 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. That's Ninky Van Damarel. Ninky Van Damarel. Yes. Did I get it right? Okay. And she's Dutch. I never met anybody from Holland I didn't like, you know. This is Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. And today we're going to do, hmm, what, Science and Minoa. And we're going to find out about astronomy. Some big deal happening at IFA in the next few weeks, isn't it? We're going to go, we're going to go film it, yeah. Roy Gal told me about it. Yes. Yes. He's my office neighbor. Okay. Okay. So your office is in IFA? Yes. Okay. And you're an astronomer from, from Holland? May I say Holland instead of the Netherlands? Yeah, that's fine. Is that fair? That's politically correct. And you studied in Leiden, Leiden University, which is a big observatory, which is world famous, world class. And you came here only towards right into the middle of the TMT dispute. Yes. How do you feel about that? Yeah, that was, that was very strange because actually, so I arrived at the end of November 2015. So my first working week, that was the first week of December. That was when the judge decided that the permit had to be revoked. And that basically the whole procedure of obtaining the permit had to be redone. So. Welcome, Nikki. Yeah. And I had heard about it, of course, like the, the TMT story was, was a big issue in, in astronomy, but suddenly it got a whole lot closer and yeah, it's been interesting to follow it. Interesting to follow. In the last two years. I'm really glad that the permit has now been granted again. Yeah. Yeah. Knockwood that it'll actually happen. It, it's still, yeah. There's still a couple of steps to take, but I, I have confidence that the TMT will be built. There's some people think they're going to fight it forever, but you know, there is the law. Yeah. We do have the law. Yeah. Yeah. I'm really concerned actually, you're into exoplanets and other amazing things in the universe and beyond the universe that you're not limited to universal, your universal plus. Yeah. I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to the universe, the universe is everything maybe you were, you mean the solar system. Solar system. Right. Yeah. No, the solar system is very tiny part of, well, the Milky Way and then the Milky Way is part, a tiny part of the, of the universe. Yeah. How did you choose to study this? Because I was, so I was good in physics and math in high school and I started to look into possibilities like, what can I study? I went to visit universities and my father was a physicist too, so he was very happy about that. Oh, runs of the family. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then I heard that you could study a combination, physics and astronomy because they are, they are closely related. Yeah. Astrophysics. Yeah. And that sounded very interesting. So that's when I started and I started to do this double major and by the end of my bachelor studies I was, I was like, this is what astronomy, this is what I want to do. It's so fascinating. Why? Why is it fascinating? What is about it fascinating? It's because there are so many things that we don't really understand yet in the universe. And at the same time we have the tools to study it. But what is, yeah, what is so cool is that you need only a tiny little bit of information, like one picture with a telescope, maybe a very long exposure picture but still. Yeah. Or one spectrum that you're measuring. Yeah. And then because the laws of physics are the same everywhere, we can actually use that in order to learn from that tiny bit of information. Yeah. And then we combine it with what other people have done, we try to put it in a bigger picture there. It's incredible how much we can learn just with those. It sounds like it's a gratification in being a detective, taking one little subtile of information, building a theory on it and then validating this really exciting. Physics is like that in general, but gee whiz. Now, you said something I want to spend a little time on, and that, you said, and I quote, I quote this, the laws of physics are the same everywhere, and everywhere by everywhere you mean everywhere. And that includes the periodic table of elements. So if it's not on the periodic table of elements, it isn't ever anywhere. Well, who knows? Maybe the periodic table is not entirely complete. Okay. We don't know that. I take your point. There are definitely elements that are very unstable that are impossible, definitely impossible to find on earth, but they may form in very exotic environments and may survive for, I don't know, a millionth of a second. Yeah. And we don't know about them. And we don't know about them. So the table may not be complete, but whatever is on the table or should be on the table, that's constant everywhere in the solar system, outside the solar, in the whole universe everywhere we could possibly imagine. Yeah. So the ratios will be different because they depend on the environment and because all the elements are in principle formed in stars, because stars burn hydrogen and form heavier elements. And once we get beyond iron, then we need actually a supernova or other exotic places to form even heavier elements. But all of that is something we can understand and that is governed by the laws of physics. Yeah. Well, there's something comforting about it to know that whatever you're doing, whatever far reaches you're visiting, the rules are essentially the same. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You know, the other thing is chemistry. You talk about astrochemistry, that in fact that's a big thing for you. What is it? So astrochemistry is formation of molecules in space. So we're no longer talking about elements, but actually molecules that interact with each other and exchange atoms and electron bonds, et cetera. They're more complex than atoms. They're more complex. Yeah. I mean, a molecule consists of multiple atoms. Multiple atoms and structured in a certain way. And they are structured in a certain way, exactly. Yeah. Astrochemistry is interesting for many reasons. So there is a link with origin of life. I mean, eventually molecules have to grow. We're all made of molecules. We're all made of molecules. And they have to have been formed at some point, becoming more and more complex. Yeah. And maybe eventually form things like DNA. So that's one part of it. But another really cool thing about astrochemistry is studying molecules allows us to study conditions. So we are studying, well, CO is a very simple example. CO is the most abundant molecule in space after molecular hydrogen. And so it helps us to trace densities. So it's carbon oxygen? Yeah. Carbon oxygen, carbon monoxide. Yeah, OK. Yeah. And it's a molecule that's very easy to form and is very abundant everywhere. But you wouldn't want it in your garage. No. Definitely not. But it can help us to trace gas densities. And that is something that we need in order to calculate physics and dynamics in a certain system. OK. But then there are other molecules that are telling us something about processes that are happening. So for example, there are locations where CO is frozen out because of the low temperature in combination with a certain density. What is frozen out mean? Frozen out means that it's frozen out onto the dust grains. So the dust grains have an icy layer of CO molecules. So that means there is no more CO in the gas phase. Dust grain is a particle of matter out in space? Yeah. OK. Yeah. And then once CO is frozen out, other chemical reactions will occur. And then suddenly a molecule like N2H plus can be formed. Which is? Nitrogen, nitrogen, hydrogen. Ah, we speak a little else at our dinner table, yeah. Oh, that's good. I encourage that. No, I know it sounds very exciting, but it's a molecule that we like because it tells us, hey, that is an area where CO is frozen out. So it must be very cold there. And so it tells us something about the conditions. About what you're looking at. Yeah, yeah. So this is a big thing because if you can look at the molecules far away at places and see how they're reacting and how they're developing, then you can find out about that place. This is very important in discovering about that place. And I guess the two things come to mind is, one is, how do you do that? How do you look at this molecule millions of miles away and figure out what's going on with it? OK, so a molecule actually emits photons. So it emits light at very specific frequencies or very specific wavelength equivalent. So that means that if you observe at this wavelength range, where that molecule is emitting, you can detect a so-called molecular line. So you need spectroscopy in order to do that. So how do you do that? You have to have telescopes. And telescopes help you do that. And then you look at the frequency and the wavelength and all that of the light, then you can discover what's happening with the molecule. And this, I want to tell you something you don't know. This is closely related to photography, because you are a photographer. She's a bike rider. The old Dutch people are bike riders. And then she's a photographer, yeah. So this connection. Yeah, that's true. Although with molecules, it's really looking at these very specific wavelengths. So with a photograph, you usually take a broad range of wavelengths. So when you get the data for this, I mean, you have to have a telescope. And why do I feel that Subaru helps you and Keck helps you? As you get the data from Keck and Subaru on Monokea. And this is the data. You get it in a spreadsheet form or in a database form. How do you get that data? So the way that a telescope works is that the owners of the telescope, which are usually countries or, in some cases, institutes, universities, the astronomers that work in those countries or at those institutes, they have access to using it. From the telescope. From the telescope. Yeah. But it's in computer format, yeah? Yes, yes. But this is even before you have any data, because the telescope is not randomly observing. You just pick out what you want, because the sky is way too big for that. So what you do, if you want to observe something, is that you write an observing proposal where you say, this is what I want to do. This is why it's important. That's why it's interesting. This is how my telescope settings should look like, like this instrument, this wavelength range, this exposure time, et cetera. And then also, important, how much time do I need? So you need to estimate that. You cannot just say, oh, give me half a year, and I'll see how much I'm going to use. No, you have to specify how much you need. Then this is usually a cycle once a semester or once a year that everyone sends in their proposals. Then a committee will read all those proposals and grade them. Committee in the consortium for the telescope. Yeah. And they decide which proposals get granted time. Then if you get the time, either you go there yourself or it will be observed for you. You get an email saying, hey, your data has been observed. Here's the download link. And you download it to your computer. So you've made proposals like this, and they've been granted. And then you have to benefit this data for a length of time. It's not just one observation, it's a length of time. How many years do you get it for? It depends on the telescope. So I believe the CAC telescope has two years proprietary time. So that's the time that I'm the only person who can download that data. The ALMA telescope, which is in Chile, that's another one that I use. Yeah, because ALMA is a global collaboration of countries. So no matter where. Let's say within the US, or in the Netherlands, or anywhere in Europe, I can use it. Oh, that's terrific. Now, suppose I went there, Niki. And I said, my name is Jay. I know Niki. And I really like astronomy. And I'd like to have some observation time, too. What do you say, guys? What would they say to me? They would say, write an observing proposal and send it at a deadline. You think I might get an observation time? Yes. In principle, everyone can apply. Because, well, I already mentioned you have to be related to a country or an institute. But most telescopes also offer so-called open time, which is for everyone. That's great. There's a democratization there. It is. I have to emphasize that it's very competitive. Because there are countries where astronomers are working that are not part of these collaborations. So a lot of people like Australia, for example, apply for this open time. So you would still have to go up against these astronomers. I feel it's a real challenge for me. And that's why we're going to take a one minute break, Niki. I'm going to go and write my proposal. We'll come back in one minute and continue this conversation. And when we do, I'm going to ask you, what do you do with all that data? How do you make it work? We'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. We have this crazy thing going on today. I was just walking by. And all these DJs and producers are set up all around the city. And I just walked by and I said, what's happening, guys? They told me they were making music. I had no musical talent. And then I sat down and kind of, I saw it do it. Yes, sir, we're back with Niki Vendemarro of IFA, an astronomer. Wow, fabulous. And I wanted to ask, I mean, Hawaii, you came from Leiden, which is world-class. Everybody knows. And you came to Hawaii. What's about Hawaii that makes it so special that it would advance your career and your inquiry into astronomy? Yeah, so Hawaii has the very special advantage that we have access to 10% of the telescope time of the telescope, so Mauna Kea. Oh, that's the deal. Yeah, so. U.H. has 10% of the time. Yes. So the other 90% is divided over the owners of the telescope. So for example, Subaru is a Japanese telescope. So most of the users are Japanese. And Keck has several owners on the mainland, where astronomers are proposing. But we have 10% of the observing time. And, well, we don't have that many astronomers. So it's relatively easy to get a lot of observing time. So this is a very attractive point. This is very attractive for my research, yeah. Yeah, would TMT help you? If you had time on TMT, would that help your scientific inquiry? Probably, yeah. I mean, my interest is not so much in the optical near-infrared, which is what TMT is going to do. I actually look mostly in longer wavelengths, radio wavelengths. OK, OK, a radio telescope. So here we are. And it's all laid out there in your computer. And you've downloaded it from Keck, from Subaru, and from Chile, too. Yeah, Alma. And so, oh, Alma, yeah, Alma. What is ALMA? What does that say for? Atacama Large Millimeter Array. I knew that. Now they know it, too. OK. OK, it's got these three things, including Alma. And they're all laid out on your computer. What do you do with them in order to make scientific sense out of them? Well, that can be a very long, painful process. So we always have to reduce data and calibrate data, because what we measure is not the actual information that we can use. So we have to convert it to units. We have to get rid of disturbances by the atmosphere, all those kinds of things. And that's up to you. You have to make algorithms and formulas to do that. Yeah, well, a lot of software luckily exists already. So I don't have to reinvent the wheel, because many people are using these data. And they share. Yeah, yeah. This is very nice about science in general. Yes, yes. But it always depends a little bit on the science that you want to do with it, how you are doing your reduction. So that's why, in principle, you still do it yourself. It's the end of the day. What comes out? It's either images, so 2D image, or in case of Alma, it's actually 3D images. So it has, well, it has x and y. And then it has the third dimension, which is frequency or wavelength, because Alma allows you to study a lot of wavelengths at the same time and get those spectrums out of there, that we were talking about before. You can get a 3D modeling. You get a 3D map with all that molecule information. So we can detect different molecules and even detect their velocities, so the way that it's moving. Now it's up to you to take that data, those maps, and figure out, I'm just making a guest list here, about the exoplanets, about the disks and where they fit on the exoplanets, and about their creation and their evolution over millions of years. And what do you do after lunch? I'm only kidding. I do sleep sometimes. No, so as soon as I have those images, what we usually do is we write models where we put in the physics, and then we let it calculate. And then we compare those models to the data. And if it matches, that means that, oh, our model seems to be consistent. So maybe our model is representing the real thing, the nature of what we're looking at. Writing those models is also a very lengthy process. But that is primarily what we do. So you're getting confirmation. You make a theory, you get confirmation, and then presumably you publish. Where do you publish? Astrophysical Journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Monthly Notices Royal Academic Society. Those are the three main astronomy journals. I've had one publication in science a couple of years ago. Science magazine. This is a big deal. Because it was a very big discovery. And what was your conclusion in that article? I mean, we don't have a lot of time here. I understand. Well, I can tell you what the discovery was. So we had observed a disk with Anna. And what we found was that the disk was actually not circular, not pancake-like, which is how we always imagine disks to be. No, what we saw was that the dust particle in that disk were actually concentrated on one side. They were all gathered on one side of the disk. It was asymmetric. On the other hand, we could also observe the gas through molecular lines. And that one was showing this sort of pancake structure. So all the gas was still distributed. But the dust was concentrating. And this is super important for our understanding of planet formation. Because in order to form planets, including exoplanets, the dust grains need to collide and stick together to grow to larger and larger particles. And well, this is a slow process. But we have models sort of predicting it. We predict the development, the growth of a planet. Predicting the growth of a planet. By gravity and astrochemistry. No, no, no. Long before gravity kicks in. This is, these are van der Waals forces, electric forces. These are tiny little attraction forces that keep dust grains together. So this is at the very start. Dust grains are a micrometer in size. And they grow up to a millimeter, centimeter, very slowly. But we can observe this growth by looking at different wavelengths. So we can see where the larger grains are. In this case, all the large grains were located in one place of a disk. So that means that they're growing very rapidly there. And this is what we call a dust trap. And that was something that was predicted by theory that dust traps must exist. Because they help us to grow planets. But it had never been observed before. So that was the discovery. And that's why it got published in Science. It's a major thing in terms of the fact that you could find the development of the planets. What caused it? And it's just logic. So you take all that data and it's logic. Now an exoplanet is just a planet outside the solar system. Is that what it is? And I told you that one of our young guests here, his name was Christopher Lindsay, at a Elanee School. He was a sophomore at Elanee School, invented or rather discovered an exoplanet that hadn't been discovered before. It's really remarkable. This is a very interesting field you're in. Yeah, definitely. So let's talk about the Science Cafe, which you spoke on September 19th, as I recall. Something recently. And you spoke to a group of scientists and science enthusiasts in Kaimuki at the regular meeting of the Science Cafe. What was it like? What did you tell them? So I mostly talked about the most fundamental question in astronomy, or maybe even in humanity, which is this question, are we unique? Are humans unique? And the Earth itself, is it unique? Because historically, we like to put ourselves in the center and we like to compare everything to ourselves. We are normal and the rest is hopefully following the same normal. And even if you look at the history of astronomy, that is very obvious that people are taking that stand because people used to say, oh, the Earth is in the center of the universe. Everything else is orbiting us. I think I've rid of that notion a long time ago. Well, we got rid of that. But still, it was around for a long time. But even after that, when they put the Sun in the center of our solar system and the Earth orbiting it, OK, well, fine. But maybe our Sun was still very special. And then when we realized we were actually part of the Milky Way and we are just somewhere in the outskirts of the Milky Way not really special. Again, we're making ourselves less important. That's fine. However, then we started to discover exoplanets and so planets around other stars. And what we are looking for are planets just like us. And they are actually pretty hard to find. Because what we find primarily are these hot Jupiters, which are very massive planets, very close to the Sun. So it's a complete different configuration than our own solar system. So that raises the question, maybe we are more unique than we thought. Origin of life elsewhere. Yeah, that is the second part of it. Because you need certain conditions in order to even have life. I mentioned that also in my talk, the habitable zone, which is the region where water is liquid. So temperature and pressure are just right so that water is liquid. So it's possible. And that's possible. And we've discovered planets like that that are in the habitable zone where water is liquid. So maybe life is fine. Well, with a cocktail, the cocktail could give rise to it. Let's look at some of your slides that you used at the Science Cafe before we close here. And why don't you describe what we're looking at? So that's your title format, yeah? That was your big question. We went from there to, ah, life elsewhere. They don't look like that though. Maybe they do. We don't know how they look like. I mean, we haven't found them yet. Okay, what's next? I'm significant. Yeah, I'm significant. Well, it is illustrating the point that I was making before. We are thinking we are significant. We are important. And maybe we are just really generic. We don't know. It's really hard to say how normal we really are. Yeah. But you have to think about those things. What's this now? This disk? No, this is the solar system. The whole thing that we know in this around the sun. Yeah. We are the third planet around the sun. Really pretty small. Yeah, we are pretty small. Yeah. And the one with the rings, that's Saturn up in the foreground. Okay, what else we got? And what's that? That's the Milky Way, as seen from, well, how we imagine how it looks like from outside. So the whole, our solar system is where the arrow is. Our solar system is one of those tiny little dots but the arrow is pointing at, yes. Big question though, Niki. What's at the center? What's that bright light at the center? Is that a big sun or something? No, that is the bulge where a lot of stars are concentrated. But then we know that in the very center of that, there is a supermassive black hole. We cannot see that. In the center of that white hot spot. So I mean, how many, do you know how many solar systems are in this Milky Way? Well, we know there are about 100 million stars and statistics tell us that on average, each star has at least one planet. So that's 100 million planet. Oh, no, 100, at least 100 million. At least 100 million planets, yeah. I think you have a lot of work to do. Yeah, well, I have time. You do. It's great to talk to you, Niki. It's really wonderful. I'm so glad. And we're making a movie for OC 16 of your talk and we'll include some of this discussion too. But on the other hand, it's not over. I mean, not for you and not for us about you. So I'd like to have more of this conversation later. It's okay with you. Sure, yeah. Thank you, Niki. Great to talk to you. How did you say goodbye in Dutch? Goedendag. Goedendag. Goedendag. Goedendag, I could do that. Thank you so much. You're welcome.