Successful Across the Nation Speaking Tour Completed

Late yesterday I drove back to Los Angeles, after three weeks of touring astronomy departments from Tuscon to New England. I am grateful to all those who hosted me and who spoke to me. I appreciate many people letting me present my talk either through my presentation book or though a more formal talk process. It is necessary for a scientist to get feedback, and I am grateful to all who gave feedback. I am especially grateful for the patience of those astronomers who understand that I have not had the normal professional interchange due to being sent home in a manner that has denied me the normal collegial sociality that scientists expect.

I am continuing to job search, even considering a return to graduate school arrangement. My next new effort will be to speak publicly about my mission to be an astronomer who has my career, family, and friends. Family means marriage and children, so I could this as four goals. I will openly claim my history and future: to not let someone powerful have the final say on my four goals of career, friends, or how I seek marriage and children. I choose to publicly seek these four purposes of life: perhaps I will get them, or perhaps not, but either way, I would rather people know how employment in science affects obtaining these most important things in life.

Onward for having career, family, and friends!

Driving to Utah to see family

It has been too long since I have seen my family in Utah, and now my father is very ill. I have never driven to see my family from such a long distance. The situation I have been put in has been a difficulty on my entire family. I had always expected to be a scientist who gets married and has children. I should have been lucky because nature has been kind to me, giving me no reason as far as I know that I couldn't have had family by now. But people put other plans instead. I was moved out of science to the extent of having my data access blocked, with colleagues and friends blocked from me by someone's choice. When I pointed out how this would end my life goal of career, I was told this was better for me. This was called "help" from someone who claimed he was giving me personal direction as a friend. If I lost my goals due to natural causes, it has to be accepted that things happen by nature without regards to our choices. But it is necessary to oppose unethical harm done by choice. Nature cannot be negotiated with. But we must expect people in power to follow principles of ethics to not do unnecessary harm. People can be pushed to make better choices.

I insist on going forth with my goals, to have the obstacles intentionally put in front on me replaced by help:

Career, family, and friends.

Talk at Pennsylvania State

The astronomers at Penn State kindly hosted me at their snowy campus in State College. I was preceded by another very good exoplanet talk. Their was a very enthusiastic discussion, largely on what might be expected to happen that might or might not allow the energy signature of planet destruction to be seen.

Before and after the talk, I had good discussions with several astronomers. PSU has put together quite a good exoplanet group, following the lead of Professor Alex Wolszczan who made the first firm discovery of planets outside the solar system in 1992, three years prior to the discover of 51 Peg. I've talked with Professor Wolszczan in the past, which was good since he was on travel but most of the other PSU exoplanet astronomers were there.

I also took some photos of the campus with the bright colors of autumn leaves mixed with all the unusual early snow. I also enjoyed this scenery on the drive from State College to Youngstown, Ohio.

October snow in Pennsylvania!

It's a very snowy morning in October here in State College, Pennsylvania. They tell me it is the earliest snowfall in record in State College.

I am looking forward to meeting several astronomers in Pennsylvania State University, after some walking through snow. I walked around the snowy campus yesterday and it is a beautiful campus. I have to decide whether to walk to campus from the motel or pay $6 for parking today, if the parking isn't taken early. They tell me it will be busy today since it is Homecoming today.

New York to Pennsylvania: Autumn to early Winter

Had a beautiful autumn to winter drive from Syracuse, New York, to State College, Pennsylvania, where I will meet, speak with, and give a talk to astronomers tomorrow. The drive through New York and Pennsylvania was gorgeous with all of the fall colors brightening the rolling valleys of this largely rural drive. The drive was generally moderately up and down through shallow valleys, winding between thickly wooded hills in peak colors of red, yellow, and green. The weather went from mysterious and gloomy, to a little rainy and then very rainy, with finally very wet snow as I approached State College. It was the earliest snow in the records of State College, people at Penn State and at Steven's Motel told me.

The moderate sized towns and the little town buildings along the highway had a lot of character. Many corn fields made me wonder how competitive is corn grown in New England versus the superfarms elsewhere. The whole drive had many picturesque places, with winding streams at the bottom of lush green valleys.

Fall colors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont

Taking one day to see a new part of the country. I went from Connecticut through Massachusetts and into Vermont (plus a little of northeastern New York) to see the colors of the autumn leaves. I have heard so much about how beautiful Vermont is, and it is indeed beautiful and welcoming, with pleasant small towns between the rolling hills. The best leaves, though, were in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where they were more at peak but in Vermont many of the leaves have already fallen.

I am looking to add one or two stops to my astronomy visits, since the visits I have done have been so productive. It has been wonderful talking with people regarding all they have done in exoplanet science!

Harvard, Day 2: Talk and visits

I gave my falling planets talk at Harvard today. It was well received, with good questions. There is interest in what will happen when these planets are destroyed. Many fascinating issues of where might this energy go and how fast is it released, how does the tidal friction come about, and how does planet destruction happen in general. I like how at least the transfer of angular momentum and how the star is made to speed up is at least one part of the problem that is relatively easy for us to understand. But we still don't know how much of the angular momentum is shed, which makes a difference for how stable is the "synchronous" situation when the star's rotation is sped up to the same rate as the planets orbit.

I had good discussions with several Harvard astronomers. Some have had long experience with planet transits. They've perfected their abilities to screen out likely transits from imposter eclipsing binary signals. Willy Torres estimated that 90% of apparent planet transits are one of the eclipsing binary "vermin." I should have asked when that percentage is, since it is knocked down in more than one step: a medium telescope radial velocity measurement to exclude stellar companions, and a large telescope radial velocity measurement to actually detect a small radial velocity characteristic of a planet.

There was also some comment that while the Kepler project can be expected to find many planets, it is too easy for people to forget that it only finds planetary candidates that will need to be confirmed by radial velocity measurements that will mostly be done from the ground by large telescopes, and this will take time. No one knows how the screening of unprecedentedly small planets will proceed -- especially since being confined to a small part of the sky, these will not be all of the brightest star candidates. There is talk that we will not have a quick harvest of many, many planets, but that it may take many years to vet the process.

Harvard, Day 1

Met with several people at Harvard even though most of the senior people I had hoped to meet are in California for a Kepler meeting. But I got some great feedback on my falling planets projects. I will give a talk tomorrow.

Cambridge is a beautiful city, and the fall colors are out in force here now. The Harvard astronomy building is very nice -- new and pleasant. The people are also pleasant.

Now I need to get out a 2 page handout on my talk.

Car Trouble

The bright side: the car trouble happened at a good time and place. I was intending to go from the DC suburb of "Upper Marlboro" in Maryland to Connecticut tonight, and then on to Boston tomorrow night so that I could go to Harvard on Monday. My nightly stays are in part determined by where I can bid a low hotel price on priceline.com. I thought since I've never been to New York City, and since today's drive was only going to be less than 6 hours, that I would "drive through" NYC. I am staying longer than intended: my car is losing its oil through a bad oil pan gasket. I was actually in the tunnel coming into NYC when the oil light flashed just briefly. Just outside the tunnel, it flashed again. I knew it was a problem because yesterday I had put two quarts of oil in after the car had run out of oil. Losing two quarts in one day is bad! So I entered "Auto service" into the GPS that Emily lent me and on the 2nd try it took me to a service place that will actually be open on Saturday and Sunday. So I am staying in a NYC hostel, in a dorm with 10 people, tonight. I am having to do this on the cheap. Good that the hostel is within walking distance of the car shop.

Hope that the rest of my trip has no more misadventures.

NASA Headquarters

Talked with several people at NASA Headquarters on Friday about being connected with NASA exoplanet science. I had long sought to be a part of the Kepler transiting planets project, and seek to be a part of the (still being proposed) TESS follow-on transiting planet project.

The proposal deadline for Kepler was at a very unfortunate time: 2007 May. Since this was just two months after Rosing cut me off my projects triggered by his disapproval of my personal activities having nothing to do with work, it was not the time that I was able to pay attention to the science deadlines that I now carefully watch. I am doing what I can to not be kept out of these historic projects. What a shame if when the earths are discovered if I have not returned to being a part of the effort.

Hence the trip!

NSF Headquarters

Visited NSF Headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia to discuss employment in science issues. I gave my presentation on not only employment issues but also challenges to scientists developing their knowledge and skills, which are absolutely essential to success as an astronomer, physicist, or any other scientist. Success does not come in a vacuum, but requires fostering a supportive learning environment. For a scientist, gaining new knowledge and skills are a process that can never end.

I talked with an aide of NSF Director Arlen Bement, who will brief the Director.

The NSF is housed in quite an imposing and impressive facility on Wilson and Stuart streets. Stuart Street is one street over from Taylor street. I should feel at home.

Saw the Washington mall and some of the tourist sites on the way from Arlington to where I am staying, which has an address variously called Landover or Upper Marlboro.

Baltimore and Johns Hopkins University

Today I was at Johns Hopkins University. I presented my talk privately since the public schedule was full. My talk went well again. I also heard from some astronomers here about their work. I went by the Space Telescope Science Institute across the street from the astronomy dept; I have an appointment with a STScI staff member for later.

One astronomer took me to a talk given by the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Interesting that he had been a professor of history. He also grew up in the U.S. His talk was fascinating. I hope that Israel is as determined to have peace as he portrays.

The campus is beautiful. The leaves are starting to change color (more than the "just beginning" I said in my last Baltimore post). The East feels more "woodsy" than the West, and this campus is very comfortable.

I am to visit Washington DC tomorrow: NSF and NASA.

Another productive day!

Ohio to Maryland

I had a great visit with several astronomers at the Ohio State University in Columbus yesterday. I debated my observing falling planets idea. Perhaps the energy from tidal migration would only heat up the bulk volume of the star, and in that case, the energy from the tidal migration of even the largest planets would not noticably brighten the star. The total energy of the star is too great. But I still maintain that it is still important to consider whether a signficant part of the energy is deposited in shallow layers. It would be ironic if true, but I wonder if having higher Q values could mean that more of the tidal dissipation would occur in a more shallow layer and thus more of the energy could come out as a luminosity increase.

But perhaps I should focus on after the planet starts to be destroyed. Whether destroyed by Roche lobe overflow or by the planet entering the star's photosphere, that energy will come from at or above the star's surface.

I had a good drive from from Columbus to Baltimore. The leaves have just started changing in Eastern Ohio and Western Maryland, as well as the the nearby areas of West Virginia and Pennsylvania). It was a very pretty drive today. The leaves have only barely started changing in eastern MD near DC and Baltimore.

I look forward to talking with astronomers at Johns Hopkins tomorrow. I will talk with one astronomer working with Pan-STARRS, which is interesting to me for how it will survey stars and so could learn about exoplanets.

Driving the long stretch

I had good visits of the Astronomy Departments at New Mexico State University (NMSU) in Las Cruces and the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. I am between Memphis and Nashville, on my way to Columbus, OH to visit astronomers at Ohio State University.

At UT Austin, they had a conference between the astronomy and planetary people with some very interesting talks on exoplanets. They were kind to invite me to their conference dinner so I had a good chance to tell people about my falling planets, and my role in making the discovery paper determination of the parameters of TrES-3, the first observations of mutual events of Uranus, and setting up the LCOGT global telescope network.

Driving from Austin TX to Columbus OH is a long stretch! There is some distance in the middle of the US between the bigger astronomy departments. It was to place this stretch on a weekend that determined the day of the week of my visits. It has been a long trip already and I am not halfway there. I do miss Emily a lot. I really hope something direct comes out of my efforts, but meeting so many more people face-to-face is very valuable!