By: Ethan S
Wow, it’s only the 5th day of SSP and I think I’ve learned more about astrophysics than I had my entire life up until this point. The pace and workload of SSP is challenging and exhausting, but also exciting and fascinating. Sleep can wait.
Also, I have to say, it is a little bit intimidating to be surrounded by so many brilliant and hard-working people. My one consolation to this feeling is that many other SSP participants seem to be experiencing some form of “imposter syndrome,” as well.
Our First Guest Speaker
I think I can speak for all SSPers (or is it a different demonym, like “theSSPians”?) and say that today was greatly anticipated from the first day. After learning that Richard Feynman had given guest lectures at SSP in the past, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the many guest speakers we would be hearing from. Even despite my high expectations, my expectations were far exceeded by Dr. Tarter, Chair Emeritus for SETI Research.
I’ve always had a fascination with the thought of extraterrestrial life. I think science fiction books, movies, and TV shows are to blame. Recently, I have been watching The Expanse. You should watch it, too, if you haven’t already, but I digress. The point is, thinking about extraterrestrial life is interesting to me, and probably is for most people.
Dr. Tarter presented the myriad of methods SETI and other groups have used and are using in the search for life outside of Earth. For example, they are searching for signals from star systems with a single frequency. There is no known non-biological phenomenon that would produce this, so it would imply a laser or some other form of artificial electromagnetic radiation.
Some signs of possible life are subtler and more ambiguous. For example, phosphine gas, a biosignature, was discovered in the atmosphere of Venus in quantities larger than are produced in any known non-biological chemical process. It is possible that the phosphine gas isn’t even phosphine since only one type of data was examined, or that an unknown, but non-biological process was responsible. Regardless, Venutian microbes remain one explanation for the phosphine gas in Venus’ atmosphere.
Beyond the many interesting methods used by SETI and their findings, if there is one thing to take away from Dr. Tarter’s presentation, it is that it can be easy to lose perspective of humanity. After all, we are mostly fixed to one planet by gravity, and we rarely even interact with people from other cultures. As easy as it is to think of different people as different, we are really all the same, whether or not there is life outside of Earth. As Dr. Tarter put it, we are all “Earthlings.”
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”
-Carl Sagan
Some other interesting recent SSP occurrences:
- Being that today was the last day with a Python lecture, Dr. Bauer allocated the last half hour or so to ask questions. He answered many of our questions, from “What is it like teaching computer science at a liberal arts college?” to the obviously most important questions, such as “Which video games do you like to play?” Unfortunately, we are still in the dark over the significance of the birds he showed us every day.
- My team experienced the joy of code that spontaneously broke then started working again. James’ solution to a problem on the pset looked like it should work, but it returned (0, 0) every time. To debug it, he included some print statements that printed out variables at various points in the function. After running the code, the function not only printed out the correct values at every point in the program, but also returned the correct values. Maybe the electrons in the CPU were misbehaving, who knows.
About Me
Hi! I’m Ethan S, a rising senior from Highlands Ranch, Colorado. Although I am an only child, my cat, Nala, and my dog, Cocoa, are loud, needy, and fun enough that they are equivalent to younger siblings. Outside of school, I enjoy hiking, biking, swimming, fly fishing, speedcubing, playing the piano, and skiing. I also love math, physics, programming, robotics, and of course, astronomy. I can’t wait to learn more about my favorite subjects over the course of SSP and get to know all of the amazing people!
