From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Mon Jun 09 2003 - 15:47:08 MDT
Dear Transhumans/Extropes,
Some thoughts to share.
On Friday May 30, ended the Astrophysics of Dust conference in Estes
Park, Colorado (http://www.physics.utoledo.edu/~aod03/). Only a small
number of the 275 attendees were planetary scientists, the rest were
astrophysicists studying dust in the interstellar medium, in the
intergalactic medium, in circumstellar disks, and high energy objects
(e.g. quasars, starburst galaxies), and, some fraction (say 1/5) of
the attendees were laboratory spectroscopists and theoreticians who
were studying the formation of the molecules and dust particles.
From my notes and John Mathis' (University of Wisconsin) summary talk,
one can say that the cosmic dust field is an extremely active field.
There is a flood of new observations, lab work and theoretical work,
representing a wide range of expertise (dust is fantastically
interdisciplinary) and applications, helped by the huge increase in
computing capability. The dust scientists' views are changing rapidly
about this subject, and has become more realistic, messy [... chaotic,
turbulent, much like life ... ].
Some implications of this messiness is that:
1) Observed quantities are only averages
2) Radiative transfer is uncertain
3) Grains move relative to the gas and to each other
4) Dust varies from place to place
In spite of the above, some number of solid (heh) relationships hold
regarding dust particles' intensity and wavelength dependencies, mass
distributions and interstellar gas-phase depletions. One hundred
twenty different molecules in space have been discovered: these are
the building blocks of the dust particles that form from them, and
eventually become you and me. John Mathis ended the talk with some
interesting words that, 'these are not ordinary times and that some of
the most exciting decades in the history of astronomy lie before us
(and to let's keep on having fun)'.
For me, the conference showed a startling transition in my own twenty
year life path, random-walking through astronomy. In 1988, during my
earlier scientific programing life at NASA-Ames, I worked for a year
for two astrophysicists; my project was to typeset (LaTeX) their
conference proceedings book: _IAU #135: Interstellar Dust_. At the
time in '88, I remember thinking that dust was a boring topic, but I
did a very good job on the book; it was one of the first Kluwer
conference books typeset completely in LaTeX, we developed our own
macros, those two astrophysicists wrote a complimentary letter to my
employer, Sterling Software, that resulted in a small bonus at the end
of the project.
The Estes Park meeting was the next dust meeting since the previous
1988 gathering, and I was there, far from thinking that dust was
boring, and presenting my own dust topic. Startling. Since last
January, I've been working in Rome on astronomical infrared
spectroscopy and various cosmic dust topics. The move to Italy was not
easy, the early life in Italy has been difficult too, amplified
because I lost my partner the second week I arrived (and with that, my
main reason for living in Rome). However quasi-permanent astronomy
jobs are difficult to find anywhere in the world and so the good news
is that I have one of those, very interesting work, in a sunny
European place. [The bad news is that the salary is not enough to
cover basic living costs so that is my next challenge.] Those two
astrophysicists I worked for in 1988 were present at the Estes Park
meeting too, and were tickled that I was there in that capacity as a
dust scientist, and now seeing my obvious changes in the last fifteen
years, I think that I am tickled too.
The people at the meeting were a mix of folks from different
countries- the largest one (half, perhaps) being the U.S., the rest
from The Netherlands, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, U.K, Australia,
others. We came to know each other fairly well because the astronomers
at this meeting were isolated- we had sleeping rooms, dormitory style,
in several large several story apartment buildings of a YMCA
conference center, and the meeting started each morning at 8:30am and
ended at ~11 pm. Meals were provided, no beer or wine at dinner or the
poster sessions (YMCA), but a lot of scenery of snow-capped mountains.
Some words about cultures. Something about the U.S. culture (I don't
know what) promotes a sameness, a fear of 'being other'. Perhaps I'm
sensitive to these aspects, so then I'm only more affected than other
people, however, here is a story that might illustrate it.
On May 30, Friday evening, I embarked, via buses, on a mini-journey
from my hotel near the Denver International Airport to the Aurora
Mall, in order to find a hardware type of store that might carry a
1/4-inch hex adaptor for my Black-and-Decker drill. My drill purchase
is new (bought in Rome)- necessary because my flat came to me bare and
I'm still needing to build cupboards to put away dishes, food, etc.
Unfortunately the Sears store at Aurora Mall in Denver did not have
the adaptor ('it is a specialty item' they said), and so I began my
trip back, adaptor-empty, from the Aurora Mall, back to my hotel. The
weather did not look nice, however, the clouds that were far on the
horizon when I left, were now black and they filled 1/3 of the sky. I
made it to my first bus transfer, then I had one more bus to take that
covered the last 15 miles to my hotel. I waited for that bus, and I
waited and waited, but no bus. Meanwhile, the clouds filled half the
sky, headed in my direction, the temperature dropped ten degrees (F),
and the lightning began.
Still I waited at the bus stop, still no bus, and after one hour, I
began to get desperate, and I stuck out my thumb, in order to hitch a
ride from someone to my hotel. The road on which I was standing had two
two-lane sides, somewhat busy at 7pm, filled with many drivers with
SUVs and pickup trucks. But no one wanted to pick me up! A hundred cars
(or more) passed me, it was still light, many people surely saw me (I
made it a point to try to catch their vision). Was I strange-looking?
I don't know- I was essentially 'dressed for work' with a black silk
blouse, purple print skirt, stockings, black shoes. The strong wind
was me whipping me around, I was cold; this probably showed too.
After those hundred or so cars passed my hitch-hiking thumb, one pulled
over- it was a young man named Juan, a Mexican, in a pickup truck. He
said he was drinking a little ('would I like a beer? or a cigarette?'
he asked), I could see an empty beer on his seat, but his speech and
driving didn't seem to be adversely affected, and he said that 'he wanted
to help, and where did I need to go'? 'To my hotel', I answered, and off
we went. Because he didn't recognize the names of the street
intersection of my hotel, and I didn't know the area at all, the path
was not straight, and we had to stop and get directions once. In
about 30 minutes, however, he put me at my hotel, he wouldn't accept
my offered money for gas, and he drove away with a cheery wave.
The moral of the story (if there is one) is that if you are stuck in
Colorado in a lightning storm, along a busy road dressed for work and
trying to hitch a ride, you might be viewed 'different enough' to the
drivers, that, instead of seeing a person in trouble, they are seeing
someone frightening to them, and therefore only another 'different
enough' person might be willing to help you. Since many people here
have had experiences of being viewed weirdly by the outside world,
my advice is: don't give up, accept yours and others differences,
respect those differences, and please don't get stuck in a
lightning storm!
Amara
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "Every exit is an entry somewhere else." --Tom Stoppard
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jun 10 2003 - 04:30:46 MDT