Dr. Eric Koch, Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Revealing the multi-phase neutral interstellar medium’s role in the star formation lifecycle: a sharpened view of nearby galaxies from LGLBS and PHANGS-JWST

The neutral interstellar medium (ISM) fuels the star formation lifecycle, yet we still lack vital constraints on the formation and destruction of molecular clouds because of challenges in observing the cold neutral ISM phases with high resolution and sensitivity. With dedicated surveys, the combination of VLA, ALMA, and JWST can now make significant advances in the coming years. In this talk, I will present multiple observational approaches that are making progress in this area: detailed 21-cm HI VLA mapping across the Local Group from the Local Group L-band Survey (lglbs.org), resolved molecular cloud studies with ALMA and JWST in M33 and PAH imaging from PHANGS-JWST as a highly sensitive resolved view of the total neutral gas tracer (phangs.org). These surveys bridge Galactic with extragalactic star formation studies and provide new constraints to guide the next generation of numerical simulations.

Monica Vidaurri, Stanford University and NASA Goddard

Ethics and Aliens: the need for an ethical approach to space science

The progress of space science and exploration has seemingly inevitably fallen to private companies, to the concern of private citizens and scientists, who are directly impacted by private actions in space. Additionally, academia has reached a critical limit in terms of unchecked features that promote elitism and exclusionism, including increasingly competitive admissions to programs and fellowships, scarcity in jobs, prevalent sexual harassment, and others. As individuals, it is difficult to imagine what a truly ethical framework for our work looks like, let alone how we alone can influence laws and policy to change the actions of individuals with seemingly unlimited wealth and resources. This talk will introduce 3 main facets of what ethics means with respect to space science and exploration, including introducing space science as a historically oppressive institution, and how we can begin to move past this as individuals, labs, departments, and institutions. The norms we allow and ignore ultimately shape these broader laws, policies, and workplace culture. As a result, our science cannot be detached from the social and political framework it exists in, and the custom of early and regular collaboration with ethicists and planetary protection specialists (and other social scientists) is critical for not only mission safety, but mission and science integrity, as well as the well-being of those contributing to the mission and who gets to be included in such work. Creating a safe, responsible, and ethical space for peaceful purposes cannot wait for the international space community to create these practices de jure, but must be started at the individual level and regarded as custom for integration into international law, de facto, and require an uncomfortable self-assessment in the true goals of space science, as well as the ways that the academic structure has failed certain groups of students. By creating a new framework that prioritizes ethics, only then can we responsibly go into the unknown.

Dr. Guochao Sun, Northwestern University

Unveiling the Physics of Galaxy Formation and its Large-Scale Effects at Cosmic Dawn

Cosmic Dawn, loosely defined here to be the first billion years of cosmic time, is an ever-intriguing era that witnessed the formation of the first generations of galaxies. Toward the end of it there was also the last major phase transition of our Universe, the epoch of reionization (EoR), which is believed to be driven by the hydrogen-ionizing background emerged from the early galaxies formed. In this talk, I will explain how Cosmic Dawn becomes a real exciting epoch for unveiling the physics of galaxy formation thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as well as several forthcoming facilities such as SPHEREx, Roman Space Telescope, Square Kilometer Array, and LiteBIRD focusing on the large-scale effects. I will discuss the theoretical landscape galaxy formation at Cosmic Dawn informed by new JWST observations, with a particular focus on the phenomenon of bursty star formation. I will introduce methods and ideas to shed light on different aspects of early galaxy formation, including the star formation history, stellar feedback, outflows, and the ionizing output, using both individual galaxies and their effects on the large-scale structure and cosmic background radiations. With a few case studies, I will demonstrate how to harness the power of the aforementioned facilities and their synergies for these purposes.

Grad student town hall

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