Cara Santa Maria: Hello everyone, and welcome to Talk Nerdy. It is Monday July 11th, and I’m your host, Cara Santa Maria. This week, I want to give a shout out to those of you who made Talk Nerdy possible including those of you who visited w
ww.patreon.com/talknerdy and pledged your support of the show at the highest level. I want to thank Phil Thibert and Timothy Glover and additional supporters include: Rod Adams, Charles Payet, Japh, The Honourable Husband, Gabriel Felipe Jaramillo Gonzalez, Ken Pfeifer, Brian Holden and Jeffrey Sewell. You know what guys, there are literally like hundreds more of you. I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for making TN possible and for continuing to allow it to be 100% free to download. You know what? I’m really excited about my guest this week, so I’m ready to dive right in. She has the coolest title; she’s the Deputy Director of Science for Communication at NASA headquarters. Without any further ado, here she is: Dr. Michelle Thaller. Michelle, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and chat with me ­­ remotely across the country ­­ today. Dr. Michelle Thaller: Hey, anything that has “nerdy” in the title, I’m there. I’m very happy to be here. Cara: I am so excited, so, I literally just got back from a camping trip like a few minutes ago. So I apologize in advance if my voice is a little scratchy and my head is not quite, my processing speed isn’t quite up to snuff today ­­ been sleeping on the ground. But we had such a wonderful time. Drove up about 5 hours in California and brought the telescope, so we could do some stargazing, and it was just lovely. How often, in your job working for NASA, do you actually get to sit back and and look up at the stars? Michelle: Oh Hardly ever at my job, you know. I just took my husband to Botswana for his 60th birthday, and I absolutely adore the southern sky. It just just gives me fits. I mean, I was in Chile about a year ago, up by ALMA. So, you know, very very high altitude, very dry desert, and there was a night there. It was a moonless night, and somebody pointed out that we actually had these faint little shadows that we were casting, and it was a shadow from the Milky Way. Cara: No… Michelle: The Milky Way was so bright that there was a shadow. So, I used to be a research astronomer. Basically right after I got my doctorate, I did a lot of research at different telescopes, but then I sort of got into the space telescopes end of things. Unfortunately there, you don’t get to go to the telescope. Cara: Yeah, but you get to tell the story. So, so maybe for people who aren’t familiar, let us know what is your job title at NASA. Michelle: At the moment, it’s Deputy Director of Science for Communications. So there’s a number of people that are at headquarters, and they have different roles as scientists, and I have kind of a unique one. I mean, there there really hasn’t really been anybody in this job before, it’s one of the jobs you have to make for yourself. Cara: Mmhmm Michelle: Where, you know, you say “Okay, well I’m a scientist, but I really really want to focus on how we do communication so that’s sort of a job title I wrote myself.” Cara: And so, it’s very different than what we think of as traditional publicity, you know. I think a lot of people who read the Martian and then watched the movie and they think of this Kristen Wiig character, right? This person who is there to communicate to the public what’s going on at NASA, but she’s a full publicist. She doesn’t seem to have any scientific training whatsoever. Michelle: That’s right, and we have people whose expertise is more like that at NASA, so we have people that know about social media, or they know about traditional news media, press releases, all of that. They know about managing the message, making sure we have the consistency and everything is correct, and we’re doing everything correct politically, and that’s actually not me, you know. I have this rather odd position of being the person that kind of provides the narrative for the science. And most of the job, like everything else is planning, and budgets, and begging for money, and trying to figure out metrics, and are we doing the right thing. But very occasionally, like last weekend with Juno, I get a chance to actually tell the story. And that is my absolute favorite part of the job Cara: I think it’s so wonderful too that the administration at NASA understands why it’s so necessary. I think the one thing that NASA has always done such a wonderful job of is just getting the fact that science can’t exist in a vacuum. And that, if the public doesn’t appreciate the science, and if the public isn’t aware of the stories behind the science, that they’re not going to be interested in contributing funding. They’re not going to be interested in, you know, getting, I think, emotionally behind a lot of the missions. And NASA, more than I feel like any other public institution, definitely more than most universities and most other organizations that actively do science really understand that. They were just decades ahead when it comes to science communication. Michelle: Well, there’s certainly no other federal organization that has the sort of public footprint we do, and that is very deliberate. That doesn’t just happen. We have a staff of people, it’s a big investment you... I occasionally, I get comments online people will say “But remember, you guys are using,” you know, “tax money to do this.” And I think what people don’t understand is that that’s never far out of our mind. We very much understand how lucky we are to be exploring the universe, and yeah this is funded by public money, and that’s something that there’s no option here: We have to take the public along we have to make them feel invested. And yes, part of it is to get more funding, to get the public support, but that’s not why I’m doing it. That’s not what I think about. I mean, I really ­­ this sounds a bit, in some ways sort of an arrogant scientist thing to say ­­ but I really do think people’s lives are made better by this, and that’s why I want them along with us for that. Cara: Absolutely, and since you’re a headquarters, you’re in DC, correct? Michelle: That right, correct. Cara: Since you’re there you get to communicate science from across the different NASA campuses. You know we’ve got a lot of really interesting stuff that happens all over the spectrum, and Juno is something I think was very close to the hearts and minds of the individuals out here in California because there was so much great stuff happening at JPL. And it really reminds us, I think, of the landing of curiosity. I feel like it had a taste of that sort of excitement especially in the social world. Michelle: It did. I mean you know, obviously you know, the Curiosity landing was even more dramatic. You know putting putting something into orbit around Jupiter is amazingly cool, and of course there are difficulties, but it’s not anything like landing something with a Sky Crane. And so I mean, you know the night Juno went into orbit around Jupiter was a little bit of, in some ways, it wasn’t quite as exciting as Curiosity, but I have to say: My anxiety level was nothing like it was for Curiosity. When I first saw the plans for how they were going to land Curiosity, you know, and then it has to get the radar, it’s gotta get the right distances, and then we take the Sky Crane, the Sky Crane has to bring it down, then we detach, we gotta fly away. I just looked at that and said, “What the hell?” And you know I understand they’re brilliant engineers who thought we could do this, but that was one of those things where I’m not sure I would have put good money on it actually working. And when it did, and I realized the magnitude of the accomplishment. That was a moment in my life where I sort of hardly remember it because I was screaming and jumping up, and I was out of control. I mean my mind turned off, and I was just screaming and jumping up and down. And you know, that doesn’t happen all that often in your life, where you just get taken away, and the night that for Juno on July 4th was a flavor for that, was a taste of that. I definitely felt the joy, but I’m also really glad I wasn’t as worried as I was the night curiosity landed. Cara: I’ll tell you what, when Curiosity landed, so at the time I was doing science reporting for the Huffington Post, and I was lucky enough to have an interview with Adam Steltzner, who was the engineer of course in charge of entry, descent, and landing... Michelle: Yup, yup. Cara: So all the crazy sky crane stuff, and he was so confident when I interviewed him. And I was like okay it was after the “Seven Minutes of Terror” video that was so exciting. And it’s true, I think, in many ways it was my generation’s moon landing because not until that point did I experience people my age, people in their 20s and 30s, tuning into NASA TV. People, you know, really watching with bated breath to see exactly what was going to happen and tears of joy celebrations. I mean the Twitter storm that occurred that night was such a testament to the fact that, kind of, all is not lost when it comes to excitement about science in America. Sometimes, we can get a little bit disheartened. I think we can get a little bit cynical about the American view of science and scientific inquiry I think that the Curiosity landing really reinforced to me, at least that the public cares, they really do. They just have to be communicated to in the appropriate way. It’s amazing how much things have changed. I mean Curiosity landed what about two and a half years ago. And I forget exactly what our Twitter footprint was that night, but it was nothing what it was like for New Horizons when we flew by Pluto for the first time. For the one week surrounding the Pluto flyby our twitter footprints was 12 billion. Cara: No… that’s insane. Michelle: So, it actually just shows you how social media has changed. Cara: Completely. Michelle: Even two and a half years ago you didn’t get the numbers on social media you do now. Cara: Yeah and just really the power of imagery. You know, there’s just something about being able to see what we couldn’t see before and seeing this resolving power. I mean, getting back those images of Pluto. And going like, “Oh my god, that’s what it actually looks like.” It’s not just this pixelated, rocky, you know, icy thing that none of us could really put our fingers on. That was just so stunning. Michelle: We’d never seen that world before. That was a whole place, I mean, people knew the name, people knew about it, but nobody had ever seen it. But even something like Curiosity, you know, we routinely get these beautiful panoramas back of Mars. In fact, they’re so good that you know at JPL they use Microsoft HoloLens virtual­reality glasses to actually put on the science team. They actually just put these headsets on, and the science team can walk around where the rover is and... Cara: That’s incredible. Michelle: And they can say like, “Oh let’s go over this hill. Let’s look at that rock.” Because it actually just makes it an easier way to do operations when all the science team can just all see the same images at once. But you know, the thing that I just have to stop people, just stop a moment, you know this is not Nevada, this is not somewhere in Arizona, this on another planet. And we have a car sized, nuclear powered, LASER shooting robot, and you know, there are people every morning who are going into work, putting on their HoloLens headsets and figuring out the science plan for the day. And it’s not… this is, on another freaking planet, and I don’t think people really get how amazing that is. Cara: And I think a big part of that is taking the time to just stop and look up. And this is something I had Summer Ash, she’s an astronomer who runs outreach at Columbia University. I had her on the podcast recently, and it was so amazing hearing her talk about the fact that even in the middle of New York City you can stop and look up and you can see Jupiter, you know. Michelle: You can see the moon. Just look at the moon. Cara: You can see the moon. And there’s a chance you can see Mars even in a city with so much light pollution. Here in Los Angeles, I can always spot Mars. It’s so obvious when you stop and look up, and I remember when we were camping, one of the girls that was with us made a joke, you know we pointed out Mars when the sun first set, and she made a joke and kind of waved and said “Hi,” you know, “Hello robots.” And another girl who was with us who is another science communicator said, “You know let’s stop and think about the fact that that is a planet that is entirely populated by robots.” Michelle: As far as, as far as we know. Cara: Exactly. Michelle: I’m still holding out for the microbes. I’m totally holding out for the martian microbes. Cara: And there’s, now that we have a good idea about the water content, there’s, you know, there’s a chance. There’s a real chance. Michelle: Well yeah, well there’s more than a chance. I mean, you know, I think obviously it’s nothing that we’ve found yet or that we’ve proven yet, but if you think about how much life is in the rock here, is in the regolith, all of these very very extreme microscopic bacteria that actually live down in the rocks, in some cases miles down, it just seems to me that there’s... If life started here, why not on Mars? And it could easily have survived even the catastrophic climate change that Mars went through. So I’m really hoping by the end of my lifetime we have a solid example of an entirely different kind of life. Cara: How incredible that we get to be alive during a time when so much knowledge is uncovered because of the tools that we have, because of the amount of processing power that we have, that nobody else has had access to in any of the millennia leading up until now. The incredible discoveries we get to be privy to, and I think this Juno flyby really fits in that sort of bucket, so I’d love to take a few minutes to chat about that. Goodness, I guess maybe we can start with the quick and dirty of what actually happened just six days ago now. Michelle: Well, about five years ago, pretty much exactly, it was in August 2011 we launched the Juno spacecraft and took it, you know, a little less than five years to get out there. And yes, on July 4th, and that was just a coincidence. I mean we didn’t pick the exact moment, we had a couple days of launch window, it could have gone off any day in that launch window, but it just so happened that it got there on July 4th, and it fired its main engine and slowed itself down and allowed itself to be captured by Jupiter’s gravity, you know, in the sense that it now is in orbit around Jupiter, and we hope it will survive for about another 20 months so yeah that was the night that we went into orbit around Jupiter. Cara: And what is the purpose, or I should say the ultimate goal, of having this ­­ is it a probe? ­­ this probe orbiting Jupiter? Michelle: Well, there’s no scientific question that exists as this isolated little thing. I mean, we’re not stamp collectors ­­ no offense to stamp collectors ­­ in the sense that we’re just trying to see every planet or characterize, or you know. You don’t get information for no reason other than “Hey, it’s cool, we’re around Jupiter.” In the case of Jupiter, there are so many questions about how did our solar system form, and what does it tell us about the other solar systems we’re now seeing around other stars? And Jupiter appears to be really really key because it’s so massive. Its mass is more than twice all the other planets combined. So when we were forming planets early in the solar system four and a half billion years ago. Jupiter really sucked up most of the material that was forming planets. And we thought we understood fairly well, like when I was in college before we actually discovered exoplanets planets in other solar systems. We noticed that there were lots of little rocky planets that were close to the sun and when you got farther out: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. There were these big gassy planets, that made sense because the sun would have blown all the lighter material all the methane and the water and the ices out to the outer solar system. So that it made sense, right? We thought that we got it, and then the very first solar system we find outside ours there’s a planet like 8 times the size of Jupiter inside the orbit of Mercury. Like, what the hell? That’s not what we thought was going to happen. So now, we suspect that Jupiter did not form where it did now. It may have formed farther out. We think it may have come in as far as the orbit of Mars. That’s actually one of the reasons Mars is so small ­­ it only has a tenth of the mass of the Earth ­­ because Jupiter kind of ate its lunch when things were forming. Cara: Wow. Michelle: And there’s all of this mysterious record inside Jupiter about what happened four and a half billion years ago when the planets were starting to form, and we don’t know about the interior very much. We don’t know if it has a solid core. We don’t know whether it formed first or whether it formed later, or whether it took a long time to form. I mentioned we don’t know how it’s moved around. So understanding Jupiter is going to help us understand, not only our own solar system’s formation, but it’s going to help us interpret all these other hundreds and thousands of other solar systems that we’re studying now. Cara: And what are some of the ways that we will be able to understand Jupiter, you know what are some of the scientific instruments that are on board juno that are going to help send back data. Michelle: It’s got this whole suite of science instruments. So, I mean, one of the things I’m really excited about ­­ it sounds a little technical ­­ I’m excited about the microwave radiometer. Jupiter is actually still forming; it has not completely formed. It’s still crushing itself together under the force of gravity. And as it does that, it releases heat. And that means that the farther down into the interior you go the clouds get hotter and hotter. And we’ve tuned this microwave detector to be able to actually look down 100s of miles into the clouds. We hope it’s going to get down about 500 miles. And these different wavelengths of microwaves are going to sample different layers of Jupiter. What are the wind speeds? How far down does the red spot go? You know, what is the interior structure like ­­ at least 500 miles into the clouds? And then for deeper than that, we’re going to be studying its magnetic field. That will have clues about what’s going on even deeper and then ­­ this is just kind of clever ­­ the very very central core, you know thousands of miles down beneath a huge sea of liquid hydrogen there may or may not be this solid little planet and it... Did Jupiter form as a little rocky planet and then accumulate a big atmosphere, or is that not right? Or did it form more like a star? In which case it maybe doesn’t have a solid core, and the only way that we’re sensing that is by the gravitational fields that every time Juno does one of these super close passes ­­ it goes careening over the clouds at an altitude of about 2600 miles, and as it does so, each dive one after the other, there’ll be a slight bumpiness to the gravity which will over time help us actually sample what the deep interior core is all the way down to the middle. And that will tell us a lot about Jupiter. Right there, just the gravity. Cara: I had no idea that that was even an idea. You know, I think I always thought of Jupiter as this big ­­ you know. It’s a gas giant. That’s how we always worded it, and I just assumed that if you had the most insane spacecraft ever that had most insane shielding ever that you could just fly right through it. I never even thought about the potential for there to be rocky matter in the core. Michelle: Well it’s funny it’s a bit of a misnomer. I mean none of the gas giants are actually made of gas. Cara: Uh huh? Michelle: I mean, all of them, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, get very dense very quickly, and they’re mostly liquid. So you go down, just a couple hundreds of miles into Jupiter’s atmosphere ­­ and I mean, for a little bit of calibration, the diameter’s about 12x the diameter of Earth, so a couple hundred miles down is just a little bit into Jupiter ­­ already, you get to crushing pressures and temperatures temperatures that are in the 1000s of degrees atmospheric pressure similar to what you would find on Venus, something that would just crush you flat. And then, in the case of Jupiter, very quickly becomes liquid hydrogen, and then only about a third of the way down into the interior we think it becomes, this is kind of weird, liquid metallic hydrogen ­­ that when you take hydrogen and you super compress it ­­ high temperatures, super compression ­­ you can actually force the atoms to make metallic bonds and you actually get metallic hydrogen. Cara: Wow. Michelle: So, and we think that’s true of Saturn. It may not be so much true of Uranus and Neptune. Those are probably more just liquid and not so much metallic, but Jupiter is mostly metal. Cara: That’s so cool. And Jupiter… Michelle: Yeah, really hot metal. Cara: Really, really hot metal and Jupiter... Speaking of hot metal, I once had the opportunity to interview Don Pettit, when he was on the ISS, and I asked him what space smells like. I had sourced a bunch of questions from my listeners. I was like “What is the smell of space?” And he said, “You know when you’re on a space walk ­­ obviously you can smell anything cause you’re in your suit ­­ but sometimes, when you’re just in the airlock after you’ve closed the outer doors but you haven’t closed the inner doors, you can smell this hot metal smell.” And I think that might be what space smells like. Michelle: It’s funny, you know. In the interstellar medium, in the gas between stars, we find all kinds of molecules, but some of the ones that are prevalent are these things called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons which are actually the same thing as burnt toast and we also find the same sort of compounds again these are organic molecules that are the same things in mothballs and uh Cara: Oh funny. Michelle: We find alcohols. I mean so we find all kinds of stinky, sooty, really you know, obviously space is so sparse the human nose ­­ well you’d be dead for one thing ­­ if the human nose could detect it. But if you actually could smell it, it would smell like burnt toast and mothballs and alcohol and formaldehyde. We found formaldehyde up there. Cara: That amazing. That’s not very pleasant, is it? Michelle: It’s kind of neat though. Cara: It is fascinating actually and Jupiter, actually, you mentioned that like Saturn ­­ you know ­­ it has this kind of liquid potentially core, but maybe there’s actually a rocky core as well. Jupiter also has rings, doesn’t it? And we never talk about those rings of Jupiter. Michelle: Well, we were certainly thinking about them the night that Juno went into orbit because we really sort of hoping that we wouldn’t have any trouble with the rings. Cara: That you didn’t crash into them. Michelle: Well yeah, exactly, so the rings are very, very sparse. They’re nothing like Saturn’s rings, I mean, they weren’t even discovered until we actually went out to Jupiter, and that was the only time we could see them. And they’re not very well characterized, they’re very difficult to see, and so we’re not really sure how far down towards the planet they extend. Now, we were pretty sure there have been others, Galileo was orbiting Jupiter for a while the Galileo mission, but there was a risk as Juno went down towards Jupiter that we could have hit particles from the ring and even tiny little particles. We were travelling at tremendous speeds, and even just a little piece of dust in the wrong place could have been bad. So we were, we were happy that didn’t happen. Cara: Oh definitely! I mean, I know that there’s always the fear just on the ISS anytime that there’s a mission that the tiniest little speck of dust, when you’re going that fast, can have these horrible implications. Michelle: Oh yeah, yeah. Cara: So, what about the moons around Jupiter? Jupiter has a lot of moons, doesn’t it? Michelle: It has over 60, yeah. I would imagine there’s a chance we’ll discover more. You never know what more will be discovered. Some of them are so far out that they’re actually quite hard to see, but it has these four whopping huge ones that were some of the first things Galileo ever saw with a telescope, and I think, again, people don’t really understand the size and the importance of these. Ganymede, which is the largest moon in the solar system, is very close to the size of the planet Mars Cara: Wow. Michelle: So, you know these things would be planets if they weren’t around something bigger. And so you’ve got Io, which is the most volcanically active body in the solar system; Europa, which has this vast under­ice ocean, this warm salt water ocean that we think has organic chemistry going on; and then you’ve got Callisto and Ganymede, and both of those have a lot of potential to have a lot of water underneath their icy shells. There’s some controversy because this is very much a remote sensing measurement, but the Hubble Space Telescope thinks that by observing the auroras ­­ the northern and southern lights ­­ on Ganymede, by looking at how the auroras move over the surface, they think it must the electricity must traveling through a 60 mile deep conducting ocean, so sixty miles of saltwater. And if that’s true, that means that Ganymede has by far the most amount of liquid water in the solar system. Cara: And Ganymede, you mentioned, is the largest of all of those Galilean moons but it seems like we often turn our attentions toward Europa. Is that because Europa was the first moon in which we knew ­­ or in which we had good evidence to support the idea ­­ that there is a liquid water ocean? Michelle: Well certainly, well Europa captures our imagination because, well, first Voyager, and then Galileo went by. You know the measurements, especially of the magnetic field, pretty much confirmed that there had to be a lot far more than the earth has and so that was the first place that we realized the earth is not very special. I mean, we’re special in that we have liquid water on the surface. But we don’t have the most liquid water. And the cracks, when you look at the color of the ice coming up in the cracks: There’s this sort of rusty color that we think is due to salt and possibly organics, and so I think you know Europa really captured our imagination. And actually, in both the cases of Callisto and Ganymede, if there’s water there, it has to be very far under the surface. So Europa is still a place where the water is much more accessible. We’re not exactly sure how thick the ice is. It could be tens of miles; it could be hundreds of miles. But there’s again, the Hubble Space Telescope appears to have some evidence that some bits of it are venting water vapor. Cara: Wow. Michelle: So, there may be. It’s a little bit of a comparison to the moon of Saturn, Enceladus, where the water is actually flying out of the cracks, and I mean, in the case of Enceladus, the water is just flying out. In the case of Europa, there may be places where something similar is going on. Cara: I noticed recently. I think many of the people who listen to this podcast, and who potentially follow some of the social media that I do and a lot of the science communicators in my network, we’ve been seeing this image that was released of Jupiter, a Hubble image. I’m assuming it’s a composite image of data collected by Hubble of this insane aurora on Jupiter’s north pole. Michelle: Oh yeah, you’re right. That is a composite image. There’s an image in visible light, taken by Hubble of the cloud tops and the colors of Jupiter, and I ­­ sorry that blows me away Hubble Space Telescope is here in Earth orbit, and it takes these absolutely freaking beautiful pictures of... Cara: Yeah. It’s insane. Michelle: Yeah. Cara: I’m so glad it got 5 more years extended onto its life because I just can’t wait to see what else it gives us. Michelle: Those pictures of Jupiter are lovely. And you’re right, the aurora’s are taken in ultraviolet light, so it’s a different filter. And you can just see these huge, changeable, dancing... They actually released a movie of the auroras. And in the case of Jupiter, one of the things that’s so amazing about the auroras is that there are these “footprints” ­­ they call them ­­ where these big tubes of electrical flux connect Jupiter with its major moons: Io, Callisto, Ganymede... and you can actually see these little hotspots in the aurora follow the moons as they orbit around Jupiter. Cara: Wow. Michelle: And, like I said, this possible detection of water underneath the surface of G
anymede that all comes from observing the auroras. So, I’m sure as Juno flies directly over the poles ­­ right above the auroras ­­ we’re going to get this incredible detail, and I imagine we’re going to find out things about how the entire solar system magnetically and electrically works together. Cara: Is Juna out. Juna, ha! Michelle: Juno. Cara: Juno. Although, she is female, Juno. Michelle: Absolutely. Cara: Is Juno outfitted with really strong cameras to take images in the visual, visible light spectrum? Are we going to be getting, you know, the same kinds of beautiful images with a higher resolving power as we saw, for example when cassini flew by? Michelle: Well, this is something that I’m kind of waiting to see exactly what the images kind of look like myself. When it comes to observing things like the auroras, we actually do have both UV and Ultraviolet instruments that are specially tuned to the radiation from the auroras. The only visible light camera is one that was put on, interestingly enough, for public involvement. Cara: Oh cool. Michelle: Yeah, its called JunoCam. And JunoCam is not part of the main science goals of Juno, but I think someone wisely said: If we’re going all the way out to Jupiter, we probably better bring a visible light camera, so people can really feel like they’re out there and be involved. And so JunoCam because of the proximity ­­ it’s going to get so close to Jupiter ­­ JunoCam should take the highest resolution images of the clouds ever taken. Cara: Wow. Michelle: Now, what I don’t know is exactly what those images will look like. I mean we, it’s not ­­ you know ­­ our very best high­resolution, optical camera. It’s not. It’s a smaller instrument. But I’m hoping. I’m hoping they’ll be spectacular. I really am. Cara: And the idea that, that’s there as a public facing project, is there citizen science involved? Michelle: Well, there’s certainly citizen involvement. They’re going to be showing people, I think sort of different maps of the clouds that JunoCam takes, and then, they’re going to ask people to vote on which images they’d like to take better resolution, more in­depth images of. And so, the public will actually ­­ this will be accessed through the Juno website at NASA starting in November, you can start voting for: “Oh yeah, that bit over there where there’s this interesting brown stripe in the clouds, I think we should look at that.” And it’s not so much citizen science as something that’s really important to NASA. And citizen science is when the public actually helps us analyze our data, and the idea is we need people to help us do this analysis. And the analysis is actually for a specific scientific goal. For example at Hubble Space Telescope there’s an activity called Galaxy Zoo, where you help us classify the shapes of tiny little distant galaxies. They’re only tiny because they’re so far away, they’re actually huge. But um, we actually do statistics about the morphology of galaxies how the shapes change over time ­­ how the universe evolves. In the case of JunoCam, it’s not so much citizen science as it is citizen involvement. We want people to feel like they have a voice in what are we going to take pictures of. What do you like best? And obviously, whatever images come in, you know the planetary scientists will be poring over them with bated breath at discovering new things all the time. Cara: And not just the planetary scientists at NASA, planetary scientists all over the world. That’s such a cool thing about a public institution like NASA is that the data that’s collected is freely shared with scientists and citizens alike. Michelle: Yep, in some ways, I often sort of hope that, like, world leaders would step up and say “Don’t you dare defund NASA.” Because, when you think about what NASA does, there’s obviously all the exploration of space and the planets, and all that is wonderful, and you’re right, I mean, this helps support scientific inquiry all over the planet. You know, we’ve done the statistics about how much of world science has some involvement of NASA data. Its staggering. Of course the majority of stuff does. But then there’s the more close up and personal part is that nobody is monitoring the climate of the Earth like NASA is. We have on the order of twenty satellites that are doing nothing but tracking things like the melt of the Greenland ice sheet, the change in the ocean currents, the change in the jetstream, air pollution levels. I mean we’re monitoring forest fires in the rainforests of Brazil. And then we’ve got a hotline to the Brazilian government if we actually see anything. You know, I think that people don’t really realize what a unique world treasure NASA is. Cara: It’s true, we think always of these instruments being trained into outward. We have a good friend here in our core group that we call the Nerd Brigade, named Holly Bender. She was on the podcast quite a long time ago; it might be time to get her back on. And she’s a JPL optics engineer. She makes optics for imaging spectrometers. We call her The Mistress of Space Rainbows, and... I know, isn’t it so good. Michelle: Very nice. Cara: And, one of the projects she more recently worked on was just that, a spectrometer that went in a plane that flew overhead, that showed us more data about emissions from our own forests from the trees that are growing here on Earth. You know, to be able to get that kind of data: There’s a whole, there’s a whole climate science ­­ you know ­­ section. There’s a whole climate science focus of NASA that, you’re right, I don’t think a lot of people realize is part of the overall mission of the organization. Michelle: Well absolutely, and even there’s climate change, and then there’s something as simple as a hurricane where, when there is a hurricane going: NASA, of course we have satellites like the global precipitation monitoring satellite that has these special radar bands tuned to actually make a CAT scan, a 3D image of everything that’s actually going on inside the hurricane. Cara: Cool. Michelle: Then we actually have drones. We have Global Hawk drones. The drones that are as big as a 737 as far as the wingspan. And we fly those into the hurricane, and then, we have people in human aircraft that are dropping probes into the hurricane. So every time there’s a hurricane, I mean, NASA’s on it, like three ways. Cara: Wow, that’s like a major improvement over the technology in that movie “Twister.” I’m thinking back to those little probes that they had to cut out. Michelle: That get sucked up into the... Cara: Yeah! They had to cut out the little Coke cans in order for it to fly. Wow, we’ve really stepped up our game, haven’t we? That’s really really impressive. Um, I have to say that I think it’s so cool that you get to bridge that divide ­­ you know, that divide between the scientists who are really working hard every day collecting data, analyzing data, creatively coming up with new ways to learn about our own planet and about obviously the cosmos beyond. And you get to help spread the message to the public, that’s so incredibly necessary. What’s your favorite part of your job? Michelle: Well, you know, it’s like everything in life. Things are complicated, you know? I very much like what I do. There’s always this little bit of me that has the imposter syndrome. You know, I noticed that when I was being interviewed for Juno, they would say things like “And here’s planetary scientist Michelle Thaller.” Well, I’m an astrophysicist actually. And I understand to the public, that’s not a big differential, but in my profession, that’s huge. And I’m always trying to gear how much I start slapping people down and saying “oh no no no no that’s not my expertise I don’t really belong here.” I mean, NASA didn’t really have this job, I thought that this was important. I thought that somebody needed to tell the story. And I’m the one that kind of beat down the doors and said “Hey, you know, there’s a place for me here, I think I belong here.” And I’ve had to sell myself and I’ve had to sell the idea that what I do is a useful thing to do. And it’s… there’s always the struggle with myself. Did I fail as a scientist? Should I have been on more of a pure research track? Is it too arrogant of me to say, “Let me help you tell the story?” I think that what I want to tell people out there is that there’s some absolutely wonderful jobs when you say “This is a skill I have, I don’t see anybody else doing this, and I’d really like to try to make myself useful.” But don’t look at me and think that I don’t constantly doubt whether that was the right path to take and whether I really am useful. So, you know, it is a very interesting job. And it’s also one that I’ve never really gotten over the insecurities of. Cara: I have to say that: That really strikes a chord with me. You know, probably a vast majority of the people that I have on the podcast are science communicators first and foremost. That’s what I consider my career trajectory. And again, you’re right, like many people who work in sci­comm feel like, they’re sort of forging their own path because it’s such a nascent field, and it’s such a field that a lot of people don’t understand why it’s necessary, until they get the outcome of it. And I have so many friends who came from different places. I, myself, have a background in neuroscience but didn’t finish my PhD before I switched gears. I have a lot of friends who did their PhDs and maybe even did Postdocs before they decided to switch gears, and then I have friends and colleagues who were journalists or have comms degrees or never even went to college who are now working as professional science communicators. And that imposter syndrome plagues anybody who has ever had a toe in academia. Michelle: Yes. Cara: You know it’s ­­ it’s so there for everybody, but you’re right. It’s such an important field, and it’s so wonderful to have the chance to talk to people who wear that hat in different areas, and to see that there are so many things I think that connect us. And there are so many things that we all sort of deal with, and I wouldn’t be surprised if people listening to this show who don’t work in science at all, who are purely just interested in the sciences, but have other jobs don’t feel a little bit of that imposter syndrome as well in their chosen careers. Michelle: I think the idea that there’s no way to be a scientist. There’s no personality, you know. I kept getting told all the way through my education that I didn’t have the right personality to be a scientist. And, the universe doesn’t give a damn. You know, the universe doesn’t care how we’ve culturally defined science. You know, about who gets to do it. Do you need a doctorate? Do you not need a doctorate? You’re okay, the way you are. Your curiosity, your connection to the universe is worth just as much as anybody else’s. And nothing needs to change for you to be a scientist. Just look up. Cara: Oh my god, I love that so much. And you were featured, weren’t you? In the PBS show “The Secret Lives of Scientists and Engineers.” Michelle: Oh yes! That was pretty embarrassing. I mean, no. I’m very... I love dancing and “The Secret Lives of Scientists and Engineers” featured me doing my renaissance dancing. The problem is the renaissance dances are these intricate variations on mathematical patterns that my math brain just loves. But they,.. you do them with like 20 people, and when I was in the studio alone, and I was just kind of stepping around and hopping around, you don’t really get the sense of what it’s like. Your brain just goes there’s this incredible feeling of inclusion and concentration, and you just lose yourself when you and 20 other people are making these intricate patterns together. So, it was fun to do that, but I wish people could have had a sense of what those dances really were like. Cara: So, a good friend of mine Crystal Dilworth ­­ I’ve had her on the show ­­ she also was featured in “The Secret Lives of Scientists and Engineers,” And she also is a dancer. I love it when I find out how many people enjoy what we think of as the creative arts, performing arts who work in science and engineering. There’s such a huge crossover because it’s such a creative endeavor, and people don’t generally think of science as being creative, but it absolutely is. Michelle: It’s one of the big misconceptions about science. The idea that there is a true scientific process. We’re all very soft and squishy and messy human beings. And it has so much to do with our hopes, and our dreams, and our imagination, and our insecurities, and I let my scientific career be guided by who I want to work with. I only work with people who are supportive who feed me who support me, who I love being with. And I’ve let that decide things like my PhD topic, or where I took a Postdoc, or what my job path has been. You know, there’s all of that wrapped up in what people think is this logical and cold profession. And that’s complete misconception. Cara: So, you opened the door to it, now I have to ask you. What was your PhD topic? Michelle: Well, it’s interesting. So, I could have done anything. I love astronomy. I could have done anything at all. I had a wonderful advisor in college, his name was David Latham, and it turns out that he, in retrospect, probably found the first exoplanet. At the time, people didn’t believe his data, but now he’s actually sort of being recognized. It turns out that his data was correct, he actually had the right period, the right amplitude of this planet. Cara: Oh, he’s too soon. Michelle: He was a little too soon, yeah. But he was certainly involved in that. So, he recommended this group. I did my undergrad at Harvard, and he recommended this group that was doing really good solid astrophysics, not sexy, but what are stars really like, what can you learn about them. They mainly study binary stars, and it was a group at Georgia State University. And I went down there, and I found I had so much time to work with the professors. they were so supportive of me. They took me to the observatories all around the world. They introduced me to people at conferences. I was just so happy with the experience there, so I went from Harvard to Georgia State, and I did a Postdoc at Caltech, and in each case, it was, “Who do I really enjoy working with?” Cara: I love that and what you focused on throughout that span. Michelle: Well, in my case, it was so ­­ colliding winds in massive binary stars. Most of the stars in the sky are binary stars. They exist in pairs. And most of them, really big, hot stars, that actually sort of drive the chemistry of the galaxy, you know. All of the elements in your body, aside from the hydrogen ­­ which was made in the big bang. Everything else was made in a star which had to fuse that atom and then die. And in the case of the really big stars, all the things, you know: The iron in you blood, the gold in your jewelry, all of that comes from these massive stars. And these stars have these winds of high energy particles that actually collide and interact between the stars, and it affects the evolution of the stars, and it also affects the whole chemistry of the galaxy changes. So, I did a survey ­­ one of the first surveys of these hot binary pairs ­­ and tried to look to see what the shock waves were doing and how the shocks were behaving. And the fun thing is ­­ you know ­­ when I look into the sky, there are still stars, some of them, like the bottom star in the belt of orion is one of the systems I studied for my PhD. And I look up and every time I look at Orion, I see that star and, that’s an old friend. I mean, I’ve spent nights and weeks observing that star. It’s actually two stars. Delta Orionis. And you know, all of the sudden the night sky becomes your friends and your history, and you remember when you were young, and you remember going to Kitt Peak or Mt. Stromlo or wherever. You did those observations. It’s amazing what good company the sky becomes. Cara: I love this. So basically you’re telling me you studied the dynamic underpinnings of everything that makes up everything in the universe: Who we are, what everything we own is, everything around us? Michelle: The calcium in my teeth that I’m smiling right now, the iron pumping through my veins, the tiny little bit of copper that my neurons need to function. It’s, you know, we’re all these brief little connections of dead star material that exist for the blink of an eye become briefly conscious, then scatter away. And I honestly don’t know why we’re all not just hugging each other in the streets. Cara: When you were at Caltech, did you have a chance to go up to Mt. Wilson? Michelle: Oh yeah, the Mt. Wilson people are some of my best friends. The CHARA array, which is a stellar ferometer, they run at Mt. Wilson, that was actually the group I did my PhD with. Cara: Oh, very cool! We went up there with some friends somewhat recently. It’s been a few years now. We all pitched in because you can basically rent the 60” and it comes with... Michelle: Yeah! I’m glad you did that. Yay! Cara: Yeah. It comes with an operator, it’s everything, and someone to show you around. And we just spent all night observing, and it was so stunning. I mean, before I think I got my telescope ­­ I have a wonderful 8” computerized S
chmidt ­C
assegrain that honestly, when I go out under dark sky I can see things that are almost as brilliant as what I saw at Mt. Wilson ­­ but up until Mt. Wilson: I had never seen a globular cluster; I had never seen the Cassini Division in the rings of saturn. The things that we saw there just changed me. Michelle: Yeah, just be sure you do the same thing in the south, the southern sky is even better. Did you notice? I don’t know if you happened to notice when you were at Mt. Wilson that Mt. Wilson is run by Georgia State University. Cara: Oh, I didn’t. Michelle: Yup so they run the Mt. Wilson institute. Cara: That amazing. Michelle: Yeah, so, once again these are these solid, absolute, work­horse physicists who are doing brilliant work about how stars really function. I just think they’re wonderful. Cara: I’ll tell you, I did notice Hubble’s locker downstairs, and I took about 20 selfies with it. I was so excited. Michelle: Yeah, it’s amazing to think of the history of that place. Cara: I know. Michelle: That’s where they discovered the speed of light was constant. Think about everything that came out of that observation. I mean the Michelson­Morley experiment, where they were trying to prove that ­­ well, they weren’t expecting the result ­­ they were trying to measure that the speed of light was different in one direction as the Earth went around the sun. And the weird answer they got was: Nope, it’s the same everywhere. Cara: Wow. Michelle: Yeah, whoo. I mean, I’m going to get back there. I’m so going to rent the 60” or the 100” one night. I’m going to do that. Cara: Oh my gosh, please let me know if you do. Michelle: Absolutely. Cara: Let me know when you come to Los Angeles next. Because we have a really great network, probably a lot of crossover because you spent so much time at Caltech. Michelle: Yeah I get to LA every couple of months, so I’ll take you up on that. Cara: So, I have to ask you. I mean, this has been such a wonderful chat, I’ve learned so much. And you know I think I’ve taken enough of your Sunday away from you, but I end the podcast asking my guests the same two questions. And I’m absolutely thrilled to put you on the spot, first of all, and second of all to hear your answer. And they’re big questions, just to warn you. Generally, I want to know first, when you think about the future in whatever context that’s relevant right now, whether it’s a personal context or whether you’re thinking globally and big picture A) What is the thing that most concerns you, most worries you, keeps you up most at night? And on the flip side of that, what are you most excited and optimistic for? Michelle: Well okay, so there’s ­­ I mentioned NASA’s study of climate, and I don’t think as a culture, a global culture, we’ve really dealt with this at all yet. You know, it’s, in a hundred years time I mean, maybe not so much in our lifetime, but in our children’s lifetime and our grandchildren’s lifetime, there are going to be some massive changes, and it doesn’t have to be apocalyptic. But when I see how we’re dealing with refugees now ­­ a relatively small number of refugees ­­ we’re going to be dealing with something on the order of a billion refugees. And I, we’ve got to start talking about: How are we going to handle this? How are we actually going to make this as peaceful as we can? Or are we just going to have a global war? And so, climate change is something that we’ve already bought to a large degree. There is certainly ­­ if we make wise decisions now, and we actually cut our carbon emissions and all things like that ­­ there are definitely better scenarios versus worse scenarios. I mean, we need to take action, but the things are going to change. And, I don’t get the idea that young people have really owned this as something that is going to become a major part of their lives. I mean, if in a hundred years time, we’re busy settling a billion refugees, are we going to think that an investment in a space program is worth it? You know, when we have so many other problems to worry about, are we going to worry about the arts? Are we going to worry about science? You know, I have some fear about us entering a very tumultuous period of history coming up. Cara: Yeah. It seems like we have a pretty vague understanding. You know, especially young people, Millennials and later. I think there is this sort of existential threat that exists with most of us. That we are living in the era of severe climate change, and I think there’s also kind of a learned helplessness that maybe our leaders haven’t taken significant action. And that’s where you start to see this um, I think this great swell. You’ve seen it, with the Bernie Sanders movement lately. But this great swell of young people taking to the streets and hopefully taking to the polls to try to do something about it. But you’re right, it does seem like when we think about the downstream effects of what is ­­ at this point ­­ inevitabley happening, it feels very vague. Something like you just mentioned, having so many displaced refugees is not what’s on people’s minds when they think of climate change. They’re thinking of hurricanes, or they’re thinking of the actual natural disasters, but they’re not thinking of the effect that that’s going to have on the people downstream and the fact that everything’s ­­ you know ­­ we’re not going to be wiped out in one fell swoop. We’re going to have to mitigate this stuff. Michelle: Exactly, we’re going to have to adapt to it. And when we can, I mean, that’s the thing. So you know, it’s funny. I remember: Remember, 2012, there was this Internet rumor that, you know the world was going to end ­­ the Mayan apocalypse? Cara: Oh yeah. Michelle: Whatever that was. And we were getting calls at NASA about it. In fact, we even sent out a page at NASA, you know, saying, “There’s nothing interesting happening in 2012 astronomically. We’re all fine.” But I would get these calls from people that would say, “So, is the world going to end next week?” And, I would say to them ­­ and I tried to be polite ­­ but after several of these calls, I’d say, “Do you think I’d be here? You know, if my answer to you was ‘Yes, the world is going to end in a week.’ I’m at my desk at NASA. I’m actually working. That’s how I would spend the last week of my life?” Cara: Doing paperwork. Michelle: And so, I always say that if the scientists are all still going to work, and they’re all still functioning: Don’t be worried about anything. If all the scientists all of the sudden buy up all the good wine, max out their credit cards and disappear: Then you know to be scared. And climate change is a little bit like that. At cocktail parties we sometimes talk about our zombie apocalypse plans that when we retire, which for me will be in about 20 years. Where are you going to retire to? Because it’s not going to be Florida, you know. How are you going to invest your money? Because things might start to get unstable. We’re starting to make our plans for: What if things actually really do start to go south. And, I think when scientists start talking like that, that that’s when you gotta get worried. Cara: Yeah, yeah Michelle: On to, on to the good stuff. Cara: Yeah I’m like ­­ okay, big breath ­­ moving on. Moving on. Michelle: Yeah, even better. Cara: What are you excited about? Michelle: There’s so much to be optimistic about. I mean ­­ as you mentioned ­­ we’re in this golden age of discovery, but it’s in fits and starts, and this has been a bad week for thinking about diversity and how our culture is accepting people of color and different genders and different sexualities. But, I love the fact that NASA has a float in the gay pride parade. And I love it that we have transgender scientists, and it doesn’t matter. And I love it that ­­ as a woman ­­ I can get pissed off and say, “Where are the women in this meeting?” You know, “Where are the women in our upper management? Where are the people of color? Why don’t we look like the general population?” I mean, just 20/30 years ago, NASA wasn’t very diverse at all. The only people who ever walked on the moon were white guys. So I think, what I’m allowed to be angry about, and what I’m allowed to believe about myself, and what I’m allowed to think has to change, and how I can demand and say, “Look, I’m a legitimate full human being, I’m nothing less. Do not tell me that because I am a woman: I am this way, or I will respond this way. You know, I’ve actually been made very ­­ I’ve been made very angry at diversity trainings. You know, people mean well, but... There will be a guy leading a diversity training, and he’ll say, “You know women are very odd.” You know. “They’re not very aggressive. They want to be included. They’ll be very quiet. So, if you want a woman in your group, you’ll have to be aware of this.” And I’m sitting there in the back going, “Hell no!” You know, I mean, I’m gonna climb up your butt if you’re going to say that. I mean, there’s nothing about me that’s retiring and reclusive and gentle that way, and I’m allowed to say the way I am is absolutely fine. And you know, I think that’s changing in our culture ­­ in fits and starts ­­ and I’m very much heartened by the power we’re going to have if we start not denying most of humanity a role, a real solid role, in science and in the culture as a whole. Cara: It’s just so true that if you take a microscope to what’s been happening lately, if you take a small sliver of time, a small cross­section of time, you can very easily get discouraged and very easily get depressed. I mean, like you said, this last week has been especially difficult. But if you do widen your field of view just a little, take a little bit of a step back, you will see that we’re on a trajectory that is a really positive one. It’s really depressing when we take two steps backward when it comes to progress, but the truth of the matter is: The world is open to us in a way. The world is open to women. The world is open to people of color. The world is open to ­­ like you said ­­ the LGBTQ community in a way that it never was before, and I am very excited about that, as well. And I’m so glad that that was your answer to that question because I ­­ especially right now ­­ it’s so timely and so important. Michelle: I’ve said: The universe doesn’t care what you personality is. The universe doesn’t care about your gender, the color of your skin, your sexual orientation. We are all the same thing. looking out with 7 billion sets of eyes, and we’re all so brief. You know ­­ I’m sorry ­­ you know, definitely have existential angst I... So soon I won’t exist. And, we have this one time to look up together, and I think we just really need to take it. Cara: On that note Michelle, thank you so much for joining me this week on the podcast. It was an absolute pleasure. Can you let everybody know where they can, you know, find you on social media ­­ where they can see more of the great outreach that you’re doing? Michelle: Well as far as the outreach, definitely just go to Nasa.gov. You’ll see all the latest stuff on NASA. As far as me personally, I’m on Twitter @MLThaller. Facebook, you can find me: Michelle Thaller, and uh I’m doing Snapchat a little bit, when I have a little bit of time. But yeah, those are probably ­­ the easiest places to find me is the Facebook and Twitter stuff. Cara: Nice. Well, once again Michelle, thanks so much for joining me. Michelle: It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Cara: Of course and everyone listening, thank you for coming back week after week. I’m really looking forward to the next time we all get together to talk nerdy.