 This is Twist this week in science interview episode interview with dr. Moia Mcteer Hey, everyone. I'm dr. Kiki and today on the show we are going to be speaking with dr. Moia Mcteer about her new book Milky Way and it is an autobiography of our galaxy Not the autobiography and autobiography. So I guess that the milky way has written Several or may write more we'll see about that. I would love to introduce my guest for today dr. Mcteer has a has a degree in astronomy mythology PhD in astrophysics from columbia university and she is also a folklorist and science communicator Welcome to the show dr. Mcteer. Thank you so much for having me dr. Mcteer is my mom All right You're not you're not grabbing on to the the the doctor title at this point. Um, I mean It depends on the context, right? Sometimes I don't want to be that formal But I like the sound of dr. Moia like it just it sounds nice I go with dr. Kiki. So dr. Moia here you are Thanks for joining me today. And I just to get started the background mixing mythology folklore and astrophysics I mean this At least astrology astronomy kind of goes back into that mythology folklore Cultural history for you know ages, but how did you come to bring it together? Yeah, I uh, I don't know much about astrology I I I put that out there because often people here I'm an astronomer and they they get the too confused so they start asking me about zodiac signs and I'm like, sorry I'm not the right person for this Um, that is one of the default assumptions that people have when they hear I did astronomy and folklore together A lot of people assume that I would study constellations I did propose a few different projects when I was an undergrad Maybe looking at creation myths from different cultures and seeing how those compare to the big bang theory What I eventually ended up doing was researching an exoplanet From with data from the Kepler spacecraft And then I wrote a science fiction novel that was set on that planet and was inspired by the hawaiian sovereignty movement so I Have had this weird Journey to try and connect these two and now most of the way that I do that is through fictional world building using science and facts as a building block And as a world builder, what are your favorite kinds of worlds to build are they? Realistic like how do you go like how do you go about? Deciding okay, this is this is how my world is going to be I love this question. I have really honed my process for building a fictional world over the last few years And it starts with your intention. What do you want to do with this world? Do you want to tell a story in it? Do you want to play a game in it? So that it's interactive or are you just trying to build a place where you feel like cozy and warm for yourself? I often do world building as an escape exercise um, so I I teach people science so that they can make their worlds feel rich and textured and realistic but It doesn't have to be solely based on science for something to feel real. I really love fantasy worlds We don't we don't have magic On earth the way that you know, they do in a world with fairies or dragons But you can still make something Actually, I'm gonna not use the word realistic. I think coherent is what I want in a world something that just Sets rules and then follows them throughout Yeah, that internal consistency is Very very important and I find myself when I'm Reading science fiction or fantasy that when the world breaks its own rules. I get really mad Yeah, it can totally take you out of the experience and make you not want to keep reading or watching it anymore I've had that experience several times So the difference between so your your your previous book lying hordes about the exoplanet that you were studying How uh, how did you make up physics for this exoplanet? Did you make up any rules for the chemistry and the life that would be be there? Or was this all Was everything based on hard science in your exploration of that world? Yeah, I love that as much as possible was based on the hard science the The tricky thing with saying uh A planet out there is habitable is that we don't have the information available yet We don't have the technology to give us the information necessary to say whether or not a planet is earthlike and habitable So the only thing I really knew about that planet was how big it is Approximately and how far away it was from its host star Which gave me an idea of what temperature it might have But I knew nothing about its atmosphere nothing about its surface So all of that had to be made up And what I ended up doing was saying all of the things that I don't know about this planet through The data i'm going to say that they are pretty similar to earth So it had an earthish atmosphere The chemistry the physics were pretty much the same. I think the gravity was uh, maybe slightly different The the biggest difference between that world and earth was that it orbits a very different type of star one that is dimmer and cooler than our sun So it would have been it's so this exoplanet itself is closer to the sun It had its habitable zone is totally different. Yes. Um, yeah Yeah, tell us a bit about like what you learned through your graduate work that kind of Yeah became the nugget So so that world it was much closer to its star because the star was cooler than our sun But it was so close that it We think that it might have been tidally locked Which means one side of the planet is always facing the star So you have a day side of the planet and a night side. Um, and actually one of the big Struggles in that book one of the big conflicts was that they they knew their planet was becoming tidally locked And needed to get off of it onto another planet in their system. That was further away Uh, so that that was really fun to think about and then when I went to graduate school because that was my undergraduate work When I went to graduate school, I started exploring different facets of exoplanet habitability um, I knew that I was really interested in Galactic habitable zones. So where in the milky way galaxy do we expect to find the right conditions for life? And I I had a great time answering that question um My first project in grad school was trying to come up with a method to find mountains on exoplanets and Quantify how bumpy those planets were Because if we know that a planet has mountains or other topographical features then that gives us insight into the interior of the planet Which we don't Have other ways to do right now And then I did a couple of projects looking at the motion of stars around the galaxy and how that affects planets um, so one was Our fast stars more or less likely to have planets around them And it looks like oh, do you have a guess actually I want to ask Yeah, I was sitting and thinking about that So by fast stars, do you mean stars that orbit more quickly or that are spinning themselves more quickly? Great question orbit orbit around the galaxy This I I'm gonna say less likely. Okay It turns out that there's not really an effect Until you get to really high velocities of stars In the in the center of the galaxy, but out here where we are in the disc of the milky way There's not much of an effect But then I I took my conclusion from that paper And my next paper looked at the center of the galaxy and simulated the orbits of stars in what we call the bulge Which is this much denser region of the milky way And I was trying to see how common Stellar flybys are how often do stars have these gravitational interactions? And I found that they're pretty common in the bulge Four fifths of stars can expect to have a close gravitational encounter and then I took I took that information and did another project on How can we look at clumps of stars? And we call them moving groups. They're stars that are not actually clumped in physical space But they have similar velocities like they're they're moving To together Um, and I did a project to look at their chemistry to see if I could back track how those moving groups formed So Yeah, I did a lot of fun stuff in grad school That I mean, it sounds so interesting coming to this, you know The origins of different aspects of the milky way So like the moving groups did they all form together? And if they did form together would they have similar composition and or you would assume that they would and it depends on how They form like it was it was like a mystery that I got to solve and All of all of the work that you've been involved in how is this going to Impact our view of the milky way moving forward That's a great question I think that my my research Added some information about Where we might expect to find life like us although I take the view that Life is probably Pretty common in the universe and if it is then it's going to adapt to the environment that it's in So most life won't look anything like us because most planets don't look anything like earth So it was it was definitely poking at the anthropological Um principle when we're like anthropomorphizing everything and putting Humanness into everything that we're looking for Yeah, and when you and when you say life right provio Like anything honestly honestly at this point astronomers are looking for anything that reproduces and Ingests fuel Because the definition of life is pretty ambiguous I do think that my my science communication work will have a much bigger Impact when it comes to changing the way humans see the galaxy And you can see that in the book what I really want people to do is stop thinking of space as something separate from us We are On a spaceship right now earth is a spaceship traveling through the universe We are a part of space And I I want people to to stop separating us I mean very similar to how historically we've tried to separate separate ourselves from nature You know from the animal kingdom and you know, we're above it somehow and different and Yeah, we're we're a part of all of it. Yeah, exactly Yeah So and this is where the storytelling comes into play and really makes a difference and so I'd love to know, uh Your graduate work and looking at the milky way. Were you weaving stories about the milky way? From the milky ways perspective the whole time. Were you asking the milky way these questions? No, I think for an answer I mean, that's kind of what all astronomers are doing is Spending hours with data that the universe has kind of gifted to us and and trying to eke out an answer But no, I think this project that I did anthropomorphizing the galaxy and giving it a personality That was a recent project That that I wasn't always doing it was fun though. It was really fun to try and and get myself in the mindset of this 13 billion year old um, you know, like 100,000 light year across thing. It was really it was really fun to do that And from the get go in the book. It's the milky way has got sass the milky way is like, oh Purely little humans. You're nice. I'm glad I'm glad you happened. But yeah, whatever One of my favorite reviews of the book so far has has said the milky way is such a jerk I don't know how it got this book deal or why someone as nice as moya agreed to write it Write it for the milky way, but the milky way is a jerk and I want out You know, that's our human anthropocentric perspective, right? We are you know We you want the universe to be nice to us, right? Oh treat us nicely. Let humanity live special We're special. Yeah, so, you know from the perspective of a conscious galactic entity You know this universe It's talking to It's cells, you know, but at the same time it doesn't have to coddle those cells because yeah, what's going on there? I'm so much bigger than you like I It's it's not being a jerk. The attitude is an at it. I mean, I don't know. I've I've considered books on AI and you know Consciousnesses before, you know superhuman consciousnesses and why would they be nice to us? Exactly the milky way. Look, we are such a tiny part of it. The fact that it is Speaking to us at all. Is it being nice? um One of my friends when she read the book was surprised because she thought it would have more of a nurturing Mother nature type of personality. Um, I was like Well, why why would it? I mean the the earth I can see the earth having more of a nurturing mother nature personality It deals with us all the time, but yeah the milky way We've been around for such a tiny fraction of its lifespan. Like why why would it give us that respect? and Really, it's like watching a little bit of mold grow in you know in your bathroom You're like you notice it and you go, huh? Is that good or bad? Yeah Yeah, at one point in the book the milky way compares the human lifespan to that of a mayfly And it's like this fly spends its entire life in one room of your houses like Do you ever wonder why it bothers to do anything at all? Because that's how I the milky way feel about you humans like why do you bother you live for for no time? So it does respect us in that way. Um, it admires Our grit and determination Yeah So tell me this this Old snarky sassy milky way Who does the milky way want to be talking to who is it trying to reach out to? It's trying to reach out to all humans. I mean it sees us all as the same, right? There's a line in the book where it says that the idea that there are different types of humans is utterly To the galaxy like we all look the same to it, but really it just wants us to start telling stories about it again the the reason that the milky way decided to write its autobiography is because For most of its existence. It has been pretty lonely And much of what it does is destroy I mean it try it forms stars It falls in love with those stars and then has to reckon with their inevitable demise And that has has created a lot of inner turmoil for the galaxy So when humans came along and we started Looking up at the sky and using it to keep time or navigate or entertain ourselves in our little communities It felt useful and it really liked that feeling But then we stopped and it's almost like it got this this brief flash of Of positive emotion and then we took that away So now it it is trying to get us humans to be more familiar with space Which is hard because most people don't have a good view of the night sky We don't need to rely on it to navigate or keep time and Even entertain ourselves. We have Netflix now, so Yeah, the milky way is speaking to all of us And you you've talked about the fact that you grew up Um out in the woods where there was no television You weren't connected in the way that people are connected so much around the world now looking at our devices um, and even in your life now do you Do you see this? this I guess belly button Gazing naval gazing of humanity. Um, is it going to affect Astrophysics are we do you think that we will have fewer? People looking up at this guy to ask questions or do you think they're going to be finding all this stuff on the internet because That's a great question. I could see it go going either way Actually, we have more technology now than we ever had to Observe the universe and share what we learn about it. Uh, so there is a A big miss and disinformation problem with the internet But it's also a really powerful tool to get cool knowledge and and information out there. So I think Um, I was really hopeful when I saw the response to the JWST images People immediately downloading that that picture of the ring nebula and putting it as the screensaver on their phone I think that's awesome. If that's the way that we can connect to space now, then okay, let's let's really lean into that Yeah, let's lean into I mean the speaking of the JWST I mean, there's some amazing stuff that's going to allow us to look at exoplanets to be looking at our Neighbors. Yeah, I mean people got super excited about the images and I I get it. We're a visual species um, the milky way also thinks that we're We're silly for relying so much on our site But um, I was really thrilled by the spectrum that we got with JWST of one of these Uh, big jupiter-like planets. We saw such a clean Spectrum, uh, which tells us what elements are present in this planet's atmosphere. We saw Signatures of water, uh in this planet's atmosphere that would be Impossible to see with any other telescope. So yeah, it's it's amazing what JWST can do There's been a A scientist who has Been putting out his ideas. I think he has a book coming out in a little bit that because of JWST, we're going to be seeing that Inflation isn't happening and that the big bang didn't happen and that the JWST is going to give us the evidence to put the big bang theory To rest. I got a question about this last night and an event and I hadn't heard about it. I need to look this up after this I'm wondering what Is it it's the expansion part? Do they think that there's no expansion or that the expansion isn't accelerating? No, I think it's the inflationary. It's the inflationary part. Yeah Backward fascinating. Yeah, I'm I'm gonna look this up After our talk. Yeah, it's it's it's it's interesting, but I'm kind of I'm like, okay It's the it's one of the fringer ideas But they're you know saying this is new evidence that the JWST is bringing out But right I mean as scientists we have to be open to new evidence giving us Kind of paradigm shifting information about the universe a hundred years ago It was paradigm shifting that the universe was expanding And not just standing still and then it was another radical shift to say that that expansion is speeding up So yeah, I'm I'm ready for my mind to be blown But I would need a lot of evidence to to be blown Yeah, the extraordinary claims rely Require extraordinary evidence. Yeah, I mean the the inflation thing is interesting because there's there's so much in our big bang hypothesis our big bang theory that says Like we we didn't have all of the data available at the time and so there there are a lot of Aspects of it that are kind of like well We need this to happen to explain other things and so the inflation part Is kind of a weaker point of the big bang theory where we we needed the universe to get really big all of a sudden And so we were like, oh, well, what if it just inflated? To a to thousands of times its original size and so like yeah, I I'm I'm ready for that to be questioned Yeah, and if we can make it uh more accurate, that's yeah, you know a big part of it Exactly But from inflation back to your book about the milky way I don't want to get off track too much these questions like astrophysics is a huge field It's it's very maybe the biggest feel how how does the milky way feel about its place? In the universe really good really good about it. The milky way Has a lot of confidence, but it's not It's not unearned the milky way is the the biggest strongest galaxy in the local group. That's the small Neighborhood of about 50 galaxies that we've discovered Andromeda is the other Biggest galaxy in the group. It's unclear which is more massive and which has more stars the the measurements keep going back and forth but the milky way for a long time really hated itself and And really felt guilty for not being able to make a star that didn't die But then it it learned how to fight back and talk back to that voice whispering these horrible thoughts in its head and Part of what brought it out of that was its love for the Andromeda galaxy, but another part is just taking a moment to really Step back and look at what it's doing look at the effect that it has on the world around it And when it did that it was like, oh wait. No, I'm I'm awesome. I'm beautiful. I'm strong. I'm brilliant I'm the milky way like everyone should love me So the milky way feels really good about its place in the universe even though it knows That there are other bigger galaxies out there Yeah, and this is uh, this is you know, this is a lesson that maybe people Individuals can take from this perspective that the milky way has taken about itself That's the point You can you can absolutely see that I wrote this book during the pandemic at a time when I and many others Were struggling with mental health. Yeah. Okay. That's that in itself is also, you know an interesting We've weft to the weave So as we come into the end of our 30 minutes here What are what are a few of the things that you really Need or want people to know about about your book and what you've put into the world You do not need to know any astronomy to pick up this book and learn from it. It is written Not for children. I do not do Any of my work for for young audiences. It's written for um, like I say high school and up, but you do not need to know any astronomy Every time there's a new term or a piece of jargon. I do explain it in the book. Um, I think you'll also find that it's not just about astronomy There are Myths in here stories and folklore that we have made about the milky way galaxy throughout human history There is also history of science in here where you can learn about how astronomers and physicists and other researchers Learned what we do because I've found in my science communication work that so much of psychom is just giving people scientific results Um and hoping that they that it sticks in people's minds I think it's a lot more effective if you teach people how the science is done. Um, so you'll find that in this book too I mean the advice that you get when you write a book is Not to say that you are writing this book for everyone, but I really do feel like there's something in this book for everyone What did you gain from writing this book? confidence I did not think I could write this book. I didn't I I didn't think I had enough to say about space I didn't really trust myself to pull off the conceit of Writing from the perspective of an of an omniscient galaxy because I do not know everything And actually I'm still terrified that there are wrong things in this book because they The publisher does not have anything to do with fact-checking like I had to send this book out to My astronomy colleagues to get it fact-checked myself Um, so I'm I'm still worried, but I am so much more confident in my Ability to write and communicate and express complex ideas now than I was before this project Yeah, and it's all this kind of a project. I can imagine it's always in science. It's what we know Now, you know, there are always more questions being asked and more technologies coming forward to help us Answer questions like it's more accurately and more efficiently, but yeah, I think that's in scientific training We are we're trained to not ever really conclude anything implications We've constrained the possibilities The universe is probabilities. This is it It's all statistics. So how can I ever be certain, you know, how can you write a book with error bars? was also like We have made discoveries since I finished writing this book In the book I talk about the image that we took of m87s event horizon This is the the edge of a black hole around another galaxy and I had this quippy little line about how Oh, you humans you your eyesight is too bad to see the black hole at my center And then like literally less than a month after I turned in the final version We had taken that picture of Sagittarius a star and I was like you couldn't Have analyzed your data just a little bit more quickly Yeah Come on But that's okay. That's that's what um, like future updated releases are for Or a next book or next book. Yeah, when the when the milky way gets to more specific naval gazing When the milky way finally becomes the celebrity to humans that it feels it should be then There won't be another book Well, I I'm so glad that you have written this You know the story this autobiography of the milky way so we can get a look inside the milky ways inner life and thoughts And hopefully it will lead more people and you know in the way that Carl Sagan, you know began so much storytelling in the scientific or not began but really Inspired so much storytelling in the scientific sphere. I hope that this Does that as well? Oh, thank you so much me too. Yeah, where can people find you online? And where is this book available? This book is available anywhere books are sold In the u.s. And there will be Different translations coming out over the next couple years You can find oh, there's also an audiobook that I read so you can hear me talking as the galaxy And you can find me on twitter instagram and tiktok. I finally took that plunge At go astro mo. It's the same on all platforms Fantastic and thank you for taking on all the different social medias. None of none of that is easy And it's like you post different things on each of them because you have a like a different persona across it's it's interesting I'm still learning Well, if you wanted places for a world building you've got them all sorts of outlets different personalities Yeah, fabulous. Thank you so much for joining me. I am very very glad I got this chance to talk with you moya Yeah, me too. Thanks dr. Kiki Thank you dr. Moya And I hope everyone out there has enjoyed this interview thank you for joining me for this conversation and We will return next wednesday at 8 p.m. Pacific time for our regularly scheduled live streams And in the meantime remember It's all in your head