PHYS 1040 Signature Assignment

Connor Philpot

Discussing anything about the universe isn’t necessarily easy or a naturally given topic if

you aren’t an astronomer. On a surface level people have discussed things like the constellations

or star gazing plenty of times, but actually talking about things like star formation? That’s not

your average water cooler small talk. It’s not something you easily bring up in conversation. So,

my goal for this assignment? Do exactly that. I got together a bunch of my friends and planned

some questions beforehand to make our one to one and a half hour talk all about astronomy.

Specifically, I wanted to talk about other planets, and how much they knew about them. I made

sure to prepare what I was going to say beforehand, and didn’t clue them in to specifically what

we were going to be talking about. Though they did know we were going to be talking about

something related to astronomy. I went around some websites, previous assignments, and

discussions we had done in class prior to prepare my questions. We had planned a time to talk

that was already part of some existing plans we had anyway. This is what happened.

It was the usual group of my friends, about eight of us. We were getting together at my

friend’s apartment. We planned on hanging out to celebrate some birthdays and watch a movie

with some dinner. As the night began to wind down and it was getting later, the talking phase

began. So, I decided now would be the best time. We were already talking about random chit

chat anyway, so other planets in space weren’t too far off from the agenda. I started with “what

do you guys know about other planets?” (Sagan, C. (1957). Life on other planets? The

University of Chicago Magazine) Relatively simple and a good segue into the conversation. A

couple of my friends immediately jumped in. To put things into perspective, between the eight of

us, three of them are actually pretty science savvy. I wouldn’t consider myself very
knowledgeable, but two of them love to learn about these things and consider science one of

their best subjects. While the other straight up wanted to go into marine biology with astronomy

as a minor at one point. The rest however, bar me and this class, are pretty surface level when it

comes to these topics. This is why I chose them as it was a perfect balance of interest and

curiosity.

One of my friends immediately followed up with “what ones, the ones in our solar system

or farther out?” Immediately this threw a wrench into my plans as I was originally going to ease

into things like exoplanets after the general solar system topics. (Williams, J. (2018). Exoplanets.

hawaii.edu.) My friend responded with “what do you mean father out?’ At this point I accepted

we were just going to head straight into it. I brought up how while we have the main eight

planets in the solar system, we have discovered many more beyond that. This was common

knowledge to the science three of the group, but for one of my friends in particular this

immediately sparked his interest. Apparently, he wasn’t aware we had discovered so many

planets beyond the solar system, and that we knew a good deal about them. This immediately

steered the conversation in that direction, with the big science three helming the discussion. With

me of course trying to keep things on track. He asked the general things like “what are they

like?”, “how close are they?”, and most importantly “are they similar to the ones we have in our

solar system?” I had to describe the concept of an exoplanet, and how it’s classified. Me and the

science three clarified the difference between a gas giant and other planets more focused on land

mass or solid terrain to clarify things for this friend. Exoplanets also being considered out of the

solar system was a concept we had to convey. Getting to that point was the biggest hurdle since

we needed to get to that for the larger discussion. At this point he was grappling with all this new

knowledge but the conversation wasn’t letting up. This led to the big whammy of how we had
discovered hundreds, even thousands of exoplanets in our universe. This blew my friends mind a

bit, as he apparently was unaware of this knowledge. Even though exoplanet information has

been around since 1998. I took this opportunity to steer things back to what I had planned to talk

about, because as I expected the conversation went off the rails for a bit. I interjected one of my

planned questions, being “do you guys think if we had the technology to make travel possible to

these other planets, would you live there?” I set this up as a trick question, as we don’t know of

any planets specifically like Earth that can support life in the same way it can. Only one to two

planets as far as we know being in the realms of possibility of having life, and not a complex

kind at that. The science three once again interjected how it wouldn’t be possible. We then got

on the topic of terraforming Mars, which wasn’t apart of my plans at all. This part of the

conversation not going very far as Mars would be extremely difficult or next to impossible to

terraform as we are now.

At this point in the conversation, I had pretty much lost control, and was trying to find

ways to segment back to my prepared questions. The science three were pretty much taking the

lead in educating and contributing to the bulk of the conversation. The difference between gas

giants and other planets, exoplanets and exoplanet classification, what qualifications do you have

to be to be considered a planet, even how asteroids and other planetoids affect terrain.

(Vanderwende, B. (2009). Gas giant clouds: Their origin and structure. colorado.edu.) One of

the things I didn’t think we would cover being habitable zones, a contribution from one of the

sciences three that surprised me. We specifically got on the topic of planet erosion however, as

one of my friends was very curious as to how planets changed. With things like storms and

cratering shifting a planets terrain piquing his interest. I was contributing all throughout, and the

conversation never steered away from the topics I presented. However, the lead and how I would
segue into the next topic went completely out of the window. Finally, I decided to get to my final

three topics of the night. At this point in the conversation, it was pretty much me and the science

three holding a class for the other four people while they asked questions and we all enlightened

each other. Throwing a couple jokes in there for good measure. I asked the other four how they

think we found these planets, and we actually got some pretty satisfactory answers. We got the

usual satellites, telescopes, and mapping responses. The best part though, was when the mind

blown friend threw in “do we track their energy?” I have no idea how or why he guessed this, but

it was pretty on point. This led us to talking about things like gamma rays, X-rays, and even

visible light and how we used that to track these planets and their make-up. Going into

technological advancements and scientific discoveries like the doppler shift and it’s light

tracking, or microlensing and its angles and gravitational lensing. Planet tracking became the rest

of the conversation as we took fun estimations as to how many planets could be left to be found.

Overly large numbers being the regular guesses.

The conversation at this point was winding down, so I decided to ask the final question.

“Did you guys feel like you learned anything from this?” Two of the science three said they

enjoyed some clarifications, and the other four said it was really interesting. Of course, the

former marine biology major joked how none of this was new to him. He’s pretty sassy and kind

of joked about how this was all just “common knowledge”. We did have a small talk after about

how it’s sad some of these things aren’t actually considered more common knowledge though,

and how more people should be educated about this stuff. Everyone enjoyed the discussion, and

it was more fruitful and interesting then I though it would be. The conversation lasted about an

hour.
 This whole experience was pretty interesting for me. While I was expecting this

discussion to be a little free form, I did not expect it to go off from the plan the way that it did.

While I choose my friends because I liked the mix of knowledgeable and not as informed, I

didn’t expect my other friends to lead the conversation the way they did. I was still contributing

and I’d say while we covered about six out of the eight questions, I was planning on talking

about, three of those weren’t brought up by me and naturally came into the conversation from

everything else we were talking about. That’s what surprised me the most about the discussion as

a whole. It showed me that people, if they show interest, can come to these questions and

conclusions on their own if they’re curious enough. If I had to do this assignment again, I would

pick more people with less knowledge on astronomy. While I enjoyed what I got out of this

conversation, I wish I got to lead more of it. Overall, I learned a lot from this assignment and had

a good time with it though. It showed me that most people do have an interest in astronomy, and

it doesn’t have to be just a specific topic. Astronomy is important to everybody, even if they

don’t realize it.

Sources:

Sagan, C. (1957). Life on other planets? The University of Chicago Magazine

Williams, J. (2018). Exoplanets. hawaii.edu.

Vanderwende, B. (2009). Gas giant clouds: Their origin and structure. colorado.edu.