:26:50.439]But if you have the ability, I think it can be
[00:26:52.200]an incredibly powerful and rewarding thing.
[00:26:58.600]So people will often talk about science communication
[00:27:01.770]how we should connect things to people's daily lives
[00:27:06.300]and news you can use and all this stuff.
[00:27:07.650]I think sometimes there is space for just, it's really cool.
[00:27:11.410]And it's out there and it's interesting
[00:27:14.416]and we can look at waves in the rings of Saturn
[00:27:18.860]by a tiny moon and feel inspiration from that too.
[00:27:22.380]And so there are ways to share
[00:27:27.030]our excitement and our love and our feelings about science
[00:27:31.660]in ways that can really connect with other people.
[00:27:34.290]So
[00:27:37.345]that's kind of all I wanted to talk about,
[00:27:41.400]that I think that sharing our stories
[00:27:44.970]and sharing our feelings and sharing our passion
[00:27:47.860]as scientists is something that can be
[00:27:52.440]deeply important and deeply rewarding and we should always
[00:27:58.120]do it in an age appropriate way.
[00:28:00.474](audience laughing)
[00:28:02.130]So thank you for listening.
[00:28:05.407](audience applauding)
[00:28:14.738]So we have plenty of time for questions and discussion.
[00:28:17.390]So I'm going to let Katie field her own questions,
[00:28:19.510]but I'll come around with the mic.
[00:28:23.010]If you have questions about the universe
[00:28:25.130]or anything in it, I'm a cosmologist so that's fair game.
[00:28:29.090]Whatever.
[00:28:36.840]Yes, Kenneth.
[00:28:40.560]Okay.
[00:28:42.110]Sorry, the mic scares me a little bit.
[00:28:45.270]So this is actually the first I've seen
[00:28:46.750]of that like model of the universe.
[00:28:48.490]And those two models were generated independently,
[00:28:50.580]the one from what we've seen, our slices, and the other one
[00:28:53.560]from the heat map of our outer rim or outer view?
[00:28:57.730]So they're both generated in basically the same way.
[00:29:02.300]I used two different visualizations.
[00:29:05.420]They're done by some of the same
[00:29:07.720]people at University of Melbourne.
[00:29:09.910]They're done slightly differently
[00:29:10.840]and they're visualized slightly differently.
[00:29:12.460]But both of those models with the cosmic web,
[00:29:16.000]they start with a universe that's just dark matter
[00:29:19.660]but with the density distribution of spots
[00:29:24.890]determined by the cosmic microwave background,
[00:29:27.530]by the statistics of that, and then they just let
[00:29:30.030]gravity happen and that's how you get the cosmic web.
[00:29:33.330]And then, so once you get the cosmic web,
[00:29:34.960]then you say okay, all the high density places,
[00:29:36.760]that's where the galaxies are because the galaxies
[00:29:38.530]themselves are totally unimportant at this scale.
[00:29:41.970]It's all dark matter and the cosmic web
[00:29:44.510]and then you put the galaxies in
[00:29:45.580]and then you see what the universe looks like.
[00:29:48.280]And if you compare a map based on those simulations
[00:29:51.650]with a map based on stuff we see in the sky,
[00:29:54.390]you really can't tell the difference
[00:29:55.990]unless you're already an astronomer
[00:29:58.130]and you know the patterns and the galaxies,
[00:30:01.120]you won't be able to tell.
[00:30:04.028]That is absolutely fascinating.
[00:30:07.247]I agree, other questions for Katie?
[00:30:13.817]I'm curious what media that you're on
[00:30:16.850]and then let's say in a typical week,
[00:30:18.830]how much time do you spend preparing that media?
[00:30:22.150]What media am I on?
[00:30:23.010]So,
[00:30:26.600]well, so I'm on Twitter and I also have a Facebook page
[00:30:31.040]that I very rarely do anything with.
[00:30:35.360]And then every once in awhile, I'm on a podcast
[00:30:39.320]or a radio show or something like that.
[00:30:41.030]So, maybe twice a month I do
[00:30:43.450]something like radio or podcasts.
[00:30:46.870]It depends on if something exciting has just happened.
[00:30:51.894]Well like, when Stephen Hawking passed away
[00:30:54.280]I was on three radio shows and a TV one.
[00:30:56.800]So that kind of thing changes the statistics.
[00:31:03.630]So there's those things and then
[00:31:04.700]I also write for Cosmos Magazine
[00:31:06.890]and it's every like three months, I think,
[00:31:08.480]I write an article for them.
[00:31:10.020]And then every once in awhile I'll write something
[00:31:11.570]for someone else like Scientific American.
[00:31:15.090]And how much time,
[00:31:18.274]I have no idea.
[00:31:19.360]So the podcasts and radio and stuff tends to be like
[00:31:23.030]nights and weekends as does the writing for Cosmos.
[00:31:28.380]And then there's like public talks and stuff
[00:31:30.550]and those tend to be also nights and weekends.
[00:31:33.810]Sometimes, like I gave a talk at a
[00:31:36.460]middle school over spring break.
[00:31:38.580]So it's kind of science day job,
[00:31:41.956]science communication nights and weekends job sometimes.
[00:31:46.990]But I have no idea how the actual time balances out
[00:31:52.440]because there's overlap in terms of,
[00:31:55.620]like I get to choose what I write about for Cosmos Magazine.
[00:32:01.200]And I often choose topics that are related
[00:32:04.100]to the research project I'm working on,
[00:32:05.760]so it kind of connects my reading for my research projects
[00:32:10.050]with something I'm talking about with the public.
[00:32:11.960]And sometimes I get ideas for research projects
[00:32:14.140]from writing things for the general public.
[00:32:16.660]There's a paper I'm working on now
[00:32:17.750]that comes out of something like that.
[00:32:21.640]So yeah, it's all mixed in together
[00:32:24.420]and it's very hard to disentangle at this point.
[00:32:27.850]I'll follow up on that real quick.
[00:32:29.900]Because in fact, you just touched on this at the very end.
[00:32:32.270]I think a lot of times active researching scientists
[00:32:36.990]tend to think of science communication
[00:32:38.540]or outreach as like philanthropy,
[00:32:40.980]like something that they do for other people.
[00:32:43.290]And it's certainly that, I mean,
[00:32:44.470]people benefit from it for sure.
[00:32:46.360]But I think they see it as often very separate
[00:32:49.590]from their research and in addition to,
[00:32:52.000]but you touched on this at the very end.
[00:32:53.750]Are there other ways that you would say your work
[00:32:56.260]in engaging the public in science
[00:32:58.990]has informed and helped your actual research work?
[00:33:02.650]Yeah, so sometimes it's just about ideas
[00:33:07.823]and sort of getting a better overall view.
[00:33:10.730]So because the work I do is in cosmology
[00:33:14.450]and sort of on the border between particle physics
[00:33:17.250]and astrophysics and there's just so much going on
[00:33:20.822]that I kind of have to know about everything
[00:33:24.122]that's happening in cosmology,
[00:33:26.640]which means I need to read extremely widely.
[00:33:28.960]And sometimes writing stuff or talking to the public
[00:33:33.500]helps me get a better sort of broad understanding
[00:33:37.620]of what's going on and I'm better informed.
[00:33:39.830]So that's a perk.
[00:33:41.581]There's also like the sort of psychological aspect which is,
[00:33:47.222]I don't know how many people are active in academia,
[00:33:51.850]but when you're working on like a research project
[00:33:54.940]or a Ph.D. thesis or something like that,
[00:33:57.580]it can get really lonely and like people
[00:34:00.834]are not being like, great job today,
[00:34:04.830]it was awesome that you wrote down that equation.
[00:34:06.650]Like, that doesn't happen.
[00:34:09.760]And so doing stuff like science communication
[00:34:12.240]can be really nice 'cause sometimes when you give a talk,
[00:34:15.970]people will be like, great talk!
[00:34:17.400]And people will get excited about stuff
[00:34:20.072]and you get to feel like you know some things
[00:34:22.860]'cause you talked about something
[00:34:24.260]that the people you're talking to didn't know
[00:34:26.890]and so you're like oh, I learned some stuff in my studies.
[00:34:29.320]And that's a helpful feeling to have
[00:34:31.650]that you don't always get in your academic life.
[00:34:35.336]So
[00:34:38.283]it's also sometimes like a much needed sort of pep talk
[00:34:42.100]kind of thing to do these sorts of events and things.
[00:34:45.990]Great talk, Katie!
[00:34:47.120]Thank you, thank you.
[00:34:49.720]Okay, next question.
[00:34:54.267]Hi, sorry my voice is awful right now,
[00:34:56.060]I'm dealing with a bad cold.
[00:34:57.870]But, so I'm really sorry to drag politics into this.
[00:35:02.360]The issue is my field that I studied
[00:35:04.730]and have a Bachelor's in is environmental sciences.
[00:35:08.970]And right now due to our, for lack of better words,
[00:35:12.420]political climate, it's extremely hostile
[00:35:16.741]towards anyone in any remote part of my field.
[00:35:21.480]And I admit that I kind of ran away
[00:35:23.890]and I'm off doing art right now because I couldn't take it.
[00:35:27.870]But do you have any suggestions
[00:35:29.930]for getting a civil discourse going on
[00:35:35.950]in regards to anything related to
[00:35:38.480]a controversial type of topic?
[00:35:41.990]I think that's really hard.
[00:35:44.600]That's something that I haven't had to deal with directly
[00:35:48.740]all that much because this stuff isn't that controversial.
[00:35:53.180]I mean, sometimes there's a controversy in like,
[00:35:57.550]should we spend money on sending probes to Mars
[00:35:59.730]when there are people starving on Earth?
[00:36:01.230]And that's a discussion that should be had and can be had,
[00:36:05.405]but my work is not particularly
[00:36:08.790]politically charged for the most part.
[00:36:12.700]There are lots of different strategies that people use.
[00:36:16.040]One of the things that's talked about a lot is if you want
[00:36:20.550]to reach people who might be sort of on the other side
[00:36:24.250]of some kind of political issue,
[00:36:25.920]then finding shared values and building trust
[00:36:28.780]are kind of the most important things.
[00:36:30.540]So
[00:36:33.060]with environmental science,
[00:36:36.260]some people have had a lot of luck with talking about
[00:36:41.580]aspects of purity
[00:36:45.583]of the environment
[00:36:46.927]and things like you can get into religious discussions
[00:36:50.780]about how we're stewards of our world and stuff like that.
[00:36:56.120]So people have used ways to connect
[00:36:59.048]with shared values in that way.
[00:37:02.130]And I think that, for me I think that
[00:37:04.560]one of the things that I've noticed a lot is,
[00:37:08.120]so I was actually going to mention some of this in the talk,
[00:37:14.720]there are all these surveys about
[00:37:16.380]how people feel about scientists and science.
[00:37:19.700]And the surveys tend to say that people trust scientists.
[00:37:24.340]Scientists are some of the most trusted people
[00:37:26.570]in civic life, more than politicians and
[00:37:32.635]sometimes more than doctors.
[00:37:34.160]Like, scientists are somewhere up with doctors
[00:37:36.230]in terms of people trust scientists.
[00:37:39.350]But people also see scientists as kind of inhuman.
[00:37:42.790]And so you see these surveys and people think
[00:37:46.530]scientists are trustworthy in the sense of like,
[00:37:50.210]they're going to get the science part right
[00:37:51.720]but they might steamroll over people's values
[00:37:54.600]and needs and feelings at the same time
[00:37:56.950]because they're amoral and robot-like
[00:37:59.620]and all they care about is advancing their scientific agenda
[00:38:03.130]and they don't care about people.
[00:38:04.110]Like, this is a kind of stereotype that comes up.
[00:38:07.450]And it comes up partially because
[00:38:09.640]that's a very common media trope
[00:38:11.947]and partly because there have been
[00:38:14.950]a lot of occasions in the past where in the
[00:38:20.810]process of advancing science, people have steamrolled
[00:38:23.840]over other people's lives and values and so on.
[00:38:28.530]And so,
[00:38:32.835]I think that the more people get to know scientists
[00:38:37.060]as humans and the more that scientists can portray
[00:38:40.020]themselves as humans who just want to learn things
[00:38:42.840]and are trying to just learn things,
[00:38:45.900]that will help a lot, I think.
[00:38:47.840]'Cause a lot of people, like I see all the time, people
[00:38:52.580]accusing climate scientists of
[00:38:55.190]just being in it for the money.
[00:38:57.002]Yeah, there is no money! And there's no money.
[00:38:59.642]Right.
[00:39:00.475]Especially in the United States.
[00:39:02.730]Right now, I don't have a job in
[00:39:04.870]my field because there is no money.
[00:39:07.010]Right, right.
[00:39:07.843]And I think that because there's so much evidence
[00:39:11.860]that there is no money, the only way that people can
[00:39:14.976]believe that scientists are in it for the money
[00:39:17.790]is to believe that there's some kind of big conspiracy
[00:39:19.690]and that scientists are inherently evil.
[00:39:22.170]And so, I think that finding ways to connect with people
[00:39:27.680]in the sense of like, showing yourself as a human
[00:39:31.230]who is not evil and talking about what you care about
[00:39:34.477]and what makes you passionate
[00:39:39.814]and what's exciting
[00:39:42.240]and I think those kinds of things help a lot.
[00:39:43.640]So there are a lot of efforts out there to
[00:39:47.620]more accurately portray what scientists are like.
[00:39:52.025]Science storytelling, things like The Story Collider,
[00:39:54.100]and then there's efforts like things about what
[00:39:58.090]scientists look like and like Tumblr and Instagram
[00:40:01.500]and all of these kinds of things that people
[00:40:03.070]get involved in to try to humanize science.
[00:40:05.940]So I think those things help a lot
[00:40:08.280]'cause it's hard to believe that somebody
[00:40:10.340]is part of a global conspiracy and evil
[00:40:12.550]if you get to know them as a person.
[00:40:15.581]So I think that---
[00:40:16.500]So the Science Slam itself
[00:40:17.809]is one of those efforts as well.
[00:40:19.286]What?
[00:40:20.119]The Science Slam itself
[00:40:20.952]is one of those efforts as well.
[00:40:22.093]Sure, yeah To sort of show the
[00:40:23.171]human side of scientists through storytelling.
[00:40:25.940]I will also say that that's part of what I think
[00:40:27.840]makes Katie's presence on Twitter so effective also.
[00:40:30.810]Because not only, you're posting
[00:40:32.780]all this really exciting, amazing science.
[00:40:35.190]But on the other hand, then like on Sunday, I was like,
[00:40:37.720]Katie's watching Jesus Christ Superstar Live too!
[00:40:40.440](audience laughing)
[00:40:42.470]Yeah, and yesterday I posted about how my face fell off
[00:40:45.130]when I went outside 'cause it was so cold, yeah.
[00:40:47.220]Scientists have weather too.
[00:40:49.270]Sorry?
[00:40:50.103]I'm here because of your tweet
[00:40:51.514]that you were coming yesterday.
[00:40:52.592]Oh, awesome.
[00:40:53.425]Yeah, I completely spaced this
[00:40:55.267]because work has been crazy,
[00:40:56.541]but then it's like, oh, Science Slam!
[00:40:58.666]I totally forgot about that, I need to go.
[00:41:00.275]Well, thank you for coming.
[00:41:01.667]But yeah, I think that's a big part of why I'm on Twitter
[00:41:05.939]and a big part of why I don't just talk about science.
[00:41:09.100]And I know that, like I talk about politics on Twitter
[00:41:12.070]and I'm sure that I alienate a lot of people with that,
[00:41:14.000]but I think also talking about politics
[00:41:16.090]shows that I am a person who cares about things,
[00:41:17.980]which is, again, not part of the stereotype
[00:41:21.517]of cold, feelingless scientists.
[00:41:24.816]So sometimes, like when I try to explain my Twitter presence
[00:41:30.200]to colleagues and I say well, you know, I talk about space
[00:41:33.130]but I also talk about a cat I met or something.
[00:41:35.790]I think a lot of times they're like,
[00:41:38.660]well why aren't you just talking about physics?
[00:41:40.090]Like, well, because the thing I'm doing
[00:41:41.710]is not just, here's science facts.
[00:41:44.986]It's like, here's science facts
[00:41:46.900]and also I'm a person who does things.
[00:41:49.300]And so it can be weird because sometimes
[00:41:51.680]it can feel like oversharing and it can feel like
[00:41:54.175]why should anybody care about this?
[00:41:56.574]But it's because people care about people.
[00:41:58.831]They care about little moons of Saturn
[00:42:00.790]but they also care about people.
[00:42:02.190]So that's an important thing to do.
[00:42:05.670]Fantastic.
[00:42:08.970]So since you bring up controversy,
[00:42:11.040]I guess there's a different sense that controversy
[00:42:13.200]could be used in regard to, I guess, within a field
[00:42:15.790]it can be an area of key debate of,
[00:42:17.840]well what's going to be discussed in the future?
[00:42:19.718]What's currently unknown?
[00:42:22.460]And so in your field I guess, what are the
[00:42:27.970]key milestones that you're looking forward to figuring out
[00:42:31.840]in the next few years or what are astrophysicists
[00:42:34.830]in 10 years going to be really focusing on?
[00:42:38.250]So one of the big things right now is this picture.
[00:42:43.309]Like, trying to figure out what the heck dark matter
[00:42:46.347]and dark energy are, 'cause we don't know.
[00:42:49.597]So I think we're getting closer with dark matter.
[00:42:52.600]I think we have a lot of evidence
[00:42:54.790]and we have a lot of information about dark matter.
[00:42:56.700]Dark energy is a much harder problem
[00:43:00.930]in terms of figuring out what exactly it is.
[00:43:04.840]So in my field, understanding dark matter
[00:43:07.320]is one of the biggest things right now.
[00:43:11.190]There are a bunch of controversies
[00:43:12.390]also in terms of like, the very early universe.
[00:43:15.400]So, what happened before that fireball state?
[00:43:18.840]So the fireball extended 'til about 380,000 years after
[00:43:23.206]the moment of the Big Bang, creation, whatever you call it.
[00:43:28.290]There was a first moment.
[00:43:29.710]For 380,000 years, the universe was like a giant fireball.
[00:43:35.260]In cosmology, we talk about that whole period
[00:43:37.530]as the Hot Big Bang, as the Big Bang theory,
[00:43:40.040]as that whole period is the Big Bang.
[00:43:42.240]But whatever happened at the
[00:43:43.900]very first moment, we don't know.
[00:43:45.580]And that's a big topic that people
[00:43:47.690]are trying to figure out right now.
[00:43:50.040]And then the end of the universe is another one.
[00:43:52.680]So I'm actually working on a book right now
[00:43:54.925]about the end of the universe.
[00:43:56.870]It's going to come out in 2020, published by Scriber.
[00:43:59.890]It's called The End of Everything.
[00:44:02.387]And in that book, I talk about what the
[00:44:05.130]current understanding and sort of questions are
[00:44:08.557]about what's going to happen in the very distant future
[00:44:12.490]and I go through a few possibilities
[00:44:13.810]and what the evidence is for each of them.
[00:44:15.730]And because that's an area of active research
[00:44:17.820]where we're starting to sort of solidify
[00:44:20.920]around a couple of possibilities
[00:44:22.370]and what those would look like
[00:44:23.570]and we're getting new evidence all the time
[00:44:27.580]for which way that might go.
[00:44:29.834]So that's another big topic.
[00:44:32.510]But I think kind of filling in this pie chart
[00:44:35.900]is a big part of trying to understand the universe.
[00:44:41.292]The other thing is also, in theoretical physics,
[00:44:45.267]figuring out how quantum mechanics and gravity
[00:44:47.980]work together is a really key thing
[00:44:50.100]and what the next theory is beyond the
[00:44:53.760]Standard Model of particle physics.
[00:44:55.520]'Cause right now, we're stuck on the Standard Model
[00:44:57.070]of particle physics which only explains that little slice
[00:45:00.200]and doesn't explain the other bits at all.
[00:45:02.660]And so if we can figure out what comes next after that,
[00:45:05.800]then we'll have a hopefully better
[00:45:07.460]understanding of the whole picture.
[00:45:09.460]Or maybe vice versa,
[00:45:10.330]I'm not sure exactly how that's going to go.
[00:45:12.240]So are there technological obstacles
[00:45:14.640]to addressing those questions or?
[00:45:17.169]Sometimes, so in the sense that, like,
[00:45:22.040]with dark matter we're building new
[00:45:25.160]and better detectors all the time.
[00:45:27.340]For dark energy, we're building new
[00:45:28.720]and better telescopes all the time.
[00:45:31.595]There's a galaxy survey called LSST
[00:45:34.710]that's coming out in a couple of years
[00:45:35.990]that's going to help us understand dark energy better.
[00:45:39.320]So there's stuff like that where we're just building
[00:45:41.420]better and more sensitive instruments.
[00:45:43.850]On the particle physics side, there's talk of building
[00:45:46.710]another collider after the Large Hadron Collider,
[00:45:49.310]something that's bigger, larger.
[00:45:52.470]So that will help, presumably.
[00:45:55.417]But I think for a lot of these questions,
[00:45:57.750]it's not just like, we don't know
[00:46:00.070]what the machine looks like that we need to build.
[00:46:02.423]Like, especially in cosmology.
[00:46:05.250]We discover things in studies of distant galaxies
[00:46:09.330]and things like that that we can't
[00:46:12.267]study on earth with machines.
[00:46:14.310]So it's about getting more and better data
[00:46:16.510]and then also developing theory.
[00:46:19.110]Like on the theory side,
[00:46:20.060]there's a whole lot of work to do too.
[00:46:22.132]Some really interesting stuff going on in theoretical
[00:46:24.450]physics that I absolutely do not have time to explain
[00:46:27.800]that has to do with a better understanding
[00:46:31.560]of how fundamental space and time really are
[00:46:35.266]in the final theory, which we're trying to develop.
[00:46:39.120]Really interesting stuff, but that's in terms of like,
[00:46:42.330]we need to build the mathematical machinery
[00:46:44.012]as much as anything else.
[00:46:48.910]And I assume that The End of Everything
[00:46:50.360]will be an illustrated children's book?
[00:46:52.350]Yes.
[00:46:53.358](audience laughing)
[00:46:54.270]No.
[00:46:56.969]It will be aimed at the general public who is not
[00:47:00.058]terribly terribly frightened by the end of the universe.
[00:47:03.700]So yeah.
[00:47:04.550]Well, truth in advertising.
[00:47:05.630]I think if you buy a book called The End of Everything,
[00:47:07.597]you're probably prepared to understand.
[00:47:09.431]Yeah, you should be ready, yeah.
[00:47:10.730]Okay, I think we have time for one more question
[00:47:12.220]and I saw a hand up over here.
[00:47:16.280]Thanks so much for coming
[00:47:17.880]and thanks for your awesome Twitter feed.
[00:47:20.160]I'm a very pro-science non-scientist, if you will.
[00:47:23.620]And I appreciate it as a layperson.
[00:47:25.290]Oh, Cool. And people like you
[00:47:26.860]who will take time out of your life to share your knowledge.
[00:47:30.640]Apart from the awesome people like scientists
[00:47:33.000]who are able to do that directly and share their knowledge
[00:47:35.700]as a science communicator that way, do you feel like there's
[00:47:38.110]a role for non-scientists in science communication
[00:47:41.520]and public communication with science?
[00:47:43.551]Oh, sure. I know there's a lot of
[00:47:44.740]maybe ill will towards like writers and journalists
[00:47:46.950]who don't maybe quite understand the scientists as much
[00:47:49.630]or the science as much and maybe misrepresent things
[00:47:52.570]or overblow particular findings.
[00:47:55.430]I know that's a thing.
[00:47:57.040]What would you say as a scientist yourself
[00:47:59.060]in terms of that role for the non-scientists?
[00:48:01.505]So I think that there's a ton
[00:48:04.260]that you can do without scientific training.
[00:48:06.663]For one thing, you can do actual
[00:48:08.740]science as a citizen scientist.
[00:48:10.280]So there are lots and lots of projects out there
[00:48:13.120]where you can be actively involved in scientific research
[00:48:17.297]without any background or training
[00:48:19.300]by taking part in data analysis
[00:48:22.010]or data collection or various things like that.
[00:48:27.340]You'll sign up on a website,
[00:48:28.330]they'll tell you what to do, you'll do the thing,
[00:48:30.260]and you might discover something really cool.
[00:48:32.621]And so there's definitely ways to get
[00:48:34.540]involved in the actual science part.
[00:48:36.840]In terms of like,
[00:48:38.090]supporting science or supporting science communication,
[00:48:48.459]like political activism for more support
[00:48:51.470]for science and science education is really important.
[00:48:54.800]Support for education in general and just kind of
[00:48:58.714]sharing your knowledge and passion with other people.
[00:49:03.220]One of the things that I think drives
[00:49:09.650]some of the bad science reporting out there
[00:49:12.100]is that people need clicks and everything's driven
[00:49:16.546]by clicks and advertising and stuff like that.
[00:49:18.720]So if you can support independent journalism
[00:49:21.630]that does good science reporting,
[00:49:23.520]that's always really helpful.
[00:49:26.090]Support organizations that do good science reporting
[00:49:29.097]and that do just good reporting in general, honestly.
[00:49:33.486]That's super helpful.
[00:49:35.130]So there are a couple, some of the places that do
[00:49:39.180]some of the best science reporting are actually like,
[00:49:41.718]charitable foundations 'cause they don't have to get clicks.
[00:49:46.070]But sharing and supporting good science
[00:49:49.850]reporting is always really helpful.
[00:49:51.830]And then just, I don't know, be nice to scientists.
[00:49:55.450]That's always good.
[00:49:57.010]I'm not really sure, but yeah,
[00:49:59.370]there are lots of ways to get involved.

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Science Slam: Keynote Katie Mack

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