Our Island Universe

Reviewing her data collected from the previous night, a young PhD student found a puzzling source. She discovered a repeating signal of pulses that consistenlty arrived 1 and third second apart, just like clockwork! Annoyed that perhaps aliens were trying to contact her, Jocelyn Bell Burnell labeled the source LGM-1: Little Green Man-1. Was it a radio signal from ET? What was the source she had serendipitously discovered?! #WomensHistory

On a dark, moonless night, far away from city lights, you can look up to see thousands of stars glittering against the blackness of space. How did we ever figure out how far away the stars are? Harvard “computer” Henrietta Swan Leavitt solved the riddle of distance in astronomy. Her discovery ushered in the expanding universe and the stunning realization that our Milky Way Galaxy is literally one of trillions in the cosmos! #WomensHistory

Wood. Oil. Gas. Maybe fire is a fundamental element of nature as the Greeks thought? When did we finally figure out what stars are actually made up of and who made that ground-breaking discovery? Celia Payne’s 1925 doctoral thesis at Harvard provided the key insight that would later be described as “ the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy. ” #WomensHistory

Setting foot on the Moon was an enormous engineering & scientific accomplishment. We’d finally dip our toes in the ocean of space that awaits us to explore. How we got there involves many #HiddenFigures who were instrumental to this story. One such person is Katherine Johnson who was born and raised in a small town in West Virginia. #WomensHistory

Who was the first African-American woman in space? Dancer. Chemical engineer. Medical doctor. Dr. Mae Jemison became the 1st African-American woman in space when the space shuttle Endeavour launched on September 12, 1992.

Nichelle Nichols played Lt. Uhura for 6 years on Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek. While not a scientist or engineer in real life, she did play one on TV and her impact was no less profound.

On February 14, 1990, at the suggestion of Dr. Carl Sagan, Voyager 1 turned its camera backwards and snapped a “family portrait”. As Voyager 1 raced outwards to the fringes of the Solar System and then beyond, c aught in the center of scattered light rays from the Sun, Earth appears as a tiny point of blue light. On seeing that image, Dr. Sagan wrote about our “pale blue dot”.

February 2nd is Groundhog day. It derives from an old European superstition that if a groundhog emerges from its burrow and see its shadow, winter will last another 6 weeks. Groundhog Day is really an important astronomical holiday, and whether a groundhog day sees its shadow or not, we *know* that spring is just around the corner.

2019 was the second-hottest year on record. In fact, every decade since the 1960s has been warmer than the one before. Is there any “debate” within the scientific community about #climatechange? What’s the evidence that our planet’s climate is changing and that our dependence on fossil fuels is the reason? #OurIslandUniverse Climate Change image caption: Credit: Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2535/satellite-data-confirm-annual

Betelgeuse, the bright orange/red star in the armpit of Orion the Hunter, is going to explode any time now. Betelgeuse this winter is only half as bright as it was last winter. Has it already exploded? What does that mean for us here on Earth? #OurIslandUniverse Betelgeuse image caption: Brian Ottum kindly provided this direct comparison of Betelgeuse a few years ago and Betelgeuse now. He wrote: “Left is February 2016. Right is December 31, 2019. Note that the brightness/appearance of all