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Speaker 1: When we look back at humanity's path to understanding the universe,

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Speaker 1: it's never a straight line. We sometimes tell the story

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Speaker 1: that way Galileo, Newton, Einstein, et cetera. But the truth

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Speaker 1: is that it's a zig zaga set of paths that

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Speaker 1: branch and fade or intersect. It's an unguided exploration through

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Speaker 1: all the possible ways of understanding this beautiful universe. And

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Speaker 1: there's a lesson in that not just about how to

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Speaker 1: learn more about the universe, but how each and every

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Speaker 1: one of us should look at their own.

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Speaker 2: Path through life.

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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and a professor

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Speaker 1: at UC Irvine. Welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jorge

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Speaker 1: Explain the Universe in which we do exactly that, try

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Speaker 1: to understand and explain the entire universe to you. We

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Speaker 1: think that everything out there deserves understanding, and everyone out

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Speaker 1: there deserves to understand the nature of the universe, both

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Speaker 1: all of the beautiful and glorious mysteries that we have

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Speaker 1: unraveled and the mysteries that remain, the questions that stand unanswered.

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Speaker 1: We want to take you to the forefront of knowledge

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Speaker 1: and help you understand what we do and do not know.

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Speaker 1: And something that we talk about a lot on the

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Speaker 1: podcast is that science is of the people, by the people,

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Speaker 1: and for the people. It's not some huge, impersonal institution

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Speaker 1: pumping out knowledge. It's just a bunch of people being

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Speaker 1: curious about the world and dedicating their lives to try

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Speaker 1: to scratch that itch to figuring it out. So when

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Speaker 1: you re a study about how spiders fight wasps or

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Speaker 1: how crystals forming clouds on venus, you should think about

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Speaker 1: the person behind that study, the person who spent years

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Speaker 1: squatting in damp forests watching spiders or building a sensor

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Speaker 1: that would fly on a mission of venus. There's a

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Speaker 1: life there, a human who decided to do that instead

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Speaker 1: of becoming a novelist or a hedge fund zillionaire. In science,

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Speaker 1: as we know, it emerges out of all that the

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Speaker 1: same way that the tuing and froing of the little

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Speaker 1: particles somehow weaves itself together to emerge as a rock

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Speaker 1: or a baseball. When you zoom out, all of those

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Speaker 1: people working in their little niches weave themselves together to

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Speaker 1: move science forward. But it's never a straight line. It's

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Speaker 1: always a zigzag. As science lurches from one idea to another.

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Speaker 1: And it's also a zigzag for the individuals involved, the

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Speaker 1: people who are succeeding or struggling, winning awards or nearly

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Speaker 1: dropping out. The path of an individual scientist, how they

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Speaker 1: find their niche and figure out a way to contribute.

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Speaker 1: It requires luck and creativity, the same way research does.

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Speaker 1: And today on the podcast, I want to dive into

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Speaker 1: a fascinating story that weaves those two threads together. My

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Speaker 1: friend and colleague, Professor Iau Mowa Shields, who studies the

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Speaker 1: atmosphere of exoplanets, has written a gorgeous book about her

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Speaker 1: science and her life and her very unusual path to

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Speaker 1: be an astronomy professor. And so today on the podcast,

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Speaker 1: we'll be talking about life on other planets, the story

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Speaker 1: of Iau Moa Shields. All right, it's my great pleasure

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Speaker 1: to introduce the podcast Professor ol Mowa Shields, my friend

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Speaker 1: and colleague here at UC Irvine. A. Professor Shields has

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Speaker 1: her PhD from the University of Washington and then she

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Speaker 1: was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Harvard. She's been a

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Speaker 1: Covely Fellow and a Ted Fellow, and she now holds

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Speaker 1: the Claire Booth loose assistant professorship at UC Irvine that

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Speaker 1: she was recently promoted to tenure. Well, welcome to the podcast,

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Speaker 1: and thank you very much for joining us.

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Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.

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Speaker 1: I've been very much looking forward to talking to you

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Speaker 1: about this wonderful book you wrote, Life on Other Planets.

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Speaker 1: I love how weaveseing your research story and your personal story,

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Speaker 1: and it tells us so much about life on other

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Speaker 1: planets and life on this planet. And so I was

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Speaker 1: hoping to talk to you first about your science and

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Speaker 1: then getting in a little bit more into your personal story.

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Speaker 2: I love that.

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Speaker 1: So the question that seems to motivate your science is basically,

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Speaker 1: where can we live or where can life exist on

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Speaker 1: planets in our universe? Is that the thing that drives you?

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Speaker 2: It is that old question are we alone? In the universe?

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Speaker 2: I have filtered it a little bit more through my

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Speaker 2: own lens, you know, like, which is how do we

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Speaker 2: choose planets to target and prioritize in that quest to

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Speaker 2: answer the question are we alone? And the thing the

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Speaker 2: way that I do it, the way that my team

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Speaker 2: does it is once the planet is found by the observers,

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Speaker 2: and of course finding that planet is super hard. That's

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Speaker 2: a euphemism really, I mean, it's as I mentioned in

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Speaker 2: the Ted talk, it's like trying to, you know, figure

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Speaker 2: out what color a fruit fly is on a headlight

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Speaker 2: that's you know, trillions of miles away.

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Speaker 1: That sounds easy when I'm talking about it.

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Speaker 2: Do it in a day. So like that that, I

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Speaker 2: don't mean to underestimate it all the amount of work

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Speaker 2: that observers have to take. However, once that work is

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Speaker 2: done and they found a planet that exists in a

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Speaker 2: particular region of space around its star that we call

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Speaker 2: the habitable zone, that's only the first step. Because just

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Speaker 2: because a planet is in the habitable zone doesn't mean

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Speaker 2: that it's habitable, And just because it's habitable doesn't mean

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Speaker 2: it's inhabited. Like let's be clear about that because often

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Speaker 2: that that gets confused in the media. But like you know,

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Speaker 2: we find a planet that's in the habitable zone, that

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Speaker 2: doesn't mean that we know anything about what kind of

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Speaker 2: atmosphere it has, or what kind of surface it has,

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Speaker 2: or what kind of environment that it really has that

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Speaker 2: might allow liquid water to stay liquid on the surface.

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Speaker 2: And that really is our overwhelming criterion for habitability. When

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Speaker 2: we say, you know, let's look for other habitable planets.

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Speaker 2: It's let's look for planets that might be warm enough

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Speaker 2: to have liquid water, because we know on our planet,

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Speaker 2: everywhere there's water, there's life, and every single life form

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Speaker 2: from the tiniest microbe to the largest elephant, requires liquid

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Speaker 2: water to survive.

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Speaker 1: So you're starting from the planets that other folks have found,

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Speaker 1: all this list of five thousand or so exoplants we've

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Speaker 1: discovered so far, and you're trying to figure out which

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Speaker 1: ones to focus in on to understand whether there's water

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Speaker 1: on them.

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Speaker 2: Yes, because from that subset of five thousand plus planets

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Speaker 2: that we've found, maybe a few dozen of them to

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Speaker 2: maybe tens of them are in the habitable zone. And

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Speaker 2: we're going to keep finding more and more of these

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Speaker 2: potentially habitable planets because we now have another satellite, another

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Speaker 2: observatory called TESTS, the Transiting Survey Exoplanet Survey satellite, and

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Speaker 2: it's already found additional planets. It's going to be finding more.

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Speaker 2: So we find this, we get a planet that's been

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Speaker 2: discovered and we don't know anything about for the Earth

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Speaker 2: size planets, what's actually in their atmospheres. So what my

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Speaker 2: team can do is we can use climate models that

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Speaker 2: were historically used to predict climate and weather on the

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Speaker 2: Earth to predict climate and weather on exoplanets, and we

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Speaker 2: can say, Okay, we don't know anything about this planet's

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Speaker 2: atmosphere or surface. What kind of atmosphere or surface would

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Speaker 2: it require to have above freezing surface temperatures for liquid water?

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Speaker 2: If we throw an Earth atmosphere, Earth like atmosphere at

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Speaker 2: this planet and run our simulations, is it habitable? Is

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Speaker 2: it warm enough for liquid water? And if it is,

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Speaker 2: that's a result. If it's not, it's what kind of

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Speaker 2: atmosphere would it need a little more carbon dioxide? Because

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Speaker 2: you know, while on our planet we have way too

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Speaker 2: much carbon dioxide, other planets might actually benefit from it

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Speaker 2: if they're on the colder side. And I have to

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Speaker 2: make this very clear when I talk to my students,

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Speaker 2: because carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. By definition, a

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Speaker 2: greenhouse gas is a gas that both absorbs and emits

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Speaker 2: infrared radiation. And on our planet, we we're no longer

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Speaker 2: in energy balance because we have now added to our

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Speaker 2: current complement of CO two and that's us doing that,

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Speaker 2: and so we have more than we need. We don't

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Speaker 2: need any more. We're hurting ourselves. For other planets, CO

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Speaker 2: two can be a benefit if they are way out.

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Speaker 2: You know, the outer edges of the habitable zone are

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Speaker 2: even farther outside because greenhouse gas is warm things up.

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Speaker 2: So we can figure out what kind of atmosphere a

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Speaker 2: planet would need and what kind of surface, because surfaces

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Speaker 2: also have their own different reflective properties, and they can

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Speaker 2: absorb different kinds of light from stars. And we do

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Speaker 2: this for planets that have been discovered. We can say, Okay,

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Speaker 2: how habitable is this planet really? Over it? And the

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Speaker 2: planets that are the most habitable, over the widest range

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Speaker 2: of different atmospheres and surface types and shapes of their

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Speaker 2: orbit and axial tilts, those are the planets that we'd

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Speaker 2: want observers to put at the top of their list

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Speaker 2: to look at with these next generation telescopes to try

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Speaker 2: to find evidence of life.

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Speaker 1: So you mentioned that twice. Now, the putting things at

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Speaker 1: the top of their list or focusing on things, why

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Speaker 1: do we need to do that? I mean, we all

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Speaker 1: have only a few thousand of these planets. Why don't

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Speaker 1: we just look at all of them to prioritize.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I wish we could, and I'd love it

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Speaker 2: if we could. Unfortunately, we don't have infinite telescope time.

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Speaker 2: We can't follow up on every single potentially habitable planet

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Speaker 2: to look for signs of life in their atmospheres, in

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Speaker 2: its atmosphere, and so we do need to do this prioritization,

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Speaker 2: especially given that we're going to continue to find more

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Speaker 2: and more.

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Speaker 1: So what kind of observations are we talking about the

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Speaker 1: original observations that discover the exoplanet. Is there are not

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Speaker 1: the same kind as the ones that can tell us

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Speaker 1: about the atmosphere.

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Speaker 2: That's right, yes, So finding a planet in space we

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Speaker 2: have different choices. We have maybe five techniques, and the

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Speaker 2: techniques that all that are finding most of the planets

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Speaker 2: these days are something called radial velocity and the transit technique.

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Speaker 2: Most of the planets we've found have been used using

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Speaker 2: the transit technique, and that is we look at light

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Speaker 2: that's coming from a star and if there's a planet

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Speaker 2: around that star that we see transit, you know, go

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Speaker 2: in front of that star. From our viewing angle. We

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Speaker 2: know all planets transit their stars, but we may not

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Speaker 2: see the transit. It depends on if we're lined up

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Speaker 2: in such a way that we can, and when we do,

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Speaker 2: we see the light dip because something a planet is

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Speaker 2: passing in front of it and it's taking a little

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Speaker 2: chunk of light out of that star.

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Speaker 1: It's a mini eclipse, right, that eclipse.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And we can measure that the depth of that eclipse,

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Speaker 2: the depth of that transit, and that tells us information

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Speaker 2: about the planet, like how large the planet is, but

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Speaker 2: it doesn't tell us anything about out what's in that

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Speaker 2: planet's atmosphere. To do that, we need another kind of

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Speaker 2: technique called using a spectroscopy. That technique is employed by

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Speaker 2: James Webspace Telescope, and we'll be employed by other future

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Speaker 2: missions as well, And that is when we can sort

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Speaker 2: of measure. Again, we're measuring light coming from a star,

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Speaker 2: but if the planet is lined up in such a

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Speaker 2: way from our viewing angle, we see that starlight filtered

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Speaker 2: through the planet's atmosphere, and that starlight little chunks of

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Speaker 2: it are taken out by atmospheric molecules that exist on

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Speaker 2: that planet, and we can look at those chunks of

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Speaker 2: light taken out and match those to where we know

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Speaker 2: certain atmospheric gases absorb. We know that from the laboratory

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Speaker 2: measurements measurements of our own sun, and that can tell

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Speaker 2: us what's in the atmospheres of the planets that are

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Speaker 2: transiting these stars.

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Speaker 1: So each of our telescopes is sort of good. It's

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Speaker 1: something like we have ones that are good at finding

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Speaker 1: these exoplanets, and then another one you would use to

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Speaker 1: follow up to measure the atmospheric signals of that planet.

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Speaker 1: You can't do both with the same telescope.

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Speaker 2: Usually not. And this, you know, this technique of transit

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Speaker 2: transmission spectroscopy is this fancy word for that kind of

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Speaker 2: a technique. When we're looking for atmospheric fingerprints of life,

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Speaker 2: those fingerprints we call bio signatures or biomarkers. Sometimes those

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Speaker 2: terms are used interchangeably, but it's basically biologically generated global

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Speaker 2: impacts to a planet's atmosphere or surface. That doesn't have

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Speaker 2: to be the atmosphere. People are really big on the

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Speaker 2: atmosphere because they think that's probably all that we're going

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Speaker 2: to be able to see, if that at all for

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Speaker 2: Earth planets. But a lot of my works, you know,

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Speaker 2: from the book, has been about saying the surface matters.

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Speaker 2: You know you can, and you can't assume that it doesn't.

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Speaker 2: And we've been able to prove with our simulations that

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Speaker 2: in fact it matters a lot.

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Speaker 1: So are we looking for habitable planets planets that might

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Speaker 1: have water and service gravity that's reasonable, et cetera. Or

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Speaker 1: are we looking for biosignatures of inhabited planets or both.

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Speaker 2: Ultimately, it's the biosignatures that would allow us to answer

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Speaker 2: that question how we're going to answer are we alone?

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Speaker 2: While it's finding something, measuring something that life could excrete

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Speaker 2: into the atmosphere or onto the surface that tells us

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Speaker 2: only life can do that, and coming up with that

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Speaker 2: recipe of gases that only life together could produce is

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Speaker 2: its own sub field of astronomy and astrobiology. That's not

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Speaker 2: what I do, but it is crucial to that enterprise.

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Speaker 2: Is Okay, what are we going to look for? Not

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Speaker 2: just what are we going to look at?

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Speaker 1: So once we've discovered this planet, then your job is

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Speaker 1: essentially figure out whether it's likely to have the conditions

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Speaker 1: for life by simulating possible scenarios and seeing whether they

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Speaker 1: fit the data that we know about the planet.

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Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly what I do. Alongside another part of

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Speaker 2: our world, which is not necessarily having a planet that

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Speaker 2: has been discovered to work with. So one of the

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Speaker 2: fun things I enjoy doing is creating fictional planets that

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Speaker 2: I don't know that might exist, but that could, you know,

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Speaker 2: like a hypothetical planet. Say we say, let's put a

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Speaker 2: planet around a different type of star than the Sun,

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Speaker 2: which therefore emits a different type of light overall, and

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Speaker 2: see what the planet's climate does. That was really what

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Speaker 2: my dissertation work was all about, is let's put planets

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Speaker 2: around different types of stars and see if their climates

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Speaker 2: would be different. And yes, they would be, and we

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Speaker 2: got to show how and why. And now as a professor,

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Speaker 2: we ask questions like, could there be a planet that

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Speaker 2: exists that has too hot of a day side it's

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Speaker 2: a permanent day side, too hot of a night side

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Speaker 2: that's a permanent night side, and only a habitable surface

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Speaker 2: environment along the dividing line between them, which we call

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Speaker 2: the terminator. Could such a planet exist and would its

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Speaker 2: climate be stable? And in my post dot Ana Lobo

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Speaker 2: showed that that kind of climate can in fact be stable,

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Speaker 2: and it's more likely to exist around a drier planet

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Speaker 2: than a wetter planet. And I love doing that kind

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Speaker 2: of stuff because it allows me to turn knobs and

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Speaker 2: see what factors are really the most critical to governing

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Speaker 2: habitability and to realize that these environments could exist out.

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Speaker 2: Not only could they exist out in the universe, but

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Speaker 2: they could be more conducive to supporting life than the

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Speaker 2: more traditional kinds of environments that we're used to seeing

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Speaker 2: within our own solar system.

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Speaker 1: Can you talk for a little bit about the role

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Speaker 1: of simulations here, because I think listeners are hearing that

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Speaker 1: you start with some parameters of a planet, but then

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Speaker 1: you're doing some sort of calculation to figure out like

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Speaker 1: what's likely to be there. How do we go from

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Speaker 1: here's the structure of a planet to understanding what its

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Speaker 1: climate might look like. I mean, we can't even predict

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Speaker 1: the weather here in southern California. How can we predict

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Speaker 1: the atmosphere of an exit planet.

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Speaker 2: Well, it requires us to make sure that our model work,

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Speaker 2: that they're valid for a given set of circumstances. So

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Speaker 2: we our models always have to be validated for the

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Speaker 2: one planet whose climate we can be fairly certain within

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Speaker 2: a twenty four hour period or you know, to be

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Speaker 2: relatively stable. And of course it's the climate is different

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Speaker 2: than the weather. Let's be clear about that so like, yes,

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Speaker 2: weather is very variable over a span of hours, let

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Speaker 2: alone days, but the overall climate of our planet has

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Speaker 2: been relatively stable over hundreds thousands of years, and we

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Speaker 2: largely we have different reasons for that. Some of the

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Speaker 2: reasons include the kind of axle tilt we have, the

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Speaker 2: fact that we have a certain obliquity that allows our

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Speaker 2: planet not to swing wildly in that regard. We also

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Speaker 2: have a moon. People have thought that, you know that

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Speaker 2: that of course helps us to help the obliquity to

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Speaker 2: be stable. There have been some simulations to show that

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Speaker 2: without a moon we probably wouldn't vary as wildly in

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Speaker 2: obliquity as was once thought. But those aspects and the

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Speaker 2: fact that we have a silicate weathering feedback. We have

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Speaker 2: a carbonate silicate cycle which when there's a lot of precipitation,

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Speaker 2: you know, that washes CO two out of the atmosphere,

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Speaker 2: locks it into rocks and cools temperatures. And then when

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Speaker 2: temperatures get too cool, we got volcanoes that outgas CO

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Speaker 2: two back into the atmosphere and warm temperatures. So we

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Speaker 2: have this built in feedback that allows our climate to

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Speaker 2: be relatively stable over long time scales. So we can

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Speaker 2: predict our climate relatively straightforwardly with these models. You're absolutely

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Speaker 2: right that with these exoplanets, you know, how can we

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Speaker 2: propose to predict their climates with these models? We don't.

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Speaker 2: First of all, we don't know what their atmospheres are like.

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Speaker 2: That's why our work is so important because we can say, okay,

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Speaker 2: so let's run a whole suite of different atmospheres and

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Speaker 2: see what the climates would be. But there is a

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Speaker 2: key thing that we can't prove yet that exoplanets have,

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Speaker 2: and that is this carbonate silicate cycle that's pretty important.

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Speaker 2: Habitable zone, this like region of space around each star.

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Speaker 2: It assumes that we do have a carbonate silicon cycle

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Speaker 2: on these extra planets. And the fact is that's why

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Speaker 2: the habitable zone is a first order approximation and it's

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Speaker 2: self limiting because it assumes circular orbits of planets. We

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Speaker 2: have many, many planets elsewhere around other stars that have

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Speaker 2: very very eccentric orbits and certainly beyond zero, and we

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Speaker 2: have no proof that any kind of silicate weather and

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Speaker 2: feedback is active on these planets to regulate the amount

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Speaker 2: of carbon dioxide and precipitation in our atmosphere. With temperature,

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Speaker 2: but we have to assume that it is for these

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Speaker 2: climate models. So we assume that there is like a

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Speaker 2: we start with an Earth and we can simulate our

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Speaker 2: planet and say, run your model, and do you get

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Speaker 2: an atmosphere a surface temperature pattern similar to what's actually

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Speaker 2: here on Earth and has been measured with satellites. Yes

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Speaker 2: you do. Okay, great, we know the model is valid.

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Speaker 2: Now what are we going to change. Let's change the

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Speaker 2: star and have an actual spectrum of the star that

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Speaker 2: the planet is orbiting. We can put that in and

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Speaker 2: all the different sellar properties and to some degree, and

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Speaker 2: then the planet's properties that we know of like it's radius,

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Speaker 2: maybe it's mass, if we've gotten Doppler measurements as well,

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Speaker 2: and then we are filling in the gaps. And that's

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Speaker 2: why I'm so big on theoretical simulations as well, because

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Speaker 2: without those, the amount of things we would know about

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Speaker 2: exoplanets would be you could count on one hand. Right,

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Speaker 2: we need to be able to fill the gaps between

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Speaker 2: what we do not know and what we need to

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Speaker 2: know to be able to come closer to answering this

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Speaker 2: question about these environments. So yeah, it's important. We can't

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Speaker 2: sort of put a paper out and say this planet

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Speaker 2: has this atmosphere, has this surface, and is habitable. But

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Speaker 2: we can say this planet, if it has this atmosphere,

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Speaker 2: if it has this surface, or if it has this

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Speaker 2: set of atmospheres, here's how habitable it would be. And

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Speaker 2: that allows for the range of possible atmospheric and surface

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Speaker 2: and dynamical environments that might exist around this planet, while

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Speaker 2: also being able to quantify their impact on habitability.

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Speaker 1: And then can you analyze more deeply once you have

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Speaker 1: the spectrum. Now you've looked at the planet, Do you

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Speaker 1: have the spectrum? You have an idea of what's there?

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Speaker 1: Does that allow you to model what's going on over

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Speaker 1: there and have a deeper sense of whether it's habitable

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Speaker 1: or maybe even inhabited.

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Speaker 2: So you mean once we were to get some kind

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Speaker 2: of a transit transmission spectroscopy that measurements, Yeah, yeah, I

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Speaker 2: mean we've been able to do this with James web

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Speaker 2: And this was a surprise as far as I know.

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Speaker 2: Back five ten years ago and people were talking about

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Speaker 2: JAWST and what it would be able to do for earths,

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Speaker 2: those are pretty short sentences. People were like, that's going

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Speaker 2: to be able to do some stuff for the larger

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Speaker 2: like Jupiter sized planets. But people were very skeptical about

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Speaker 2: how much information we'd be able to get out of

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Speaker 2: James Webb when it comes to Earth's and it turns

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Speaker 2: out we're surprising ourselves because not only have we confirmed

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Speaker 2: the discovery of Earth sized planets with James web we've

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Speaker 2: also measured atmospheric constituents of you know, in Earth sized

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Speaker 2: planet's atmospheres. Now I believe that those measurements are some

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Speaker 2: additional measurements that were taken earlier this year. And the

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Speaker 2: point is that we are able to you know, to

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Speaker 2: start to get this kind of information for a smaller

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Speaker 2: region or a smaller regime of planets than I think

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Speaker 2: we thought, and we're doing it already. So if we

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Speaker 2: were to get, you know, a spectrum from an Earth,

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Speaker 2: you know, an Earth around another star and it had

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Speaker 2: these sort of whether it's carbon based molecules like methane,

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Speaker 2: it becomes the question of what is going to tell

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Speaker 2: us exactly that life's there, and that is that's an

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Speaker 2: ongoing quest. You know, It's like you need methane along

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Speaker 2: with oxygen, perhaps maybe ozone two, maybe some other kind

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Speaker 2: of lesser known gases like dimethyl sulfide, things that come

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Speaker 2: from plankton. There are people that are that are thinking

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Speaker 2: about all of these different I said recipe earlier, these

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Speaker 2: different kind of combinations of gases. But if we were

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Speaker 2: if we were to come up come up with this

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Speaker 2: like set of these different gases that would say that,

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Speaker 2: and we could say only life can do that, then yeah,

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Speaker 2: we would have answered this question.

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Speaker 1: I have lots more questions for our guests, but first

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Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Okay, we're back and I'm

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Speaker 1: talking to Professor Aumwa Shields, professor of astronomy at UC Irvine,

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Speaker 1: about her book Life on Other Planets. I love how

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Speaker 1: you describe sort of fleshing out the habitable zone from

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Speaker 1: a first order approximation. Like the simplest calculation is just

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Speaker 1: where is there enough solar radiation to melt water and

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Speaker 1: make sure it's not steam. But as you say that,

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Speaker 1: it's more subtle than that. Right, It depends on so

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Speaker 1: many details. One planet would be habitable if it was

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Speaker 1: closer in. Another planet would be habitable is further out.

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Speaker 1: So the habitable zone has to depend on the planet, right,

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Speaker 1: the size of the planet, certainly, the atmosphere and its surface.

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Speaker 1: So can you, in broad strokes, give us an understanding

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Speaker 1: and what we've learned about habitability of planets, like what

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Speaker 1: conditions are required beyond just like you have to be

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Speaker 1: in some zone around your star.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, when I was a grad student, my advisor, the

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Speaker 2: Key Meadows, had this workshop where she invited everyone who

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Speaker 2: she knew who worked on habitability to Seattle and we

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Speaker 2: all like sort of stayed in about three different rooms

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Speaker 2: at a conference center and hashed out this question of

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Speaker 2: what are all of the different factors that can influence

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Speaker 2: the long term presence surface liquid water on a planet?

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Speaker 2: And we came up with this very intricate web and

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Speaker 2: I still show it in my talks today and it

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Speaker 2: always gets like this sort of gasp from students or

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Speaker 2: like or a or an oh like that, because it

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Speaker 2: is overwhelming. And that's really the point of the showing

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Speaker 2: that slide is that we are meant to be overwhelmed.

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Speaker 2: There are a lot of factors that can influence that.

434
00:24:25,160 --> 00:24:28,320
Speaker 2: You know that that criterion of surface liquid water, yes,

435
00:24:28,680 --> 00:24:31,200
Speaker 2: planetary distance from a star, which is what the habitable

436
00:24:31,280 --> 00:24:34,880
Speaker 2: zone is, you know, is that expression of that's one

437
00:24:35,680 --> 00:24:43,120
Speaker 2: and broader stellar environment that could be stellar activity, and

438
00:24:43,840 --> 00:24:46,120
Speaker 2: you know rotation rate of the star and of course

439
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:50,520
Speaker 2: planetary rotation rate. So there's stellar environment, there's planetary environment,

440
00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:55,560
Speaker 2: there's stellar effects, there's planetary there's you know, the dynamics

441
00:24:55,600 --> 00:24:59,160
Speaker 2: of the planet's environment, whether there are siblings, like whether

442
00:24:59,280 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 2: planets planets can push and pull on each other, and

443
00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:06,720
Speaker 2: just like our own Solar System, planets are often not

444
00:25:06,840 --> 00:25:10,639
Speaker 2: alone in their systems. And so there's the gravitational effects.

445
00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:15,560
Speaker 2: There's how reflective different surfaces are. There's how the age

446
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:21,159
Speaker 2: all of the system itself. This web of different factors

447
00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:23,000
Speaker 2: is something that many of us in the field of

448
00:25:23,000 --> 00:25:27,040
Speaker 2: exoplanet climatology have been slowly chipping away at for the

449
00:25:27,520 --> 00:25:31,080
Speaker 2: last I would say, like, you know, fifteen twenty years

450
00:25:31,119 --> 00:25:33,720
Speaker 2: that we've been people have been doing this, and we

451
00:25:33,800 --> 00:25:37,880
Speaker 2: still don't know what are the most critical factors. I mean,

452
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 2: there are sort of the heavy hitters, like how much

453
00:25:40,680 --> 00:25:43,080
Speaker 2: light you get from your star, because yeah, it's true,

454
00:25:43,080 --> 00:25:45,560
Speaker 2: if you put a planet, no matter how much atmosphere

455
00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:48,560
Speaker 2: it's got, how thick, what's its composition, you put it

456
00:25:48,600 --> 00:25:50,919
Speaker 2: far enough away from a star and it will freeze.

457
00:25:51,600 --> 00:25:55,360
Speaker 2: So like stellar distance, our planetary distance from a star

458
00:25:55,600 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 2: matters and the atmosphere. Of course, the composition of the

459
00:25:59,320 --> 00:26:02,600
Speaker 2: atmosphere is a critical piece as well. But we one

460
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:05,560
Speaker 2: thing that we've seen from this web and from kind

461
00:26:05,600 --> 00:26:08,000
Speaker 2: of looking at different aspects is that it's a lot

462
00:26:08,080 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 2: more complex than orbital distance. It's a lot more complex

463
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:17,800
Speaker 2: even than atmospheric composition. You know, you change one factor

464
00:26:17,840 --> 00:26:21,880
Speaker 2: about a planet and it can change everything about its future.

465
00:26:22,520 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 2: And that that's important for us to know for our

466
00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 2: own planet. And I think it also can drive home

467
00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:31,960
Speaker 2: that reality of how lucky we all are that we're

468
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:35,960
Speaker 2: on a planet that, for whatever reason, all the different

469
00:26:36,840 --> 00:26:41,639
Speaker 2: possible combinations kind of that combination generated something that allowed

470
00:26:41,640 --> 00:26:42,480
Speaker 2: life to start here.

471
00:26:42,840 --> 00:26:46,000
Speaker 1: So as you survey like the parameter space of planets,

472
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:48,639
Speaker 1: does that make you feel like we are unusual or

473
00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:50,720
Speaker 1: do you feel like, oh, there's lots of ways that

474
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:53,800
Speaker 1: a planet could end up with liquid water in the surface,

475
00:26:54,320 --> 00:26:56,560
Speaker 1: or do you feel like, wow, it's an exquisite balance.

476
00:26:56,960 --> 00:26:59,920
Speaker 2: It was the second option you mentioned. It's the one

477
00:27:00,560 --> 00:27:02,399
Speaker 2: there's a lot of ways to do it. I mean,

478
00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:06,240
Speaker 2: we've had books written about how rare some scientists think

479
00:27:06,560 --> 00:27:09,399
Speaker 2: this planet is. There's a book called Rare Earth that

480
00:27:09,560 --> 00:27:11,880
Speaker 2: was written by Peter Ward and Don Brownlee that really

481
00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:14,280
Speaker 2: talk about how it was a super rare thing to

482
00:27:14,400 --> 00:27:16,840
Speaker 2: have happened the way it happened, and it's probably not

483
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:20,159
Speaker 2: going to happen much or have happened much elsewhere. I

484
00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:23,080
Speaker 2: take a different view because you know, when we think about,

485
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:26,119
Speaker 2: for example, seventy percent of all stars in the galaxy

486
00:27:26,200 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 2: are not like the Sun. They are these small, cool

487
00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:32,880
Speaker 2: M stars. And the great thing about that is that

488
00:27:33,480 --> 00:27:36,479
Speaker 2: they're so numerous that we may end up finding that

489
00:27:36,600 --> 00:27:39,000
Speaker 2: next habitable planet around an M. We have got a

490
00:27:39,040 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 2: lot of opportunities to do that, and it's easier to

491
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:45,640
Speaker 2: find planets around these stars. There's a lot of pros,

492
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:48,640
Speaker 2: but one of the cons is that these stars are

493
00:27:48,800 --> 00:27:51,520
Speaker 2: very long lived. None of them have ever died, because

494
00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:54,480
Speaker 2: their lifetimes are longer than the current age of the universe.

495
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:57,359
Speaker 2: They have lifetimes of hundreds of billions and in some

496
00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 2: cases trillions of years. I actually find myself oney ask

497
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:03,800
Speaker 2: you questions about the latest results about James Webb, which

498
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:06,480
Speaker 2: says which will challenge how old the universe really is.

499
00:28:06,520 --> 00:28:08,600
Speaker 2: But I'm going off of like what we have known

500
00:28:09,280 --> 00:28:12,520
Speaker 2: you to date, which is slightly less than fourteen billion years,

501
00:28:12,560 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 2: and so these because these stars are so long lived,

502
00:28:15,119 --> 00:28:18,200
Speaker 2: they can be very active for a really long time.

503
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:20,439
Speaker 2: And I always use that I think I used it

504
00:28:20,440 --> 00:28:22,760
Speaker 2: in the book to that analogy of like the Terrible

505
00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:26,480
Speaker 2: twos phase for stars. This Terrible twos phase can last

506
00:28:26,520 --> 00:28:31,240
Speaker 2: for billions of years, and during that time any planets

507
00:28:31,240 --> 00:28:35,840
Speaker 2: that formed around these stars could be pelted with harmful

508
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:40,200
Speaker 2: X ray UV radiation. And this often comes up in

509
00:28:40,200 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 2: a talk when people ask that, you know, how likely

510
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:44,040
Speaker 2: do you think it is to find life on a

511
00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:47,520
Speaker 2: planet orbiting an m star, given that that life could

512
00:28:47,560 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 2: be subjected to that kind of environment, And I say, well, yeah,

513
00:28:50,760 --> 00:28:53,120
Speaker 2: that could be a problem. Seriously. There's been a lot

514
00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 2: of papers that talk about this. However, we see life

515
00:28:56,600 --> 00:29:00,880
Speaker 2: at the bottom in deep ocean hydrothermal vent vironments on Earth.

516
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:04,920
Speaker 2: Life finds a way. So that is an example of

517
00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:09,280
Speaker 2: how many different ways life can survive. And that's one

518
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:11,200
Speaker 2: of the reasons why I think that we could end

519
00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:13,520
Speaker 2: up finding life within our own Solar system. And we've

520
00:29:13,520 --> 00:29:16,400
Speaker 2: got moons right at Jupiter's moon Europa, where we know

521
00:29:16,440 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 2: there's liquid water. It's underneath an ice crust, but it's there,

522
00:29:19,960 --> 00:29:23,120
Speaker 2: and we're going to go back and actually drill something

523
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 2: through the ice and see if we can find anything

524
00:29:25,720 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 2: swimming around in there. And Saturn's moon Enceladus, and we've

525
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:31,720
Speaker 2: got examples within our own Solar system of places that

526
00:29:31,840 --> 00:29:34,960
Speaker 2: could be habitable and or do fit the criterion for

527
00:29:35,240 --> 00:29:40,440
Speaker 2: hosting liquid water not on their surfaces, so it's subsurface.

528
00:29:40,480 --> 00:29:42,400
Speaker 2: But mincing words.

529
00:29:44,760 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit more about the role of

530
00:29:46,600 --> 00:29:48,400
Speaker 1: the surface, because I think that's something a lot of

531
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:50,600
Speaker 1: people haven't thought about or heard about. I loved how

532
00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:52,960
Speaker 1: you treated it in the book. What is the importance

533
00:29:52,960 --> 00:29:55,080
Speaker 1: of having the right surface on your planet to make

534
00:29:55,160 --> 00:29:55,880
Speaker 1: it habitable?

535
00:29:56,040 --> 00:29:59,080
Speaker 2: It is important. A lot of the times that these models,

536
00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:02,200
Speaker 2: we assume there's an ocean, and we often go one

537
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:05,400
Speaker 2: step further and assume that ocean is a slab ocean,

538
00:30:05,560 --> 00:30:08,160
Speaker 2: which means it's like fifty meters deep and there's no

539
00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:12,000
Speaker 2: ocean heat flux. And we do that. There's justifiable reasons

540
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:13,600
Speaker 2: for doing that. First of all, we're not going to

541
00:30:13,600 --> 00:30:16,240
Speaker 2: be able to get any kind of bathometric information about

542
00:30:16,280 --> 00:30:20,920
Speaker 2: an exoplanet anytime soon, and simulating a four thousand meter

543
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:24,600
Speaker 2: deep ocean takes a lot longer than a fifty meter

544
00:30:24,720 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 2: slab ocean and people there are exoplanet astronomers that are

545
00:30:28,600 --> 00:30:32,080
Speaker 2: looking at the role of ocean circulation on habibility, and

546
00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:35,240
Speaker 2: that's important too, And those models take months to run,

547
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:37,400
Speaker 2: so it can be very useful as long as you're

548
00:30:37,440 --> 00:30:40,080
Speaker 2: willing to say, Okay, here are the results using a

549
00:30:40,080 --> 00:30:43,360
Speaker 2: slab ocean, and if we assume there's ocean heat flux

550
00:30:43,400 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 2: and a depth there, here's how the results might change.

551
00:30:46,920 --> 00:30:48,760
Speaker 2: You know. As long as we include that, then we

552
00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:52,080
Speaker 2: can make sure that we've communicated some meaningful science and

553
00:30:52,120 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 2: information whilst also being able to generate a lot of

554
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:58,760
Speaker 2: simulations and go in depth in terms of the climate

555
00:30:58,800 --> 00:31:03,120
Speaker 2: and atmospheric dynamics involved. But the thing is that this

556
00:31:03,200 --> 00:31:07,240
Speaker 2: is a generalized and highly idealized scenario to assume a

557
00:31:07,280 --> 00:31:10,760
Speaker 2: planet has ocean and nothing else. In reality, we step

558
00:31:10,760 --> 00:31:12,600
Speaker 2: out our front door and we see how much more

559
00:31:13,000 --> 00:31:19,280
Speaker 2: surface topography and compositional variety there exists, you know, within

560
00:31:19,320 --> 00:31:21,360
Speaker 2: this planet. We have to be able to move in

561
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:24,400
Speaker 2: that direction when it comes to simulating exoplanet environments. So

562
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:27,320
Speaker 2: what we do is we start with, okay, we know

563
00:31:27,400 --> 00:31:31,840
Speaker 2: that an ocean is very absorptive across the em spectrum.

564
00:31:31,880 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 2: It's just if you were to look at this a

565
00:31:34,240 --> 00:31:36,880
Speaker 2: plot of you know, how reflective ocean is, It's just

566
00:31:36,920 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 2: a straight line across you know, most wavelengths. But that's

567
00:31:41,120 --> 00:31:44,840
Speaker 2: not the case for other surfaces. If you put water

568
00:31:45,000 --> 00:31:48,520
Speaker 2: ice on a surface, water ice, as I'm very big

569
00:31:48,520 --> 00:31:51,960
Speaker 2: and talking about in the book, is extremely absorptive of

570
00:31:52,360 --> 00:31:58,400
Speaker 2: a type of radiation that's longer, redder wavelengths infrared, and

571
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:04,360
Speaker 2: very reflective of visible near UV radiation. And that basic principle,

572
00:32:04,360 --> 00:32:09,200
Speaker 2: that basic phenomenon about water ice and about the vibrational

573
00:32:09,240 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 2: modes of the water molecule. When you apply that to

574
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:16,720
Speaker 2: host stars which emit different types of light, and you

575
00:32:16,760 --> 00:32:22,640
Speaker 2: think about that interaction, it completely affects planetary climate and habitability.

576
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:26,440
Speaker 2: So you know, we have quantified that we've changed the

577
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:30,080
Speaker 2: surface and say, okay, say it's land, Well, what kind

578
00:32:30,080 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 2: of land? You know, it could be a clay, it

579
00:32:32,240 --> 00:32:35,080
Speaker 2: could be calcite, it could be graphied, it could be

580
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:38,400
Speaker 2: you know, a different kind of combination of basalt. And

581
00:32:38,560 --> 00:32:43,040
Speaker 2: each of those surfaces have their own wavelength dependent properties

582
00:32:43,240 --> 00:32:46,040
Speaker 2: and behave different ways depending on what kind of light

583
00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:50,280
Speaker 2: they receive from their host star environments. So we have

584
00:32:50,400 --> 00:32:52,360
Speaker 2: been able to do this kind of work for not

585
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:55,480
Speaker 2: only water ice, but also ice that has a lot

586
00:32:55,520 --> 00:32:58,280
Speaker 2: of salt in it, because it turns out if temperatures

587
00:32:58,320 --> 00:33:00,480
Speaker 2: get cold enough, there can be an there's a little

588
00:33:00,480 --> 00:33:02,960
Speaker 2: bit of salt in the ocean, well, there's a lot,

589
00:33:03,000 --> 00:33:05,320
Speaker 2: but if you know, even is a little bit, that

590
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:08,040
Speaker 2: salt can precipitate to the top of that layer and

591
00:33:08,080 --> 00:33:12,000
Speaker 2: form a crust so reflective it's even more reflective than snow.

592
00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:15,800
Speaker 2: And no one had applied that phenomenon to looking at

593
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:19,920
Speaker 2: exoplanets and deciding, you know, could these exoplanets, even in

594
00:33:19,960 --> 00:33:23,000
Speaker 2: the habitable zone, get cold enough on their surfaces for

595
00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:25,360
Speaker 2: this type of ice to form. And we were able

596
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:28,680
Speaker 2: to show that yes, they could, even in the habitable zone,

597
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:32,800
Speaker 2: and that climate models needed to incorporate parameterizations for the

598
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 2: formation of these types of surfaces if they wanted to

599
00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:40,400
Speaker 2: really produce accurate assessments of planetary habitability. And so we

600
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:43,640
Speaker 2: did that for different land surfaces as well, and now

601
00:33:43,680 --> 00:33:46,920
Speaker 2: we're looking at alternative ices like, of course you can

602
00:33:46,960 --> 00:33:49,600
Speaker 2: get cold enough for not only water ice to form,

603
00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:53,560
Speaker 2: but or this sort of salty ice, but carbon dioxide ice,

604
00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:58,120
Speaker 2: methane ice, ammonia ice, and people in the past have thought,

605
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 2: you know, who cares about that? Because if the the

606
00:34:00,200 --> 00:34:02,320
Speaker 2: planet's that far away from the star that it gets

607
00:34:02,360 --> 00:34:04,800
Speaker 2: that cold enough, like it's not going to be habitable,

608
00:34:04,840 --> 00:34:06,640
Speaker 2: Like why would we even want to invest money? And

609
00:34:06,760 --> 00:34:10,560
Speaker 2: that it turns out that these planets, if they're eccentric, yes,

610
00:34:10,560 --> 00:34:13,120
Speaker 2: they can get far enough away from their star. They

611
00:34:13,160 --> 00:34:15,799
Speaker 2: can also get very very close to their star, and

612
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:19,240
Speaker 2: they can go in and out of that traditional habitable zone.

613
00:34:19,440 --> 00:34:22,000
Speaker 2: And you know, what would that do for life? Could

614
00:34:22,000 --> 00:34:25,960
Speaker 2: you have a planet whose atmosphere, entire atmosphere like condenses

615
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:29,759
Speaker 2: out on the surface at its farthest point from the star,

616
00:34:29,800 --> 00:34:33,080
Speaker 2: which we call appo astron and then like sublimates back

617
00:34:33,120 --> 00:34:36,880
Speaker 2: into the atmosphere at perry Astron at the closest approach,

618
00:34:37,400 --> 00:34:40,439
Speaker 2: you know, and people are you know, hadn't really thought

619
00:34:40,480 --> 00:34:44,080
Speaker 2: about that beyond the sheer fact that yes, the planet

620
00:34:44,080 --> 00:34:45,960
Speaker 2: can go in and out of the state. But what

621
00:34:46,000 --> 00:34:49,600
Speaker 2: would that do to the actual atmosphere, Like we're starting

622
00:34:49,600 --> 00:34:52,120
Speaker 2: to be able to simulate that and look at the

623
00:34:52,160 --> 00:34:56,800
Speaker 2: optical and other properties of these ices. You know, that

624
00:34:56,920 --> 00:35:00,239
Speaker 2: could form and then sublimate back into the sky in

625
00:35:00,280 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 2: the atmosphere and then form again, Well.

626
00:35:02,320 --> 00:35:04,960
Speaker 1: I love that you're not just ruling out candidates, you're

627
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:07,000
Speaker 1: also opening the door. You're like, oh, there are other

628
00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:09,799
Speaker 1: ways to make habitable planets, things that we might have

629
00:35:09,840 --> 00:35:12,799
Speaker 1: not considered. That's very cool, and I love seeing the

630
00:35:12,840 --> 00:35:15,399
Speaker 1: sort of errative process of science in action. You start

631
00:35:15,440 --> 00:35:18,120
Speaker 1: from a simple model and new ad bills, and you

632
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:21,320
Speaker 1: add whistles and you keep making things more and more realistic.

633
00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:23,440
Speaker 1: How far do you think we are from, like really

634
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:26,959
Speaker 1: having anything that describes those planets, And how confident would

635
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:29,720
Speaker 1: you be that our model is describing anything that's happening

636
00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:31,440
Speaker 1: over there, or do you feel like, wow, there's so

637
00:35:31,520 --> 00:35:34,359
Speaker 1: much complexity we still haven't added that. Really, it's still

638
00:35:34,360 --> 00:35:34,960
Speaker 1: a big question.

639
00:35:35,719 --> 00:35:40,000
Speaker 2: The main uncertainties that I would want to prioritize really

640
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:43,239
Speaker 2: is there are two models. These climate models have historically

641
00:35:43,719 --> 00:35:48,359
Speaker 2: been I want to say bad at but that's we're

642
00:35:48,360 --> 00:35:53,919
Speaker 2: still struggling with cloud microphysics. So really, how clouds are

643
00:35:54,040 --> 00:35:58,319
Speaker 2: formed on these planets, how they change, how their properties

644
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:01,480
Speaker 2: are expressed with them a model, because clouds, you know,

645
00:36:02,239 --> 00:36:05,240
Speaker 2: they form at different heights. We have low clouds, medium clouds,

646
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:08,440
Speaker 2: high clouds on our planet. And we're just talking about

647
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,239
Speaker 2: water clouds, and of course getting into other types of

648
00:36:11,800 --> 00:36:15,520
Speaker 2: compositional cloud microphysics as something else, but really, how you

649
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:18,680
Speaker 2: form these droplets, how drop how the cloud droplets are

650
00:36:18,840 --> 00:36:21,759
Speaker 2: parameterized in a model is something that still requires a

651
00:36:21,760 --> 00:36:27,200
Speaker 2: lot of work. And the other thing is this surface compositional complexity,

652
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:31,000
Speaker 2: because still where we're at is being able to say, okay,

653
00:36:31,040 --> 00:36:35,040
Speaker 2: we're putting large swaths of a type of surface over here,

654
00:36:36,080 --> 00:36:38,400
Speaker 2: and large swaths of a type of surface over here,

655
00:36:39,600 --> 00:36:44,160
Speaker 2: but being able to really incorporate a complex surface environment

656
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:49,920
Speaker 2: where we have vegetation and different land surfaces and ice

657
00:36:50,000 --> 00:36:55,240
Speaker 2: and ocean and topography and orography, putting that all into

658
00:36:55,480 --> 00:36:58,000
Speaker 2: a model is important. We can do it with the

659
00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:02,200
Speaker 2: Earth's environment any thing, you know, having some idea of

660
00:37:02,239 --> 00:37:05,800
Speaker 2: how if we changed that different combination or that different

661
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 2: orientation for both surfaces and topography, for example, and how

662
00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:15,520
Speaker 2: that would influence climate, weather patterns, atmospheric circulation when circulation

663
00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:17,719
Speaker 2: that remains to be seen. And we need to be

664
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:20,600
Speaker 2: able to do that in a much more smoother, much

665
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:23,320
Speaker 2: more systematic way. And right now it's pretty clunky.

666
00:37:23,440 --> 00:37:25,440
Speaker 1: Okay, I want to get more into that, but first

667
00:37:25,520 --> 00:37:41,120
Speaker 1: let's take another break. We're back and we're talking to

668
00:37:41,239 --> 00:37:45,360
Speaker 1: Professor Alamawa Shields about her book Life on Other Planets,

669
00:37:45,600 --> 00:37:49,080
Speaker 1: her research into exoplanets, and the story of how she

670
00:37:49,120 --> 00:37:52,040
Speaker 1: got where she is. Awesome. Well, thanks sover much for

671
00:37:52,040 --> 00:37:54,160
Speaker 1: telling us about your science. I'd love to know talk

672
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:56,600
Speaker 1: a little bit about your story about how you got

673
00:37:56,640 --> 00:37:58,879
Speaker 1: to where you are, how you got to be who

674
00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:01,000
Speaker 1: you are. If that's her, I'd take us back to

675
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:04,920
Speaker 1: your sort of original inspiration, like what is it that

676
00:38:05,000 --> 00:38:08,920
Speaker 1: got you young o moha into science thinking that this

677
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:10,120
Speaker 1: was going to be the path for you.

678
00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:12,440
Speaker 2: As long as I can remember, I have been that

679
00:38:12,760 --> 00:38:16,640
Speaker 2: person who was looking up and I always preferred looking

680
00:38:16,719 --> 00:38:20,040
Speaker 2: up to looking straight ahead. And as I wrote in

681
00:38:20,080 --> 00:38:21,960
Speaker 2: the book, I was often bumping into things on the

682
00:38:22,000 --> 00:38:24,719
Speaker 2: street because I was My neck was craved up. So

683
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:26,440
Speaker 2: like I grew up in a part of the country,

684
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:29,120
Speaker 2: you know, in the US where there was a lot

685
00:38:29,120 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 2: of there were planes being flown. My grandmother worked at

686
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:35,520
Speaker 2: Miramar Air Force Base and that was where the Blue Angels,

687
00:38:35,560 --> 00:38:38,239
Speaker 2: the Aerial Flight Team, were stationed, and so we used

688
00:38:38,239 --> 00:38:41,000
Speaker 2: to go to Blue Angels shows on the weekends and

689
00:38:41,080 --> 00:38:43,960
Speaker 2: we'd see these amazing planes doing these just like death

690
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:46,759
Speaker 2: defying acts and that was like that was football for us.

691
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:49,080
Speaker 2: We would tailgate and like sit on the on the

692
00:38:49,160 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 2: lawns and look at these planes. And that was also

693
00:38:52,120 --> 00:38:56,320
Speaker 2: Miramar was also where Top Gun was shot and was filmed,

694
00:38:56,360 --> 00:38:59,160
Speaker 2: and I remember seeing that movie and being very inspired

695
00:38:59,200 --> 00:39:02,839
Speaker 2: by Kelly McGill's character, who was an astrophysicist and just

696
00:39:02,880 --> 00:39:05,600
Speaker 2: an all around badass. You know. It was just like

697
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:07,839
Speaker 2: that's who I want. And then it kind of all

698
00:39:07,880 --> 00:39:12,280
Speaker 2: came together when I saw this movie called Space Camp, which,

699
00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:16,839
Speaker 2: though not an OSCAR contender, it was like very very

700
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:20,319
Speaker 2: influential for me, you know. You know. I was like,

701
00:39:20,400 --> 00:39:22,840
Speaker 2: if kids can get launch into space, then I thought,

702
00:39:22,840 --> 00:39:24,960
Speaker 2: like I was a kid, it could happen for me.

703
00:39:25,600 --> 00:39:27,719
Speaker 2: And that's like when I decided I was going to

704
00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:28,520
Speaker 2: be an astronaut.

705
00:39:28,640 --> 00:39:30,760
Speaker 1: So not a scientist. You wanted to be an astronaut.

706
00:39:30,960 --> 00:39:33,920
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, it was an astronaut. And in my

707
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:35,760
Speaker 2: mind it was, Okay, I'm going to go to space

708
00:39:35,800 --> 00:39:39,000
Speaker 2: and I'm going to study space. So then I put

709
00:39:39,520 --> 00:39:42,239
Speaker 2: two and two together and said, okay, because I knew

710
00:39:42,239 --> 00:39:44,800
Speaker 2: I had to study something before I applied to NASA.

711
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:46,759
Speaker 2: That much I knew at the age of twelve, and

712
00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:48,000
Speaker 2: so I was like, well, I'm going to study the

713
00:39:48,000 --> 00:39:49,880
Speaker 2: thing that I want to go to. So that told

714
00:39:49,880 --> 00:39:52,600
Speaker 2: me from looking that up in the World Book Encyclopedias

715
00:39:52,640 --> 00:39:55,880
Speaker 2: that we had at home, that that meant astronomy, Studying

716
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:59,640
Speaker 2: space meant studying astronomy. Then the two and two, I mean,

717
00:39:59,640 --> 00:40:02,839
Speaker 2: they went hand in hand, and they did for that

718
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:07,399
Speaker 2: the next few years until I ended up stumbling into

719
00:40:07,440 --> 00:40:09,400
Speaker 2: an audition at the prep school I was going to,

720
00:40:09,480 --> 00:40:11,839
Speaker 2: which I had decided to go to because they had

721
00:40:11,840 --> 00:40:15,080
Speaker 2: their own observatory. But when I got there, it was

722
00:40:15,120 --> 00:40:17,880
Speaker 2: like my second year. I was dragged to an audition

723
00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:21,440
Speaker 2: for the play Steel Magnolias with some girlfriends and I

724
00:40:21,520 --> 00:40:23,920
Speaker 2: ended up getting cast, Like I didn't really care if

725
00:40:23,920 --> 00:40:25,719
Speaker 2: I got cast, like most of the girls that I

726
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:29,120
Speaker 2: knew really wanted to get cast, and I couldn't care less.

727
00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 2: I was like, homework break, Sure, I'll go. And I

728
00:40:32,239 --> 00:40:35,560
Speaker 2: ended up getting a part, and I realized how much

729
00:40:35,600 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 2: I loved it, you know, and it brought me back

730
00:40:37,719 --> 00:40:41,680
Speaker 2: to when I was ten and had auditioned for a

731
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:44,919
Speaker 2: play at the La Joya Playhouse because we lived there

732
00:40:45,160 --> 00:40:49,040
Speaker 2: in San Diego and had been an understudy. But really

733
00:40:49,040 --> 00:40:51,480
Speaker 2: hadn't thought seriously about it. But it's like, once I

734
00:40:51,520 --> 00:40:54,480
Speaker 2: started to act in high school kind of thought about

735
00:40:54,640 --> 00:40:58,440
Speaker 2: how formative those experiences of being on stage were for me.

736
00:40:58,560 --> 00:41:01,359
Speaker 2: And it became more than just being on stage when

737
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:04,120
Speaker 2: I got that part and saw what it took to

738
00:41:04,160 --> 00:41:07,840
Speaker 2: put together a story, to work with people, to present

739
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:10,600
Speaker 2: something that we were then going to share with the world.

740
00:41:10,680 --> 00:41:13,520
Speaker 2: Our world was, you know, was this school. But it

741
00:41:13,600 --> 00:41:17,719
Speaker 2: gave me something that I didn't have as a budding astronomer.

742
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:21,759
Speaker 2: It gave me that sense of community and connection. Astronomy

743
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:25,880
Speaker 2: at that point felt very isolating and something that I

744
00:41:25,920 --> 00:41:29,399
Speaker 2: did on my own with a telescope, and I loved that.

745
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:32,440
Speaker 2: And yet I also had this other aspect of with

746
00:41:32,480 --> 00:41:36,239
Speaker 2: the acting, of like we work together day and day out, rehearsing,

747
00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:40,080
Speaker 2: learning things about each other, using our personal backgrounds to

748
00:41:40,160 --> 00:41:43,120
Speaker 2: tell a story, and then little people's heads off with

749
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 2: that story, you know, in a good way. So like

750
00:41:47,000 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 2: that was the beginning of Okay, I have two things

751
00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:51,880
Speaker 2: now that I really love to do, and how do

752
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:53,160
Speaker 2: I make that work? You know?

753
00:41:53,400 --> 00:41:54,960
Speaker 1: And was it hard for you to be in sort

754
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:58,760
Speaker 1: of two worlds already? I mean, imagine the drama kids

755
00:41:58,880 --> 00:42:01,880
Speaker 1: and these space nerds probably didn't have a lot of overlap.

756
00:42:02,200 --> 00:42:03,680
Speaker 1: Was that weird to be sort of like in two

757
00:42:03,800 --> 00:42:06,520
Speaker 1: groups of kids and two communities and two sort of

758
00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 1: sets of you know, life goals in front of those kids.

759
00:42:09,640 --> 00:42:13,960
Speaker 2: It's interesting. And at Exeter it wasn't. It wasn't strange.

760
00:42:14,239 --> 00:42:17,840
Speaker 2: No one ever made me choose or looked at me funny.

761
00:42:17,880 --> 00:42:20,520
Speaker 2: Because I had I was doing those things. It seemed

762
00:42:20,560 --> 00:42:22,840
Speaker 2: like it was a it was a wonderful environment to

763
00:42:23,040 --> 00:42:25,440
Speaker 2: be able to do many things. It wasn't until I

764
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:28,400
Speaker 2: got out of that environment and you know, needed to

765
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:31,160
Speaker 2: choose a school and got into college and it was

766
00:42:31,200 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 2: like you had to choose a major, and like it

767
00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:37,200
Speaker 2: became clear that those two things were very far apart,

768
00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:40,040
Speaker 2: and you know, one was going to have to win.

769
00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:43,040
Speaker 2: And that was the That was sort of the next

770
00:42:43,080 --> 00:42:45,239
Speaker 2: phase of it for me. It was, Okay, I'll choose this.

771
00:42:45,440 --> 00:42:47,840
Speaker 2: I've been wanting to do astronomy and be an astronaut

772
00:42:47,840 --> 00:42:50,440
Speaker 2: for the longest of the time of the two, so

773
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:54,160
Speaker 2: let's stay with that. But one without the other never

774
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:57,360
Speaker 2: felt fully right, and I kept going back and forth.

775
00:42:57,400 --> 00:42:59,480
Speaker 2: And this the book is that journey of that of

776
00:42:59,560 --> 00:43:02,720
Speaker 2: thinking Okay, I'm going to choose this that's not working.

777
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:05,959
Speaker 2: I'm going to go choose this. Hmmm. I missed that thing,

778
00:43:06,719 --> 00:43:09,040
Speaker 2: and you know, and ultimately realizing that it was never

779
00:43:09,080 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 2: about choosing, It was really more about owning, you know,

780
00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:14,640
Speaker 2: who I was.

781
00:43:14,960 --> 00:43:17,040
Speaker 1: So in the book you talk about how you started

782
00:43:17,040 --> 00:43:20,719
Speaker 1: grad school you're on this path to become an astronomer

783
00:43:20,840 --> 00:43:24,200
Speaker 1: or scientist, but after your first year you left. You

784
00:43:24,239 --> 00:43:28,080
Speaker 1: decided you're going to go the other direction, back into acting.

785
00:43:28,120 --> 00:43:29,800
Speaker 1: Tell us about that choice. Was that difficult?

786
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:34,520
Speaker 2: Yes and no, it was very difficult. The way it happened.

787
00:43:34,719 --> 00:43:38,480
Speaker 2: I was divided when I started that PhD program, I

788
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:41,640
Speaker 2: more I sort of did it on autopilot, because that's

789
00:43:41,680 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 2: what you do, you finish undergrad If you're going to

790
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:46,160
Speaker 2: be a scientist, you need that PhD. But I had

791
00:43:46,200 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 2: already recognized at MIT that I needed the arts again

792
00:43:50,120 --> 00:43:52,680
Speaker 2: in my life, and I'd even applied to some acting

793
00:43:52,719 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 2: schools that during my senior year. But I shot for

794
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:59,160
Speaker 2: the moon and hadn't gotten into those three schools, and

795
00:43:59,160 --> 00:44:00,800
Speaker 2: so I was like, all right, I'm being told that

796
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:03,719
Speaker 2: it's astrophysics, so I'll do that. But just just because

797
00:44:03,760 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 2: I made a choice, didn't mean that that dream was

798
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 2: going to like listen and like just die, you know.

799
00:44:10,719 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 2: So like during that first year I was there were

800
00:44:13,280 --> 00:44:16,080
Speaker 2: four people on my cohort. The other three all lived together.

801
00:44:16,239 --> 00:44:17,960
Speaker 2: They had invited me to live with them in one

802
00:44:18,080 --> 00:44:20,279
Speaker 2: in the house, but I was like, no, no, I

803
00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:22,440
Speaker 2: want to be on my own and I wanted my independence.

804
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:25,400
Speaker 2: But what I didn't realize was they were all working

805
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:27,880
Speaker 2: on problem sets together, you know, and I was not.

806
00:44:28,719 --> 00:44:33,000
Speaker 2: So like I immediately set myself up for being a part.

807
00:44:34,040 --> 00:44:36,560
Speaker 2: And then I started to sort of daydream about acting

808
00:44:36,640 --> 00:44:39,040
Speaker 2: and films and stuff. And I did well in certain

809
00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:42,839
Speaker 2: courses like atomic physics and some other ones, but like

810
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:46,879
Speaker 2: I was struggling in this course called basic astrophysics, which

811
00:44:46,880 --> 00:44:52,000
Speaker 2: I always loved to make fun of. But there was

812
00:44:52,040 --> 00:44:55,600
Speaker 2: that professor who suggested that I consider other career options.

813
00:44:56,280 --> 00:44:58,319
Speaker 2: And so that was a difficult moment for me. And

814
00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:01,319
Speaker 2: I thought that that confirm all the things that all

815
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:04,520
Speaker 2: the reasons I was using to feel up separate and apart.

816
00:45:04,640 --> 00:45:07,440
Speaker 2: I was like, Okay, that confirms it. Plus I didn't

817
00:45:07,440 --> 00:45:09,920
Speaker 2: really see many people who looked like me in my

818
00:45:10,080 --> 00:45:14,840
Speaker 2: environment doing astronomy, so I sort of on the downlow

819
00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:17,319
Speaker 2: applied to acting schools again and rode these sort of

820
00:45:17,560 --> 00:45:20,400
Speaker 2: secret buses to Chicago and got in this time, and

821
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:23,279
Speaker 2: so decided to leave. And that's the part that I

822
00:45:23,280 --> 00:45:26,520
Speaker 2: felt when I said yes and no, because in many

823
00:45:26,560 --> 00:45:30,120
Speaker 2: ways that part was like such a relief. When I

824
00:45:30,160 --> 00:45:33,239
Speaker 2: finally decided I was leaving, it was like I didn't

825
00:45:33,239 --> 00:45:36,160
Speaker 2: want to have that conflict anymore because I saw it

826
00:45:36,160 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 2: as a conflict that's something I hit I needed to

827
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 2: work out. And so, okay, I'm getting signs that I

828
00:45:43,040 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 2: shouldn't be in astronomy, like fine, you know, f it,

829
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:48,520
Speaker 2: I'm going to go, but I'm going to go to acting,

830
00:45:48,719 --> 00:45:52,240
Speaker 2: and that I won't, you know, all done, I don't

831
00:45:52,239 --> 00:45:55,759
Speaker 2: have any conflict anymore. So that I remember, like it

832
00:45:55,840 --> 00:45:57,400
Speaker 2: just felt when I was taking the bus to the

833
00:45:57,440 --> 00:46:01,680
Speaker 2: airport to leave Madison, Wisconsin, it was like it was like, oh,

834
00:46:02,040 --> 00:46:05,239
Speaker 2: you know, the way to the world was gone. But

835
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:07,520
Speaker 2: of course what I didn't recognize was that, like the

836
00:46:07,560 --> 00:46:12,320
Speaker 2: way I left, that wasn't a clean break. The reasons

837
00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:16,280
Speaker 2: I know not only and I can't entirely blame that professor,

838
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:17,960
Speaker 2: although I you know, as I write, I would never

839
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:20,520
Speaker 2: tell that to a student today. It's not it's not

840
00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:22,640
Speaker 2: my job. It's not my I don't have that power

841
00:46:22,719 --> 00:46:25,160
Speaker 2: to determine if someone should choose a different career or not.

842
00:46:26,239 --> 00:46:29,440
Speaker 2: I don't believe that we as faculty should wield that power.

843
00:46:30,760 --> 00:46:34,279
Speaker 2: But I was the one who listened, and that's on me,

844
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:36,960
Speaker 2: you know. And so there was a lot of forgiveness

845
00:46:37,080 --> 00:46:40,040
Speaker 2: to do, both of that professor and of myself. And

846
00:46:41,080 --> 00:46:44,920
Speaker 2: it ultimately had to be about going to something, not

847
00:46:45,120 --> 00:46:47,600
Speaker 2: running away from something, you know. And that's what I

848
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:52,560
Speaker 2: discovered later on, when you know, when I chose acting

849
00:46:52,600 --> 00:46:54,759
Speaker 2: and was like, wow, this is this is hard in

850
00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 2: a different way. In some ways, it's like it's easy,

851
00:46:57,600 --> 00:47:00,160
Speaker 2: no problem sets, but a lot, a lot of work

852
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:03,440
Speaker 2: and all the things that it didn't seem like science

853
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:06,399
Speaker 2: cared about, like my feelings and who I was, as

854
00:47:06,400 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 2: long as I could do the problem set or write

855
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:11,960
Speaker 2: the paper, Acting cared about a lot, you know, And

856
00:47:12,040 --> 00:47:16,279
Speaker 2: so I needed to bring up all those experiences from childhood,

857
00:47:16,280 --> 00:47:18,759
Speaker 2: all through you know, through early adulthood and use those

858
00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:22,160
Speaker 2: to embody these different characters. And it was very challenging

859
00:47:22,560 --> 00:47:26,799
Speaker 2: and also extremely rewarding. But again, it wasn't on its own.

860
00:47:26,960 --> 00:47:30,120
Speaker 2: It was not fully representative of the person that I am,

861
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:32,600
Speaker 2: so I had to have that discovery.

862
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:34,520
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for sharing all of that. I

863
00:47:34,560 --> 00:47:36,880
Speaker 1: also want to hear about your path back to science.

864
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:39,360
Speaker 1: I know that a lot of our listeners are folks

865
00:47:39,400 --> 00:47:42,799
Speaker 1: who have always been interested in science, have always thought

866
00:47:42,840 --> 00:47:45,480
Speaker 1: about physics and space, but their life took them some

867
00:47:45,600 --> 00:47:47,480
Speaker 1: other way, And a lot of them right into me

868
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:50,480
Speaker 1: and ask me like, is it unforgiving? Is it possible

869
00:47:50,520 --> 00:47:52,560
Speaker 1: to get back in? Could I still be a scientist

870
00:47:53,080 --> 00:47:55,640
Speaker 1: if I'm already thirty, or I'm forty or I'm fifty.

871
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:58,000
Speaker 1: Are their paths back into acting it? Tell us about

872
00:47:58,000 --> 00:48:00,880
Speaker 1: how you forged your path back in academune, because I

873
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:03,360
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of people think it's very unforgiving

874
00:48:03,360 --> 00:48:06,000
Speaker 1: that once you step off it's impossible to get back.

875
00:48:06,280 --> 00:48:08,600
Speaker 1: Tell us your story about how you decided to come

876
00:48:08,600 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 1: back and how you made it work.

877
00:48:09,880 --> 00:48:11,759
Speaker 2: And that's the reason. One of the main reasons I

878
00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:15,200
Speaker 2: wrote this book was for others to know that they

879
00:48:15,239 --> 00:48:18,120
Speaker 2: are not alone, because I felt alone for a long time,

880
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 2: and I too get these emails from people who are like, yes,

881
00:48:22,360 --> 00:48:24,279
Speaker 2: I've always wanted to do this thing, and I haven't

882
00:48:24,320 --> 00:48:26,239
Speaker 2: known how to put it together with this other thing,

883
00:48:26,320 --> 00:48:30,120
Speaker 2: and you know, and that's such a rewarding aspect of

884
00:48:30,160 --> 00:48:33,400
Speaker 2: having shared my story in this way, because it's like,

885
00:48:33,440 --> 00:48:37,640
Speaker 2: we know the more of us. Shame can't survive in community,

886
00:48:37,800 --> 00:48:41,960
Speaker 2: you know, it only survives in isolation and in the vacuum.

887
00:48:42,600 --> 00:48:46,640
Speaker 2: Once you connect to someone who has your experience or

888
00:48:46,719 --> 00:48:48,840
Speaker 2: this has been my experience, you know, someone who has

889
00:48:49,120 --> 00:48:53,240
Speaker 2: also has some aspect of my journey they share, then

890
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:58,319
Speaker 2: I'm no longer alone, you know, and there's absolutely a

891
00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:01,759
Speaker 2: path back. It might be a challenging one for me.

892
00:49:02,160 --> 00:49:04,759
Speaker 2: I was gone for over a decade. I say it

893
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:07,920
Speaker 2: was exactly eleven years, so it was a solar cycle

894
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:11,560
Speaker 2: that I'd been gone from academia, from astronomy in particular.

895
00:49:11,600 --> 00:49:14,120
Speaker 2: I was in academia but for acting. So I think

896
00:49:14,160 --> 00:49:16,239
Speaker 2: I write that I was. I had been cheating on

897
00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:19,120
Speaker 2: astronomy with acting, and I hope that astronomy would take

898
00:49:19,160 --> 00:49:22,680
Speaker 2: me back. And what I discovered was the biggest obstacle

899
00:49:23,239 --> 00:49:26,960
Speaker 2: was myself. You know, there's no surprise now in retrospect.

900
00:49:27,040 --> 00:49:30,560
Speaker 2: But because people were very warm in this second PhD program,

901
00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:32,160
Speaker 2: and in the first one, in fact, most of the

902
00:49:32,200 --> 00:49:35,160
Speaker 2: people there were very warm too, But the second time around,

903
00:49:35,800 --> 00:49:39,320
Speaker 2: people were asking me about my background, my non traditional background.

904
00:49:39,680 --> 00:49:41,799
Speaker 2: I was the one who was saying, can we talk

905
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:43,840
Speaker 2: about something else, like, because I, you know, I wanted

906
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:46,400
Speaker 2: to be taken seriously as a scientist, and I thought

907
00:49:46,440 --> 00:49:50,160
Speaker 2: that my humanities, you know, that sort of stint I

908
00:49:50,200 --> 00:49:53,680
Speaker 2: had done with acting like shouldn't be discussed because people

909
00:49:53,760 --> 00:49:56,240
Speaker 2: might use it as reason to think that I wasn't,

910
00:49:56,400 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 2: you know, a serious scientist. But when I had a

911
00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:02,480
Speaker 2: mentor tell me, you know, your theater background is your superpower?

912
00:50:03,520 --> 00:50:05,920
Speaker 2: That changed everything for me because I knew I didn't

913
00:50:05,960 --> 00:50:09,360
Speaker 2: have to pretend that that didn't exist. I could again

914
00:50:09,400 --> 00:50:12,120
Speaker 2: that that owning. I could own it. And then all

915
00:50:12,120 --> 00:50:14,680
Speaker 2: of a sudden, I saw all the aspects about science

916
00:50:14,880 --> 00:50:18,440
Speaker 2: that were, you know, very much applicable, where my acting

917
00:50:18,440 --> 00:50:21,080
Speaker 2: background was super applicable. So it is true that because

918
00:50:21,080 --> 00:50:23,600
Speaker 2: I'd been gone for over ten years, some things I

919
00:50:23,640 --> 00:50:26,560
Speaker 2: had to I felt like I never learned an undergrad

920
00:50:26,640 --> 00:50:29,200
Speaker 2: and so I was learning from the ground up and

921
00:50:29,239 --> 00:50:31,760
Speaker 2: some things I had just forgotten. And so I worked

922
00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:34,880
Speaker 2: really hard, and I had this a monumental case of

923
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:37,960
Speaker 2: imposter syndrome. And I write a lot about it in

924
00:50:38,000 --> 00:50:41,560
Speaker 2: the book, and several earlier versions. I think I wrote

925
00:50:41,600 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 2: so much. I was like, Okay, I got it, Like,

926
00:50:43,080 --> 00:50:45,839
Speaker 2: got to take some stuff out because it's like eventually,

927
00:50:46,200 --> 00:50:48,160
Speaker 2: like we need to have an upward trajectory here, and

928
00:50:48,200 --> 00:50:52,000
Speaker 2: so like it was this trifecta of issues like African

929
00:50:52,000 --> 00:50:55,640
Speaker 2: American woman in a field dominated by white men, older

930
00:50:55,680 --> 00:50:58,080
Speaker 2: returning student. I was thirty four when I came back

931
00:50:58,080 --> 00:51:01,239
Speaker 2: to grad school and classically trained actor, you know, so

932
00:51:01,280 --> 00:51:04,560
Speaker 2: I had three reasons to feel different. But this time

933
00:51:04,880 --> 00:51:08,560
Speaker 2: I did not isolate. I went after every single mentorship

934
00:51:08,600 --> 00:51:10,799
Speaker 2: program that was available, and by this time there were

935
00:51:10,840 --> 00:51:13,439
Speaker 2: a lot more, I think even than back then, and

936
00:51:14,320 --> 00:51:17,840
Speaker 2: I you know, asked the questions that I was afraid

937
00:51:17,880 --> 00:51:20,880
Speaker 2: would make me sound stupid. I went to the office hours,

938
00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:23,560
Speaker 2: you know, because I was older. I actually, here's the thing.

939
00:51:23,680 --> 00:51:26,560
Speaker 2: Being older, there's a big advantage there, which is this

940
00:51:26,880 --> 00:51:29,920
Speaker 2: maturity factor. So like I brought that work experience, that

941
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:33,319
Speaker 2: real world experience. And I also was more settled in

942
00:51:33,400 --> 00:51:35,600
Speaker 2: myself and who I was when I came back to

943
00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:38,760
Speaker 2: grad school, so I knew I wasn't there to mess around.

944
00:51:39,280 --> 00:51:42,560
Speaker 2: I knew exactly what I wanted to study. It wasn't

945
00:51:42,680 --> 00:51:44,600
Speaker 2: like you know, I'm going to go to grad school

946
00:51:44,600 --> 00:51:46,239
Speaker 2: because that's what you do, and what do I want

947
00:51:46,280 --> 00:51:48,640
Speaker 2: to Like that was the first time. Around this time,

948
00:51:48,680 --> 00:51:50,839
Speaker 2: it was like my husband and I had had left

949
00:51:50,960 --> 00:51:53,680
Speaker 2: very well paying jobs in LA to move up to Seattle.

950
00:51:54,160 --> 00:51:56,719
Speaker 2: So I had to want it bad and I did,

951
00:51:57,760 --> 00:52:00,560
Speaker 2: and that meant, you know, I ended up finishing in

952
00:52:00,640 --> 00:52:03,520
Speaker 2: five years. The normal amount is six. But I was

953
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:05,719
Speaker 2: I was afraid at every point. I was afraid that

954
00:52:05,760 --> 00:52:09,080
Speaker 2: I was gonna, you know, confirm stereotypes about my race

955
00:52:09,120 --> 00:52:11,359
Speaker 2: and my gender and then I would go get an

956
00:52:11,400 --> 00:52:14,520
Speaker 2: A plus in extraglactic astronomy. You know, I was terrified

957
00:52:14,520 --> 00:52:17,960
Speaker 2: that I was going to fail the qualifying exam, you know,

958
00:52:18,040 --> 00:52:24,240
Speaker 2: that fearful, like god awful six hour exam at the time.

959
00:52:24,840 --> 00:52:26,600
Speaker 2: Now it doesn't exist at U DUBB, but at the

960
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:28,840
Speaker 2: time it did. And it was a six hour exam

961
00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:33,600
Speaker 2: covering thirteen courses and two years worth of coursework. And

962
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:36,319
Speaker 2: you know, the two black women who had taken it

963
00:52:36,360 --> 00:52:38,919
Speaker 2: before I took it, you know, years before, had either

964
00:52:39,719 --> 00:52:42,360
Speaker 2: failed and failed out of the program or had needed

965
00:52:42,360 --> 00:52:43,920
Speaker 2: a third time to take it. And so like the

966
00:52:44,040 --> 00:52:50,319
Speaker 2: pressure was like and I kept walking through. So it

967
00:52:50,400 --> 00:52:52,759
Speaker 2: was like to the people out there who were like,

968
00:52:52,800 --> 00:52:54,759
Speaker 2: I have this thing and I'd spent a long time

969
00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:57,120
Speaker 2: and I don't want I'm afraid, Like it's okay to

970
00:52:57,160 --> 00:53:00,839
Speaker 2: be afraid, and you're it's probably good afraid. It means

971
00:53:00,840 --> 00:53:03,960
Speaker 2: you care. So what are you going to do about that?

972
00:53:04,520 --> 00:53:06,839
Speaker 2: You know? We don't want to let the fear keep

973
00:53:06,880 --> 00:53:10,160
Speaker 2: you from moving through, you know. And that's that's the

974
00:53:10,200 --> 00:53:12,080
Speaker 2: thing I did the first time. I let the fear

975
00:53:12,760 --> 00:53:16,799
Speaker 2: kind of paralyze or used it as a justification to

976
00:53:16,840 --> 00:53:19,600
Speaker 2: do something else, which I wouldn't I wouldn't have changed

977
00:53:19,640 --> 00:53:22,160
Speaker 2: for the world. It's how I became who I was,

978
00:53:22,200 --> 00:53:23,840
Speaker 2: and how I met my husband and why we have

979
00:53:23,920 --> 00:53:25,719
Speaker 2: our daughter. Like all these things they work out the

980
00:53:25,760 --> 00:53:28,239
Speaker 2: way they're supposed to. But now moving forward, like we

981
00:53:28,280 --> 00:53:31,480
Speaker 2: don't have to let the fear keep us from doing

982
00:53:31,520 --> 00:53:33,400
Speaker 2: the thing that we're meant to do in the world,

983
00:53:34,160 --> 00:53:37,000
Speaker 2: you know, and recognizing that, like no human being gets

984
00:53:37,080 --> 00:53:40,759
Speaker 2: to tell any of us who we're supposed to be.

985
00:53:41,239 --> 00:53:44,440
Speaker 2: No human being is that powerful. Just like feel the feelings,

986
00:53:44,440 --> 00:53:48,040
Speaker 2: feel the fear, and then do the next next indicated action,

987
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:51,880
Speaker 2: whether that's fill out the application, you know, ask a

988
00:53:51,960 --> 00:53:55,120
Speaker 2: mentor for a letter like, just keep moving through those

989
00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:56,279
Speaker 2: big emotions. Well.

990
00:53:56,320 --> 00:53:58,560
Speaker 1: One thing that strikes me about the path of your

991
00:53:58,560 --> 00:54:01,360
Speaker 1: life is something I think for many people's lives, for

992
00:54:01,520 --> 00:54:04,400
Speaker 1: my kids, is that it's something you could never have predicted.

993
00:54:04,520 --> 00:54:06,880
Speaker 1: You didn't follow an existing track where you could predict

994
00:54:06,920 --> 00:54:09,560
Speaker 1: exactly what's going to happen. Dot. It's a one of

995
00:54:09,560 --> 00:54:13,240
Speaker 1: a kind life, like many lives are. But I wonder

996
00:54:13,400 --> 00:54:17,080
Speaker 1: what twenty year old you would think if she could

997
00:54:17,080 --> 00:54:20,120
Speaker 1: have seen where you are now. Would you think amazing

998
00:54:20,400 --> 00:54:22,680
Speaker 1: I got to do both or would she think, ooh,

999
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:24,920
Speaker 1: that was tough. For what would she think about the

1000
00:54:24,920 --> 00:54:26,600
Speaker 1: path that your life has taken.

1001
00:54:27,160 --> 00:54:30,200
Speaker 2: I think she would be pretty thrilled and surprised too,

1002
00:54:30,800 --> 00:54:33,120
Speaker 2: you know. And I think the most surprised or the

1003
00:54:33,160 --> 00:54:36,759
Speaker 2: thing that she'd be the most impressed by, is not,

1004
00:54:37,560 --> 00:54:41,920
Speaker 2: you know, the stuff on the resume, but that we

1005
00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:44,400
Speaker 2: got to find I'm saying we, me and her, we

1006
00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:50,920
Speaker 2: got to find a way through the difficult feelings because

1007
00:54:50,960 --> 00:54:54,240
Speaker 2: twenty year old me got stuck in them a lot

1008
00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:58,880
Speaker 2: and thought that they were the truth, or thought that

1009
00:54:58,920 --> 00:55:03,520
Speaker 2: the truth lay somewhere out there and someone else, a professor,

1010
00:55:03,560 --> 00:55:07,440
Speaker 2: a guidance counsel, or another student who performed better on

1011
00:55:07,480 --> 00:55:10,720
Speaker 2: that test than I did. I thought that the truth

1012
00:55:11,760 --> 00:55:15,560
Speaker 2: was someone else's job. And what I've learned is that

1013
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:19,080
Speaker 2: the answers are usually right here. And you know, it

1014
00:55:19,080 --> 00:55:22,200
Speaker 2: may sound a little cheesy, but it's absolutely the case.

1015
00:55:22,600 --> 00:55:24,480
Speaker 2: And I still have to remind myself of that. I'm

1016
00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:27,239
Speaker 2: not always going to remember like, oh yeah, yeah, it's

1017
00:55:27,360 --> 00:55:29,520
Speaker 2: I already know what I'm being led to do. But

1018
00:55:29,600 --> 00:55:32,200
Speaker 2: I think that she'd be the most kind of relieved that,

1019
00:55:32,360 --> 00:55:35,319
Speaker 2: like a you know, finally we figured this out, like,

1020
00:55:35,960 --> 00:55:38,600
Speaker 2: because when the answers are somewhere out there, it's like

1021
00:55:38,680 --> 00:55:40,880
Speaker 2: there's no way to be steady. I'm for those listening,

1022
00:55:40,960 --> 00:55:43,000
Speaker 2: I'm like moving back and forth like a weather vane.

1023
00:55:43,080 --> 00:55:47,520
Speaker 2: But when the truth is here, then I can be grounded.

1024
00:55:47,800 --> 00:55:49,840
Speaker 2: I like to be influenced by a lot of different

1025
00:55:49,880 --> 00:55:54,360
Speaker 2: philosophies beyond the practice of science, you know, in terms

1026
00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:59,439
Speaker 2: of like especially some Buddhist stuff, you know, And that's

1027
00:55:59,480 --> 00:56:01,799
Speaker 2: this idea of like being mountain solid, that I can

1028
00:56:01,840 --> 00:56:06,000
Speaker 2: be solid in myself no matter and mountains all sorts

1029
00:56:06,000 --> 00:56:09,360
Speaker 2: of weather. You see it in the mountain ranges, and

1030
00:56:09,480 --> 00:56:11,680
Speaker 2: yet the mountain is the mountain, and like that that's

1031
00:56:11,719 --> 00:56:14,160
Speaker 2: how I can be in my life. I think that's

1032
00:56:14,239 --> 00:56:20,160
Speaker 2: the biggest victory really beyond any material wealth or achievement,

1033
00:56:20,600 --> 00:56:24,440
Speaker 2: is being comfortable in my own skin and knowing that,

1034
00:56:24,520 --> 00:56:28,240
Speaker 2: regardless of how things turn out, like, I'm okay, wonderful.

1035
00:56:28,320 --> 00:56:30,000
Speaker 1: Well, now I just want to ask you for a

1036
00:56:30,000 --> 00:56:33,120
Speaker 1: few minutes about the future. Obviously we're on the cusp

1037
00:56:33,160 --> 00:56:36,239
Speaker 1: of understanding a lot of things about the universe. Where

1038
00:56:36,239 --> 00:56:40,719
Speaker 1: do you see exoplanet research in ten years, in twenty years?

1039
00:56:40,760 --> 00:56:43,520
Speaker 1: Is it impossible to predict because there are so many

1040
00:56:43,560 --> 00:56:46,120
Speaker 1: surprises ahead. What are we going to learn in ten

1041
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:48,000
Speaker 1: or fifteen years? It's going to blow our minds?

1042
00:56:48,239 --> 00:56:51,879
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know, it's impossible for us as

1043
00:56:51,880 --> 00:56:56,440
Speaker 2: scientists to really make predictions, or at least make predictions

1044
00:56:56,440 --> 00:56:59,840
Speaker 2: with very much, very much of a high percentage of confidence.

1045
00:57:00,640 --> 00:57:03,640
Speaker 2: But I have a belief. Okay, So I'm going to

1046
00:57:03,719 --> 00:57:06,120
Speaker 2: say right up front, this is a belief. This is

1047
00:57:06,160 --> 00:57:09,880
Speaker 2: not grounded in any kind of fact. I need evidence

1048
00:57:09,920 --> 00:57:11,440
Speaker 2: for that, and I don't have it. But knowing what

1049
00:57:11,560 --> 00:57:16,680
Speaker 2: I know about our capabilities and our current instrumentation, I

1050
00:57:16,680 --> 00:57:18,800
Speaker 2: think we're going to get a lot of exciting information

1051
00:57:18,880 --> 00:57:21,080
Speaker 2: in the next fifty years. I think some of that

1052
00:57:21,160 --> 00:57:25,840
Speaker 2: information could include an answer to this question. I've said

1053
00:57:25,880 --> 00:57:27,960
Speaker 2: something recently that I want to share here, which is,

1054
00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:32,080
Speaker 2: you know, think about the Apollo missions. We had a

1055
00:57:32,120 --> 00:57:35,040
Speaker 2: president at the time who gave us a mandate, which

1056
00:57:35,080 --> 00:57:38,120
Speaker 2: is to put a human He said man at the time,

1057
00:57:38,160 --> 00:57:40,440
Speaker 2: a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.

1058
00:57:41,360 --> 00:57:44,360
Speaker 2: And we did that. And we did that, and I

1059
00:57:44,400 --> 00:57:46,720
Speaker 2: think you've heard me say this before, but we did

1060
00:57:46,720 --> 00:57:51,720
Speaker 2: that with only a fraction of the world's population at

1061
00:57:51,760 --> 00:57:54,360
Speaker 2: the table allowed to participate at the table. And what

1062
00:57:54,400 --> 00:57:56,560
Speaker 2: I mean by that was, you know, the mission control

1063
00:57:56,720 --> 00:58:00,800
Speaker 2: was largely dominated in terms of gender and race. So

1064
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:04,000
Speaker 2: what would it be like for someone, perhaps the president

1065
00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:07,320
Speaker 2: of some country, whether it's ours or another country, to say,

1066
00:58:07,480 --> 00:58:09,000
Speaker 2: we are going to not only put a human on

1067
00:58:09,040 --> 00:58:11,800
Speaker 2: the we're going to actually answer this question, maybe even

1068
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:13,920
Speaker 2: put a human on another planet. But let's start with

1069
00:58:14,000 --> 00:58:16,000
Speaker 2: answering the question of are we alone. We're going to

1070
00:58:16,040 --> 00:58:19,840
Speaker 2: answer that question, whether it's by twenty seventy five or

1071
00:58:19,840 --> 00:58:22,640
Speaker 2: twenty one hundred, we're going to do this by this time.

1072
00:58:22,880 --> 00:58:26,840
Speaker 2: And we allowed every single person to be a part

1073
00:58:26,880 --> 00:58:31,320
Speaker 2: of this journey, regardless of their academic status, regardless of

1074
00:58:31,360 --> 00:58:34,840
Speaker 2: their race, their gender, whether they identify as any kind

1075
00:58:34,880 --> 00:58:39,080
Speaker 2: of gender, like age. You know, My Rising Stargirls program

1076
00:58:39,320 --> 00:58:42,200
Speaker 2: allows girls of all colors and backgrounds in the middle

1077
00:58:42,200 --> 00:58:47,600
Speaker 2: school age to create their own NASA inspired depictions of

1078
00:58:47,640 --> 00:58:50,960
Speaker 2: exoplanet environments. You know. So they're making their own artists

1079
00:58:51,000 --> 00:58:53,920
Speaker 2: depictions in the same way that NASA artists do, and

1080
00:58:53,960 --> 00:58:57,440
Speaker 2: some of their exoplanet art environments are environments that we

1081
00:58:57,480 --> 00:59:01,520
Speaker 2: could actually see out there, and they're making choices about

1082
00:59:01,800 --> 00:59:04,720
Speaker 2: what kind of you know, what kind of vegetation might

1083
00:59:04,760 --> 00:59:07,760
Speaker 2: be there. You know, just because they don't have that

1084
00:59:07,840 --> 00:59:11,920
Speaker 2: necessarily the academic status yet to be able to contribute

1085
00:59:12,200 --> 00:59:16,120
Speaker 2: in a quantifiable way to write a paper, does not

1086
00:59:16,240 --> 00:59:19,360
Speaker 2: mean that they don't possess the amount of imagination that

1087
00:59:19,680 --> 00:59:22,960
Speaker 2: could actually be quite inspirational in this effort. So I

1088
00:59:23,000 --> 00:59:25,800
Speaker 2: think it's important to expand or idea of who gets

1089
00:59:25,800 --> 00:59:27,880
Speaker 2: to participate, and we do that to some degree with

1090
00:59:27,920 --> 00:59:31,120
Speaker 2: citizen science projects. But I think we can learn a

1091
00:59:31,120 --> 00:59:33,680
Speaker 2: lot more about the universe if we invite a lot

1092
00:59:33,720 --> 00:59:34,880
Speaker 2: more people to be a part of it.

1093
00:59:34,960 --> 00:59:37,000
Speaker 1: Well. That leads directly to my second question, which is

1094
00:59:37,040 --> 00:59:38,919
Speaker 1: how do we do that how do we create more

1095
00:59:39,000 --> 00:59:43,240
Speaker 1: paths for creative students, students that have artistic background, students

1096
00:59:43,280 --> 00:59:47,640
Speaker 1: that have unusual paths, students that are not just white dudes.

1097
00:59:48,240 --> 00:59:50,600
Speaker 1: What do we do to open up this institution to

1098
00:59:50,640 --> 00:59:53,920
Speaker 1: make it easier for people like you coming in the future.

1099
00:59:54,280 --> 00:59:56,960
Speaker 2: You know what, I want to say that that is

1100
00:59:57,000 --> 01:00:00,520
Speaker 2: probably not my job to answer that question. I think

1101
01:00:00,560 --> 01:00:02,360
Speaker 2: it might be the job of the people who are

1102
01:00:02,400 --> 01:00:06,640
Speaker 2: in the dominant category. And the same way that you know,

1103
01:00:06,680 --> 01:00:09,920
Speaker 2: when we had our Black Lives Matter resurgence in the

1104
01:00:09,960 --> 01:00:13,160
Speaker 2: twenty and twenty twenty, I was grateful that UCI was

1105
01:00:13,200 --> 01:00:14,960
Speaker 2: one of I won't say few, but it was an

1106
01:00:14,960 --> 01:00:19,920
Speaker 2: institution that recognized that it wasn't the job of black people,

1107
01:00:20,320 --> 01:00:24,760
Speaker 2: whether faculty, your students, to devise ways to allow black

1108
01:00:24,760 --> 01:00:28,120
Speaker 2: people to thrive and institutions that the fact is that

1109
01:00:28,840 --> 01:00:31,600
Speaker 2: a lot of us carry a big burden just to

1110
01:00:31,680 --> 01:00:35,040
Speaker 2: be in the instant environments that we're in and to

1111
01:00:35,160 --> 01:00:37,720
Speaker 2: ask us to shoulder the you know, the burden of

1112
01:00:37,960 --> 01:00:41,280
Speaker 2: how do we get more diversity? Here is another burden

1113
01:00:41,600 --> 01:00:44,440
Speaker 2: and another example of how we have less time to

1114
01:00:44,480 --> 01:00:46,320
Speaker 2: do the actual work that we need to be able

1115
01:00:46,320 --> 01:00:48,440
Speaker 2: to stay in these institutions. What I will say is

1116
01:00:48,480 --> 01:00:52,640
Speaker 2: that having a progressive viewpoint and showing that progressive viewpoint

1117
01:00:52,720 --> 01:00:56,600
Speaker 2: to interested students is a start. So University of Washington,

1118
01:00:56,680 --> 01:00:59,400
Speaker 2: when I was a prospective student, one of the reasons

1119
01:00:59,400 --> 01:01:01,040
Speaker 2: why I wanted to come there is because they had

1120
01:01:01,040 --> 01:01:03,080
Speaker 2: a broader idea of who a grad student can be.

1121
01:01:03,360 --> 01:01:06,120
Speaker 2: They had people students there who had gone into the

1122
01:01:06,160 --> 01:01:09,240
Speaker 2: Peace Corps before coming back to grad school. One student

1123
01:01:09,280 --> 01:01:12,760
Speaker 2: had gone to pastry school, And so I thought, maybe

1124
01:01:12,800 --> 01:01:15,840
Speaker 2: I'm not as much of a rare magical unicorn as

1125
01:01:15,840 --> 01:01:18,880
Speaker 2: I think I am. You know, so the more we

1126
01:01:19,000 --> 01:01:23,680
Speaker 2: can maybe highlight those sorts of paths, the more people

1127
01:01:23,800 --> 01:01:27,160
Speaker 2: might be gravitate to our departments and say, Okay, there's

1128
01:01:27,160 --> 01:01:30,280
Speaker 2: a place for me here. Role models are powerful, and

1129
01:01:30,760 --> 01:01:33,880
Speaker 2: a lack of role models is a powerful thing too.

1130
01:01:34,120 --> 01:01:36,120
Speaker 1: Thank you one. Thank you for being a role model

1131
01:01:36,160 --> 01:01:39,040
Speaker 1: for the future, and thanks for coming on the podcast

1132
01:01:39,040 --> 01:01:42,200
Speaker 1: to talk about your science and your story and for

1133
01:01:42,240 --> 01:01:45,440
Speaker 1: doing it with such eloquance and such Kinder, thanks very.

1134
01:01:45,440 --> 01:01:47,600
Speaker 2: Much, Thanks so much for having me. It's been a

1135
01:01:47,600 --> 01:01:48,880
Speaker 2: real pleasure to talk with you.

1136
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:52,360
Speaker 1: That was my conversation with Professor Almawah Shields her book

1137
01:01:52,520 --> 01:01:55,560
Speaker 1: Life on Other Planets is a fantastic read, not just

1138
01:01:55,600 --> 01:01:58,160
Speaker 1: for the science, but also for her fascinating story of

1139
01:01:58,200 --> 01:02:01,600
Speaker 1: an unusual path into act. I hope you all find

1140
01:02:01,640 --> 01:02:12,960
Speaker 1: it inspiring. Thanks very much for listening. Thanks for listening,

1141
01:02:12,960 --> 01:02:15,680
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe. Is

1142
01:02:15,720 --> 01:02:20,320
Speaker 1: a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit

1143
01:02:20,360 --> 01:02:24,440
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

1144
01:02:24,480 --> 01:02:25,480
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.