YouSaid · the spoken record

Anna Frebel

lines on the record: 167
first: 2023-05-18
most recent: 2023-05-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Talked about the biological evolution requires the chemical evolution for all of this to kind of play out and Carbon played this important role. And in some sense, we're just a consequence of all of these things being the way they are, right? Maybe this is just where we are supposed to be because, you know, the laws of physics sort of work the way they do. And we talked much about the variety of everything really in certainly, you know, from over here to over there. In the vicinity of where the sun and the solar system formed, they were the way they were. And life maybe was a necessary consequence of that. In some sense, I like to believe that because then it becomes reproducible and we can apply that same argument elsewhere. If it's total chance, right, that makes it harder. That's not truly satisfying to a scientist.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And to broadcast that, right? I think this is how the audience really should be interacting with scientists much less about the findings, but really more about this yearning for answers, right? I need to find these khakis. I need it because I need to go, right? It's like now, now. And then, oh, God, here it is. Now I can go my merry ways. It's so relatable. We just need to find more and better ways to do that. So I hope to turn this into also a digitized version at some point to again make it more accessible.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The implications and the findings is much harder to understand for anyone. This is where the scientists work truly lies. This is our job. But the moment of discovery is easy. And it's beautiful. And it needs to be said. And so taking my audience on this journey, what is the perils? What are my worries? And then, oh, here is the moment of discovery. Let me tell you about it it profoundly transformed me, and here's how it went, right? It's so good.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You asked me beforehand, right? What does it feel to be at the telescope in this moment, right? I'm happy to talk about this, but it's nowhere written ever. Nobody really talks about it. And so having a form of theodorf, the arts, to bring this exciting moment, that is what we all want to experience as scientists to a wider audience is so profound and so rewarding. And they all love it because everyone can understand a moment of discovery. I was looking for something and then I found it. It's like you misplaced car keys, right?”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That they just lived through my presentation. And it's a wonderful compliment that almost spends 100 years from one woman to the next passing on the torch. And, you know, when we write up our results in, let's say, you know, in magazines like Nature and Science, it's always about the results on the golden platter, perfectly prepared. The discovery is never described, only ever the results.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely critical piece that explains my work today. And we all stand on the shoulder of giants. She was one of those giants. And in some ways, it's of course a way for me to acknowledge other people's work that have come before me. It's a wonderful way to highlight the contribution by a prominent woman. The way I do it is it's a 25 minute play in costume where I relive for people the moment of discovery. Then I turn into myself and then I give a 30 minute presentation on the R process and the creation of heavy elements because the audience can now perfectly understand that the public audience, given the historic backdrop of this discovery,”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I already just mentioned sometimes. That I like besides astronomy, or at least I try to find connections. And so some years ago, I, again, with the help of my friend who made this Marie Curie movie, she and I wrote a one-woman play where I actually portray Lisa Meitner, who was an Austrian-German physicist, nuclear physicist from Germany. I have the right accent for that. And we wrote this play about this moment of discovery of nuclear fission. Again, this is...”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right, right. And this moment of kind of feeling it in your entire body and mind that this is the right thing, you know, getting there is probably really hard. But if you don't try, you won't find out.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let out what's not on your plate. And then this way we get a little bit closer. And then it's like, well, why don't you take a risk? Just sign up for something for three months.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, for some time with your heart and your hands. Because I think most people long to own something. You know, we all, I think, want to leave some legacy of some sort, you know, for our children, for humanity, for this planet. And I think it's really important for young people to strive for that and not lose sight or trade that for all the opportunities because an opportunity is nothing if you don't do anything. You need to do something at the end of the day. So I chat with lots of people about this and I often start by just saying, hey, tell me what you don't like because it's much easier to, you know.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On one thing, because they're afraid they're missing out on 99 other things. But life is a little bit missing out on 99 other things because we only have 24 hours in a day. I have that feeling very often. There are so many things I would like to do, many things I would like to try to be good at. Sometimes I wish I had a different job, you know, because I have other interests too, but I realized, okay, I can only do one thing. So I have no regrets. But this is a general feeling that I think I would think most of us have. But if it lets, if it stops you from really digging, drilling down on one thing to become an expert in one thing, to become really good at one thing, that you call your own. Then that it just makes it difficult.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Seems increasingly hard for folks to find that sometimes I feel that young people have all the opportunities these days and that's wonderful, but it's almost like that leads to some, what's the right word, they're a little bit of tired of too tired to make all the decisions because at some point you need to put your eggs in a basket and you need to be okay with that. We can't do all the things even though we're often told you can be president too. And I think that's really important to convey. But at the end of the day, we can only have sort of one job or one type of profession. I'm not saying you need to be locked in, but it's hard to change 180 degrees. And so lots of people, I think, are often afraid to really dig in. at least for some time and get the hands real dirty and really learn from the bottom up.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I really like that I have the freedom to do that, that I'm allowed to follow my hunches. Too many people I think are sort of boxed in with their job or their life that they don't have that kind of freedom. That's really important to me. And I certainly try to make use of that. I also try to teach that to others to trust them, to learn you need to learn your things, but then you need to also trust that knowledge and that you have a grasp on it, right? You get out what you put in. And being able to contribute in meaningful ways to our knowledge about our cosmic ancestry, our cosmic history. That's a wonderful thing.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, in some sense, it's an ongoing love story for me, if I could say it like that, where, you know, I found my stars, my thing. And I am fortunate enough to be able to keep doing that. I'm happy to see where it will take me. You know, it's an evolution, as with every relationship. You have to, if you don't march forward, you move backwards. I'm not interested moving backwards. So I'm letting the field and the discoveries and the findings lead me to, you know, and I'm often... It's not hard for me to follow sort of my hunches. And sometimes, even at the telescope, it's like, let's take a look at this one. I have a good feeling. And then usually something good or, you know, not bad pops pops out at the end. And I”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Kind of it clicked all over my head and was like oh my god it it all fell in place because we can use these old stars to study the elements to learn how they're formed we can get these clean signatures that help us inform the nucleosynthesis processes you know and I know of course I need to know a lot about stars too. So it's like all together and that was sort of a moment of magic. And then the fact that I have now done that for 20 years is just like I won the lottery.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My friend actually made a beautiful, produced a beautiful movie about the discovery of the elements, the theater play, but digitized, where when I saw it, I could actually kind of relive the sort of discovery moment that Marie Curie had. It sent shivers down my spine. It was fantastic. I mean, this is the kind of thing that I wanted to experience. But yeah, so nuclear physics and element creation information was really interesting to me, chemistry, the element stars and all of that. And I was like, I don't know if I ever find something that combines all of these things. And then I ended up in Australia and I met this person and he was working on old stars. And as I was sitting in his talk hearing about this for the first time,”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so early on, you know, when I was in high school, I was thinking like, okay, what do I want to do when I grow up, right? I knew I wanted to do astronomy, but I was a little bit torn because my interests were definitely stellar astronomy, but also”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. Lisa Meitner was nominated for the Nobel Prize 40 times, more than that even. It's amazing. She holds the record for that. She never received it Case in point.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This taken together, that's progress, right? Science is what it is. We have to decide what we do with that knowledge, right? We can always use things for good or for bad. That's part of the human endeavor as well.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“1939, so many, many contributions and it's just so remarkable if you just take that body of work. That changed how we do things, how we see the universe, how we understand things has led to so many subsequent discoveries, good ones and bad.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so many women had many contributions to that. Of course, prior to that, Marie Curie discovered two new elements. So awesome. Radium and polonium. Lisa Meitner discovered nuclear fission. That is the basis for understanding the R process. This is exactly what happens in the R process. you know, the heavy nuclei, let's say uranium, if you bombard it with a neutron. We talked at length about it, it will decay. Actually, it will fission, it will split into barium and krypton, let's say. So two lighter elements. That's exactly what we observe. I have always a higher abundance of barium than the heavier elements because of this fission cycling that she calculated in 19.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Discovered. Yes. It was later termed the most important thesis of humankind or something like that. What a revelation to realize that stars are made of hydrogen and helium, right? And this was exactly the time when people figured out why stars are shining, namely because of nuclear fusion and that it's protons and the tunneling effect that leads to the actual fusion. Otherwise, you know, the protons repulse each other. They don't come together. And so what an incredible time it was back then. And so stars and nuclear physics were very closely related. And it remains now it's called nuclear astrophysics.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cecilia Pengaposhkin later on in 1925 was one of the first women to obtain a PhD in stellar astronomy and she figured out, she calculated that the sun is mostly made of hydrogen and helium. Seems normal to many of us these days, but at the time it was thought that celestial objects are made of the same thing as the Earth”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That data needed to be processed and looked at and analyzed. And so many women or several dozens, one or two dozen women over the years were hired to do this work. And in the process, because they were looking at the actual data and they were smart, even though they had often no formal education, they made a lot of discoveries simply by being in tune with what they were doing. So they weren't robots, the term computer would perhaps let on, lead on. So any jump cannon classified thousands and thousands of spectra and found out that you can stars have different temperatures and their spectra look according. We still use that classification sequence. Today”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Discovering things is part of the human nature, right? And so it has happened for the longest time, not just by men, but also by many women. The field of stellar astronomy, which is my field, has particularly benefited from many discoveries made by women. You mentioned the Harvard Computers. That's a term used for women who worked about 100 years ago at the Harvard College Observatory and they were hired for their low wages and willingness to do diligent and patient work to calm through the big data of the day. So the observatory director, they were carrying out large sky surveys at the time and they needed”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What are planets made of? Elements, right? To take the Earth as all heavy elements, right? The universe needed to reach a certain stage first to have produced enough of all these elements. To actually make a planet.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the difference between me and my JWST colleagues. Their objects, that light has travelled thirteen billion years or whatever it was to us and they're observing that now. My light has only traveled a few thousand years. It's nothing.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Comfortably, and it's judgment free because it just calculates things on its own. Whereas as physicists, we are so judgmental. This makes sense. This doesn't make sense, right? It doesn't get any worse.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beat all the doorways in the entrances. So, how far can we let the math go? Before that stops to make sense, right? And I don't know what the answer is to that, but it's really cool that because math is not limited by our physical nature, it can probably go a little bit further than the physics.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is the current question, right? How far, how much further can we push math, let's say, to the front of the Big Bang if there is such a thing?”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes, yes, and sometimes no, right? So What our job as physicists is to take the mathematical model, calculate our numbers, and then ask the question, does this make sense? Right? Now, in the case of 15, it doesn't, but we took the average anyway because that was the best we could do, right? So, all right, let's put that aside. Let's apply the same sort of thinking to the Big Bang, right? Math can tell us things that we as physicists cannot grasp because it doesn't make sense to us. Now, in the case of the Big Bang, Big Bang, that's a special case because we don't actually know what's supposed to make sense. And this is where things get interesting. But this is where math will ultimately be the winner because we can no longer say this makes sense or this doesn't make sense because the physics is broken down.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perspective. It is not incorrect because this is what I calculated. Nobody made a mistake. Now we can question whether that's a good model, but that's a separate issue.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But does it make sense? No, it doesn't. If we believe the universe is thirteen point eight billion years old, it 15 is ridiculous, yet it is correct. Isn't that interesting”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is probably not accurate, but this is the best calculation we could do. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is that that was actually the average of multiple elemental ratios that each gave a certain age and then we averaged that because for better or for worse, this is the best we can do. So some of these numbers said, oh, this star is 15 billion years old. And then others said, Oh, this is 10 billion years old. And so I often use that in my class to say, like, What's the good news and what's the bad news here? Some ratios say 15, something 10, right? Is 15 correct? And then I asked them, and some people will say something. And so the thing here is that it's an absolutely correct calculation given the mathematical and physical model that we constructed.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Um not with stars, for better or for worse, because, you know, stars only probe the time when they were formed. And the Big Bang is Shorty before then. I mean, I often talk to my students about the difference between math and physics. Let me give you an example. We talked earlier about HT1523, and I was happy to share with you that I measure thorium and uranium, but I actually didn't quite close that loop. So we did this to try to attempt to calculate an age for these stars. Right, but they rely on us knowing how the R process works, how these elements are created, where it happens, and then how those elements get dispersed into the gas and end up in the next generation star. So quite a few question marks. So that's how we got to the age of 13.2 billion years.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We may not always be able to live up to that. But it doesn't mean that we're not finding out new things. It's just a different kind of quality because the questions have shifted. You close one door, suddenly there are 10 new open doors that we want to explore and march through. And that's finding these last puzzle pieces here and there that merely make it airtight.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I think that's what many of us scientists are a real little bit detailed. I fully understand this, not just broadly, but I really know. We really know now. And so more and more of that is going to happen. And so I think this is probably true across astronomy, these individual 10 sigma discoveries become less and less if they were easy, we would have made them already, right? Which means we have made many of them, but really filling in the details is the next sort of level of discovery. Maybe we need to find a new word for that. The hopes and expectations that go along with the word discovery are so enormous.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just Yes. So I think about it more like literally of the puzzle. Let's say you have a thousand piece puzzle and you have 900 pieces in there. If you're a person like me, I want to get to the last ones. I'm not going to leave it. It's like, okay, I see broadly what this is going to look like, right? I'm done now. No, I want to get to the last one. Is the picture globally going to change? No. Are we going to figure out all the details and how it really works? Yes, right?”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the individual discoveries are actually, we've made most of those, certainly through individual SA Finding yet another second generation size incredibly important for me, but Isn't really going to move the needle, finding 50 of them or 100 of them, that would move the needle, but that's in a word or two magnitudes up. And new search techniques and new surveys may enable that. But would you still call that a discovery? Right.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then it needs to pair up with your interpretation again. And so knowing, really being in the know about every step of what happens, that relates to quality results, I think. That's why I have sometimes little trouble with sort of big data and statistical analysis. Yes, on average, that's true. I'm not debating that, but I'm the kind of person I like to look at the outliers, so not the bulk, but the special ones. And they just need to be treated in a different way. And there needs to be an acknowledgement of that, different ways for different things.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's always the danger if you have someone else's data that you just don't really understand, the limitations completeness things, how certain things were set up. And, you know, you get out what you put in. So I'm really particular about that. And it certainly paid off for me. That's one of the main notions that I try to teach in my classes and to my students that you need to be able to formulate your question really well because otherwise you're going to get an answer to a different question but you won't notice that the goalpost has shifted in the meantime right so your interpretation can only be as good as the question if you need to change your question that's cool do it”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And this is how you can really drill down on the questions that you have, right? Because you control what data you get. Otherwise, you have the data that you have, right? You get what you get and you don't get upset. I don't like that. I'm a little bit snobby. I really like to formulate my questions, go to the telescope, and then come what may I try to get it.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can, I do myself. I don't generally take other people's data, at least not, certainly not in the end stage and I'm not a big data kind of person, although we all headed that way. I certainly use data from the Gaia astrometric satellite for the kinematics, for example. But that's personally a new thing for me to use sort of big sky surveys that are available. So it's still very sort of hand-grown field, you know, where we do our individual observations. I have enjoyed that a lot, but that's about to change.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. And I would say we've made huge progress over the last 20 years. When I joined that field, it was in its infancy. And there was this serendipitous discovery of that first, second generation star. And we have filled in the canvas a great deal since then. And this is what I have greatly enjoyed about doing so because there was so much discovery potential. And it's been dying down a little bit because of all the progress. It's going to, it's on the up and coming again because there are so many large spectroscopic surveys in the works now that will just provide a different level of data that we haven't had before. I'm sort of of these older generation. I have only very few colleagues. I work in small teams and I observe every single star myself that I what”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because there are so many different kinds out there. And we still find new patterns sometimes, right? And there needs to be an explanation. The question is, is it ultimately just one quirky store? Is it two or is it three, right? Is it a sample? Is it a population? So we haven't concluded that kind of work yet.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. Data VT is fantastic already. I am not planning to use it personally, although I think on one or two observing proposals actually because similar to what we already spoke about, we're interested in the same thing. We're just kind of looking at different sides of the fence, right? I have my old surviving stars and I concoct these little stories about what the earliest galaxies may have looked like, what the objects were that contributed, you know, energy and elements and all these things. And my JWST colleagues, they try to detect some of these earliest photons from these earlier systems to look at the energetics and other things, what was there, how many these kinds of things, right? So together we're trying to explore this first billion years, but we do it in very complementary ways. And so I'm very excited to see what.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we just made it. Really, it was almost impossible. And it was just, the thing is, this is such a serendipitous moment in a serendipitous moment. The enhancement of these heavy elements was so strong that even in this really crappy data, we could still see the enhancement The absorption was so strong that it stuck out of the noise. If the enhancement wouldn't have been as strong, we would not have been able to say anything because we wouldn't have been able to tell. But because it was so extreme, it lent us a hand despite the weather and all, to say like, yes, this is it. So that was quite the night.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, absolutely, because these were really faint stars. And so we were really lucky by making a very tight strategy of getting the absolute bare minimum for all the stars so we could at least take a very crude look. Is it a yay or is it a nay? We couldn't even say yes or no, just to get an idea because we needed to know why was that important? Because we could only observe this system again nine months later”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What am I supposed to do? And then I joked, well, maybe we found an R process galaxy. Let's go to the next one. And the weather was degrading. And so to cut a long story short, we had to come. He was observing the right stars. It was an R process galaxy. The first one we had ever discovered totally unpredicted. We had no idea that this was a thing. I mean, you know. Of course, we thought that such a thing might possibly exist because why not, right? Neutron submerges happen somewhere. Crazy supernovae probably too, but we were not prepared in that moment to find this thing. In the end, the weather was getting worse and worse, and we wanted to see how many R process are in this galaxy. So we managed. By her hairline to observe the nine brightest stars but the data quality was atrocious.”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and you just gotta learn to live with it. Coming back to reticulum, too, actually, you know, that little dwarf galaxy, that was a run that we had and the weather was incredibly bad. And I had sent my student there. I was at home and he calls me at 2 a.m. and he was like, Anna, I think I observed the wrong stamp. I'm so sorry. There's this line there, this europium line, and it looks like a metal rich star. And I was like it's cool. We all make mistakes. Send me the data, send me that summary plot. And so I look at it super tired. It's like, I can't really tell. It doesn't look wrong, but I can't tell you right now that it's right either. So why don't you go to the next target? And he calls me back an hour later. Hannah, it looks just the same”
2023-05-18 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #378 – Anna Frebel: Origin and Evolution of the Universe, Galaxies, and Stars · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source