Caltech Astronomy Public Lecture Series - Astronomy is Driven by Technology (Not Ideas) - Shri Kulkarni - 03/26/2021

Astronomy has a reputation for being shaped by deep thinkers like Einstein. Join us for a controversial talk that instead suggests astronomy is now in its golden phase due to rapid advances in technology, not due to ideas. Timestamps and links are included below: Announcements: 00:00​​ Introduction to Presenter: 03:51 Presentation on Technology Driving Astronomy: 7:22 Q&A Panel Introductions: 41:13 Where do humans factor into science in the future? 43:33 How should we interpret the tension between the two discrepant values for the Hubble Constant? 47:09 How should we apply Occam's Razor to theories? 49:21 What's wrong with modern (astro)physics today? 51:33 What about string theory? 55:05 What about doing theory for theory's sake--should there be consequences for bad hypotheses? 59:26 How do we rescue astronomy from the theorists? 1:00:57 How far away can we directly image exoplanets? 1:06:10 Could we image an Earth around a Sun as an exoplanet? 1:08:17 Could blastwaves from supernovae be detected (or a danger for us) on Earth? 1:10:14 Could distant gamma-ray bursts affect things here on Earth? 1:16:01 Could a supernova have torn away Mars' atmosphere? 1:19:12 Are brown dwarfs the dust bins of the galaxy? 1:21:08 What are your thoughts on Oumuamua's origin? 1:23:45 How should controversial arguments in science be settled? 1:28:15 When was the first exoplanet discovered? 1:32:41 Have we discovered any exo-moons? 1:37:37 Were Saturn and Jupiter once brown dwarfs? 1:40:00 How many exoplanets that we've found are probably brown dwarfs? 1:42:06 What roles do black holes play in star and planet formation? 1:44:53 What about the Trappist exoplanetary system? 1:49:48 Do most stars host many planets? 1:52:23 How can junior scientists still make high-impact results without some uncertainty in observations? 1:55:31 Closing Remarks: 2:00:03 Participants: Professor Shri Kulkarni is the George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. During his time as a professor at Caltech beginning in 1987, he has served as both department chair as well as Director of Caltech Optical Observatories (Palomar and Keck Observatories). Among his many accolades, Professor Kulkarni is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, has received the Helen B. Warner Award from the American Astronomical Society, and the Alan T Waterman Prize from the National Science Foundation awarded to the most accomplished scientist, doctor, engineer working in the USA under the age of 35 at the time. Prof. Kulkarni's primary interests are the study of compact objects (neutron stars and gamma-ray bursts) and cosmic explosions, and he was on the science teams who first discovered a millisecond pulsar, a brown dwarf, a galactic fast radio burst, and determined that gamma ray bursts are at cosmological distances. He is currently the director of the Zwicky Transient Survey, a large scale effort to monitor the sky for short-timescale phenomena. https://sites.astro.caltech.edu/~srk/ Dr. Ilaria Caiazzo is an astrophysics postdoc at Caltech. She is interested in stars, in their lives and in their afterlives. Her main focus is on the remnants of stellar deaths: white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. When she’s not looking at stars, she is watching movies, and she sometimes writes or produces small ones. http://ilariacaiazzo.com/ Julie Inglis is a PhD student in planetary sciences at Caltech. She is interested in the atmospheres and formation of extrasolar planets and satellites. She uses computers to simulate the formation of satellites from dust disks around forming planets, as well as direct imaging and spectroscopy techniques to probe the atmospheres of young giant planets at wide separations from their host planets to understand more about the formation processes of these objects. When she steps away from her computer for a break, she enjoys hiking and camping with friends, and writing and art. Dr. Cameron Hummels is a postdoctoral researcher in theoretical astrophysics at Caltech. He creates supercomputer simulations to study the formation and evolution of galaxies since the Big Bang. In addition to astrophysics and public education, he is really enthusiastic about trail-running, long-distance backpacking, beer brewing, chess, and the astronaut program. http://chummels.org