StarTalk Radio - Science Gets Fabulous, with Summer Ash and Emily Rice – StarTalk All-Stars

Episode Date: December 13, 2016

Cosmic images from distant nebulas and galaxies are decorating leggings, jeggings, jewelry, and more. Explore the science behind the fashion with our hosts, astrophysicists Summer Ash and Emily Rice, who run the STARtorialist blog. Chuck Nice co-hosts.NOTE: StarTalk All-Access subscribers can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free. Find out more at https://www.startalkradio.net/startalk-all-access/ Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

This is StarTalk. Welcome to StarTalk All-Stars. We're your all-star hosts. I'm Emily Rice. I'm an astronomer at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York, and the American Museum of Natural History. And I'm Summer Ashe. I'm an astrophysicist at Columbia University, where I am the director of outreach for the astronomy department. And together, Emily and I are the founders of StarTorialist, an astronomy and science fashion blog. Today we're here with our co-host Chuck Nice. Yes. And we are going to be answering a bunch of cosmic queries about science and about fashion. Yeah, as a matter of fact.

And it's great. You know, we take these questions from all over the Internet and everywhere, every property where you can find StarTalk, whether it's Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or you name it. Patreon, which is people who actually take the time to give us money, which means that they get priority. Yes, that's right. All star access. Yes, because just like politicians, we are not above being bribed. I wonder if that's a reason

why we started an astronomy fashion blog. Maybe. We have some things that we would like to plug. Valentino. Right. For example. So yeah, I mean, it's very cool that the funny thing is, people are interested in science as fashion.

And we got a bunch of questions that people want to know about that. Let me ask you, how did the startorialists even come about? That's a great question, Jack. Famous origin story. Is there a famous origin story behind it? Cool. Let me just say I actually already know it but i have to do my job go ahead we don't even know this is i don't know it that's why i'm asking go ahead

like it was kind of it was kind of always there i think bubbling in the background like i remember noticing in graduate school that you could start to buy you know clothes with stars on them and clothes with galaxies and this like galaxy leggings. For some reason, it started as leggings. That I don't understand. But it seemed to start as leggings. That's where fashion always starts, apparently. Yeah. A lot of fashion starts as leggings.

I mean, look at the Middle Ages. I mean. I kind of always had in the back of my head, like, of course, as a graduate student, I couldn't afford a lot of these things. You know, I was buying like clothes off the discount rack. You head. Like, of course, as a graduate student, I couldn't afford a lot of these things. You know, I was buying, like, clothes off the discount rack. You don't make a lot of money as a graduate student. It's just, you know, but at least you're getting paid a little bit to, you know, study whatever you want to study, which is an awesome thing about graduate school. But, like, and so I kind of had it in the back of my head that, like, I can't buy everything, but, man, I would love to, like, kind of keep track of it so, you know so I can see what I'm missing, have this virtual closet or something like that.

In the back of my head for a long time, I splurged on a couple things here and there when I graduated and stuff like that. Then I came to New York City, and it seemed like the startorial universe, as it were, exploded. startorial universe, as it were, like exploded. It was now, you know, not just a couple niche places, but on runways and, you know, kind of everyday stores, like what do you call them, high street stores, like H&M and Zara and stuff like that. But I was like doing so many things.

I had this new job and I was like, I can't, you know, I can't do this. And luckily, I don't even remember where the conversation was. I feel like it was at the museum and it was probably within the first year that you were there. Yeah, like pretty soon. And we just discovered that we were both thinking the same thing. Yeah. And so I was like, I'm never going to do this myself. And Summer was like, let's do it together.

And kind of, you know, it's like having a gym buddy or something like that. And so we came up with this idea. I like this. Right. Yeah, like let's hold each other accountable. Yeah. And I do remember distinctly meeting at the cafe, the Hungarian coffee shop. Yes, the Hungarian coffee shop. By Columbia.

And kind of like, yeah, flesh out like what we would do and like kind of. Hungarian coffee shop? Yeah, of course. Very good. Is it really good? Yeah, it's a Hungarian pastry shop. Oh, okay. That's what it's called.

I was going to say, Hungary's not really known for coffee, but then again, Turkish coffee. So yeah, go ahead. That makes sense. Go ahead. I do going to say, Hungary's not really known for coffee, but then again, Turkish coffee. So yeah, go ahead. That makes sense. Go ahead. I do remember that. As long as everything makes sense. Somewhat pieced together origin story. But my favorite is, so we kind of brainstormed together, got on the same page, and then made

a Google Doc of all our ideas, and here's the things that we've seen in various places. But we needed a name. We didn't have a name. Right. And we started making a list of, like, all of these different space puns. And they were pretty, you know, all kinds of, like. Like what? Like supernova, like kind of psychotour.

Psychotour. Supernova. Then again, psychotour, if it didn't sound like crazy fashion. Yeah, some of them you've got to say out loud. Psychotour. I'll kill. Then again, Psychotour, if it didn't sound like crazy fashion. Yeah, some of them you've got to say out loud. Psychotour, I'll kill you, galaxy. I'll kill you with space. Go ahead. He doesn't need our help to kill us.

Right. That's so true. And so we had a whole, actually, it would be really fun to share the whole list. I would love to see that list. Because the Star-torial list actually is spot on. Like you can't get a much tighter sweet spot than startorial list. So what happened was we were still doing this. We were both updating the doc and sort of just looking at it every now and then

to see what the other person had come up with and adding comments. And sort of just looking at it every now and then to see what the other person had come up with and adding comments. And I was in an office with a couple other people at Columbia, a postdoc office. And one of my office mates is Josh Peek, who's now an astronomer at Space Telescope Science Institute. And we were sitting there. Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble. Baltimore, Maryland. Nice.

And I was sharing with him this idea because he's a super creative person. And he just turned to me one day and he goes, Star Toriolus. And I was like, oh, my God, that's it. That's cool. And I told Emily and we were like, done. And does he get royalties? He should. He gets our undying love and affection and appreciation.

I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I sent him one of our favorite. We have a favorite T-shirt. I came up with the name Star Toriolus and all I got was this lousy t-shirt. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I sent him one of our favorite. We have a favorite t-shirt. Did the t-shirt say, I came up with the name Startorialist and all I got was this lousy t-shirt? We do give him shouts out on Twitter. Anytime somebody asks us about that, I just tag him. I'm like, that was all Josh. We do give him a lot of credit.

And I just realized we don't actually have Startorialist t-shirts. Yes. Are you kidding me? No, I meant another t-shirt. And I didn't even wear my Startorialist necklace. Oh, yeah. We do have necklaces, but those are just kind of like our own necklaces. Yeah, because there are some people who may not want to wear the actual space images,

but they would wear startorialist because it's such a cool name. It is an awesome name. That's a really good point. Yeah, so you might want to look into getting some startorialist t-shirts. I'm just saying. We're working on it. We're a baby step. It's on the list. We've got a long list of things that we want to do. getting some Startorialist t-shirts. I'm just saying. We're working on it. We're babysitting. It's on the list.

We've got a long list of things that we want to do. That's very cool. Yeah, so now it's Startorialist. And we made sure, you know, we had, and actually I saved the Twitter. It was a Twitter direct message conversation between Summer and I where she was like, Startorialist. And at first I was like, ah, maybe, no, that's it. Right. It took me maybe about three minutes and the timing is probably still there.

And then we had to check and like make sure that it was available on you know twitter instagram and stuff um and then we launched three three years ago almost three years ago three years ago in december is kind of when we started and so astronomers have this big conference every year in january right and so we launched kind of in december like just before that big conference and then had an official kind of launch at the conference in January.

Cool. Because it was part of so our tagline for Startorialist is where science meets fashion and where scientists get fabulous.

Oh, okay. Because we also kind of wanted to bring like it wasn't just about like, you know, the astronomy pictures on clothing but it was also about encouraging scientists to, like, adopt this kind of fabulousness and, like, display their love for science.

That's right. Express themselves. Express yourself. Right. And also recognize that there's multiple ways to be a scientist. And so you can wear some little thing or you can wear a lot or you can embrace it. And the great thing is the more people that embrace a love of science, the more people will want to adopt science. They will want to adopt a love for science because I think that

most people feel as though it's such an arcane, esoteric subject that that's for those guys over there. People think like, oh, you know, rumpled shirt and dirty jeans and like, you know, tousled hair and you can't care. And you're writing on glass all the time. Yeah. Equations. But it's like, no, you can wear, you know, like this amazing ball gown with a photo of the moon on it and like also be a scientist like you you know a lot of it is is and especially for the inclusion of women in science where it's you know much more culturally acceptable for women to like spend time on their hair and time on their

makeup and stuff like that and so it was like women that were into science kind of had to tone that down a little bit because we were afraid that people like wouldn't take us seriously because it's like oh well if you have time to like you know do your hair or wear makeup or something like that then you're not spending enough time doing research oh god you know for some reason and so i wanted to kind of normalize the fact that you know you can care about these other things that might seem superficial or something like that yeah exactly right yeah i mean and which is and that that is a very female thing, believe it or not. Or not female thing, but that's a double standard that's directed only towards females.

Not only, I would say, because I think some dudes also care a lot about fashion. No, I'm not talking about fashion-wise. What I'm saying is, if you're a scientist and you're a guy and you love basketball, and you're running around spouting stats on players, no one says to you, so when do you have time to do science? You know so damn much about basketball, you must not be in the laboratory enough. You know what I mean? Nobody says that.

Yeah, that I agree with, unfortunately. Unfortunately. I got a heavy sigh out of Emily on that one. All right, let's get it. Can I just say another awesome benefit of this emergence of all of this science fashion and wearable things and things around your house is it's also a really great talking point. And it's a really great conduit to start conversations about science. About science. That's cool.

Because I wear a scarf. I go get a coffee. Somebody's like, that's a cool scarf. And I'm like, well, actually, let me tell you, it's this star cluster and Hubble took this image

and then we start talking about things. Right. And so it's this really great outreach tool. Oh, that's, yeah. You know what? Absolutely.

Point well taken because that is a great, great way to start a conversation about science. Yes. And you'll find so many people who actually, once you start talking

about science and they'll show you like secretly how much they're really into it. It's funny, you know. Well, speaking of people who are into it, let's go to our cosmic queries. We always start with the Patreon patron question. And for those of you who support us on Patreon, you know,

we will give you priority when it comes to our cosmic queries. And in addition to that, let me just let you know that anyone listening right now, you can view this podcast in video form on StarTalkAllAccess.com. So everything that we do, you will find on video form on StarTalkAllAccess.com. So you don't just have to listen. You can watch. Chris Ryu from Patreon says this. How long do you think it will be before there are civilian astronauts

wearing fashionable clothing? Now, I'm not quite sure what he means by civilian astronauts. We have those already. Yeah. Like tourists, space tourists. Space tourists. There's a bunch of people who have gone to space.

Yeah, paid to go to space. Right, so. Lance Bass never made it. He did. He trained, but he didn't go. Right, so. Lance Bass never made it. He trained. He trained, but he didn't go, right? The Russians canceled the contract? No, I think that. Something happened.

It didn't necessarily secure him a spot. Right. But you got to go through the training and stuff. But he didn't actually make it into outer space. But the Intrepid Museum that's here in New York City, and you know in the Space Shut Shuttle Pavilion, they have the space shuttle on the aircraft carrier and they have a Soyuz there. Yes. And the Soyuz came from a space tourist. I forget the guy's name, which is a shame.

Was it the first one? It wasn't the first one, I don't think, but it was a guy who paid to go into the space, like, with the Russians. And then he came back and they were like, you know. And that was his capsule. Yeah. They were like, you want the capsule too? Wow. I forget how many millions of dollars it was.

Yeah. But you know, it's like, you know, you do a skydiving, you know, trip or something like that. And then it's like,

Oh, and you pay an extra $20 for the plane. You want the plane dude? Yeah. You can have the capsule. And he donated it to the intrepid, which I think is just a wonderful story. That's very cool.

So space tour. so there already are space tourists. Yeah. But, and the other thing is that this, so the space fashion, the kind of start, like, so we do astronomy, like we're astronomers, but we really, our blog is kind of more even broader to science fashion in general, and especially space travel. I think Summer's an even bigger fan than I am. And one of the awesome things is that the space

wear, like the astronaut outfits, like jumpsuits and spacesuits and things like that, are coming into fashion. Like bomber jackets. Mike Massimino can be the coolest guy in the street by just wearing his blue

astronaut jacket all over the space. So it's kind of going the other way. Like, astronaut fashion is becoming fashion. Becoming regular fashion. Like, Kickstarters, like that Beta brand jacket, you know, using kind of similar materials like Tyvek, so for really lightweight materials and similar designs of, like, the white with red stripes and with patches and things like that, or with the orange jumpsuits. That was on what runway show was that?

I believe Orange is the New Black. I believe that was the show. Yeah, no. Well, there was NASA stuff. It was in Houston. It's a designer that likes Houston and is based there. And she took her influence from both Houston and Texas floral and fauna, but it's also mixed with official NASA patches.

Right. And it's totally escaping with official NASA patches. Right. And I'm totally, it's totally escaping me right now. Well, that's cool. We're on our way, basically. We're headed in that direction. It's there, yeah. It's already happening. I got a pair of Vans that are practically like they're an imitation inspired by the

moon boots. Right. So it's like off-white canvas. It has a big, fat, blue thing, and then it has a patch for either the U.S. flag, and it has a remove from flight zipper up the back

with the red tag. Remove before flight. It's awesome. That's cool. I love it. Excellent. There you go, Chris. There's your answer. We are more than on our way to space fashion everywhere, which is a good thing. All right, let's move on. This is Jack McCormick coming to us from Facebook.

And Jack says this. How much more advanced? This is not a fashion question, but this is just. We can do it. Yeah, I'm sure you guys can handle this. This is what he says. How much more advanced are the signal-sending devices on our solar system exploring satellites and space telescopes? Compared to Earth Wi-Fi transmitters, NASA gets a signal from Pluto, I lose my signal when I sit in the corner of my kitchen. The thing about that transmitter from Pluto, what is it?

It's like a modem. One kilobyte per second? What? It's less than a modem. The things that are in space, first of all, they're built so far in advance that they don't have what we have. Right. The technology surpasses them because they're built so far.

Yeah. And everything has to be flight tested. They also have limited space on the craft. So there's the size limitation. There's money limitation. There's weight limitation. Right. So they really try to go with what can work with the mission.

All right. So then why is it? Is it just the spaces of vacuum and that there's lack of interference? Why is it that something that's one kilobyte from Pluto, we're getting. Not losing a signal. Is not losing a signal. But he's right. If I were to walk from my living room to my kitchen, I start roaming.

What the hell is that? You should check with the architect of rebuilding. I think it is. So it's not just the signal coming from Pluto, but it's this awesome thing that we have on Earth called the Deep Space Network. It's got big dishes that are spread all over the Earth so that even as the Earth rotates and certain parts of the Earth face towards or away the different satellites, and you can monitor this all online, which is super cool. You can go to the Deep Space Network website and see which dishes on Earth are communicating with which satellites and things like that. It's one of my favorite websites. Yeah.

It's not just NASA, right? It's all of the different space agencies, I believe, share the Deep Space Network. Yeah. And then you can also see the antenna will have two different signals, one that shows that the antenna is sending a signal to that spacecraft and one that shows that the spacecraft is talking to the antenna. Wow. And then you can click on the antenna or the spacecraft and find out more information about

it itself. It's phenomenal. That is amazing. It's interactive. It's live. And it's live. Live stream. So it's all the stuff that's happening while you're watching it right then and there.

Yeah. And they have the same thing up in the control room in JPL. Mission Control has the exact same display up there. Wow. That is super cool. That is super cool. Well, there's your answer, Jack. It's really the fact that you need a big giant dish in your house so that you can get any signal that is sent.

It's not the signal being sent. It's the way it's being received, you know? And you know what? Now I understand what my wife means when she says, I just can't talk to you. You don't get anything I'm saying. I need a big...

You don't have the right receiver. I need a big... I don't have the right receiver in my head to understand what this woman is talking about. So now I get, oh, you have cleared up so much for me. We have to take a break, but we'll be back with more Star Talk All Stars right after this. Welcome back to Star Talk All Stars. We are your all-star hosts today. I'm Summer Ashe.

And I'm Emily Rice. And we've been talking to Chuck Nice about stellar fashion and all things startorial because Emily and I run Startorialist, an astronomy and science fashion blog. Yes, yes, yes. And you know, the cool thing is, well, we're doing our cosmic queries, of course, where we take all of your questions, those of you who are listening out there, whether you send them to us on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever we are found on the internet. But before we get back into our queries, I really do want to talk about the startorialists and your fashions because you are wearing your fashions right now. And maybe you can describe to the people exactly what you have on.

By the way, all very, very cool. I would absolutely wear the hoodie that Emily is wearing. And for those of you who are wondering what this might look like, well, there's a very simple solution to that. You can go to StartalkAllAccess.com where you can actually see this podcast in video form. So tell me about what you're wearing. Emily, you have on this hoodie. And what is on the hoodie first? I have this hoodie.

It's by Black Milk Clothing, who I think is the company, at least it's the first company that I came across that made the Galaxy leggings that we were talking about earlier. But now they make all kinds of things, dresses, hoodies.

And so I happen to buy a hoodie because it's a nice and big size and it covers my star forming region in my belly right now. You can also see on Star Talk, All Stars, All Xs. Yes, for those of you who are wondering what that means, Emily is with child and about to give birth to something that will totally change her universe.

So I've heard. This one is called, so one of the weird things about astronomy fashion is that the names of things aren't always accurate, but we try to, especially astronomers. That's where we come in. Yeah, that's where we come in. We have actually two kind of characters on the blog. One's a pedantic astronomer that likes to correct everything, and then we have a poetic astronomer that really loves everything spacey, no matter what it is. see no matter what it is. And so this one's called like a purple galaxy sweatshirt, but it's actually kind of bluish and reddish and it's actually images of the constellation Orion. Yeah. So we

can actually point out like the horse head nebula and the flame nebula that are in Orion's belt. I think this is actually the Orion nebula up on my shoulder. So this is a wide field image of something that we can see in the night sky, like a wide field image in the Orion constellation. Wow. And that particular image is gleaned from where? This one, I actually don't know. That's bad of me because usually I know, I think this one is not the Hubble Space Telescope because this is a much wider field of view than the Hubble Space Telescope. And so I think this is some kind of ground-based telescope. and I believe it's also an optical image. Okay, gotcha.

And it could even be an amateur image because this is something like this wide of a field of view is relatively, it's even more easily obtained by a small telescope. Cool, cool. And you know what? All those things are asked in our query, so you've touched on some points that we're going to get to. Just a tease for those of you listening. And Summer, what are you wearing? Because that is really cool. Would you say it's out of this world?

I would indeed. So it's also a hoodie, except that it's open in the front and it's reversible. Nice. So there's another company that does a lot of the Galaxy prints, and they're based here in Brooklyn. Sorry, we're not in Brooklyn, but they're very close by. And they're called Shadowplay NYC. And so they did a limited release maybe last year or a year and a half ago. And so it's a proper hoodie, and on one whole side, it's a print of what they call Sagan's Galaxy.

Yeah, they call this one Sagan's Galaxy. Also actually a nebula. And this nebula is NGC 602. I think NGC 602. I knew she'd have that. The larger the small Magellanic Cloud. You got it right. What do you know?

See, look at that. Chuck is fact-checking us live. And so you can either wear it with the galaxy on the outside and then sort of have this loose folding over a lapel that's black, or you can reverse it and then have the little peak of the galaxy sort of showing. And Emily actually, I think, has a matching scarf. I think it's the same image on the scarf. Yeah, I brought my scarf along, and it's the same image.

It's a little bit easier to see on the scarf. So Shadowplay would actually have a series of products with the same galaxy on it. And the same print on different... So they would have a dress top, a shirt top, a scarf on two different sizes. Wow. Here's my favorite part. My favorite part, because this is like a nebula in either the large or the small Magellanic Cloud. I can never remember.

And so it's this kind of, you know, it's a lot of diffuse gas, and you can see individual stars, but then you can also see this tiny little spiral galaxy that's actually a very, even more distant foreground or background galaxy. Yeah. And so I just love, you know, the combination of stars and galaxies

and gas and colors and space. All put together. There's a whole idea of depth of field, too. Yeah. Space. There's so many things that are out there, and they look like they might be at the same distance. But they're not.

You're seeing a whole range of distances. You can just kind of keep going. And ages and times and all that cool stuff. That's super cool. I also have, there's another cool company that we know of called, they used to be called Jersey Maids, and now they're Ugin. Ugin Tribe. Ugin Tribe.

And they have a couple different necklace series where they are magnetic. That's a locket. Oh, that's a magnet. That looks like a locket. So you can buy a whole set of magnets that are different galaxies and nebulae. And then switch them out. And customize. Or they have a solar system one, too, where you can just pick your planet.

And you're wearing this pendant, and it looks like something from Men in Black. Like, that should be an actual, like, there's a spaceship parked off of Earth right now waiting to kill us all so it can get that pendant. That's what that looks like. This is actually the Cat's Eye Nebula, isn't it? I think so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. And this is a funny thing with nebulae that they call it a planetary nebula,

but it's sort of, they used to think that was where the beginning of the process of planets forming started. Right. But it's actually the end stage of a star's life. Oh, so we thought it was the birth and it's really the death. It's really the death. They die in spectacular. It's the Benjamin Button of space. Oh, poor guy. Poor guy.

It is. He's such a cute baby that's about to die. Okay. All right. Yo, that is super cool. That is all great stuff, man. I just like this all the time. Guess what?

Who should? We kind of do. You should. I mean, really. And like you say, it looks good, and it's also a conversation starter, too, so I kind of dig it. Yo. All right. Well, let's get back into our Cosmic Queries. And that's the first time I've ever sung that.

I got to tell you, it felt really good. Cosmic Queries. You should do a jingle. Let's put that on a note. Yeah, let's put it. Exactly. Here we go. Let's put that on a note.

Yeah, let's put it. Exactly. Here we go. You know what? I found this to be a fascinating question from Martin Moriera on Facebook. I'm not sure if he's, I think I know what he's trying to say here. What happens if the Earth is really a flat surface but from space seems round because of the distortion of the gravity that produces on light when it reaches our sight? of the distortion of the gravity that produces on light when it reaches our sight? Is it possible to believe that the entire universe is like a giant 3D flat surface that we understand as round objects because of the gravity? I'm not a flat earth guy, by the way, just wondering. Now,

what he's saying is somewhat obfuscated by a few different things that he's drawing from, obfuscated by a few different things that he's drawing from, if I think I understand him. One, the Earth is actually round. It's like a ball. It is a sphere. It doesn't appear to be a sphere. Wait, I should let you guys explain all this. What the hell am I doing?

You can explain the question. But I'm trying to explain the question. Yeah. But what I think he is trying to do is ask you about what I believe to be the theoretical shape or topology of the universe, because there are two different universes. There's the real universe. OK, there's the universe that we see. And then there is the theoretical topology of the universe, which is 3D. So can you can you explain that? Because I don't even think I explained it well,

but I think I know what he's talking about. Does that make sense, what I just said? Your question, your interpretation of the question makes sense. Okay, then let's go with my interpretation of the question. Are you going to hang with it? Because I don't want to say to Martin, your question doesn't make any sense. Your question doesn't make any sense to anybody but me.

So can I just take the first part just to clarify what you were saying that there are these two things that we describe as the universe. Yes. One of them is the universe that we see, which we call the observable universe. Okay.

So that one is us here on Earth looking out in all directions. Right. And as far as we can see. And so that forms a sphere. Right. Because we're kind of around us. We're looking all around.

So that's the observable universe does have a geometric shape in 3D space that we can say is a sphere. But the universe itself, that's a different question and you can't really conceive it as a 3d dimensional shape but you can describe it by what happens on different 3d dimensional shapes for space and time like so that's that's where that flat it's harder to comprehend the kind of the overall geometry of the universe because it's really a geometry in not the three dimensions that we're used to, but the four dimensions of space and time. Right. And so we think on the largest scales that the universe is actually flat overall. Overall.

So unlike the Earth that looks flat nearby but is actually round if you go far enough, the universe, we think, looks flat nearby and is also flat at large distances, at large extents. Right. But that's flat in three dimensions and not two dimensions. Right. Because when we look out. Three space dimensions of the universe. There you go.

All right. Cool. Cool. See, that describes, and it's because it's flat because if you went in one direction, you would never come back to where you started. I think so, yeah. Which is what the sphere would describe. Yeah.

Gotcha. Okay. That you could come back to where you started if the universe had a spherical topology. Yeah. Okay. We could also, and there's even a third option. Instead of spherical or flat, the universe at one point, like the the other option was it's sometimes called a saddle shaped

topology. More like a Pringle as opposed to a sphere. It would have been delicious. A delicious salty parabola. Now I'm hungry. I don't know why. We've ruled out that and we think we've also ruled out the saddle or Pringle shape

is called a negative curvature and the the positive um curvature is the the spherical shape right so we think we've ruled those out and we think that the universe overall is flat okay but flat in three dimensions of space right not flat like you look at a piece of paper flat yeah because that's flat in two dimensions yeah gotcha's flat in two dimensions. Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, because we're looking at it in the four dimensions. And then there's the four dimensions of space and time. Yeah.

Gotcha. We start to talk about travel and light moving through space. Let me tell you something. Where are we talking about fashion? Yeah, I was going to say, let's get back to fashion. But still, that was still a fascinating question, Martin. I mean, yeah, I'm glad we did it. Let's get back to something fashion. Let's go to, this comes to us from Google Plus with

no name on it. Wow. Sorry about that. Here we go. I have noticed an increase in space-inspired clothing and have always wondered, why is it always cats and galaxies? Could it be that cats are our superior beings, the creators of our universe, observing from inside? What do you think this new fashion trend show, where it will go? I personally love how it spreads science. There you go. Oh, it's from He Who Is Nobody. That explains the lack of a name. There you go. Lack of a name. He Who Is Nobody. So there you go oh it's from he who is nobody that explains the lack of a name

there you go lack of a name he who is nobody so there you go what is the deal with cats in space we've also noticed that it's such a thing

fabulous things to look at I enjoy cats and I enjoy space and sometimes sometimes it's also pizza sometimes it's pizza and pizza

and space yeah we actually have a special so we have like days of the week themes for our blog okay And sometimes it's also pizza. Sometimes it's pizza. Yes, cats and pizza and space. Yeah. We actually have a special. So we have like days of the week themes for our blog. Okay. Like we have Moon Monday or Moon Day. We have Tuesday Shoes Day.

Tuesday Shoes Day. So sometimes they're like different, you know, different astronomical objects. Sometimes they're different like clothing themes for different days of the week. And for Saturday, we not only have Saturn Day. Or Saturnalia. Saturnalia. Uh-huh. Of course, the day was named of the week. And for Saturday, we not only have Saturn Day. Or Saturnalia. Saturnalia. Of course, the day was named after the planet. But we also have Catter Day. Catter Day. That's a thing on the internet. That's a thing on the internet? And you think like, oh, you know, a couple space cat things and that'll be done pretty quickly. And, oh no. They just keep coming. There's lots and lots. There's a whole

cat-tress, castronaut? Castronaut. Okay, I'm going to tell you as a man, that sounds painful. It's a cat in a space suit. No,

I'm just telling you right now. It's actually adorable. Don't worry. I'm not signing up for the castronaut program. You know, that's all I'm telling you. Kitty,

kitty, kitty astronaut I should maybe say. I kind of want a comeback of pigs in space because I grew up on that and that was kind of amazing. We should have Miss Piggy. We should start a Miss Piggy in Galaxy.

Pigs in Space. Well, that's very cool. I'm glad. Lots of cats, and we don't know why. I think maybe because it's the Internet. Yeah. The Internet loves space. The Internet loves cats.

You put the two together, and you get cats. The Internet loves, yeah. All right. By the way, I found out that this was actually not from He Who Is Nobody. It's from Snapshooting, and it came to us from Instagram. Okay. Instagram also loves cats. Yeah, that's so true.

I follow a lot of cat accounts there. There you go. Now, here's what He Who Is Nobody actually wrote in, which you guys may not be able to answer. But it says. Sounds like a challenge. No, no. It's just the nature of the question. It's really not a challenge.

Which garment of Dr. Tyson's do you think best captures the cosmos? Aha. I should have worn a different shirt today. Why? Because I have a shirt that is inspired by Neil's star vest. By his star vest? He does have the celestial vest which has got the I have a thing with the personified

sort of. Neil's not here. Yeah, it's a very like it's very 80s I think. I think it was a thing in the 80s that came from like glassware or something with the, you know, the crescent moons with the face in it and the sun with the triangles. And it looks like

it's hand drawn. It wouldn't be like, it's not like a photo image. Tapestry or hand drawn. Which is, I mean, that's iconic. The fact that he's

in a Superman comic wearing that and, you know, the fact that you can, his Lego character has it on it. His Lego character,

like, what? Wait a minute. Neil is a Lego character? I don't know i did not know that is neil a lego character let me check the booth it's not an official let me check it's like a custom you know how you might buy a custom star trek or star wars figure it's a custom lego figure that this woman named oh my god that would be so awesome. I just want to hear Neil just singing, everything is awesome. Okay.

So there's another one of our vendors, Pauline Acklin, made a t-shirt that has the vest on it. So you can wear the t-shirt, you know, like a tuxedo t-shirt, but it's a Neil Tyson t-shirt. Oh my God. So it's actually Neil's vest on a t-shirt. How meta is that? That's crazy.

I like to wear it and say today the role of Neil Tyson will be played by Summer Ash. Cool. So we have to take a break. Okay. And maybe when we come back, we can talk about the makeover, the fashion makeover that we would love to give Neil Tyson. Oh, let's do that. Welcome back to Star Talk All Stars. I'm Emily Rice. And I'm Summer Ash.

And thanks to our co-host Chuck Nice for being here. Yes. Talking about fashion. This is fun. I love it. And you know we've gotten some. And science. Fashion and science. They're not two different things. There's this big intersect. It's a Venn diagram. They do overlap.

Fashion and science. And they overlap on what you're wearing right now, both of you, which are wearing really cool fashion-inspired hoodies. Which I got to tell you, do they have any that are darker? Like, I like it. Yes. Oh, yeah. Just where it's like a spiral galaxy on the front or something like that. Oh, yeah. I could find that in a hoodie.

Yes, we can send it to you. You can send it to me? Absolutely. I'm going to buy it. You just made a sale. I could find that in a hoodie. Yes, we can send it to you. You can send it to me? Absolutely. I'm going to buy it. You just made a sale. I'm all about it. Sweet. I'm telling you.

I really wish we sold stuff. I know. Oh, really? We're going to get on that. Wait a minute. We're working on it. Wait a minute. You guys just blog about it?

You don't actually sell stuff? In all our spare time. Ladies, we have got to talk, okay? We're working on it. Like, actually, one of the things that we would like to share with you is that we started to collaborate with some people that are designers. So one of the great things about making this blog is that we've come into contact with a lot of people who make science-inspired clothing and jewelry and things like that. And so we have inspired mostly jewelry so far. Yeah.

Have we done clothing? Like not yet, maybe. Yeah, I think we're on the border. Pauline might be working on something for us. We're on the cusp. But we have a new collection that's coming out very, very soon with Psy Chic, who is actually an engineering student, an undergraduate student. I think she's graduating in December.

Okay. And she does 3D printed jewelry. Oh, cool. So I'm holding up one now that is actually, do you recognize this? All I know is this. There are two spheres, one very large, one very small circles, because they're not spheres, because they're flat. They're flat. And then around it, there seems to be like a pattern that circles the large circle

and then that pattern then proceeds to the small circle and goes around it several times. And I gotta tell you, I have an idea, but I don't know what it is. It kind of looks almost like an abstract pattern or something like that, like a curlicue or something.

It almost looks like a treble clef. It almost looks like a treble clef. I was going to say, it almost looks like a treble clef, or a musical note. It actually represents the lunar orbit insertion trajectory. So this is the trajectory orbiting Earth and then going to the moon and orbiting around the moon

that the Apollo astronauts took. Nice! Yeah, and you can wear it as jewelry. It's 3D printed by an amazing company. And why is it a lunar earth insertion? Why do they call that the insertion?

Where's that come from? A lunar orbit insertion. A lunar orbit insertion. Because you're inserting the spacecraft into the lunar orbit. Gotcha. I believe.

Right. So that's cool. That's exactly right. And so I wore this on my StarTalk episode. Oh, nice. With a moon t-shirt. Oh, very cool.

Yeah. You can also accessorize and you can dress all in moon if you like. Yeah, all moon if you want. And let me just say that lunar orbit insertion sounds so, so very dirty. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. Star Talk after hours.

Yeah, that's Star Talk. Star Talk after diaries. Star Talk all, all access. Coming later. Go all, all access. Coming later. Go ahead. Go ahead. So that's one that she already had. And she teamed up with us and said, what would you like to see 3D printed that you can wear as jewelry?

Nice. And so we picked out some things. We picked out the Hubble telescope. You got the Hubble telescope right there. I see that. Very recognizable, right? Yes. And then this one's a little bit trickier.

It's a bunch of little squares. But this means a lot to me. This is the field of view of the Kepler Space Telescope. Okay. I was going to say, thank God I didn't know that. Because if I had gotten that, I'd be hanging around you guys for too long. Okay? I went into the wrong field of profession. If I actually recognize that as the

field of view of the Kepler, I would have, you know, but that's really cool though. And can you tell me how that represents the field of view of the Kepler, please? Yeah, this is actually like by field of view. I mean, this is literally like the, each of the little rectangles is what Kepler uses to collect data. Okay. Gotcha. So you can think of it as the field of view as like the kind of footprint on the sky that Kepler can observe. Right. Or you can think about it on the opposite sense that this is actually the detector in the telescope. Right, okay. This is like the detector that's collecting all of the photons from the stars.

So it would be like if it's outside, it's what it's seeing, and if it's inside, then it would be like the CMOS chip on a camera. Yes, exactly. Okay, cool. And then we also have one that's... Another one. Oh, what's that? Okay, let me see. You can also tell me if you recognize it. Let me see that. It's been in the news lately. Yeah, I do recognize that and I can't remember. Go ahead. It's the James Webb Space Telescope. That's it!

It's the mirror, the primary mirror segments from the James Webb Space Telescope. Honeycomb mirror segments. Honeycomb mirror segments, yes. And the telescope is now fully manufactured and assembled. And when are we launching? And now they have to do the testing. In October 2018. So October 2018, the Webb telescope will go.

And unfortunately, this is supposed to be, this will be, it's not supposed to be, this will indeed be the most advanced telescope that we have ever put into space. And it will allow us to see imagery that we've never seen before, right? Absolutely. And as opposed to Hubble, this one is going to primarily look in the infrared. There will be some overlap in the visible wavelengths. But this one is also going not in Earth orbit, but it's going to what we call a Lagrange point, which is a stable orbit on the far side of the moon. So there's no repair in it. Right. Once it's gone, it's gone. It's gone. But that's also so, because it's infrared,

Earth actually radiates in infrared. We sort of give off heat. We have some excess heat to give off, and so it doesn't actually get contaminated or it doesn't influence the imagery that we receive. Okay, cool. Yo, that is all cool. This is stuff that we help design. I love it. All right, that is awesome. Let's move on to another query. This one from Ryan Parker coming to us from Facebook. Thank you for writing in, Ryan. Ryan says this, are the guidelines for manipulating interstellar images, such as the fabulous ones from Hubble,

we often see contrast enhanced, wildly colored, finished photos and wavelengths that we wouldn't be able to perceive with our feeble senses. But is there a point when it becomes too close to fantasy? And by the way, I am writing from 45.5 to 31 degrees north, 122.6765 degrees west. Just so you know. We're pointing our space, our spy satellite. Yes, right where you are. Right now. Yeah, yeah.

Watch out, Ryan. We're watching you. Alright. Anyway, I see what he's saying. Some of these, explain to us about the imagery that we see. I mean, more importantly than what he's talking about, the manipulating of these images for fashion purposes, when we see these images,

what are we really looking at? And that's I think that's what he's trying to get to. And when do we take those interpretations, if they might be called that, too far? The answer is that it varies as to how realistic it is, something that we're looking at. Like he said, there's visible light that we can see with our eyes, and I think that my sweatshirt is an image taken in visible light.

But then there's infrared light that we can't see with our eyes. And I think that my sweatshirt is an image taken in visible light. But then there's infrared light that we can't see with our eyes. And the Hubble telescope also observes it in infrared light. But we can take that and we just have to take that data, it's real scientific data, and then map it to colors that we can see. And, you know, and so some people might say like, oh, but that's not realistic. But it's still real. It's real scientific data. And I think a lot of the space agencies that run these space telescopes are very good at doing it in very kind of repeatable, reproducible ways. So, for example, a lot of the space images come from the Hubble Space Telescope, which is very well known. But also the Spitzer Space Telescope is less well known. which is very well known, but also the Spitzer Space Telescope is less well known. It's an infrared space telescope that was in an – it still is in an Earth-trailing orbit.

Not all of the instruments work anymore, but it observed images in infrared wavelengths and mid-infrared wavelengths longer than our eyes can see. And also the Chandra X-ray Telescope works in X-rays, so really high-energy photons. Nice. And all of these, like, you know, because they're also NASA telescopes, all of the data is public. All of the images are public for public use, Creative Commons. You can put them on stuff and sell them, these images, which is fantastic for designers. And even some of my favorite images are the same object, the same space object, maybe a nebula or a galaxy, observed by all three different space telescopes.

And are there three different— And then combined. Right, but would there be three different renderings? It would be all the same picture, but there would be kind of three different color palettes a little bit. Gotcha. So, for example, this NGC 602 that Summer's wearing, there's this one version that's just the Hubble image.

But then there's another version that also adds the Spitzer observations and the Chandra observations. And it's much more kind of neon because you usually map the X-ray data, the X-ray photons, to kind of neon blue or purple or pink or something like that. And the infrared images also tend to get like bright red or green or something like that. They kind of map the data that is at wavelengths that we can't see onto particular colors that are representative. Gotcha. And it's an art form as well. There's some people that do this professionally for astronomers

to make press release images and things like that. And it's just beautiful what they can come up with. And I just wanted to add that actually, so those different wavelengths, especially for objects that I like, which are supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies, the different wavelengths are actually seeing different material. So the infrared is also much more sensitive to dust. Okay. And the X-ray is really sensitive to hot gas.

Right. And so a lot of times for those images of galaxies in those different wavelengths, you're not actually seeing the same sort of outline or object even. The emission's coming in different shapes. Right, because the materials that they're actually being able to see are different. Yeah, and they're invisible in some of the other wavelengths. So then you put them all three together and the cool thing about,

that's what I love about astronomy too, is that you have to look in all these different ways to see the full picture. See the full picture, right. And so it's just like, so if I might, and I'm just,

I'm spitballing here because I'm trying to get my own, this is what I do. I listen to this stuff. I learn something. No, I learn something and then I see if I'm processing it correctly

by what I'm able to make an association. So how I'm able to make the association lets me know, do I really understand you? And so when you're talking about these wavelengths and you're talking about the materials, it's kind of like hypersonic sound versus sound that we can hear. Is it along those? You understand what I'm saying? So it's like, yes, that sound is there. You just can't hear it. But if I were able to get you a different listening device,

then you would actually have a representation of what it sounds like to you. But that's not actually the hypersonic sound that you're hearing. That's your representation of the hypersonic sound because you can't hear it. Is that right? It might be like feeling the sound. Sometimes there's a bass that's so low that you can't hear it, but you feel it. Or like a high-pitched thing that like you can't hear it, but maybe you can see something vibrating. You can see it vibrating. So this is what it's like.

I mean, for me, yeah. So see, so. You just kind of translate it into. Those things are all just spectrums of frequencies. There you go. So sound frequency, light frequency. Right. Yeah.

And so the thing is with the images that match up with the galaxies, you have a picture that's showing you three different things going on in the galaxy, too. And so those are my favorite composites. That's cool. So when you get those composites, it's bringing them all together. Exactly. Wow. It's not just the colors, but it's also like the physical phenomenon that produce these. Nice.

This radiation that, it's so science. Yeah, it really is. It's like an image on a t-shirt. It is. And it's so rich with science, it really is. It's like an image on a t-shirt and it's so rich with science. It's amazing. All right, here we go. Let's move on. Here we go. Jess Ming from Facebook says, why are galaxy prints so awesome?

They are on everything. Are they real nebulas or an artist's interpretation? Either way, they are awesome. Yeah. Okay. I got a feeling that Jess is about 13. No, I'm joking. I would use awesome just as much.

I say awesome just as much, even though I know we're not supposed to necessarily. Yeah, exactly. That's what they say. That's the thing. So I was wearing this actually a couple weekends ago to visit a friend of mine. Okay. And she was like, oh, that's awesome. It, exactly. That's what they say. That's the thing. Like, so I actually, I was wearing this actually a couple of weekends ago to visit a friend of mine and she was like, oh, that's awesome. It's space. And I was like, yeah, it's real. You know, it's a real image. Here's the horse head nebula and stuff. And she was like, oh, it just looks like a pattern to me. And I realized I was like, oh, like astronomers, I think have this like sixth sense or something

like that, where it's like, we can pick out like, you know, that's a real galaxy. We don't always know the galaxy. Sometimes we do. That's a little bit of a party trick. But like astronomers can distinguish real space from fake space a little bit. Okay. And actually a lot of the things, I mean, our favorite things I think are the real space, but also the fake space is pretty nice sometimes. You know, there's a lot like planetscapes and, you know, kind of different images put together and representative stuff.

One of the things that I don't know that I would love to find out is kind of what are, why some things look like space even when they're not space. We need a neuroscientist for that. I want to do like a psych experiment of like what people recognize as space versus what they don't think is space. Right. like what people recognize as space versus what they don't think is space. Right. I have this one dress that I bought at Macy's like several years ago, and it looks like one of the Hubble Deepfields.

And if you don't know what a Hubble Deepfield is, Google it right now. But for most astronomers know, and I think a lot of science buffs know, that they're this like a dark field with just lots and lots of galaxies in this field. And there's several different kind of generations of them, Hubble Deep Field, Ultra Deep Field, Extreme Deep Field. And I have this one dress that I really think it's just a pattern. It's like a black with a little bit of a splatter pattern and some different colors. But any astronomer looks at it and says, where did you get that Hubble Deep Field dress?

And I was like, Macy's at 34th Street. I don't think it's the Hubble Deep Field. It could be and just very manipulated, but I haven't been able to actually match it up with any of the Hubble Deep Fields yet. I think it's like somebody saw the Hubble Deep Field and wanted to reproduce it. It has a pattern.

But didn't actually use the physical one to go one-to-one. So it's like the same objects, but all just basically some designer ripped off the Hubble deep. That's basically what you can. It's not bad at all. No, I'm not saying, you know,

it's not like the Hubble deep field has like, you know, attorneys. They don't have kids. It doesn't have kids to feed or anything. Exactly. Right. You know what I mean?

Then some of them are like every once in a while, like I have this pair of leggings that I think are from like Kohl's or something like that. And I was like, Oh, you know what I mean? But then some of them are. Like, every once in a while, like, I have this pair of leggings that I think are from, like, Kohl's or something like that. And I was like, oh, you know, it looks like a, you know, a fake space. I thought, oh, like, generic nebula or something like that. And then I looked at a particular shape on the leggings, and I was like, that looks familiar. And I actually noticed that it was, it's the LH95, I believe, the star-forming region image by Hubble. And I was like, no, it is that same image. It's just very, very manipulated, you know, different colors and stuff like that.

So it was like these leggings that, you know, I bought for $8 at Kohl's, like really are a real space image. They're the real space image, right. And we never kind of know. We had such a hilarious time once where there were these leggings that someone was wearing to do yoga and then we posted them on Twitter. And myself and Phil Plait had this whole back and forth going, I think it's this. No, I think it's this. And we had like this cosmic detective hunt. We finally found it. Yeah, we were joking about it. And I found it and I was like, done. Yeah. But you had to keep zooming in and looking at it different ways to match it.

Oh, that's cool. This is the kind of stuff that keeps us up at night if we're not observing. Well, listen, there are worse things that keep you up at night. And for you, being pregnant, believe me, in just a little bit of time, believe me, something else is going to be keeping you up at night. All right. Let's – I got one quick, quick question. And it says – Real quick.

Real quick, because I know we're at the end of our show. And at Whitstap wants to know this. Do you think the designs and fashion has increased female interest in astronomy or in any cosmos field? Do you think that? That is our hope. Well, I think honestly that it doesn't because it doesn't need to because I think women are already interested in science. Okay. Frankly.

What I think that this does is this kind of normalizes the participation of women in science. Gotcha. And, you know, and other people, you know, because it's not just women that are interested in fashion. Oh, that's true. Like, you know, having hobbies and being interested in other things and also being enthusiastic about what you do and not necessarily, you know, only wearing like a graph paper shirt and dirty jeans or something like that. And being willing to share the cosmos. Nice. And not just live in your own little universe. Well, I have enjoyed this.

I think it was awesome for the fact that we were able to talk about fashion and science, which you when you think about it, you don't really think those two come together. Like when you first think about it. But I have to say, they do. They do in a very big way. You've been listening to Star Talk All Stars. Thanks so much, Chuck, for co-hosting with us today. Thank you. Awesome. I'm Emily Rice. Keep asking questions.

And I'm Summer Ash. Hubble got you. This is StarTalk.