Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium (2001) / Chapter Skim
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4. Benefits to the Nation from Astronomy
4. Benefits to the Nation from Astronomy
Pages 137-158
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THE ROLE OF ASTRONOMY IN PUBLIC SCIENCE EDUCATION Astronomers' most significant contribution to society lies in the area of science education, broadly conceived to include (1) raising public awareness of science, (2)
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Astronomy encompasses the full range of natural phenomena from the physics of invisible elementary particles, to the nature of space and time, to biology thus providing a powerful framework for illustrating the unity of natural phenomena and the evolution of scientific paradigms to explain them. In combination, these qualities make astronomy a valuable tool for raising pubic awareness of science, and for introducing scientific concepts and the process of scientific thinking to students at all levels.
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Both the distribution of astronomical data and software via the Internet and the ready availability of sophisticated imaging devices on moderate-cost small telescopes enable amateur astronomers to play an active and growing role in discovering new objects, searching for transient and variable objects, and monitoring them. Astronomy inspires work in the arts.
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Perhaps the best known of these is the regular series of science articles published in Parade, the national Sunday supplement a series begun by the late Carl Sagan and now continued by David Levy. Magazines devoted exclusively to astronomy enjoy wide circulationnearly 300,000 combined for Sky and Telescope and Astronomy.
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The American Astronomical Society has found that news stories carried on Web sites often stimulate stories on affiliated television networks. Web sites offer the additional advantage of coverage in depth since they are not limited in terms of space in the same way as newspapers and television broadcasts.
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, and Research-Based Science Education (sponsored by NSF/NOAO) allow students to explore and use newly acquired astronomical data.
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144 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM FIGURE 4. I School children visiting the exhibit Light!
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Through such projects as the AASTRA program sponsored by the American Astronomical Society, the SPICA and ARIES programs at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (see Figure 4.2) , and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's Universe in the Classroom workshops, several thousand teachers have learned how to be more effective in conveying astronomy and science to their students.
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Because of the importance of linking the public investment in research to advancing public science education goals, the astronomical community has worked hard to identify areas where successes have been achieved, efforts that are highly leveraged, and ways that those gains can be propagated. Recommendations aimed at better coordinating these efforts in the new decade are described in Chapter 5.
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The rapid growth of adaptive optics over the past decade owes much to the declassification of techniques developed in the service of national security interests. Mirrors for the Hubble Space Telescope are a direct descendent of efforts in service of surveillance during the 1970s and 1980s, while today, NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office are partners in efforts to develop next-generation, large space-based mirrors.
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X-ray astronomy detectors, with their sensitivity to single photons and to low-energy x rays, are also ideally suited for fundamental biomedical research, for cancer and AIDS research, and for drug and vaccine development. These sensitive detectors have led to a plethora of x-ray medical imaging devices, including those used to search for breast cancer, osteoporosis, heart disease (the thallium stress test)
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In the W CCD development undertaken for a Hubble Space Telescope instrument was later incorporated in a stereotactic breast biopsy machine, which detects tumor positions accurately enough to steer the biopsy probe, thereby reducing the need for surgery and cutting costs by 75 percent (see the Scientific Imaging Technologies Web site at |
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Very fine line widths are needed by the semiconductor and microchip manufacturing sector to make advanced computer chips, transistors, and other microelectronic devices. In the medical sector, astronomical technology invented to focus x rays is being put to use in precision deposition of x-ray radiation to destroy cancerous tumors.
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Consequently, astronomers have been at the forefront of efforts to improve and sharpen images, to reduce extraneous noise, and to extract the maximum information from the radiation received. One example of this effort is a system of image analysis tools and computer applications programs developed by astronomers at the National Optical Astronomy Observatories: IRAF, the Image Reduction and Analysis Facility.
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FORTH, a highperformance computer programming language and operating system, was developed at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and has been used in hand-held computers carried by Federal Express delivery agents and by automotive engine analyzers in service stations, in environmental control systems in airports, and by Eastman Kodak in quality control for film manufacturing. Many software developments were also either created by astronomers or received much of their impetus for improvement from them.
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Another particle-based hydrodynamic technique, smoothed particle hydrodynamics, was both invented and improved by astronomers and has found uses outside astronomy, for example in modeling ballistic impacts. Magnetohydrodynamic codes and numerical simulations of plasmas developed by astronomers contribute to design efforts aimed at harnessing fusion power.
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In addition to terrestrial climate, understanding and monitoring solar "climate" the ebb and flow of energetic particles arising in solar flares and the solar wind, and the ultraviolet output of the Sun are also essential. The effects of energetic particles on radio communications can be dramatic, and variations in solar ultraviolet radiation can play a major role in affecting the concentration of critical trace atmospheric constituents such as ozone.
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The committee agreed that astronomers and astrophysicists can reasonably anticipate a number of future interactions with physics: · In the realm of very high energies, high energy densities, and high pressures common in astronomical objects, where advances can illuminate areas such as nuclear physics, high-energy physics, and new states of matter; · In investigations of plasma dynamics, energetic fluid behavior, magnetic interaction with matter, turbulence, and chaos phenomena whose complex dynamics represent one of the major scientific and engineering challenges today, and one where astronomical examples and theory are being studied intensively; and · In "astronomical laboratories" that extend the reach of terrestrial 155
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Whereas in the past astronomical experiments were constrained by the need to carefully select small samples, often strongly guided by a priori assumptions, astronomers can now plan far more objective approaches based on deep images of wide areas of the sky spanning a range of wavelengths, or on spectra of millions of stars and galaxies. Here, the committee noted the potential synergy of these efforts with computer science and other scientific disciplines facing the need for · Simultaneous, rapid querying of individual terabyte archives by thousands of researchers located at remote sites throughout the world; · Complex querying of multiple catalogs and image databases, including efficient correlation of catalog and image information from these archives aimed at discovery of complex patterns or rare phenomena through advanced visualization and sophisticated statistical tools to discover rare galaxies that "look like this, but not that." Developing efficient archiving protocols, querying methods, and data mining and visualization tools will enable astronomers to fully exploit the rapid advances in computer and detector technology.
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This study is an essential part of the new synergy between astronomy, planetary science, and biology what has been called astrobiology. This nascent activity aspires to encourage collaborations across these disciplines in order to address questions that compel the imaginations of scientists and citizens alike: What is the origin and evolution of life?
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N OTE 1. "Numerical Recipes" refers to copyrighted software published in the series Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing, available as books from Cambridge University Press and also in electronic form at |
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