Last entry from 2010's DPS Notebook

Well, as those of you who read this space may know, I've been promising one last post on my experiences at this year's DPS ever since the event ended way back in October. It's not that I haven't written one, on the contrary, I composed a capping piece on the red-eye back to Toronto. No, the question has been whether or not I'm comfortable with publicly posting my musings on that flight.

Knowing how much to share is a tough line to walk. On the one hand, you could take the "Dragnet" route and stick entirely to your stated subject: "Just the facts, ma'am." While they make useful references, such blogs are somewhat dry. They also ignore the fact that all of us who do science for a living are real people with hopes, dreams, desires and foibles. But you can't put so much of that on the webpage that you drown out the subject matter. So it's tough to balance the two.

What puts me over the top on this one (after much reflection) is that it does, honestly, express how I was feeling as the conference drew to a close. It was a happy time, and we all know how fleeting those can be. As such, I'd like to be able to look back, years from now and remember how it was that I felt. As such, I'm presenting this as a bit of a year-end piece:

CATP Seminar Series, Dr. Gordon Southam

Astrobiology is a big, big field and so many of its aspects remain a bit of a learning experience for me. One of the fun parts of being a fellow of the Canadian Astrobiology Training Program (CATP or "Cat-Pee" to us in the program, part of NSERC/NRCAN's CREATE program) is that we hold seminars every two weeks that are broadcast across the country. The seminars give those of us working in one part of the field a chance to see what is happening in other parts, and to learn about potential synergies with our own work. My area of focus is habitability and water cycles, and so last week's talk, given by Dr. Gordon Southam of the University of Western Ontario, a hard-core microbiologist, was quite a departure.

While I'll be the first to admit that some of the material was over my head, there were a number of interesting aspects which were a little surprising for me. I plan on using this space to discuss those aspects from this talk and from future talks. So hopefully the "CATP Seminar Series" will become a regular feature here. Don't think of it so much as a review, but instead look at it as an exploration or a discovery journal. The full list of upcomming talks can be found on the CREATE website, located here.

Dr. Southam's talk, delivered last Friday, was entitled "Biogeochemical Processes from the perspective of a Bacteria." His main take-home point was that conditions that are extreme (high temperature, pressure, salinity, pH) to you and me are normal to certain strains of bacteria. At first that statement seems a bit simplistic. After all, if bacteria have evolved to take advantage of so-called extreme conditions, then naturally those would be the environments under which they would be most "comfortable" (by which I mean their biological processes would be optimized). Thus even the term for these organisms, extremophiles, is a bit misleading.

First Impressions of CPSX: A Smart and Noble Gamble

[My new home: The Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration at the University of Western Ontario]

Before I begin, thanks to all my readers out there! It wasn't long ago that I had thought no one came by this space. But to my astonishment, sometime in the last 24 hours "HTWT" just passed a thousand page views (6-month rolling window) for the first time. I suppose I will have to write more often now - and try to encourage some dialog! I also know what you like, with my two Astrobio posts making the top 3 most viewed. Since I'm in Western partially on a CATP (Canadian Astrobiology Training Program) grant, you can look forward to more of the same in the years to come.

On to business: I want to give my first impressions of my new academic home, the Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration (CPSX) at the University of Western Ontario. To my knowledge it is the only academic organization of its kind in Canada, completely devoted to the study of other worlds and how to go about exploring them. It's a young group, only a few years old, and did not exist when I left for the US back in 2003.

An Astrobiology tempest: Arsenic Life?

Is this an SEM Image of the first known lifeform to use a different biochemistry from the rest of us?

So many interesting things to mention about the recent findings of (partially) Arsenic-based life in Mono Lake, CA. First of all there's the discovery itself, detailed in a paper by Felisa Wolfe-Simon over at Science Magazine. But there's also something to be said about the way that NASA has handled the media surrounding the discovery. Additionally, in the week since the announcement, we've had some serious backlash by bloggers, including particularly pointed remarks by fellow science blogger, and microbiologist Rosie Redfield over at RRResearch. Some seem to think that "research paper review by blog" is a good thing and a sign of the times, but is it a substitute for the peer review process? Most troubling of all are the questions being raised in some spheres about the scope of NASA's astrobiological work and the worth of the planetary sciences. After all, they argue, what's Space got to do with studying pond scum on a lake in California?

A Year at York

I've just completed my first three days at Western, and it seems like a good time to reflect back on the year of working at York. I should mention first that I will not be disappearing entirely from York. Since I will be continuing to live in Toronto, and will be periodically travelling back and forth to London, the good folks at York have been kind enough to offer me a place to hang my hat while I am in Toronto. As such, my activities with the York University Observatory will continue, though they will be scaled back compared to what they were before my move.

The Importance of Advocacy

When I was in High School, I was a bit of a film buff. I was so interested I even worked at a movie theatre part time! I saw as many as I could manage and looked forward to Sunday Mornings each week when I could sit down and hear what Siskel and Ebert had to say. While I valued their opinions, what I enjoyed most was getting a glimpse into how their critiques were put together. And if they could do it, why not me? So a friend of mine by the name of Robert and I decided to write our own film reviews and publish them in the School Newspaper. We called it "Films Under Fire" and it was a hit. We had our own website and a logo.

Dr. Jonathan Fortney (Conversations at the DPS, profile 6)

Dr. Jonathan Fortney enjoys a field lecture and the start of a life in Planetary Science near Dry Falls, Washington State in 2002. Photo by Jason Barnes.

Well folks, we've come to the end of our journey. I'll have some additional insights from DPS to post later in the week, but for now please enjoy the short blurb below of Dr. Jonathan Fortney, the last of the DPS interviews. In some ways, Jonathan is our most distinguished guest, as he won the DPS's Urey Prize as the top early career researcher this year. You'll have to forgive him if his voice sounds a little raw - I snagged him right after he gave his lecture! Even though Jonathan got his PhD at the University of Arizona, I can't say that I knew him well while he was there. His last year and my first year were the only ones that overlapped, so in some ways we were only ships passing in the night.

A Night at the RASC

UPDATE: PDF of the Talk Slides are available here!

Last night I had the opportunity to give a guest lecture at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada's Annual General Meeting in Toronto at the Ontario Science Centre. For 45 minutes (and then some with questions!), we talked about the exploration of our solar system by robotic spacecraft over the last 50 years. In my talk I made some comparisons to the earlier era of maritime discovery which lasted from the mid 1400s up until the early 1700s. Later, in lieu of the upcoming Planetary Decadal Survey, to be released in March of 2011, I discussed some of the big questions that we're on the verge of answering and what exploration by spacecraft might look like in the next 50 years.

Dr. David Choi (Conversations at the DPS, profile 5)

Dr. David Choi (provided photo) - if it weren't for the background, this could be a candid shot. No one smiles as much as he!

Like myself, Dr. David Choi is an atmospheric scientist, after a sort. However, while I look at the atmospheres of Earth, Mars and Titan, David studies Giant Planet atmospheres. The Gas Giants are, of course, essentially all atmosphere, which makes them very different targets from the thin shells that I look at. As David will himself tell you tonight, this gives them a bit of a 'fluid dynamics laboratory' quality which lets us test out our theories of how an atmosphere should fundamentally behave. Thus, David runs computer models and tests the results against spacecraft observations of the flow of the atmosphere, most recently using Cassini Data.

While at the University of Arizona, where he got his PhD, David worked for Dr. Adam Showman. From Adam, Dave got a thorough grounding in geophysics and mathematics (I remember my Principles of Planetary Physics-B well and still shudder at the sheer complexity) and has produced some impressive research. For his accomplishments he was awarded the Kuiper Prize from the Department of Planetary Sciences earlier this year. Since then David has stayed on at LPL as a postdoctoral research associate. As such, despite the connection of all of my interview subjects to LPL, he is the only one whose main affiliation remains at the U of A.

The hard-core computer modelling and observation-interpreting researcher is only one aspect of David's personality. He has also been a stalwart part of the organizational and social sides of the department and graduate student life and a strong believer in outreach. His contributions include working as a reviewer for the community, both for NASA R&A and Icarus, an organizer of journal clubs, and speaking at elementary schools about science and the planets. It's not often that I get to speak to such a well-rounded individual as David and I hope you enjoy listening to what he has to say tonight!

David's Interview, part 5 of our 6-part series, "Conversations at the DPS" runs tonight at 8:00 PM EST on Astronomy.fm's "Live at York U." I will be off again this week, but Paul & company will keep things lively! Next week we will wrap up with Dr. Jonathan Fortney.


(You didn't think I'd forget the obligatory Death Valley, 2006 Shot, did you? Here's Dave passing the time on the road from Death Valley to Racetrack Playa in 2006, as photographed by Catherine Neish. There was some downtime as the result of a vehicular break down (eventually, we were forced to abandon that vehicle, as opposed to my truck, which I simply drove for five miles over rough ground with a shredded tire on that journey!)

Dr. Britney Schmidt (Conversations at the DPS, profile 4)

Dr. Britney Schmidt poses in front of a combination of rocky and icy material, sadly not at Death Valley.

Britney Schmidt is a rising star of planetary science, as many of us have known for a while now. I first encountered her in Bob Brown's lab at LPL where she worked as an undergraduate. At the time, she was performing lab experiments on isotopic systems in sublimating ices, and cutting her space mission baby teeth on Cassini. I also had the opportunity to participate in a JPL Team-X exercise (aka Planetary Science Summer School) with her in 2005. While we butted heads a bit on that project, we gained a mutual respect for one another (or so I'd like to think) and our group put out a solid proposal for an Europan Orbiter.

Britney would later follow-up on what is perhaps the most critical part for such a spacecraft, an ice-penetrating radar, which is something she looks into in her current position as a postdoc at University of Texas at Austin. In her spare time she is also the director of the Education and Public Outreach effort for the Dawn Mission. Dawn will be the first robotic spacecraft to enter into the gravitational well of a body as an orbiter, break orbit and go on to another body, in this case two of the largest main-belt asteroids Vesta and Ceres.

This expertise with asteroids is something that Britney picked up during her doctoral work at the University of California, Los Angeles. Like me, she is a bit of a jack of all trades with experience running lab experiments, doing theory and observing other planets in their natural environments. In particular, she has used the Hubble Space Telescope to look at asteroids, revealing that there are examples which bear the spectral signs of water ice on their surfaces. I find it facinating that the more we look at comets, the more they look like asteroids (the flyby of comet Hartley-2 showed a very "asteroidal-like" body) and similarly, the more we look at asteroids, the more some of these look like comets. Britney's work was published in Science last year and won her acclaim. At the time of her interview, I hadn't seen her in person for over five years and it was good to catch up.

Britney's interview runs tonight (Monday) at 8:00 PM EST over on Astronomy.fm's "Live at York U" program. Unlike for the previous interviews, I am off tonight - but not to worry, Jesse and Paul will keep you entertained with the latest news from the Observatory and commentary on what Britney has to say, so feel free to pop by yorkobservatory.com and ask questions in the OPV chat room!

Dr. David Minton (Conversations at the DPS, profile 3)

Dr. David Minton has made a career chasing the solar system's earliest rocks. Provided Image, captured at Racetrack Playa, above Death Valley in 2006

Not everyone showed up at LPL fresh out of undergrad. Among us were several students who had previously studied in other fields and obtained masters degrees. Most of these were the usual suspects: geology, chemistry, physics, astronomy. However, I admit I took some interest in David Minton, who was coming to us with an Aerospace Engineering Degree. To my knowledge he was the third such student after myself and Yuan Lian (also in my class).

You might think that with an engineering background, the obvious speciality would be in spacecraft, and indeed David started out working with Peter Smith on the Phoenix Mission in the summer of 2005. But after that summer, he discovered that his passion was dynamical simulations. It is the work in which he has had a great deal of success, and he has stayed with it ever since, first in Renu Malhotra's research group and later at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder. Next fall, David will take up an Assistant Professor position at Purdue in Layfayette, Indiana where he will work alongside several other researchers in a budding planetary science group founded by National Academy of Science member H. Jay Melosh.

Perhaps dynamical simulations needs some more exposition. Basically, what David does is run simulations of particles in the early solar system to see how the planets formed out of the material in the solar nebula. From this information we can say why we have the planets where we see them, and what composition we expect those planets to have. It also gives us a statistical tool which enables us to examine planet formation in general and, therefore, gives us information on what kinds of planetary systems we can expect to find around other stars.

This field is still young, and as computing power increases, the simulations that David and his colleagues can run become more and more detailed. What we see is that the solar system, early in its life was a fascinating and strange place, full of giant impacts, and migrating giant planets. In fact, it was David who found evidence of this behaviour by closely examining the distribution of rocks in the asteroid belt. It was this achievement, while he was still a grad student at LPL, which won him the Kuiper Award and set him on the course that led him to Purdue.

For me, David's interview was a chance to learn about a field about which I knew little, but whose results were vitally important to my own work. After all, if you don't know the starting value for D/H who is to say that today's value is enriched? I hope that you too enjoy hearing what he has to say about the ancient arrangements of the planets.

David's interview runs Monday, November 8 at 8:00PM EST on Astronomy.fm's Live at York U program. I'll be there able to answer questions live on the air. To ask a question, leave me a comment here or better yet, join us in our online chat room during the show over at yorkobservatory.com .

And now a word from our sponsors

Opportunities to do planetary science may be somewhat limited in Canada, so it behooves us to spread them as widely as possible when they arise. I'll be starting work with this program on December 1st as part of the 2010 round of fellowships (Post by me on this to follow in a few weeks, I hope!). The good news is that the program will also be selecting fellows next year (2011) as well. The advert is pasted below. Interested? Feel free to contact the folks listed below below, or myself, or make a comment below and I will get back to you!

CANADIAN ASTROBIOLOGY TRAINING PROGRAM
NSERC Collaborative Research and Training Experience Program
MSc, PhD, Post Doctoral Fellow positions available 2011

Astrobiology is broadly defined as the scientific study of the origin, evolution, distribution, conditions and destiny of life in the universe. This new, transdisciplinary science is based on two scientific revolutions - the recent realization that microbial life is extremely hardy and can thrive in very harsh environments previously thought uninhabitable on Earth and the explosion of space technologies that are driving the robotic exploration of Mars and other planets in the search for life in our solar system. The Canadian Astrobiology Training Program (CATP) is the first Canadian cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral training program in Astrobiology and is a NSERC–funded Collaborative Research and Training Experience Program (CREATE) (2009-2015) located at McGill University, McMaster University, University of Western Ontario, University of Toronto, and the University of Winnipeg. CATP by its very nature will be accomplished through collaborative and integrative research approaches containing elements of geology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, microbiology, and robotics. CATP trainees (~70 graduate & undergraduate students, PDFs over the next 5 years) will be exposed to innovative research and training approaches, combining fieldwork at unique Canadian analogue sites, including those in the high Arctic, with laboratory work at cutting edge analytical facilities at participating university, government, and industry partners. Shared expertise within and among institutions will be provided by means of course and seminar videoconferencing, and interdisciplinary supervision. Professional training will be enhanced by training rotations with our collaborators at CSA, MDA Space Missions, and our international partners, including NASA Ames. CATP HQP trained in various aspects of astrobiology will be at the forefront of the search for life beyond the Earth. Indeed, CATP will address the recognized lack of HQP in space science and lead to new scientific opportunities and promote Canadian participation in future missions to Mars. The skills acquired through this program will be directly transferable to various other disciplines, such as Earth and environmental sciences, robotics, medicine, and astronomy.

We are presently seeking applicants for Graduate Student Fellowship (MSc and PhD) and Post Doctoral Fellow (PDF) positions available in 2011.

Successful applicants will have a strong interest in astrobiology and have an excellent background in microbiology/ molecular biology, geology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, and/or robotics or other related disciplines.


Applications will be received until January 14, 2011.


For detailed information on the CATP and how to apply, please visit the CATP website (http://create-astrobiology.mcgill.ca/) or please directly contact:

Mr. Robert Oxley
NSERC CREATE CATP Project Coordinator
McGill University
Telephone: (514) 398 7901 Email: robert.oxley@mcgill.ca