Im lonnie stonitsch, the executive director of fan. And im honored to welcome you to tonights conversation between dr. Moiya mctier and dr. Chanda prescodweinstein. Then celebrating its 40th Anniversary Season this year. Can you believe that . And we are honored to have the robust support of dozens of schools, nonprofits, corporations, families and individuals from across the country. We are joyfully and deeply committed to our vision of an informed and Compassionate Community and. We achieve that by presenting fresh ideas that elevate minds, expand hearts, and make the world a better place. We have hundreds of videos of past events archived on our youtube channel, so please be sure to subscribe to get updates when new recordings are posted for some introductions. Moiya mctier is an astrophysicist folklorist and science communicator based in new york city. After graduating from harvard as the first person in the schools history to study both astronomy and mythology, dr. Mcteer earned her ph. D. In astrophysics at columbia university, where she was selected as a National ScienceFoundation Research fellow. Dr. Mcteer has consulted with Companies Like disney pbs on their fictional worlds, helped design exhibits for the New York Hall of science and given hundreds talks about science around the globe. To combine her unique set of expertise, she hosts and produce explorer podcast that fictional world building through the lens of science. For conversatner tonight is chanda prescodweinstein. An assistant professor of physics and astronomy and core faculty in womens and gender studies at the university of new. Her research and theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, neutron stars and dark matter. She additionally does research in black feminist science, technology and society studies. She is also a columnist for new scientist and physics and nature recognized her as one of ten people who shapes science in 2020. And essence has recognized her as one of 15 black women for paving the way in stem and breaking barriers. Her first book, the disordered cosmos a journey into dark matter and dreams deferred, won the 2021 Los Angeles Times book prize in the science and technology category, and was named the best book of 2021 by publishers weekly, Smithsonian Magazine and kirkus. And now lets welcome dr. Moiya mctier and dr. Chanda prescodweinstein. Hi, maria. How are you doing . Im good. Im excited to be here with you. Dr. Chanda prescodweinstein, i see your book behind you. I use that as inspiration in part for my book. So thanks for being here with me. Thank you for my book. We are here to talk about the milky way. This really fascinating, exciting autobiography of our galaxy. I am so. I have questions for you. I want to remind the audience that there is a q a box. You put your questions in there and well be will be getting to some audience questions later. So please, as you think of it, write it down so that you dont forget it. Put it in the q a box, which i will be looking at occasionally. I am. So were just going to jump right in. You dont want to do a reading or anything like that, right i dont have a copy to read from. So you could do it in. Yeah. Im going to share it again. Im showing for you and for both windows at the same time. Okay heres this beautiful cover. I am. Okay. So the book is called the milky way an autobiography of our galaxy. So im wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what the concept of the book is. And im interested how you arrived at this. So start by telling us about the concept. And then i have a couple of follow ups that. Yeah, of course. So the whole book is written from the perspective of the galaxy. I wanted to make that very clear with the cover. So its autobiography by the milky way. But the point of this is to tell you the story. Our galaxy from its birth. 13 plus billion years ago, all the way to how it might die when. The universe eventually ends and trillions of years. And its also meant to tell story of our human understand of the milky way from the myths that we used to tell about the night sky. The way that we understand it with telescopes now. And that whole journey is being told from the perspective of the milky way, who is upset that humans have stopped telling its stories, relying on it for practical purposes like our ancestors used to. So for last 300 years, the milky way been like young humans. Whats up . We used to be buds. Like, why are ignoring me now . So that that is what the book does. And i came up with this concept soon after. I was approached by a agent in 2019. He, if i was interested in, writing a book and i was like, oh heck yeah, dude, ive always wanted to write a book. And it made sense to write a book about the milky way because i was in my couple of years of a ph. D. At the time researching the milky way. And so i it seems strategic to write a book about that. And for the perspective twist, there are a few reasons for that. One, i didnt want to just be another human astronomer tacking on their own book space like people have done that before. Second, i had just read the raven tower by and leckie, which is a really great book written from the perspective of a god in this world, except that god is a rock. So i was in the mindset of thinking of weird perspect actives from beings that we typically think of as inanimate and. Yeah, i think thats how it came about. So, you know, when i, i knew we would see a book from you at some point, right . And to give a little bit of context about, this i first heard about moria when i first heard about you, when you were finishing your two theses as, an undergraduate. So you wrote i am and this was like one of the quirks of doing honors degree at harvard, right, is you had to write thesis that covers both topics. And so you wrote senior thesis. Heres why that was combined. Oh, it was. That was combined. Okay. So the one that i remember is that you had to bring folklore, mythology and, exo planets, which is what you have been doing, research on into conversation with each other. And so you wrote a Science Fiction novel. If i remember correctly, but thats which i think i wrote to you and asked you a copy of it, which i still. Yeah. And so actually think like initially i thought the first book we were going to see from you be with some edited version of that, but definitely i thought the first Popular Science book we would see was on exeter planets. I wondered if you could talk about, you know, the the emphasis, the milky way and how you arrived at your research coming out of you. You are part of a generation that has come of age with exoplanets being like the big exciting things. Actually, one of my questions was why a galaxy and an exoplanet . Thats a great question. Yeah i have never lived in a world where didnt know about exoplanets. The first exoplanet was discovered three years before i was born. So it it was something that i studied in college. But was i was hesitant to study it in college because my undergrad advisor worked on exoplanets and i didnt want to fall into the trap of just doing whatever my did. So i tried out lots of Different Research topics star formation, galaxy evolution, black holes. I didnt instrumentation, project or i had to build an instrument to, detect the cosmic microwave background. And then i realized i am not very good working with my hands and building things. Lets go back to the data stuff and then my senior thesis in college studying an exoplanet and trying to characterize it and bringing in the folklore element, going to hawaii and doing some very brief, brief research on the 30 Meter Telescope conflict. There were hawaiians who were protecting and demonstrating on monaco, which is a Sacred Mountain in hawaii where astronomers are trying to build a massive telescope. So i went and i talked to them. You can see that in the book. Its called lying words, and its available on my website and i never got it published. But then when i got to grad school, the question that i really wanted to answer was rooted in my Exoplanet Research as in exoplanets. Do you think about the circumstellar habitable zone or goldilocks zone . This is the place where planets are just the right distance from star to have liquid water. And i was wondering, is there Something Like that on a galactic . Is there a galactic habitable zone . So thats what i studied in my ph. D. And to get there, i started by researching more exoplanet. I did a really fun project trying to figure out a way to detect mountains on exoplanets, which is hard because planets are tiny and very away. And then im moved into stars and stellar evolution and stellar motion around the galaxy. So i learned about the chemicals, the chemical that stars produce over the course of their lifetimes and how different stars do that in different ways. And i learned how stars move around the galaxy and how that affects the planets that live around them. Spoiler alert fast stars just as likely to have planets around them as slow. Thats something i found in my research. And then i combined of that to say in the milky way galaxy, we would to find habitable planets. And those are planets that meet the conditions for life like us. Right. Theres a huge caveat there. But yeah, it was always kind of galaxies, my brain. But thinking about the smaller components of galaxies and how they work together, im really bad at making decisions. I didnt want to choose between planets and galaxies and. I think ive found a way to do that in my dissertation for my ph. D. Program but when it came to writing this book, i wanted something big. I wanted i wanted a larger than life story to tell. And planets are cool, but our planet is only four and a half billion years old, nowhere near as old as the milky way. So i needed it to be bigger and longer. So you came into this as something of an expert on the milky way. And im wondering if in the process of writing the book, there was something that you learned about the milky that we played unexpected for you, like you were like, i should have known that. Thats amazing. Were there things that you learned along the way or did you feel like you came into it . Kind of knew exactly what the whole thing was . Oh, no, i. I learned things. Absolutely. I learned a lot of myths. I didnt want to put the classical greek roman myths that a lot of people hear about in this book. So i learned a lot folklore for it. And i might know a lot about the galaxy. But that doesnt mean i know everything about the universe so especially in the later chapters, the book where it zooms out from the milky way itself and starts talking about dark matter and dark energy and the fate of the universe. And it gets into quantum theory and particle physics that is stuff that i am not super strong in. So i read i read your book, the disordered cosmos, to me, with my dark matter stuff. I read katie, max, the end of everything. Help me with my end of the universe stuff. And there were some milky way specific things that i learned, like i didnt know much about the merger history of the milky way. I knew a lot about how the milky way is now and how, you know, things stars, gas and dust are distributed it now. But the past is very different picture. And so one thing that i learned specifically was the Gaia Enceladus merger. This is a smaller galaxy that merged with the milky way billions of years ago and now we can see parts of it that are left over in our galaxy. But astronomers have had to find really creative ways to identify the parts that are from guy enceladus. And the way that i wrapped that into the book, because this whole thing is a narrative arc. Its the milky way telling its own story is that in the past, the the milky way had to fight gaia and as a way to get andromedas attention, because the milky way has been hard core, crushing on andromeda for billions of years and andromeda very attracted to the milky way after it defeated guidance all of this and now the the remnant one of the remnants of gaia and solidus we call it the gaia sausage. And theres theres a line in the book where the milky way says, like, oh, thats such a suitably. Like mean name or something that you gave this this interleukin galaxies. Oh, yeah, the galaxies. Very sassy as i have written it. And so i guess that would be, you know, one of the really creative that you made here, obviously, is speaking is speaking not from your voice as a scientist and as as a public science communicator. Right. But speaking as the galaxy, kind of talking a public science communicator in scientist. I am. And so im wondering what are what things does the galaxy think that dont agree with . Like, what are the controversial views of the milky way . That we all need to be really clear . You dont agree . Thank you for asking this. There are a lot of them. The galaxy mentions several humans throughout book. One of them is Albert Einstein. The galaxy just really does not like Albert Einstein because einstein popularized as black holes for the public. And in this book, black holes the physical manifestation of a galaxys Mental Health struggles. So depression, anxiety, all those intrusive saying no one likes you and youre not good enough. Thats all coming from black holes. So that is that is another thing that the galaxy that you find in this book that i dont particularly agree with because i have nothing against black holes. But thats just how worked in the narrative. So the milky way, like Albert Einstein, the way thinks that this the saying we have of you have the same number of hours in the day as beyonce because she gets so much time. The milky way is like im so much more productive than beyonce. She has nothing on me. The milky way loves julianne drewes, and im lukewarm. Andrews but yeah, a lot of the human opinions, the milky way and i dont share, okay, why does the milky way love Julie Andrews so much . I feel like you need to impact that a little bit. I think its because needed a way to start a chapter about the the big bang and the origin of the universe. And i wanted to start it at the very so i wanted to quote Julie Andrews and it made so that for the milky way to know that quote and remember it and use it would probably mean that it likes her. So a lot of these opinions were kind of just for the sake of easy at some points. Okay. Very no, i think another question, you know, just coming back to this, the things that you learned along the way. Okay. So youre in an elevator with someone and like what makes the milky way more interesting than andromeda . Im like, whats your whats your elevator speech answer . Like, whats the most awesome thing about the milky way that youre just like, i want to point this about the milky way. Like, maybe youre their agent for the day or Something Like that. Actually, if im speaking for the milky way, think that it would say its not more interesting than andromeda. Andromeda is perhaps the one galaxy, but the milky way looks up to you and holds in high esteem the other galaxies in our local group, like the small and large Magellanic Clouds and triangulum, which is this satellite galaxy around andromeda, the milky way does not have very high opinions of those. So one thing that makes the milky way special in our neighborhood of galaxies is that its so massive. It is maybe the exception of andromeda, the most massive galaxy in our group of about 50 that weve found. Its it keeps going and forth as we learn more as we gain more data about milky way and andromeda, both of them, we used to think the milky way was more massive and then we thought andromeda was more massive. And now i the consensus is that the way is more massive. But andromeda has more stars, which is interesting. Like why . Why are the formation of these different galaxies dissimilar and like whats whats going on there . So yeah, the milky way is just the biggest, strongest galaxy. If you think of gravitational influence as like stranger than the milky ways the biggest, strongest galaxy we have. And that it sounds like the milky way is working for its relationship with masculinity there. And and, you know, working out like do i have to be the biggest one . And i should say . Yeah. For for the audience that andromeda is our nearest neighbor, major galaxy, as opposed to one of these satellites like the ones you were talking about earlier thats orbiting the the milky way. And i just want to remind the audience that were talking science and there are going to be things that your leg i want to know more about that or i didnt quite follow it we these are the kinds of questions that you were allowed to ask in a q a. So youre just i just want to remind this is your opportunity to ask a real live astrophys this agent for the milky way. Im questions about the milky way and i think maybe about exoplanets, too. You might be able to get away with. Some questions in there. Can i go back to your point about the milky way dealing with its masculinity . Because thats a great. So this the way in this book has a very strong personality that i think might be a bit polarizing. And if you stick with it, if you make it through the whole book, the milky way does soften a bit. It becomes more humble you can see it learning to like not look down so much on humans. And part of that comes from love of andromeda. And theres even line in there when its talking about the mass difference between the milky way and andromeda and the milky way says for i dont care who is more massive, it doesnt matter here. Im not worried about dominating andromeda. So yeah, it definitely does. Deal with its masculinity in that way, although i dont assign any gender to these galaxies. Yes. Yeah, i, i think that that there theres a lot to unpack there and i want to really encourage. Its its novel in a way and dont mean novel in kind of like a superficial way but like we seen anything like that kind of writing or text. And i think that that makes it a really exciting approach to communicating. And, and so this kind of, you know, part of what interests me about this approach to science communication, which i know more broadly, is something that youre super passionate about, is that it kind of brings Popular Science like general audience and, hard science, writing, tradition into conversation and with cosmic storytelling that is more oriented, right . And so thats, thats a clearly a natural connection for you to dra