Expert Spotlight: Dr. Jessica Meir

It's not every day you meet an astronaut who scuba dives under the ice in Antarctica. Dr. Jessica Meir (featured in You're the Expert's "Comparative Physiologist" episode) is one of the most interesting guests we've had on the show. 

That's Dr. Meir training one of her bar-headed geese test subjects to fly. Bar-headed geese are able to fly at incredibly high altitudes (even over the peaks of the Himalayas). Dr. Meir had baby bar-headed geese imprint on her, then she raised them and taught them to be comfortable flying in a wind tunnel, where she could study their remarkable abilities up close.  

We talked about Dr. Meir's research on geese, her time in Antarctica, and her astronaut training. You can hear it all here. 

If you'd like to learn even more about Dr. Meir (and, really, who wouldn't?), here are some resources to check out: 

-A great profile of Dr. Meir in the Harvard Gazette 

-Dr. Meir on The Discovery Channel (video) 

-A brief overview of Dr. Meir's work by BBC Nature

For some deeper cuts, read Dr. Meir's papers in the Journal of Experimental Biology here.  

Also, check out this awesome slow motion video of one of Dr. Meir's geese flying in the wind tunnel. 

Super slow-motion video of UBC's Dr. Jessica Meir and bar-headed geese in high-altitude wind tunnel experiments.

On somewhat of a tangent: for more about life in Antarctica, you should watch Werner Herzog's documentary Encounters at the End of the World. It's amazing, beautiful and bizarrely hilarious, like everything Herzog does. This scene in particular, where Herzog fixates on a penguin's journey and turns it into a existential odyssey, kind of sums up everything amazing about his work.

An excerpt from "Encounters at the End of the World" by Werner Herzog, 2007.

Expert Spotlight: Dr. Anna Frebel

"Rather than dig in the dirt, I dig in the sky."

This week on You're the Expert, the Indiana Jones of the cosmos, MIT's Dr. Anna Frebel, discusses the expansive field of Stellar Archeology. 

Dr. Frebel admits that the human mind, even one as sharp and experienced as her own, has great difficulty comprehending  the true origination of matter. But, through the process of breaking stars down to their elemental compositions, Dr. Frebel has chiseled away at some of those burning existential quandaries that have perplexed all who have dared ask the question: Where do we come from? 

Dr. Frebel began this process of cosmic discovery at the age of 14, when she first knew she wanted to study the stars. And in 2007, her childhood passion was realized when she discovered the oldest known star in the galaxy, one that dates back a whooping 13.2 billion years. Though some of her fellow Stellar Archeologists discovered a star that originated 13.7 billion years ago in 2009, Dr. Frebel continues to embrace the mantra: "If it's cloudy, apply again." In stellar archeologist lingo, that translates to: 'Just because your star is a mere .5 billion years older than mine doesn't mean that on a clear night, and with adequate grant funding, I won't discover something older.'

Dr. Frebel has won numerous awards including the National Science Foundation Career Award, the Annie Jump Cannon Award, and the Biermann Young Astronomer Award. She has also authored several papers on dwarf galaxies, nuclear astrophysics, and the oldest stars in the galaxy. 

So the next time you to want wish upon a star, we hope you think of Dr. Anna Frebel, and how she's probably carbon dated, classified, and wished on that star first.

 Cue Indiana Jones theme song. 

-Lee Stephenson

Production Associate 

For more on Dr. Anna Frebel:

-Visit her MIT faculty home page at: http://afrebel.scripts.mit.edu/www/

-A great interview with Dr. Frebel in New Scientist: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2014/02/the_oldest_star_in_the_milky_way_a_pure_second_generation_star.html

-Read an article on Dr. Frebel and her work in Harvard Magazine: http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/05/stellar-archeology
http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/05/seeing-stars

YTE in The Onion A.V. Club!

Did you see that You're the Expert just got a great review in The Onion A.V. Club? 

 "NEW TO US

You’re The Expert
Mixing radio with scientific thought could make for some stuffy listening. You’re The Expert knows this and has created a clever panel show that combines the comedy of ignorance with scientific enlightenment. 

In a twisted version of What’s My Line?, host Chris Duffy brings on an academic researcher with a complex-sounding job title such as “structural health monitor” or “Bayesian statistician.” He then challenges improv and stand-up comedians like Harry Gordon and Robert Woo to try to understand exactly what the guest studies.  

The format is very loose for a panel show. Regular features include “Truth In Comedy,” a game the panel plays with the guest and audience. It’s similar to Wait, Wait... Don’t Tell Me’s “Bluff The Listener” segment, but instead of weird news, it’s about scientific experiments and proposals. There’s also “JAG (The Jargon And Acronym Game),” in which panelists must guess scientific terms and acronyms that relate to the expert. Episodes can also feature freeform, improvised comedy monologues about the guest and light-hearted interviews about their work, like talking about a professor’s proposal to use unmanned drones to observe bridge conditions. Even though it’s considered a panel game, they don’t mire the flow of its comedy by sticking to a rigid game format—there’s no score keeping or even an official winner. Education and enlightenment are the grand prizes lying behind the velvet curtain, and anyone listening to the episode can win. [DG] "