Becoming Interplanetary: Grappling with the Human Side of Mars Exploration
In this talk, I will discuss my work as the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology. The Blumberg Chair is a unique position, created to foster research at the intersection of astrobiology (the search for and study of life in the universe), and its implications for society. During my residency, I have been exploring the ethics of Mars exploration, with a focus on equity and inclusion in the sciences. I will talk about my role, the ethical dilemmas posed by human space exploration and their intersections with our challenges here on Earth, and some of the unique opportunities working at the Library offers.
Technical Talk: Unsupervised Learning for Anomaly Detection: Rediscovering Boyajian’s Star
Astronomy has a long history of serendipitous discoveries, with many in recent years being driven by citizen science projects. Most of these discoveries occurred during by-eye examination of data— so what happens when the data volume grows large enough that traditional serendipity becomes inefficient? This question is particularly apropos for LSST, which will observe 37 billion objects across both space and time. In this talk, I will discuss how machine learning may be used to intentionally find anomalous data in astronomical datasets, and present a test case using Kepler’s observations of Boyajian’s Star. Anomaly identification is a powerful means to both discover novel phenomena, as well as to identify problematic data so that it may be cleaned from the database. Lastly, hunting down anomalies is an exciting way to engage citizen scientists in astronomical discovery, whose efforts have repeatedly demonstrated the power of the crowd in uncovering previously-unnoticed phenomena.