Guests Science

Dr. Alexei Filippenko is a Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley whose research specialties include exploding stars, black holes, violent galaxies, and cosmology (the study of the universe as a whole).  The work of his group measuring the speed-up of the expansion of the universe (using exploding stars as milestones) was recognized as the “Science Breakthrough of the Year” in 1998 by Science magazine.  He has won a number of research prizes, including the Pierce Prize of the American Astronomical Society.  In addition to his research, Professor Filippenko is a very popular teacher, having been voted the “best professor at Berkeley” by a student poll several times.  His introductory courses have been recorded on video and audiotape by The Teaching Company.  The latest is entitled "Black Holes Explained."  He won the 2004 Carl Sagan Prize for excellence in science popularization in the Bay Area.

Ben is a co-founder of the Spaceward Foundation and a member of the Space Elevator community. An aerospace engineer by day, he dons the cape and mask of Space Elevator crusader by night, and engages in daring escapades such as running the $4,000,000 Space Elevator challenge, developing Carbon Nanotube technology, and attending ISEC board meetings.

... The Space Elevator is it. Mankind has outgrown its habitat, and most all modern-day ailments are simply symptoms of this fact. The only way to solve the underlying problem is to expand the habitat, and the Space Elevator is the only way to do that. Rockets can enable individual Space missions, but only a Space Elevator can enable a true expansions of civilization into space - a space-faring society that is currently only imaginable to science-fiction writers. Looking back from the year 2500, the construction of the Space Elevator will be considered the defining moment in history when the Space Age truely began, comparable in importance to the invention of the heat engine and the beginning of the Industrial Age.

As an engineer, there is no better occupation than this. As a person, there is no more significant a pursuit. The future is closer than it appears!

Ben serves on the board of directors of ISEC.

Dr. Cynthia Phillips is a planetary geologist at the SETI Institute. She has an undergraduate degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics, and Physics, from Harvard University, and a PhD in Planetary Science, with a minor in Geoscience, from the University of Arizona. Dr. Phillips specializes in processing images taken by robotic spacecraft of the planets and moons of our solar system, with a particular interest in the icy moons of the outer solar system such as Jupiter's moon Europa. Dr. Phillips also directs a number of educational programs at the SETI Institute, including the Research Experience for Undergraduates program that brings 15-20 college students from around the country to the Institute each summer for research internships. She is also a public speaker and the author of 15 books, including Space Exploration for Dummies, The Everything Einstein Book, and The Everything Astronomy book.

Dale Cruikshank is a planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, where he specializes in determining the compositions and physical properties of small bodies in the outer Solar System. In this work he uses telescopes on Earth and in space. Cruikshank is especially interested in the ices and complex organic materials on the satellites of the giant planets, and icy bodies that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune. He got his Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in 1968, and has been with NASA for about 23 years. He is currently working on the Cassini mission at Saturn and the New Horizons mission that will fly by Pluto in July, 2015.

David Morrison is the senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., where he participates in a variety of research programs in astrobiology -- the study of the living universe.

Dr. Morrison obtained his doctorate in astronomy from Harvard University. He is the author of more than 155 technical papers and has published a dozen books. He has been a science investigator on NASA's Mariner, Voyager and Galileo space missions. Morrison is recipient of the Dryden Medal for research of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Sagan Medal of the American Astronomical Society for public communication, and the Klumpke-Roberts award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for contributions to science education. He has received two NASA Outstanding Leadership medals and he was awarded the Presidential Meritorious Rank for his work as director of space at NASA Ames. Morrison was a founder of the multidisciplinary field of astrobiology, and he provides on-line answers to questions from the public sent to "Ask an Astrobiologist," found at: http://nai.arc.nasa.gov/astrobio/

Morrison is perhaps best known for his leadership since 1991 in defining the hazard of asteroid impacts and seeking ways to mitigate this risk. Asteroid 2410 Morrison is named in his honor.

Debra Fischer is the first woman in history to discover new planets. She is part of the team that has discovered the largest number of planets around other stars; her work has focused on identifying planetary systems (families of planets) out there and looking at how the chemical makeup of a star relates to its chances of having planets.  She has recently become Professor of Astronomy at Yale University, having taught at San Francisco State University starting in 2003.  She uses some of the world's most advanced telescopes at the Lick, Keck, and Cerro Tololo Observatories for her research, and is the project scientist for a new instrument that will be used starting this November to search for planets in the southern hemisphere skies over Chile.  She has a strong interest in education, having been a volunteer working with classroom teachers and a popular speaker with diverse audiences.

Physicist Doug Caldwell is an expert on one of the most promising schemes for finding small worlds far beyond our solar system: looking for the slight dimming of a star caused when a planet crosses between it and us. Doug started working on this technique in 1997 as a postdoc working on the Vulcan project at Lick Observatory in sunny California. He served as observer, repairman, and data analyst for this small telescope designed to look for transiting "hot Jupiters." Doug then took the show on the road to the equally sunny, but much colder South Pole, where he lead the Vulcan South project, which was designed to take advantage of the long dark nights and high altitude, ideal conditions for finding the small dip in stellar brightness that would betray a planet. At the same time Doug began working on NASAís Kepler Mission, a space borne telescope that will examine more than one hundred thousand stars for evidence of orbiting worlds. Doug currently serves as the Instrument Scientist for Kepler. Since its launch in March of 2009, he spends his time trying to track down, understand and eliminate the small instrumental artifacts in the Kepler data in order to reach the level of precision needed to find transiting Earths. If Earth-size planets are common, Doug Caldwell will be among the first to know.

Native of Hartford, Connecticut.  Bachelor's degree in physics from MIT, Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Hawai'i.  Infrared astronomy post-doctoral researcher at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, and at NASA-Ames.  Professor of physics and astronomy for 12 years at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  Since 2003, employed by the SETI Institute as director of education and public outreach for NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) mission at NASA-Ames.  Teaches introductory astronomy courses in Stanford University's Continuing Studies Program.  Co-author with Michael Seeds of three college introductory astronomy textbooks, "Horizons", "Foundations", and "Astro".

Douglas Vakoch is the Director of Interstellar Message Composition at the SETI Institute, and is the only social scientist employed by a SETI organization. Dr. Vakoch researches ways that different civilizations might create messages that could be transmitted across interstellar space, allowing communication between humans and extraterrestrials even without face-to-face contact. He is particularly interested in how we might compose messages that would begin to express what it's like to be human.

As a member of the International Institute of Space Law, he examines international policy issues related to sending such responses. In addition to being a clinical psychologist (Ph.D., State University of New York at Stony Brook), Dr. Vakoch has formal training in comparative religion (B.A., Carleton College) and the history and philosophy of science (M.A., University of Notre Dame).

Dr. Vakoch has published widely in scholarly books and journals in psychology, anthropology, astronautics, and the relationship between the arts and sciences, and is the editor of several forthcoming books. His work has been featured in newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times, Nature, Science, and Der Spiegel. As a spokesman on the cultural aspects of SETI, he has been interviewed on radio and television shows on the BBC, NPR, ABC, The Learning Channel, The Discovery Channel, and many others.