well thank you so much my name is
Cynthia Chang and I guess all the other
speakers were asked to talk about
immigration and I am the oddball
out so I promise I did not miss the memo
but they did but they did ask me
specifically to talk about astrophysics
and so I’m going to tell you a story
tonight but it’s going to be very
different from the other stories you’ve
heard and mine’s going to be about
adventure and it’s an adventure that we
went on in order to learn about what
happened in the universe in its distant
past and so this is our adventure story
so the study of the universe as a whole
is known as cosmology and cosmologists
in general are interested in
understanding the big picture so that is
the history and the evolution and the
structure of the universe on its largest
scales so the sorts of questions that we
like to think about include how and when
did the universe begin what is the fate
of the universe and what is the universe
made of things like that and of course
these questions of humankind has thought
about these questions for as long as
we’ve existed and to illustrate how old
and profound these questions are I’m
showing an illustration from the 1800s
which shows a curious observer and he’s
peering into the heavens and trying to
understand what lies beyond now of
course there’s a lot of artistic license
in this picture but actually the spirit
of this picture is very similar to what
we do today and present modern day Calm
ology but thanks to the advent of
specialized telescopes that we’ve been
able to build and precision observations
we can actually begin to address these
grand questions in a precise scientific
and qualitative quantitative manner so
if we fast forward from the 1800s to the
present day this is a picture that shows
a timeline or a map of the universe as
we understand it today so we believe
that the universe began its existence 14
billion years ago in a lap and a large
explosion called the Big Bang and since
then the universe has been expanding and
cooling off now as the universe has
evolved there’s been a few significant
milestones and it’s history that I’ve
outlined here in the picture
so starting at week four million years
after the Big Bang the universe became
cool enough for the first hydrogen atoms
to form now at this point the oldest
light that we can observe in the
universe which is known as the Cosmic
Microwave Background was released now
after this point the universe was just
filled with neutral hydrogen and it was
a very dark and boring place for a very
long time and the cosmic Dark Ages
lasted until about a hundred million
years after the Big Bang and at that
point the first stars ignited in the
universe and Dawn appeared in the cosmos
and after that the universe continued to
evolve more structures appeared
including the stars and galaxies that
are familiar to us today and we as
observers sit at the very center of this
picture looking out and we’re trying to
fill in the details of this strange and
wonderful picture so for tonight’s story
I’m going to focus on one particular
slice of the universe’s history and that
is this period known as cosmic dawn so
during this period the first stars
ignited in the universe and we as
cosmologists would like to understand in
greater detail what the universe looked
like during this part of its development
so we only believed that cosmic dawn
took place between 100 and 400 million
years after the Big Bang and that may
sound like a large set of numbers to you
but I want you to think about let’s take
the whole 14 billion year existence of
the universe and compress it down into a
human’s lifespan now if we were to do
that then the period of cosmic dawn
would actually correspond to the first
few years of a human’s lifespan and so
in other words if we take our telescopes
and look back at cosmic dawn we’re
essentially trying to study the universe
when she was a toddler that she looked
very different back then
so this that’s sort of the science that
we’d like to do and what we’re
interested in studying so know that I’ve
told you what kind of science I’d like
to do I’ll have to tell you how we’re
going to do it and what we’re going to
look for so luckily for observational
cosmologists are our tool of choice for
understanding the universe is light we
have telescopes and we look at light of
various sorts and thankfully during the
period of cosmic dawn the universe was
filled with neutral hydrogen and
hydrogen
has a very special property and that it
glows with a very specific kind of light
so it turns out that hydrogen atoms emit
radiofrequency light and if we can tune
in our telescopes to observe at
frequencies between 50 and 150 megahertz
we can literally listen into the period
of the first stars igniting in the
universe so that’s the game plan and so
now you might be wondering how are we
actually going to do this in practice so
how do you catch a radio wave well
there’s good and bad news here so the
good news is that you may have
recognized the megahertz numbers that I
mentioned in the previous slide because
FM radio stations all broadcast in this
range and so that’s great because if you
wanted to measure a radio wave at 100
megahertz all you do is go to your car
stereo and turn it on and you’re set to
go right but with all things that sound
that easy there’s always a catch and the
catch here is that if you tried to build
a cosmic dawn telescope and put it at
home all you would pick up is your
favorite radio stations all the popular
music and all of that would drown out
all of the cosmological signal that
you’re trying to pick up from this guy
so you would never be able to see the
signal that you’re looking for so that’s
very sad so then you might be wondering
well what is it cosmologists to do given
this dilemma and so the solution in this
case is to leave civilization behind so
we want to get as far away as possible
from the radio stations and find a very
quiet place so that we can see the sky
and none of the contamination that we
create and so this is where our
adventure begins so it turns out that
South Africa owns a research base on
Marian Island which is shown in the
upper
right hand picture over here and you can
see that it is quite literally in the
middle of nowhere it is two thousand
kilometers away from the mainland and I
can tell you you don’t pick up any radio
stations from there so the story I’m
gonna tell tonight is about our research
team at UK’s a10 we went on a voyage to
Marion Island this past April and we set
up a new radio telescope in order to try
searching for the signature from the
first stars igniting in the universe so
I’m going to start off by showing the
final telescope that we set up our
experiment is called prism which stands
for probing radio intensity at high Z
from Marion and this is the instrument
and it’s full glory
I’m excited to share with you tonight
that this is actually the first
astronomy of any sort that’s been done
from Marion Island and so we really are
exploring uncharted territory here which
is quite exciting so now in science the
story isn’t just about the theory and
the technology but it’s also very much
about the people and there is a
significant human element to this and so
I wanted to share a picture of our
students who were the members of the
deploying team to Marion this past April
now the instrument that you saw on the
previous slide was designed built from
scratch and filled an entirely by
students and so they get all the credit
for making this work and not only that
but they they spent three weeks on
Marion and it’s three weeks is a very
short period and so they had only that
amount of time to set up a fully
functional robust system that could be
left behind for a full winter and during
that three week period every day they
spent two hours hiking through cold
weather Meyers lava fields ice pellets
you name it to get to our site work on
the equipment and hike back but it is
all worth it for the love of science and
but it is thing to their hard work that
I’m able to stand here today and share
this story with you all right
so fielding a telescope to a remote
location is a pretty scary experience
and so I’m going to share some photos
just to illustrate some of the
challenges that we faced and so this
photo shows our cargo being delivered to
our site which is located four
kilometers away from the main base there
are no cars
on the island and so yes we walk those
four kilometers every day in order to
deal with our instrument and what you
see are these three tiny orange boxes
and those contain all the pieces of
hardware that we need to construct our
radio telescope and leave it fully
functioning for a year and so well this
picture doesn’t capture is just how
nerve-wracking it is to tell the
helicopter team like yes we are okay to
go you can dump us off in the middle of
nowhere and so the best way the best the
best of absolute capsulation of the
feeling that I could come up with for
these lyrics from YouTube which is the
only baggage you can bring us all that
you can’t leave behind it really is a
little bit nerve-wracking but it’s okay
and so we started unpacking our
containers and everybody got to work and
this is one of our team members
assembling the telescope structure and
thanks to a lot of careful preparation
and hard work we were actually able to
get everything set up within a few days
and remarkably it all worked the first
time that we tried it which was kind of
a miracle grateful for that well what is
even more remarkable is that when we
looked at the observations that our that
our antennas took we could find no
evidence of contamination of radio radio
interference that’s created by humans so
no radio stations of any sort all we saw
was clean sky now as far as we can tell
Marion Island is probably the most radio
quiet location that we have ever
observed from and now we have a new
instrument in place that’s taking
observations and we really hope that
we’ll have a clean shot of seeing this
signature from the first stars igniting
in the universe so that’s where my story
for this evening ends but it’s actually
just the beginning because we have this
new telescope installed and now it’s
going to continue observing for the
winter season and so even though our
team has come and gone from Marion we
have passed the torch on to cookie so
melody who was shown in this photo and
he is the superhero of the next chapter
of our story but could because he is the
person who is spending the winter on
Marion to take care of our equipment so
when all the sudden
he will have been there for 13 months I
can tell you the internet from Marion is
pretty bad so no huge shout out to him
so I hope I’ve convinced you tonight
that with radio telescopes we can really
explore some interesting and exciting
uncharted territory in the universe’s
history and in particular this period of
cosmic dawn should be pretty fun to look
at because wouldn’t it be nice to see
the first stars igniting in the universe
and in our search for you know
exceptionally radio-quiet
locations and clean skies our adventures
have taken us to Marion Island which
seems to be a wonderful new location for
radio astronomy so we have our equipment
up and running now and we’re doing our
observations so please stay tuned to
find out what we can learn from this
very special location thank you very
much
[Applause]
Cynthia Chang and I guess all the other
speakers were asked to talk about
immigration and I am the oddball
out so I promise I did not miss the memo
but they did but they did ask me
specifically to talk about astrophysics
and so I’m going to tell you a story
tonight but it’s going to be very
different from the other stories you’ve
heard and mine’s going to be about
adventure and it’s an adventure that we
went on in order to learn about what
happened in the universe in its distant
past and so this is our adventure story
so the study of the universe as a whole
is known as cosmology and cosmologists
in general are interested in
understanding the big picture so that is
the history and the evolution and the
structure of the universe on its largest
scales so the sorts of questions that we
like to think about include how and when
did the universe begin what is the fate
of the universe and what is the universe
made of things like that and of course
these questions of humankind has thought
about these questions for as long as
we’ve existed and to illustrate how old
and profound these questions are I’m
showing an illustration from the 1800s
which shows a curious observer and he’s
peering into the heavens and trying to
understand what lies beyond now of
course there’s a lot of artistic license
in this picture but actually the spirit
of this picture is very similar to what
we do today and present modern day Calm
ology but thanks to the advent of
specialized telescopes that we’ve been
able to build and precision observations
we can actually begin to address these
grand questions in a precise scientific
and qualitative quantitative manner so
if we fast forward from the 1800s to the
present day this is a picture that shows
a timeline or a map of the universe as
we understand it today so we believe
that the universe began its existence 14
billion years ago in a lap and a large
explosion called the Big Bang and since
then the universe has been expanding and
cooling off now as the universe has
evolved there’s been a few significant
milestones and it’s history that I’ve
outlined here in the picture
so starting at week four million years
after the Big Bang the universe became
cool enough for the first hydrogen atoms
to form now at this point the oldest
light that we can observe in the
universe which is known as the Cosmic
Microwave Background was released now
after this point the universe was just
filled with neutral hydrogen and it was
a very dark and boring place for a very
long time and the cosmic Dark Ages
lasted until about a hundred million
years after the Big Bang and at that
point the first stars ignited in the
universe and Dawn appeared in the cosmos
and after that the universe continued to
evolve more structures appeared
including the stars and galaxies that
are familiar to us today and we as
observers sit at the very center of this
picture looking out and we’re trying to
fill in the details of this strange and
wonderful picture so for tonight’s story
I’m going to focus on one particular
slice of the universe’s history and that
is this period known as cosmic dawn so
during this period the first stars
ignited in the universe and we as
cosmologists would like to understand in
greater detail what the universe looked
like during this part of its development
so we only believed that cosmic dawn
took place between 100 and 400 million
years after the Big Bang and that may
sound like a large set of numbers to you
but I want you to think about let’s take
the whole 14 billion year existence of
the universe and compress it down into a
human’s lifespan now if we were to do
that then the period of cosmic dawn
would actually correspond to the first
few years of a human’s lifespan and so
in other words if we take our telescopes
and look back at cosmic dawn we’re
essentially trying to study the universe
when she was a toddler that she looked
very different back then
so this that’s sort of the science that
we’d like to do and what we’re
interested in studying so know that I’ve
told you what kind of science I’d like
to do I’ll have to tell you how we’re
going to do it and what we’re going to
look for so luckily for observational
cosmologists are our tool of choice for
understanding the universe is light we
have telescopes and we look at light of
various sorts and thankfully during the
period of cosmic dawn the universe was
filled with neutral hydrogen and
hydrogen
has a very special property and that it
glows with a very specific kind of light
so it turns out that hydrogen atoms emit
radiofrequency light and if we can tune
in our telescopes to observe at
frequencies between 50 and 150 megahertz
we can literally listen into the period
of the first stars igniting in the
universe so that’s the game plan and so
now you might be wondering how are we
actually going to do this in practice so
how do you catch a radio wave well
there’s good and bad news here so the
good news is that you may have
recognized the megahertz numbers that I
mentioned in the previous slide because
FM radio stations all broadcast in this
range and so that’s great because if you
wanted to measure a radio wave at 100
megahertz all you do is go to your car
stereo and turn it on and you’re set to
go right but with all things that sound
that easy there’s always a catch and the
catch here is that if you tried to build
a cosmic dawn telescope and put it at
home all you would pick up is your
favorite radio stations all the popular
music and all of that would drown out
all of the cosmological signal that
you’re trying to pick up from this guy
so you would never be able to see the
signal that you’re looking for so that’s
very sad so then you might be wondering
well what is it cosmologists to do given
this dilemma and so the solution in this
case is to leave civilization behind so
we want to get as far away as possible
from the radio stations and find a very
quiet place so that we can see the sky
and none of the contamination that we
create and so this is where our
adventure begins so it turns out that
South Africa owns a research base on
Marian Island which is shown in the
upper
right hand picture over here and you can
see that it is quite literally in the
middle of nowhere it is two thousand
kilometers away from the mainland and I
can tell you you don’t pick up any radio
stations from there so the story I’m
gonna tell tonight is about our research
team at UK’s a10 we went on a voyage to
Marion Island this past April and we set
up a new radio telescope in order to try
searching for the signature from the
first stars igniting in the universe so
I’m going to start off by showing the
final telescope that we set up our
experiment is called prism which stands
for probing radio intensity at high Z
from Marion and this is the instrument
and it’s full glory
I’m excited to share with you tonight
that this is actually the first
astronomy of any sort that’s been done
from Marion Island and so we really are
exploring uncharted territory here which
is quite exciting so now in science the
story isn’t just about the theory and
the technology but it’s also very much
about the people and there is a
significant human element to this and so
I wanted to share a picture of our
students who were the members of the
deploying team to Marion this past April
now the instrument that you saw on the
previous slide was designed built from
scratch and filled an entirely by
students and so they get all the credit
for making this work and not only that
but they they spent three weeks on
Marion and it’s three weeks is a very
short period and so they had only that
amount of time to set up a fully
functional robust system that could be
left behind for a full winter and during
that three week period every day they
spent two hours hiking through cold
weather Meyers lava fields ice pellets
you name it to get to our site work on
the equipment and hike back but it is
all worth it for the love of science and
but it is thing to their hard work that
I’m able to stand here today and share
this story with you all right
so fielding a telescope to a remote
location is a pretty scary experience
and so I’m going to share some photos
just to illustrate some of the
challenges that we faced and so this
photo shows our cargo being delivered to
our site which is located four
kilometers away from the main base there
are no cars
on the island and so yes we walk those
four kilometers every day in order to
deal with our instrument and what you
see are these three tiny orange boxes
and those contain all the pieces of
hardware that we need to construct our
radio telescope and leave it fully
functioning for a year and so well this
picture doesn’t capture is just how
nerve-wracking it is to tell the
helicopter team like yes we are okay to
go you can dump us off in the middle of
nowhere and so the best way the best the
best of absolute capsulation of the
feeling that I could come up with for
these lyrics from YouTube which is the
only baggage you can bring us all that
you can’t leave behind it really is a
little bit nerve-wracking but it’s okay
and so we started unpacking our
containers and everybody got to work and
this is one of our team members
assembling the telescope structure and
thanks to a lot of careful preparation
and hard work we were actually able to
get everything set up within a few days
and remarkably it all worked the first
time that we tried it which was kind of
a miracle grateful for that well what is
even more remarkable is that when we
looked at the observations that our that
our antennas took we could find no
evidence of contamination of radio radio
interference that’s created by humans so
no radio stations of any sort all we saw
was clean sky now as far as we can tell
Marion Island is probably the most radio
quiet location that we have ever
observed from and now we have a new
instrument in place that’s taking
observations and we really hope that
we’ll have a clean shot of seeing this
signature from the first stars igniting
in the universe so that’s where my story
for this evening ends but it’s actually
just the beginning because we have this
new telescope installed and now it’s
going to continue observing for the
winter season and so even though our
team has come and gone from Marion we
have passed the torch on to cookie so
melody who was shown in this photo and
he is the superhero of the next chapter
of our story but could because he is the
person who is spending the winter on
Marion to take care of our equipment so
when all the sudden
he will have been there for 13 months I
can tell you the internet from Marion is
pretty bad so no huge shout out to him
so I hope I’ve convinced you tonight
that with radio telescopes we can really
explore some interesting and exciting
uncharted territory in the universe’s
history and in particular this period of
cosmic dawn should be pretty fun to look
at because wouldn’t it be nice to see
the first stars igniting in the universe
and in our search for you know
exceptionally radio-quiet
locations and clean skies our adventures
have taken us to Marion Island which
seems to be a wonderful new location for
radio astronomy so we have our equipment
up and running now and we’re doing our
observations so please stay tuned to
find out what we can learn from this
very special location thank you very
much
[Applause]
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