How we use astrophysics to study earthbound problems | Federica Bianco

40,099 views ・ 2019-10-10

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Translator: Reviewer: Daban Q. Jaff
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I am an astrophysicist.
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I research stellar explosions across the universe.
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But I have a flaw:
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I'm restless, and I get bored easily.
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And although as an astrophysicist, I have the incredible opportunity
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to study the entire universe,
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the thought of doing only that, always that,
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makes me feel caged and limited.
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What if my issues with keeping attention and getting bored
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were not a flaw, though?
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What if I could turn them into an asset?
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An astrophysicist cannot touch or interact with
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the things that she studies.
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No way to explode a star in a lab to figure out why or how it blew up.
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Just pictures and movies of the sky.
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Everything we know about the universe,
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from the big bang that originated space and time,
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to the formation and evolution of stars and galaxies,
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to the structure of our own solar system,
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we figured out studying images of the sky.
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And to study a system as complex as the entire universe,
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astrophysicists are experts at extracting simple models and solutions
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from large and complex data sets.
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So what else can I do with this expertise?
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What if we turned the camera around towards us?
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At the Urban Observatory, that is exactly what we are doing.
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Greg Dobler, also an astrophysicist
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and my husband,
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created the first urban observatory in New York University in 2013,
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and I joined in 2015.
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Here are some of the things that we do.
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We take pictures of the city at night
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and study city lights like stars.
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By studying how light changes over time
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and the color of astronomical lights,
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I gain insight about the nature of exploding stars.
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By studying city lights the same way,
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we can measure and predict how much energy the city needs and consumes
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and help build a resilient grid
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that will support the needs of growing urban environments.
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In daytime images, we capture plumes of pollution.
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Seventy-five percent of greenhouse gases in New York City
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come from a building like this one, burning oil for heat.
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You can measure pollution with air quality sensors.
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But imagine putting a sensor on each New York City building,
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reading in data from a million monitors.
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Imagine the cost.
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With a team of NYU students, we built a mathematical model,
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a neural network that can detect and track these plumes
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over the New York City skyline.
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We can classify them --
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harmless steam plumes, white and evanescent;
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polluting smokestacks, dark and persistent --
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and provide policy makers with a map of neighborhood pollution.
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This cross-disciplinary project created transformational solutions.
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But the data analysis methodologies we use in astrophysics
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can be applied to all sorts of data,
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not just images.
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We were asked to help a California district attorney
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understand prosecutorial delays in their jurisdiction.
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There are people on probation or sitting in jail,
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awaiting for trial sometimes for years.
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They wanted to know what kind of cases dragged on,
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and they had a massive data set to explore to understand it,
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but didn't have the expertise
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or the instruments in their office to do so.
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And that's where we came in.
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I worked with my colleague, public policy professor Angela Hawken,
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and our team first created a visual dashboard
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for DAs to see and better understand the prosecution process.
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But also, we ourselves analyzed their data,
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looking to see if the duration of the process
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suffered from social inequalities in their jurisdiction.
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We did so using methods
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that I would use to classify thousands of stellar explosions,
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applied to thousands of court cases.
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And in doing so,
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we built a model that can be applied to other jurisdictions
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who are willing to explore their biases.
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These collaborations between domain experts and astrophysicists
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created transformational solutions
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to help improve people's quality of life.
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But it is a two-way road.
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I bring my astrophysics background to urban science,
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and I bring what I learn in urban science back to astrophysics.
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Light echoes:
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the reflections of stellar explosions onto interstellar dust.
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In our images, these reflections appear as white, evanescent, moving features,
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just like plumes.
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I am adapting the same models that detect plumes in city images
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to detect light echoes in images of the sky.
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By exploring the things that interest and excite me,
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reaching outside of my domain,
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I did turn my restlessness into an asset.
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We, you, all have a unique perspective that can generate new insight
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and lead to new, unexpected, transformational solutions.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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