Instant Genius - Holding the Universe in your hands, with Dr Kimberly Arcand

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

What if you could hold a supernova in the palm of your hand? Or what if you could listen to a black hole? Dr Kimberly Arcand, a data visualiser for NASA, explains how astrophysics is moving beyond flat 2D images and how you can get involved at home. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. I'm Daniel Bennett, the magazine's editor, and for today's episode, we're talking about touching and listening to the cosmos. Now, traditionally, we're used to seeing incredible images from the likes of the James Webb Space Telescope that show the universe in a new light. But these images are always, flat? Wouldn't it be interesting if we could explore them in three dimensions? What if you could hold

a supernova in your hands? Or even find out what they sounded like? Well, today to find out I'm joined by Dr. Kimberly Arkand, data visualiser from NASA, who together with Megan Wanski has written a book called Stars in Your Hand, a guide to 3D printing and the cosmos. And we're going to explore novel ways to experience the universe at large. My name is Dr. Kimberly Arcand, and I am a visualization scientist, which essentially means I like to tell stories with data. This book is actually an exploration of our universe through three-dimensional modeling and three-dimensional printing, meaning taking objects of our universe that were used to only sort of being able to see as like a flat TV screen in the

sky and instead figuring out what of that information is moving towards us and which of that information is moving away from us so that we can create these 3D models. And once we have a 3D model, it's really amazing what you can do with it. You can bring it into 3D printing. You could bring it into virtual reality, augmented reality or even a hologram. So why would you want or need to 3D print an object that you see in space? Well, I think 3D modeling and 3D printing is just a really excellent way of moving beyond the static two-dimensional image that I think many researchers and also just users in general are sort of stuck with or have been stuck with for a very long time. Again, because of our vantage point here on Earth facing out to the cosmos

and the fact that we're so incredibly far from all of these incredibly exciting objects out there, it's really tough to get three-dimensional information, but I think the rewards are really excellent because by being able to understand these objects in more than just two dimensions, it just opens up a sort of new window into our universe. So traditionally, we're all used to seeing these astrophysical objects like planets, stars, nebula, galaxies,

and we see them all as 2D images. So how much do scientists know about these objects in three dimensions? I think traditionally it's been a combination of methods, mostly through what are like spectral data. So it's sort of the cosmic fingerprint or the DNA of light, essentially that's helping to tell the story of the science. And of course, those sort of flat two-dimensional images that go with it. But for quite some time,

scientists have been really interested in getting that Z component, the sort of depth, right, understanding that red shift or the blue shift, what's moving away and what's moving towards us. And I think our technological capabilities have really been growing in that area over the past few decades as new methodologies are figured out, but also importantly, as we have new satellites, new telescopes, new observatories to be able to help us capture that information better or, you know, more easily. And I do sort of see a glimpse in the future, perhaps maybe not tip. years, perhaps 20 years down the road where scientists are working in a more three-dimensional

space from the beginning of the data pipeline versus just figuring it out and sort of adding it towards an end stage of their data processing pipeline. At least that's what I'm hoping. There are also missions and projects out there that are actually trying to create 3D maps, aren't there? Yeah, there are projects like the Gaia satellite, the Gaia mission, is a really important one because it's a little bit easier with that satellite to be able to help measure those depths to the stars within our own galaxy. And I think what's the most important place to start doing this kind of three-dimensional mapping on a larger scale than just one object here or there? Well, it's within our own Milky Way galaxy. We can learn an awful lot by just understanding the cosmological environment that we're living in most closely.

And I think as new telescopes start coming online over the next decade or two, those tools will really start to improve as we get that better data faster. As we learn a lot more about how to process that data and how we sort of figure out how to function in a three-dimensional environment from, again, an earlier part of the data pipeline. So how do you map out something in space then and then go and use that data to create a 3D model of it. Yeah, well, it's really all about kind of that information that I mentioned earlier. It's that cosmic DNA, that that fingerprint of the light and being able to understand, again, what the red shift and what the blue shift is. It's challenging to do that of these objects

that are, you know, millions, if not, you know, billions of light years away from us. And I think what's exciting about it is just that opportunity to be able to take something that you've been seeing into dimensions for so long and translate into 3D. Sometimes your eyes can sort of play tricks on you, no matter what you think the data is doing. If you only have a 2D view of it, you can't really understand the physical processes as well until you have a better understanding of it in three dimensions, whether that's from an image or whether it's from a model or something else. And so this, I think, process of trying to evaluate, excavate that three-dimensional information

that's always been there, but it's just kind of hidden from our view way down here on Earth is just really exciting because it makes a difference. We learn things when we consider the three dimensions. You know, with things like exploded stars, you learn that things come off in stages. For an exploded star like Cassiopea A, which is a supernova remnant, the principal investigator on that project, learn that they come off in sort of these two pieces. there's this sort of spherical expulsion that happens, but then also these really strongly shaped jets that happen afterwards. And it's useful for scientists to be able to understand things like this because with something like a star, we can't just zoom inside of it, right?

It's a really great way to understand the lives of stars by understanding them in their death because it's kind of like a CSI crime scene in a way. You're figuring out what happened by the, being able to look at all of those, those remnants and those bits and pieces. So by understanding a star's death in 3D, we start to learn more about it in its life. When I, when I first started looking through the book, I saw the 3D models of supernova. I think that's, you know, I think that's when it clicked for me. Because you created this kind of aha moment, because for my, you know, for my whole career, I'd only seen these, these things, these dying stars as a kind of flat,

2D image on a screen. You know, it's spectacular. But then it's just this completely different beast, this different, you know, thing in 3D. And suddenly this huge, sort of undulating block. So I like this idea of it as a kind of, you know, like a CSI investigation. How much of this, and by this I mean,

when you turn something that is, I guess, 2D into a 3D model. How much of this is like detective work? Yeah, I think like any, yeah, like any investigation you have to start with what you know, right? So that's your starting point. What do you know? And then what data can you easily grab? That's a really key thing. So right, when we've got something like the Cassupiaa supernova remnant, we're looking at, all right, what observations do we have of this supernova remnant? And what data can we glean out of that information? So you're just going back and looking at all your evidence. essentially. And once you start figuring out, you know, what does the crime scene look like? What

kind of data do you have to support everything? Then you also need to do some math. And so it's really useful to be able to piece those things together. And then sometimes, you know, you don't always have perfect observational data. Sorry, you never have perfect observational data. So sometimes you have to bring in even more math through like these simulation models, these mathematical models that help you understand the various scenarios that could have happened. So it's, it's kind of like you have to piece through, you have to take all of those tools out of your tool belt, essentially, to piece together the story of what happened at that crime scene. I'm feeling very, very CSI right now. I'm really digging this metaphor. I want to put my little Sherlock's home cap on and, uh, so is this

just for fun and just kind of for novelty? Or have scientists actually been able to, you know, to gain new insight by looking at these objects in 3D and by, you know, having them perhaps even printed and in their hands? It is. I would say it's still uncommon, but it's becoming more common. I've definitely seen more and more science papers these days that have these three-dimensional models in them that are referencing, you know, hydrodynamical simulations to help get that that missing piece of information. Obviously, with certain satellites like the Gaia satellite and new missions that'll be coming online, that will become. easier over time. So I expect that that way of knowing, that way of making meaning will become more

commonplace, or at least I very much look forward to that, because I really think, you know, I've stared at some of this data for well over two decades now. And the first time I'm experiencing any of these cosmic objects in 3D, whether it's an exploded star or baby stars or a galaxy or some larger structure, I'm constantly surprised. And as someone who feels like they know this two-dimensional data really well, to be completely surprised in so many ways by this three-dimensional representation, I think it's really exciting just to help show that power of what knowing that extra dimension can sort of help. And it's not just for scientists.

It's also really important for other learners as well, particularly learners who are blind or low vision. This way of making meaning through a three-dimensional print is really critical to establishing a sort of mental map in your head of what this object looks like and then also understanding like how it came to be. And, you know, it's nice because we actually have real work with people who are blind or low vision and research with those audiences that show how both those models can be helpful, but also how they can be really just full of enjoyment for people that have often been excluded from, you know, the scientific enterprise,

particularly astronomy, which is such a visual science, has been such a visual science for so long. So if you read the book, you can actually follow the instructions and print out your own kind of cosmic phenomenon at home if you've got a 3D printer. If anyone listening and curious, could you explain how that that will work? Well, there's a few things. For one, you can enjoy the book without having access to a 3D printer. And all of the models that we selected to be shown in the book are models that anybody can look on a computer as well. So you can just enjoy the 3D model through like a preview type of function on your laptop and explore them just on your own computer. And then as far as 3D printing them, I have found actually that these days,

days, quite a few libraries, community centers, schools, and makerspaces do have access to 3D printers for people that don't have one at home. And at least here in the U.S., access to 3D printers at libraries, particularly is pretty common now. And it's a pretty straightforward process to take your file to the library on a USB stick, pop it in, and either the librarian will print it out for you or they'll watch you set it up and then let you know when it's ready to be picked up. some hours later, which I think is a pretty awesome surface. But if you do have your own 3D printer as well and you're just starting out, I would definitely recommend starting with some of the simpler models if you've never done 3D printing. Sometimes 3D printing, larger, more complex models can take

quite a bit of time, like 24 hours, 48 hours sometimes. And there can be some bumps in the road. So if you're just starting out with 3D printing, I do recommend starting simple with things like the topological features of the moon. There are these very simple moon plates of both the near side and the far side, and it only takes a couple hours to run, you know, a small, say, three by four inch print of those plates and you'll have something in your hand pretty, pretty quickly. And then once you have sort of mastered that, you can sort of segu onto a slightly more complex model,

say something that's more spherical structure, one of the Earth globes or one of the other, you know, simple exploded stars, for example, and that will take you probably closer to like maybe six or eight hours, depending on your printer and the size you're printing it at. And then you can kind of sort of keep building your way up to the most complex models that are in the book. But I should say just beyond the models that are listed in the book, there's just many, many different objects now that you can access 3D files on. And we've tried to provide a sort of, you know, listing of those in our book, but you can also just search with Google and come across even more.

So this isn't just a novel way to experience astronomy, is it? This tech can actually provide a quite profound means of getting involved in astrophysics for those with eyesight difficulties or indeed blindness. So, yeah, astronomy has been such a visual science for so long that, for me, it's really exciting to start thinking about these other ways that we can understand and research and study these, you know, massive cosmic structures. And doing that through touch, through things like 3D printing is one avenue, doing it through sound is another, doing it through haptic response.

So on most smartphones these days, there's like a vibrational response in your phone that if you have a text come in while it's on mute, right, you'll get a little buzz. You can use that sort of vibrational response to create what's called haptification as well. So it's just another way of being able to work with touch but through digital means. There are all of these other ways of knowing. And I think some of them are particularly promising. For me, 3D printing was sort of how I started out thinking about astronomy in these non-visual or less visual terms.

And we really have had a lot of success being able to work with students and other learners who are blind or low vision to not only test those models, but to also sort of of improve them because, for example, if you have something like an exploded star, right, I'm used to that information only from that outer sort of perspective. But when we worked with students who are blind or low vision, they immediately wanted to have access inside because these are mostly nebulous structures, right? These are not hard structures made out of plastic in outer space. These are bits of gas and dust and plasm and all of these other kinds of material, right?

So being able to explore these 3D models from the inside was really important. So what we did, we just cut a model in half. And then we stuck some magnets on it so you could put it back together. It was such a simple thing, really such an obvious thing. But it wasn't until some students that we were working with who were either blind or low vision made the comment that we realized, well, yes, of course we should do that. And sound is another way to working with sonification or this idea of translating information. in our case, this information through light into sound, has been another really fascinating way of being able to translate data

that we can't see anyways, right? All of this information that I've been talking about, we're talking mostly about telescopes that are seeing in x-ray light, in infrared light, like the James Webb Space Telescope sees, in gamma rays, in radio, even in the optical light that we're used to from the Hubble Space Telescope, some of that light skews towards ultraviolet, some skews towards infrared, but all of it is so highly magnified, human eyes could never hope to see

most of these really detailed gorgeous structures, right? So the idea that we're taking information that we can't see and just translating it into an image is sort of ridiculous when you think about it because it starts out invisible to human eyes, so why not translate it into something else, whether that's sound or whether that's touch or some other ways of knowing. I'm not quite into smell and taste as far as that data translation's concerned. That to me is a little too avant-garde. But these other ways through sound and touch, I think, are really quite exciting. So you're telling me I won't be able to smell a nebula any time seen. I don't think it's smell very good. There might be some that smell like raw eggs.

No, thank you. I'm all set. So a few weeks ago, or maybe it was months ago now, there was a story with a sound the black hole was published and went viral online. So you can actually hear it. And in case you haven't heard that, here's a sample now. Now that audio was phenomenally popular. It went viral and it clearly struck a chord with the public. And I had two questions about this. First, how was that clip put together? So what are we listening to when we hear that sound? And secondly, I had a conversation with another scientist who seemed a bit cynical about it, who sort of scoffed at the idea that we just, you know, had heard a black hole. And I wondered what your take on that was.

Yeah, so sonification of this idea of translating data into sound has been, you know, sort of picking up steam for a while now. I started learning about the area of research from Dr. Wanda Diaz, who was just a brilliant astronomer and computer scientist. whose PhD thesis was sort of based around this idea of scientists can become better listeners, specifically in astronomy, but I think it's interesting to be able to apply that to many different kinds of science. And I was just really struck by that possibility, right, that we can become better listeners, so we can learn about our data in these other ways. And this idea of translating information to sound, we started out with, in my own work, just a few years ago at the start of the pandemic because 3D printing was at the time just really hard. You know, we were all sent home.

We couldn't be in the same room with people. Just getting access to equipment was challenging. And so sonification became a sort of a way to replace that ideal. And we started out just translating different kinds of two-dimensional images into sound as another way of expressing that data. And what you're doing is you're just doing mathematical mapping. So you're taking the image and you're using some Python and some software to be able to mathematically map it into sounds based on the intensity or other sort of topographical features in the data. And it can lead to some really beautiful results. So we had a lot of success with the project.

I was working with some colleagues at System Sounds, Dr. Matt Russo and Andrew Santaglita, who are experts in soundification and also happen to be musicians. And as a former band and choir geek, I was just really, excited, I think, about that possibility. And then, yeah, we got to the black hole sound, which was special because it was actually taking a sound wave that had been captured in outer space in an image and then repurposing that into sound. So sort of re-sonifying a sound wave. In that case, it's this idea that there is a supermassive black hole, you know, very far away from us in this cluster of galaxies right at the heart, and it's belching out.

all of this, this information. And that is sort of causing these ripples, which are in the hot gas that's immediately surrounding the area. And that is giving us these pressure waves or these sound waves. And I think the fact that it was sonifying a sound wave and it was coming from a black hole really did strike a chord, as you said. And I think to your second question, I'm totally comfortable with people being skeptical of things or even, you know, cynical, if you will. I think a little bit of skepticism is healthy, just sort of believing things as they're presented online, on the interwebs is not necessarily always the best idea, right? So this idea of having a little healthy skepticism, totally cool. But I think in this case, there are definitely ways that it could be

confusing because if someone's writing a headline and they're maybe, you know, not as used to carrying science stories, they might have put the headline as, you know, this is a direct translation of a black hole sound or this is what a black hole sounds like exactly or, yeah, listen to a black hole. Like those types of headlines can just be misleading because it's not that we zoomed out there in a spacecraft held up a microphone and recorded sound, right? That's not it. We're not capable of doing that. something very, very far away from us. But we did take a scientific image that showed this series of pressure waves, these sound waves, and then transpose that into something that could be heard.

Because we knew that the note was a B flat, that this black hole was singing out, this B flat, just very far, far out of human hearing, way too low for humans to ever be able to hear about 57 octaves below middle C. So we took. that note and then scaled it up into something you can hear. So all that is to say, it was a really cool result. And I don't mind skepticism. But in this case, I still think it was a pretty, pretty accurate representation of the data. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think it's the same thinking as taking the infrared light that we can't see and making it visible to create these, you know, incredible images that we see put out by the James Webb Space Telescope. You just, you know, here,

just making the inaudible audible. And I think it really put black holes, sort of front and center in the media for a short while. Yeah, honestly, there are people talking about things like hot gas and x-rays from a black hole and the intercluster medium. And I'm like, that does not happen. Like, I don't hear that in the news every day. So a technique and a product that can get people talking about belching black holes singing these songs out in the universe is to me a bit of a win and absolutely an exciting outcome.

Are there any other sonification projects we should check out or any favorites you have that might kind of give people a different perspective on the universe? Yeah, actually the one you just mentioned is one of my favorite ones that we've done, to be honest, the central area of our Milky Way galaxy and three different kinds of light, x-ray light, optical light and infrared light. And what's really cool about the sonification is that it actually helps you hear the different kinds of lights. And you can sort of hear how they complement each other and fill in some of the gaps in between.

And as you get closer and closer to the supermassive blockhole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, you hear this lovely little crescendo. And that crescendo is all the incredible high energy swirling activity of that downtown of the Milky Way and being able to hear it versus just see it as bright white spots is very moving in a different way. It just provides a different kind of access point to that information. Again, I've stared at these images for a long time. And so to find these new things in them by just translating them in a different way, I think is really quite exciting. But there are so many other sonifications as well. There's one lovely sonification of a field of black holes. It's,

a deep field where you just kind of, you know, stared off using an expert telescope into space for a long time, like 40-something days, and found thousands of black holes. And you can assign the sound based on the energy of those black holes, low energy, medium energy or high energy. And what you're doing is sort of translating the information that looks like a very boring image. The image itself is like colored dots on a black rectangle. But when you hear them, you hear this just incredible population of thousands. of black holes and you hear them in stereo sound so you can sort of feel that you're in them, that you're stretching back to that light that's, you know, many billions of years old. And I don't know, I think that's quite lovely.

But a lot of science teams are starting to do this. And we've seen it not just in astronomy, but in biology as well. Scientists are using sun vacation to help understand how proteins fold and trying to find patterns and DNA. There's just, it's just unlimited, I think, the possibilities for being able to use sound, because especially as our data gets bigger and more complex, the idea of using sound to find patterns and to find value in huge piles of data is actually a pretty valuable tool to have in our tool belt, so to speak.

So I guess what you're saying there is that our kind of senses can help us think in different ways. So, you know, we can hear rhythms or crescendos in ways that we might not spot the same patterns in something visual. Absolutely, absolutely. You can think of like a cocktail party effect, right? When you're in a, well, pre-COVID days, when you were in a lovely cocktail party, there might be a lot of people in a house, right? And you might be sitting on a couch next to someone and you're having a conversation, but you can hear bits and pieces of the conversation across the room. You can hear somebody in the kitchen washing dishes.

You can hear a dog greeting someone at the door. You can hear somebody as they walk across the hallway into the dining room, right? You're able to pick up all of those noises, and your brain helps you sort of sift through what's most valuable to you then. So when you've got piles of data of things like variable stars that change over time and that change a lot, those data are just, you know, plots. Right? So when you can listen to those changes in those variable stars, it offers you just a very different way of being able to capture that essence of that scientific information.

So, yeah, I think it's pretty exciting. And just to bring it sort of back around to 3D printing, would it, I guess it would be like seeing the grain of wood on a table as opposed to feeling it with your own hands and feeling the ridges and valleys of the wood? Exactly. I mean, it's how children tend to explore, right? Like, you know, you always hear people, their parents saying, don't touch. That's because they want to touch, right? And that's how they're learning. And I think that there's just this tremendous capability in all of us to learn through these other ways of knowing through that tactile exploration by being able to turn something around and upside down, being able to look inside it, being able to handle it. It is a very different way of knowing. And it's, it is quite useful. Yeah. So lastly then, well, what's next for all this? What new models or sonifications are you keen to create next? Yeah, I think the James Webb Space Telescope data is definitely ripe for that kind of treatment. I think it'll be fantastic, again, pairing it with information from other satellites to be able to capture that Z component to be able to understand what's moving away from us and what's moving towards us to be able to create actual 3D models.

very exciting, but there's lots of tactile 3D printing, 3D modeling and 3D printing that can be done in the meantime until those scientific pieces are threaded up. And just being able to create these relief maps with the data to be able to touch them is very exciting. And that should be, I think, coming pretty soon. And we've also started sonifying the James Webb Space Telescope data as well. There's some examples of that online to if folks are interested in hearing it. But I do see that this field should just keep growing. I'm sort of in that crystal ball,

I'm kind of hoping in the future that scientists could be on opposite sides of the world, working in a 3D space, a virtual reality space in real time with each other, translating information into sound into what have you. I think the possibilities are just endless. We just have to stay open to them. That was Dr. Kimberly Arkham there,

talking about how 3D printing and sonification can help us understand the cosmos in new ways. If you'd like to find out more about 3D printing in the universe, do check out her book, written together with Megan Wattsky, called Stars in Your Hand, which is on sale now and published by MIT Cress. Thank you for listening. The Instant Genius podcast is brought to you by the team behind BBC Science Focus magazine, which you can find on sale now in supermarkets and newsagents,

well as on your preferred app. Alternatively, do come find us online at sciencefocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name audio believes you can have digital precision with analogue warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist focal, name creates high-end audio systems combining innovation with craftsmanship so you can listen to music just as the artist intended. Discover more at name audio.com. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank.

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