Outreach

I’ve joined MapBox as Chief Scientist! This is a long-coming love story, made possible thanks to my recent extraordinary visa. An amazing next stop on my journey to bridge Science and Technology with Society at large. I am very excited to join this awesome team. Think of MapBox as a mix of Wikipedia for maps (leveraging the power of open data and crowds) and Apple style to master a product that is beautiful, fast and breaks beyond convention. Faster, better, open maps for anything that has a location. ...

-Last week it was announced that The 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation has gone to the Max Planck Society. The Asturias newspaper “El comercio” asked me to tell their readers how is it to make a PhD at the Max Planck. This is what I sent. - Todavía me quedaban ocho asignaturas de la carrera de Física, cuando en febrero solicité mi beca de doctorado al Max Planck. Mi profesor de Física Estelar II me lo recomendó. Yo acababa de llegar de Oviedo a La Laguna para terminar la carrera con la especialidad de Astrofísica y me pareció una locura. Los pocos compañeros a los que se lo dije me dijeron que me olvidase. Imposible. No me lo podía creer cuando en junio me invitaron a ir a dar una charla al comité de selección para la última fase. Nunca me olvidaré de que al acabar la misma todos los asistentes, investigadores de alto rango, se pusieron a dar golpes en las mesas, como llamando a la puerta. Luego supe que esa es la forma de aplaudir en academia en Alemania. Sólo aceptarían a nueve de los veinte candidatos, de entre los más de 500 que se habían presentado. Todos tenían excepcionales cualidades. ...

“It is not about the Science, it is not about mitigation, it is not about projections… it’s about all of that, on top of the current adaptation gap”. This is what I was thinking as I left the NAS/NASA workshop Walking the talk: Climate Science in Service to Resilient Federal Properties. This workshop, incidentally, was canceled a few hours short of its original date, October 31st, due to Sandy. On the second attempt, it was again almost cancelled, due to exceptional wind and rain conditions in DC. That pretty much summarizes my take-away from the meeting. ...

Climate change is what we deserve were the exact words I heard from an otherwise well educated and reasonable scientist. The logic was something like: Climate has changed in the past. Yes there might be a significant change lately but so has happened millennia ago, for natural reasons, like volcanoes and other stuff. If you look at the long term climate, it's full of variations. *Climate changes* Therefore this change, that is doubtfully due to humans, is not really worrisome. Climate changes and we have to deal with it. And if we are the cause of it, more so. Why fight against the consequences we deserve? We are too many, we harm the environment too much. If we indeed are the cause and we disappear due to climate change, it's the natural thing. Like if we were a virus and Earth needs to heal. The earth will come back into its equilibrium afterwards. This logic comes from a highly educated person, doing basic research science. And the fact is this is not the first time I hear a similar catastrophic argument of cosmic justice. On this particular case, few others around the table agreed on it. ...

A Russian satellite makes a time lapse of the Earth from space. A truly beautiful video. This reminds me of a text I read many years ago: Carl Sagan was defending the inclusion of visual cameras in scientific payloads, even when the scientific value would be arguable. Researchers were complaining about the extra weight and limited value, and longevity, of such an instrument, versus the many other things they could put there to measure wind speed, chemical composition, … ...

Some of you asked me today. Yes, the Sun is pretty active lately. Not many hours ago it did flare on its surface. With such luck that the ejecta pointed towards us. That´s rather unusual considering the tiny size of the Earth in comparison to the huge distance from the Sun. [caption id=“attachment_2158” align=“aligncenter” width=“448” caption=“Original source: https://www.facebook.com/game.esp”][/caption] The flare occurred because a massive magnetic rope emerged from the Sun, it twisted once there and, hence, there was a reconnection (like a shortcut) that liberated huge amounts of energy and light to space. (that´s magnetohydrodynamics 101 — the how; no one really knows why) ...

[More or less a transcription of the speech I gave today] Thank you very much for the invitation to join the Kick-off of the Water Hackathon. The topic at hand is extremely important. Water is essential, yet billions of people face aggravating challenges with water quality, quantity, or even basic access to it. The challenge here is to help solve these real identified problems with pragmatic software-based solutions. And I know, we know, that we can make great contributions. We, participants, as many as we are, we are not alone, as you can see. This event has the support of the World Bank, NASA, governments, Universities and companies around the world. Why? Because it’s working. The growth of this movement is based on its success, which I see is based on 3 ingredients. ...

The video above shows the map of the Sun from 2007 to 2010. The map calculates the image as if neither the Sun or the Earth rotated, leaving thus a black region that corresponds to the section of the Sun that can´t be seen from Earth. But they do rotate, so the black region shifts in time. The interesting bit is that the solar features remain in place. This allows us to see that certain features survive several months and are indeed recurrent. ...

Today is my last day as a Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow at The National Academies. The Program, and the extension I got, is now complete after 101 days. I knew about it like one year ago, and I decided to apply for it. Back then, I could not find much info or public feedback from former fellows. There is a great official webpage with lots of info, but I wanted real feedback from people. Here is mine, for the next to come, and everyone else. ...

This is a screenshot of the NASA press release today about astrobiology. It clearly depicts the direction [Science] outreach should go. There was a time where only journalists would go to press releases, where only they could ask questions. They were the interface between NASA and you. That time is gone. They are still needed and part of the equation, but you can also have access to the whole process, from planning to evaluation, including the ability to participate in the event. ...