 Hello and welcome to tomorrow orbit twelve dot one four very glad to have you here in station two zero four with us My name is Jared. I'll be talking a little bit today along with Sarah as well We're gonna be both talking a little bit today to a very interesting guest that we have today Dr. Jaili Jung who is coming to us right now from across the pond at Oxford Dr. Jung you have Bachelor's of engineering in science and physics mathematics and aeronautical space engineering from the University of Sydney You got your PhD in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of Toronto And you're currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford and a Schmidt science fellow So you have done just a little bit of science work In your in your career so far just a little bit So what where did you get interested in science at like what was that spark that got you interested in science? I Think I've always been quite interested in science when I was young I liked asking questions about how things around me worked But I didn't realize that's what I wanted to do for a career up until grade 10 I wanted to be an artist But then in grade 10 I discovered that My favorite part of science like the science had a lot of stuff in it And there was one part that was physics which was all my favorite bits of science and I thought okay Let's not be an artist. Let's be a physicist Awesome you can do both but what kind of art were you did you start with? So I was young and I was very vague about what exactly art was and I didn't even know how you would make money with art But I like drawing. I like painting. I like to make weird things Basically making really beautiful things that made people happy or other emotions. I didn't yeah, yeah So I just wanted to really quickly follow up. Have you thought about combining art with science? We actually a couple weeks ago had a new horizons team member and there are a lot of artists on that team including Brian May May have heard of that musician. Yeah, it's ours for Queen So have you thought about combining your your astronomy and your art even maybe as a teaching tool? Yeah, I've been thinking a lot more about it recently actually As Jared introduced me I'm this Schmidt science fellow and there's actually 13 other Schmidt science fellows in my year And one of them is very interested in science and art And we've been talking a lot about how to do them together Historically People didn't separate them as much as we do today So for example Da Vinci both did art and and science and engineering and by art It actually helped him with his science and engineering Similarly when people were Studying neurons for the very first time it was through art that the depictions of how these neuron networks Work that that's how that was communicated, but it was also art So I'm starting to definitely think about it. Maybe I'll go do a 360 Awesome. Yeah, well got definitely a good place to do that with Oxford there where you're currently at So it'd be pretty cool and you know you continued on in the college working on science degrees and Eventually getting your doctorate as well in that and what is that journey like? What's it like to go through that all the way up to getting your doctorate? Well, that's a big question so many so many feels I Think one of the biggest Things for me with getting a PhD was learning How to learn and learning how to trust yourself in the learning and exploring process I think everybody's PhD journey is very different and It can be the difference can be even bigger because of how good your supervisor can be And I just want to give a shout out to my supervisor for Voto Abraham and Peter Motton at the University of Toronto they were the kind of supervisors that They cared for you as a person first and and research was part of your person But research wasn't the only part of you and and so for me I think I grew as a person and not just a researcher and research became part of me Now that's starting to sound a little bit corny No, not corny at all I mean when you when you go into something and you really just like grab on to it and you hold on to it and You make it a part of yourself. Yeah, you know, that's a very strong motivator to push you forward Yeah, a lot of people are picking You know where to go for their PhD right now And I think picking the right advisor who cares about you as a person and will support you in or your facets For example, if you wanted to combine science and art is really important because you are more than your PhD Very very good And you continued on to Oxford as well. What what made you do the jump over to Oxford? Jumping over to Oxford in academia It's not a very strange thing to jump around all over the place because you kind of go wherever There's a job opening and there isn't always a job opening in the place that you want to go But the bigger jump I made is not actually location. It's for this year that I am at Oxford I'm not doing astronomy. I'm actually doing medical imaging And that's thanks to the Schmidt Science Fellowship And they fund fellows to do interdisciplinary science and learn deeply about another Field so that they can use techniques from and use techniques from two different fields and help each other What made you choose medical imaging? It's a great question So during my PhD people asked me this a lot, so I'm very practice it No notes During my PhD The aspect that I loved the most about it and we'll probably talk a little bit about this later about the dragonfly Telephoto array was building a telescope and the capability to see the universe in a way that hasn't been seen before and The the kind of one of the next biggest questions in astronomy is what the sky looks like not For all time because the sky doesn't change very much in general, but from second to second and We're discovering that even though we've used the same stars to navigate the oceans for Hundreds and thousands of years Those stars are permanent, but underneath that there's a there's a whole universe excuse the pun Phenomenon that's changing on over days Minutes hours and seconds and so what I wanted to do was try and build capability to be able to detect those changes So for example a star appears and then disappears again But that's really difficult In Historically when astronomers take photos we build the biggest telescopes possible and then we stare at this galaxy For the longest time possible so that we get a really long exposure time And this long exposure time allows us to see the faintest parts of the galaxy and really understand all the bits of it But if we want to see something that's changing and that appears one second and then disappears again Then if you take an exposure for 10 minutes, but that thing was only lit up for a second You won't see it because it'll get washed out There's not enough light from one second of light versus all all the other light. That's bright for the whole 10 minutes So we need new techniques to be able to take photos of things with very short exposures and then we'll end up with Just way too many pictures and we have to learn to process through them One thing that medical imaging has been doing for a long time or at least longer than Astronomy is using deep learning which is a machine learning technique to process images the tech outliers And and understand images and so I've gone into medical imaging to learn how they do that And then try and bring that into astronomy in a mature fashion and discover what these flashing lights are in the universe Yeah, that's interdisciplinary maxed it out, right? Quite interesting that you can bring those two together and you know the dragonfly telephoto array Tell us a little bit about that because that is not only is it a telescope? It's like a non-traditional Kind of telescope like we were we were looking at photos of it and we're used to our Zeiss refractor epic Griffith Observatory And this look nothing like it. So tell us a little bit about it Yeah, the design is a central this weird looking telescope, which is made up of many many Small lenses is is very strange And I'll tell you how it came about So for as I said earlier for the longest time, we've been trying to build bigger and bigger telescopes For example, there's a telescope that we're trying to build right now could the 30 meter telescope It's not to be 30 meters across. We're very good at naming things So the reason why we build bigger telescopes is when something is really faint if you have a bigger telescope You have a bigger light collecting bucket. You have a bigger light collecting bucket then you can see fainter things Also, if you want to see things that are very very Very small So you need a very high resolution to be able to see what what's going on You also need bigger telescopes And so for the last hundreds of years Telescope development is all about bigger bigger telescope better And all the engineering has gone into facilitate that However, if you're not trying to see small faint things and on the other hand You're trying to see big faint things big things for example galaxies or faint nebula Or dust and gas in in our galaxy. They're all fuzzy patches They're patches of light instead of points of light And for the last 40 years our ability to see patches of light that a faint hasn't improved at all So building these bigger telescopes hasn't allowed us to see fainter patches of light And so that's when my advisor and one of his collaborators at Yale University So this is bob in at the University of Toronto and peter at the oh there we go They're on either sides of this photo with the rest of the dragonfly team They they thought well, what why why are we not Getting any better at imaging faint fuzzy patches such as galaxies And the conclusion was that in order to optimize and in order to see these faint fuzzy patches The thing that stops us from being able to see it is refracted light Reflected light inside the telescope itself So, you know when you go out on a sunny day and you take a picture and if you have the sun Directly lighting into your camera you get these Flare sun flares and it looks really artsy and it's really pretty Have you seen that report? The J.J. Abrams effect he used it a lot in the movie Star Trek Oh, okay cool. I'll take you in for it Well, that that's really artsy and beautiful But if you're trying to see a faint object and there's these flares These these flares in your photos, then you can't see it um The thing is in if this happens in astronomical telescopes, which are is just like a fancy camera with a fancy lens They have it too And and even the faintest amount of this means that you can't see faint fuzzy patches because those fuzzy patches How do you know it's like a galaxy or it's just Because of some bright thing Uh, you know scattering light into the this that that particular part of the photo And so the dragonfly Telescope if you look at um the telescope you can see that it's made up of multiple lenses And these lenses are actually cannon lenses. They're commercial lenses And you can buy them for about $12,000 each and they yeah So you can see the in this photo the reason why they were used in this telescope is because they have So inside are these lenses and on the surface of the lens There is a proprietary technology That is coated onto the lens that means light going going through the lens most like 99.9999% goes through and only a tiny tiny little gets reflected into and scattered into wrong parts of the image for most cameras Only 98% of the light goes through and the rest gets scattered to other weird parts of the image making them possibly look like fake galaxies Okay, wow So yeah, so someone you actually answered a lot of our questions from the chat room I'm just gonna run through some of these It's great. Uh, so is the array uh made of commercially available off the shelf lenses was asked by Oh sin on our chat room and Let's see. So that's a yes. Yep. And then Could you explain how the dragonfly imager is constructed was asked by rebel 2 on our chat room. Thank you. So I Love it. Awesome. Okay, so Oh, I forgot to say um, I said how for 40 years people weren't able to image think galaxies any better So we can do 10 times fainter than than what was possible before Which I think is amazing like something doesn't change for 40 years and then bam this weird design makes it 10 times better Well, um, so helio pausing is asking. Um, are they not optically connected like some arrays? Um, so do they work together with that? That's a really In-depth question like, you know, some I can tell you know some astronomy there. Um, so There there are There are these radio. Let me Let me talk a tiny little bit about what optically connected might mean so that other people know what you're talking about So there are radio telescopes and they you can have telescopes at 100s thousands Continents apart for example the telescope that's being built right now the square kilometer array half of the The telescopes for the square kilometer array are going to be built in South Africa And the other half are going to be built in Australia But the signals that they collect from this from the same source they get They get combined with each other and they work together To to produce the image. So for example the latest news from astronomy that you heard the the the gorgeous incredible photo of the black hole um In m87 done by the event horizon telescope. So that was um connecting the optical or the radio which is I mean optical just means light and radio is a type of light. Um, it's connecting Connecting information from different telescopes together. So for the dragonfly telephoto array each of the lenses Take images completely independently. They don't get um connected in the same way that radio telepscopes do at all however Imagine if you had One camera here taking the photo with the sun in the background with these flare Art sea flares and then you had another camera taking the same photo, but like from a slightly different angle Um, then the flares will end up on different parts of the image If you combine them and get this both information from both of these pictures, you'll be able to work out where What what is from the sun flare Do you do you guys call them flares or do you call them ghosts? Um, lens flares is kind of what we call them. So yeah Okay, cool. Um, yeah, so you can like work out what is flair and what is like reality And so we use that the information from all these lenses together to even further reduce any scattered flare effects And oh Is that kind of where the deep learning comes in? Uh analyzing the separate images I'm very interesting way to use deep learning. It definitely would be um, but uh, that's not what I was thinking But maybe you know, you've given me some ideas. Oh, hey Make sure to cite us on the paper, please Well, I bring it up because helio pausing on our chat room was asking if you could possibly explain deep learning a little bit Okay, um, I can do this because I was a total noob and novice and had no idea what was going on six months ago And so I still remember what it means to not know anything um wait so deep learning, um People you might have heard about um, this thing called machine learning Machine learning is when you give the machine lots of information lots and lots of examples um of like say If you want to make the prediction of whether a person likes strawberries or not And you give it lots of examples and information about people who like strawberries and people who don't like strawberries And then the machine sorts out all this information and then makes a prediction about what uh, What makes someone likes what is a good predictor of whether someone likes strawberries So when you use these machine learning techniques, you have to decide whether you Put in the person's date of birth If you whether you should put in the person's height or put in whether they like bananas So you have to decide all the different pieces of information to put into the machine learning algorithm In order to and then you let it do its prediction of whether the person likes strawberries The the special thing about deep learning, which is a type of machine learning technique Is that it it if you don't need to figure out what information to give it If the kind of prediction you want to do is the is predictions about images So for example, um, if I got uh, if I had you know a billion images of of faces from from the internet and The internet has these labels of whether these faces Are happy or sad or or the eating something sour Then you you can pass the prediction, which is whether the person's happy or eating something sour or they're sad Into the into the computer But you can directly give the computer the picture You don't have to figure out what information to extract from the picture And then give it to the machine to let it predict Deep learning algorithms directly take in pictures and figures out what features in the pictures are important For the prediction that you want to make Okay, wow So no people no people necessary. So, um, thank you skynet. Yeah, I'm ready to do that You don't have to see that the pictures and and a human have to have looked at a bunch of pictures and decided if it's sour or not But you don't have to decide what to take out from the pictures anymore, right? Yeah, and we had a question Oh, yeah Yeah, so we had a uh, we had a question from our chat room. I don't know where it went unfortunately It was in our youtube chat room But they were asking, you know, have there been any discoveries that have been done with the dragonfly telescope and Yes, there have we've actually covered one of their discoveries on a Galaxy with very little dark matter in it. Um, but what are some of the overall discoveries so far that's been done With the dragonfly telescope away Yeah, um, so my when we set out to build this dragonfly Um telescope we were not thinking about these discoveries because well, we didn't know they were there to be discovered and so We had questions Known questions because there's known questions and the questions that you can't even predict, right? So when we first started building dragonfly and part of the motivation for my thesis is to try and understand how galaxies evolve and grow And so my thesis my thesis was all about about galaxies When I started people when you go to like a class on astronomy people would tell you this is how big a galaxy is and these are all the things in the galaxy but Then I was also told that telescopes are not good at imaging faint parts of galaxies And so when people said, oh, this is how big a galaxy is I I thought how do you know? Your telescopes aren't good enough to see the faintest parts of galaxies And so I hypothesized that if we could build a telescope that could see fainter Patches of light such as light from galaxies. Maybe galaxies are way bigger than we thought and so, um And and indeed that's what we found. Um, there's a I have this picture of a large disc galaxy That shows what people thought galaxies looked like before We use dragonfly to observe. So this picture here is of a galaxy called ngc 20 20 20. Oh my goodness. I can't believe I can't remember the number anymore because it rolls off top 2041 I think but I might be wrong because I've forgotten four numbers. Anyway So um in the center of this picture you can see um in in color and it looks kind of yellowish is is this galaxy The the size of this galaxy you can kind of see it kind of fades out And people thought it wasn't that big but after we observed it with dragonfly You can see the the black and white picture behind the colored image Is actually what the galaxy looks like with dragonfly and you can see there's a pair of blue arrows And the furthest stretches of starlight from this galaxy go all the way out to these blue arrows and this is About three times bigger than what we thought this galaxy was Uh, and this this changes um our understanding of how the the galaxy grows We understand that galaxies grow from inside out. So the centers of galaxies are Kind of where the oldest stars are and it was built out first and then slowly it grows over time and so by by Being able to identify the outermost parts of stars and we can study them in more detail and understand how galaxies grow So I thought galaxies were bigger than they They we thought they were and they they they were but it was three times bigger, which is unexpected I thought it'd be, you know, maybe 50 percent bigger Yeah We've got a question from uh gram w on youtube and he's asking about collaboration between One different parts of the spectrum don't they use radio telescopes to observe faint galaxies and gas And so how is dragonfly working in concert with this and yeah That's a really good question And that's absolutely right. So galaxies are made up of many different parts one part are stars And stars is what gives off visible light, but you're absolutely right There's also gas in in galaxies and this gas even though you cannot see it in visible light You can see it in radio light And so when you observe in in radio The gas extends out really far and typically in papers from about the 1950s all the way up until today recently all these papers talk about that the gas disc of galaxies is way bigger than the stellar disc of galaxies like up to two or three times bigger But that just turned out not to be true And so when earlier when I was talking about the galaxy is three times bigger You caught me It's I was talking about the stellar component of the galaxy being three times bigger But we always knew that the influence of the galaxy for example the gas associated with it I did extend further um And your question was about how these Information from different wavelength of light such as radio and visible wavelength can come together to help us understand by studying The the gas component the stellar component and also the young stellar component of these galaxies You can start to understand how this disc forms over time Very very cool. Um, and I actually want to ask two questions Yeah, I want to ask two questions from our chat room The first one comes from astro y y z Which is is that previously unobserved outer part of the galaxy? Is it exposure? Is it dust in the way dark matter? Is it equipment used? Or is there something else that does that? Mm-hmm exposure there's you hit on quite a few. Um, so the the aspect of exposure um I'm going to talk about the exposure part and the equipment used part together So if we were to use our really A traditional telescope for example one of these really large ones that people like to build Um and and take an image of the galaxy and we take an exposure for a really really long time You would get you you would see start to see faint stars But you would not see the faint fuzzy patches of the galaxies And it's because these faint fuzzy patches will be confused with scattered light That makes it just look like uneven background in in in the image So for example when you take a photo with the sun in the foreground and then it makes these flares It'll look like that and so the What the the new equipment that enables this observation is the dragonfly telephoto array and these lenses on dragonfly And and the fact that there are many lenses together. It means that the We can identify and eliminate the scattered light and the so these flare effects in the images and Can peel that away and see the faint galaxy underneath But we still have to expose for a really really really long time So let me try and do a quick calculation in my head The the image of um ngc 2841 that I showed earlier That was about 1500 images Each one with a 10 minute exposure I'm going to let you do the multiplication Wow Yeah, someone in the chat room will figure it out. Um With that there and uh exposure is definitely fine, but I just want to highlight Another part of your question, which is dust um It turns out that When we build a really good telescope that allows us to see faint things in the sky the thing that Limits our ability to see the faintest things in other galaxies is dust in our own milky way galaxy And and which is which is incredible because dust there are scientists who study dust in our own milky way galaxy You may think it sounds kind of boring or you're studying dust and it's not even the type from philip pullman's Um Book his dark materials, you know, there's that dust is really interesting for those of you who have read his books But this is literally just specks of dust floating around in the universe Well, people study that because these points of dust help material in the universe cool and therefore form stars. So it's actually really interesting and Suddenly we can use the dragonfly telephoto array to study that as well But at the same time it's kind of annoying because it's blocking the galaxy behind it Yeah, just a little bit And I was just I just wanted to throw this out there. Uh, dr. Brian may Um, actually if I recall correctly his doctoral thesis was on dust within our solar system Um, if if I recall correctly sounds pretty right about that. So, uh, yeah, so very interesting stuff The second part of the question that I wanted to ask we've got a whole lot of questions about this in the uh In the chat room and we'll see if if anyone can speak to this but st. Alex On behalf of a multitude of people, um, is asking if the galaxies are bigger than thought Does that end up changing the estimates of for dark matter in our universe? So does if if galaxies are way bigger than they actually we actually thought that they were does that change the Amount or ratio of dark matter to be expected That's a really good question again Um, so even though the galaxy in in distance in physical size Is could be three times bigger than what we previously thought the number of stars in that faint faint outer Region is very small and so it doesn't change The total amount of stars in the galaxy very much because most of the stars are still in the center But what it it mostly what it changes is understanding how the stars and materials put together in the galaxy Very very cool. So it doesn't change much. So Even though it takes a lot of space, there's a not not a lot of mass Right, right Because there were not many stars there. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, that would make sense then since it's it's diffuse Like we were talking about earlier Because not many stars Very cool. Now uh seafit in our chat room has has asked a question You know the telescope has grown over time. Are they finished expanding dragonfly or will they add more lenses in the future? And uh just for a little bit of background, it's how many lenses did it start with and what is it at now and is it going to expand? In 2012 we started the very first experiments We're done we're done with one lens and then very quick because it worked very quickly went to three lenses And then we had that for about a year then it went to 10 And now we're at 48 Uh, and I will do a plug for the dragonfly telephoto array If you are a very rich person and want to donate to science and discover the undiscovered things in the universe You can help us build uh more a bigger dragonfly so that we can image Image more parts of the sky and also see even fainter things such as this thing called the cosmic web Um, and uh, what what is there specifically about the the cosmic web that dragonfly can do with that? Yeah, like what's uh, what's the future of dragonfly look like? Mm-hmm. Uh, there are a few really cool things planned with dragonfly One of them is a wide field survey of the whole sky So this work is led by uh, danie Shani, danielly at the at yale university and oh actually she's half at yale and half at harvard. Um, and we so we these these, um discoveries of galaxies Oh wait, I haven't even talked about that at all. It was featured on one of your previous Um news podcast about the discoveries of these galaxies called ultra diffuse galaxies We haven't talked about that yet. Well, let's talk about them real quick Tell us tell us about those ultra diffuse galaxies and the dark web. Yeah So we set out we built dragonfly to understand galaxies that we knew about But when we pointed them at clusters of galaxies And galaxies in general we discovered these whole new class of galaxies called ultra diffuse galaxies They Uh, their characteristic is that they're very puffy Oh, he's a picture. So they um, they're very very faint and and diffuse So their light is spread over a large area and each part of the galaxy is really really faint and there are not many stars These galaxies turn out to be really really strange. So for example, um, Some of these galaxies were discovered to have no dark matter and others of these galaxies were discovered to have mostly dark matter and they're they're conundrum And we've only just surveyed We've only just taken pictures of a few parts of the universe and we found these very strange Objects and so the wide field Oh, so yeah, so for example, um, there was this galaxy dragonfly 44 And this the size of the galaxy like the physical size of the galaxy is as big as galaxies such as the milky way Or in pictured in the top of this picture the andromeda galaxy So in physical extent, it's just uh that it's really big However, when you count up the number of stars and the mass in the stars It's a hundred to a thousand times less than a normal milky way galaxy And that's why it took so long to find them because with that it was such a small number of stars. They're really really faint um, and so we found these weird galaxies and um, the next thing that dragonfly is set up to do is to kind of take to create these images of the entire sky and Count up how many different types of these galaxies there are Are they more common around? Galaxy other galaxy clusters where lots of galaxies are collected together Or actually there's a whole bunch out where there's no galaxies which are like usually areas We don't even look at but with this wide field survey We'll be able to see all of these things and count them up takes dock Um, and not just be like, oh, there's a weird one here. There's a weird one there We'll be able to figure out the population Hmm Very cool And we've got a couple questions from our chat room and youtube and i'm gonna pick this one adam synergy on youtube Was wanting wondering if it would help if we had a dragonfly array in orbit or are there plans for an orbital array Very much like dragonfly I think um I would I would love absolutely love to have a dragonfly in orbit one of the things that this would overcome is um When you take a picture of the night sky You you might notice that some parts of this like other than the stars which are the bright bits Or if you take a picture of the moon other than the moon, you'll notice that even the dark parts of the of the image they Hmm. Oh, yeah, the more carefully we look there more. There is the eye great Um from our chat room. Yeah, somebody wrote that real quick in there It's so true. That's my favorite thing about science It's like you start with questions and you're very interested and you look deeper into it And it's a it's a present that keeps on giving there are just more and more questions Yeah, okay back to uh taking a picture of the night sky You notice like the bright bits first like the stars or if you take a picture of the moon But if you look really really carefully and if you can somehow Block out your mind or physically on the computer block out the light from the stars You'll notice that the background is not perfectly black and it's not uniformly Dark either there will be parts of the image. That's like a bit brighter and a bit lighter and that's because The sky is not perfectly black For example in a city the lights from the ground gets reflected up into the atmosphere and that light gets scattered around And you can you can you tap those different parts of the sky may light up differently If we can put a and oh very importantly This is really bad when you're trying to observe faint large galaxies in the sky because Say, um, this is say this the whole screen is your picture and my head is the galaxy And this part of my oh, no, that's a bright part. This part of the galaxy is really faint And but the back the background the sky Right here is like a little bit brighter than the sky here Then you'll think that this part of the galaxy is brighter But actually it's just the sky and that's really difficult to disentangle If you can get outside of the earth's atmosphere Then all of those effects disappear and suddenly you have a clean flat background And any light above that would be galaxy Interesting it would be cool to have a dragonfly in space. Very very cool. Yeah, so get get that big donor In order to help make that happen Yeah Some of the things there now of all the sciences That that people frequently get to you know hear about Astronomy seems to be the one that sort of makes everybody kind of like lean back a little bit and go About that. So what is it? What is it about astronomy that sort of makes it? like this science that that can really like tremendously change a person Through through thinking about it or looking at it or getting into it Um, how it gets the best way to say this. How can astronomy be like a gateway science for a lot of people? That's that's the word I often use astronomy is definitely a gateway science I think one aspect of astronomy now to go full circle back to art is that it's absolutely beautiful um pictures of galaxies pictures of planets planetary nebula supernova remnants Gas and dust and Nurseries where stars and born and stars to die these images are beautiful And when when I think when humans see a beautiful picture It immediately draws you in and it's pleasurable and you start to ask questions naturally The the sky above us is also something that Is accessible to a lot of people Maybe not in cities But as soon as you step outside of a city or you go to an observatory or even if within a city you you take an image Of the moon There are so many details on it and you just start to wonder this this little this it gives you a perspective where All the billions of people of humanity will live on this tiny rock Floating and orbiting around a single star That's one star out of billions of stars in one galaxy which is out of billions of galaxies in the observable universe Are we alone? Where did we come from? Does history extend forever? Was there a beginning of time? Is there going to be an end in time? These questions, I think I think everybody Has a sense of curiosity about those kinds of questions You don't need to understand very much to be able to appreciate these questions either And and that's a really beautiful part of astronomy. It's that you don't need to understand how to code or The the nitty-gritty details and you can immediately appreciate that the kinds of questions We ask about where the universe came from and how we came to be are we alone? You can appreciate that immediately Yeah, and um and for people who may not sort of feel that way about astronomy like what's a really good way Um, like what's a way that you found that in approaching people that are like that that kind of changes their their mind about astronomy Ha, it's a really interesting question. I find that when people talk about other planets In the solar system people get really interested because I mean we live on earth it's it's just super cool to imagine the possibility of living on another planet and We you know, it's we we walk we take a hike into a mountain and we see this beautiful waterfall and it moves us Can we do that on another planet? What is it like there? Uh, this exploratory experiential nature? when we think about planets I think does definitely draw a lot of other people too Yeah, well i'm definitely uh down to go climb some mountains on other planets. Yeah, uh, that's for sure. So I don't know which one I want to do Sorry, I said, I don't know which one I'd want to do though because olympus mons is like the tallest Yeah, but its slope is like so low and you basically you basically like walk up a lot of mons I think I think io might be really fascinating. Yeah, that would be cool Also, I think ahuna mons is one of the tallest in terms of ratio with its uh with its parent body series So maybe that one, um, it'll go climb ahuna mons At some point in my life Climbing Can we get my jeep out there? There was a paper published. Yeah, recently there was a paper published about uh these lakes on titan and That so you take these images and there are these lakes things that look like lakes And then you take an image sometime later and it's gone So imagine like driving along and the lake just disappears a dry lake bed. Oh my gosh. I'm all for it. Uh, oh Oh boy All right, so you've been using astronomy to inspire some people in uh students in west africa through an organization Uh that has a really fantastic acronym of Wycea And so I was wondering if you can tell us a little bit about this organization That's right. Wycea stands for west african international summer school for young astronomers It's a summer school that's been running since 2012 And the goal of the summer school is three fold The first is to build a community of astronomers in west africa There's a few astronomers, but they want to build a bigger community there The second goal is to inspire and uh and teach and motivate the next generation Of young scientists and scientific leaders in west africa There is there's there are so many young people in west africa And oh, yeah, this is a really great photo from the summer school in 2017 in akra gana There are so many young people with amazing incredible ideas But there just aren't many courses of astronomy or many opportunities to understand to learn what astronomy is all about And so even though there are these students bustling with ideas. They don't have an outlet Wycea is an outlet and an opportunity to make like like-minded STEM Science technology engineering and mathematics undergraduate students interested in astronomy learn about astronomy And then students can decide if they want to continue with astronomy The way that wycea The wycea curriculum works is based on education research So it's not like a bunch of people fly in sit there give lectures and then fly out as soon as the lecture is over The program is was developed Over a whole year and it's constantly updating students turn up. They get shown beautiful Astronomical pictures for example of other planets of the sun of stars clusters of stars galaxies And they get to ask their own questions whatever questions come to mind about these astronomical images then they form teams and design their own investigation to answer their question and then they Basically, we don't like tell them any answers It's very frustrating for students who've never done this before I mean as a scientist I get frustrated every day when something doesn't work and doesn't make sense So they go through the same process of scientific discovery which involves frustration And then in the end they come out and realize they have the capability to answer Questions that they asked without somebody telling them the answer and that that's what science and that's what astronomy is all about So what has been some of your favorite moments in this so far because this sounds like an like an incredible opportunity for for these these folks to get so what have been some of your favorite moments during this program My favorite moment is definitely When when when the students get put into and this it's not a favorite moment because this happens over and over and over again We've had this school three times now so these students they form teams and Before they go off and do the investigation we do a little spill and say Listen to each other When you have a question when somebody has a question stop and listen don't leave anybody behind Make sure you're always listening to each other and considering carefully their question And of course when people get started and they get wrapped up in the investigation and get get wrapped up in Their ideas of how to proceed Some people will get ignored Because they'll say something and then the three other people say you're in a team of four One person says something and the three other people are like no no that's not important Well over and over again at the end of the investigation students say oh Actually, you know when we got stuck after barging forward for half a day We we realize we go back and realize the question that one of this other group member asked that we totally ignored Was the key to solving a key puzzle piece in the investigation And this moment is so typical of of science And it's one of the reasons why I've become really interested in diversity and inclusion in science If we have the most diverse set of people with the most diverse set of questions and opinions and ways of looking at a problem working together That's the way we solve the most difficult questions And so my work in west Africa. It's it's not about Inspiring people and giving people opportunities. It's selfish I want smart amazing different people to join the community of astronomers So we can figure out what dark matter is so that we can figure out what dark energy is So we can figure out what these weird flashing Lights in the universe are and and therefore understand how You know how we came to be and how we fit into this beautiful amazing universe Yeah, and I love that I love that you brought that up You know that it has to be both diversity and the inclusion with it. I heard a really good metaphor Can't be diverse and have people and then have them ignored You bring people in but you have to make sure you listen to them and give them all the resources that are needed To actually do the work. Yep. Yeah spot on. Yeah, there's actually a quote on the home page for the website that had I just fell in love with it's From one of the students. I have learned that scientists are very curious They are not so exceptional. They just ask lots of questions and they're really passionate about finding solutions to things it's such an amazing life lesson and applicable in every aspect of your life and this The summer school is just changing lives Yeah Uh, one of the things that yeah, that's definitely like one of the things I love most about science asking questions Yeah, yeah, and Having the diverse background you get different questions. You have people who everyone brings your own background and you've experienced things that I haven't experienced that Jared hasn't experienced that Uh, Emmanuel hasn't experienced it's We all have different perspectives and Being able to see the world in just a little bit different way makes us phrase that question Just a little bit differently and it just triggers all sorts of different thought processes And we just run exactly. Yeah I love it. Sorry. I'm just really excited by this. So I was wondering Oh, no, I love that you're getting excited thinking about I have to look around so the lights don't turn off in here Oh, that's all right. Oh, those are the lights the stars that keep turning on it off in your imagery Oh, cp is in there. So yeah cp variables in there. So so I was wondering Yeah, the this program looks like it requires a lot of resource and I know a resource limited access to resource is One of the things that holds a lot of people back How are you getting those resources? What kind of funding do you have? How do you get more funding? Yeah Thank you so much for asking that so Funding is one of the biggest difficulties that we have with with running ysya and we've reached out to many different organizations For funding one thing that we're going to launch at the end of april is a crowdfunding campaign to fundraise. So Back to this idea of diversity In in science and in astronomy and in in any field really, you know, I want more CEOs To be diverse more politicians to be diverse as well um So one way to allow most number of people to access the summer school is that we pay for our students travel to the school as well as their accommodation and food and this this Increases our budget by 30 percent So together with flying all the instructors in and then all the local costs as well um We we we haven't quite figured out how to fund everything for the 2019 school that will happen in october So we're going to launch a crowdfunding campaign. Um, if you have like five dollars or something that would be incredible If you follow us at twitter at ysya, or you can follow me Also on facebook ysya as well or check out our website. Um, we're going to have that crowdfunding campaign there in Uh in as by the end of the month So Definitely looking forward to that. I will definitely make sure that we send that out to everybody. Yeah, because it's such an exciting program with that, so Just kind of like to sort of like a wrap up question that's coming from our chat room That we have right here. See fit is asking what area of science excites you for the future and what direction will you personally Explore in the future. So what's the cool stuff coming up? And what do you want to get involved with as time goes on? Yeah, um Definitely one of the things i'm most excited about is this new thing that is this It's always it's been around for a while, but now it has a new name and it It has really coalesced the community together multi messenger astronomy. Um, so When we look at the things around us with our eyes, we see visible light But if we then have a radio telescope or an x-ray telescope or other tools of seeing Things we start to build up a better information and more information about the physics of what's going on and the newest thing that that came around in 2016 is the discovery of gravitational waves Gravitational waves is not even light. It's Space time Rippling and by studying gravitational waves together with x-rays and gamma rays Visible light infrared radio We can start to understand things that the most dramatic events in the universe explosions And pulsating stars and that that's what I want to study in the future But another area that i'm super excited about is this interplay between medical imaging techniques and astronomy I think it's fairly difficult because there are not many people that work across these two fields But something i'm going to try and do is to keep in touch with both fields so that they can help each other So back to this idea that diversity is Is the way to go diversity of cultural background of your Life experiences, but also the kind of research you do so interdisciplinary science I think the world's biggest problems such as climate change or antibacterial resistance Food scarcity all of these things are going to require disciplines to come together and so Actually, I feel like i'm in a really exciting place right now. I'm with the schmidt science fellowship It allows me to bridge disciplines and with my next postdoc I'm going to be working at swinburne university in australia Where they have access to 40 different telescopes to observe parts of the sky at the same time And finally figure out what these flashing lights are we have no idea what they're going to be No idea All right, well good mysteries coming up hopefully with that. Oh my goodness All right, so you work with all of these different organizations and if you could give us just a rundown of What where we can find the info on dragonfly and ycya and any Whatever else you're moving on to how can we follow you and how can we get involved in your projects? Thank you, um, definitely, uh, follow ycya um Dragonfly we don't have Social media presence yet, but we do have a website. Um, so if you search dragonfly telephoto array that should Get you to the website. Oh, maybe I can send you some of these links afterwards. Yeah, we'll get them. Sure. Yeah We'll throw them we'll throw them down there. So everybody look look down there All right there Followed on twitter schmitt schmitt fellows. Um, so that's the program That's funding young researchers to do interdisciplinary science from an early stage It's very difficult for someone who has experience in one field to get money to do something in another field because we're not proven But schmitt. Oh, thank you for the for the website But the schmitt science fellows which is done in partnership with the roads trust Um, which funds the roads scholarship They they give us that opportunity and I think more funding in in these kind of But it's a high-risk funding avenue, but more funding in this area. I think can lead to a lot of cool stuff so definitely follow schmitt schmitt fellows And uh, yeah, that's right. Uh, the program that I'm joining in swinburne university is called the deeper So deeper means you get to see fainter and fainter stuff wider That means covering a larger part of the sky Deeper wide faster, which means seeing things Taking shorter explodes exposures. So but still seeing faint stuff so that we can figure out what these flashing things in the sky are Um, there's a website for a deeper wider faster program. Sounds like a daft punk song. Yeah A good one sarah to wrap that up with uh, dr Jaylee zung. Thank you so much for coming on the show today Best of luck to you at oxford uh, and and dragonfly and all the cool stuff, uh that you're doing. So thanks for coming on Thank you so much. This has been really fun and the questions are incredible. I feel like can you come and work in astronomy all of you Well, there you go our chat room can come and collectively work, uh in the laboratory. I guess at the Tomorrow research institute. Yeah, sounds good to me So tomorrow's research today or something And uh, also not only do we have to thank uh our our guests who came on today We also want to thank you as well our wonderful citizens of tomorrow You help us make this show possible without your help There would be no studio. There would be no equipment. 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