Astrobiology

Interview with Roger Blandford, the Luke Blossom Professor at the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and Professor of Physics at SLAC. He discusses his current work developing alternate understandings of the Event Horizon Telescope image, on fast radio bursts, and on the notion that handedness has astrophysical origins. Blandford describes the history of cosmology as a respectable discipline within physics, and he credits the rise of VLBI in the 1960s and 1970s for demonstrating the evidence of black holes. He recounts his childhood in England, his early interests in science, and his education at Cambridge, where his thesis research on accretion discs and radio sources was supervised by Martin Rees. Blandford discusses his postdoctoral work on astrophysical particle acceleration and plasma and QED processes in pulsars and a formative visit to the Institute for Advanced Study and to Berkeley. He describes his initial impressions of Caltech where he joined the faculty and where he worked closely with Roman Znajek, and he explains the distinctions between radio jets and relativistic jets. Blandford explains his reasons for moving to Stanford to set up the Kavli Institute and he describes his involvement with the Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey. At the end of the interview, Blandford contends that the most exciting developments in the field have been on exoplanet research, why the possibilities in astrobiology give him cause for optimism, and why the concept that astronomical discovery arrives as “logically unscripted” resonates with him.

Interview with Lee Smolin, Founding and Senior Faculty Member at the Perimeter Institute with faculty appointments at the University of Toronto and the University of Waterloo. Smolin narrates the origins of the Perimeter Institute and he describes his unorthodox views on what exactly cosmology is. He describes loop quantum gravity and the notion of a “theory of everything” and why he has much love for string theory despite perceptions of the opposite. Smolin explains the utility and trappings of the Standard Model and he searches for deeper meaning in the origins and societal impact of the pandemic. He recounts his childhood in Cincinnati and his early appreciation for physics and the circumstances that led to his undergraduate education at Hampshire. Smolin explains his attraction in working with Sidney Coleman at Harvard, and why he saw a grand plan in his desire to learn quantum field theory. He describes meeting Abhay Ashtekar and his postdoctoral work at UC Santa Barbara and then at the Institute for Advanced Study. Smolin describes his formative relationship with Chandrasekhar at Chicago, his first faculty appointment at Yale, and his tenure at Syracuse where he found a strong group in relativity and quantum gravity. He explains his reasons for transferring to Penn State and his involvement in loop quantum gravity achieving a mature state amid a rapidly expanding “relativity community” throughout academic physics. He describes his time at Imperial College, where he developed a quantum gravity center with Chris Isham and he historicizes the technical developments that connected his theoretical work with observation. Smolin describes his book "The Life of the Cosmos" and his foray into thinking about biology and why he identifies as a self-conscious Leibnizian who tries to connect cosmology with the concept of a god and the centrality of astrobiology to these issues. At the end of the interview, Smolin explains why he continually returns to quantum gravity, and he conveys his interest in keeping philosophy at the forefront of his research agenda.

In this interview, Jon Phillips, Assistant Oral Historian for AIP, interviews astronomer and historian of science Steven Dick. Dick recounts his early interest in astronomy and branching out into history as an undergraduate and then graduate student at Indiana University. He discusses his work as an astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory and pursuing the history of astronomy in his spare time, as well as his subsequent tenure as NASA’s Chief Historian and the workings of the NASA history office. In the remainder of the interview, Dick describes his work on the history and social impact of astrobiology, and the scientific, religious, and cultural implications of the search for extraterrestrial life.