Victoria:
Our guest this week is Joe Hughes. Joe is a research scientist at Astra. He got his bachelor’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Physics from Walla Walla University and his PhD in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. He studies weather in space, and how it can affect life on earth. He also designs and analyzes new types of spacecraft to solve hard problems in clever ways. The most exciting project is analyzing how a real-life tether beam might work in space.
This week’s questions were submitted by students at Bromwell Elementary in Denver, Colorado, and by the listeners through emails and on social media.
Thanks Joe, for talking to us today.
Dr. Hughes:
Thanks for having me Vikki. It’s great to be here.
Victoria:
(Joe – What is a plasma?)
All right. Well, with that, we can go ahead and jump into the questions. This first question is also from someone named Joe, what is plasma?
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah, that’s a great question. And it’s pretty fundamental to everything else that we’re going to end up talking about today. So plasma is people say is the fourth state of matter, and I think that’s kind of an easy way to understand it.
So if you think about something like water. Well, water is really cold. It’s a solid, like ice. Solid is a form of matter. And then if you heat it up a little bit, it turns into a liquid, and you know about liquids. And then if you hit it up a little bit more, it’ll boil, and it’ll become steam. It’s really hot. And that’s a gas. Now when you’re boiling water, what you’re doing is you’re breaking the connections between different molecules. When you heat the steam even more, rather than breaking the connections between different molecules, you break their connections between an atom and its electron. And so you have electrons kind of floating freely, very attracted to the atoms, but they’re no longer bound to them. So it’s sort of like if you think of a solid, liquid, gas, and plasma is sort of like the hottest of those three states.
And so, plasmas are really cool. They’re everywhere in the universe. They’re actually, plasmas, aren’t something that we see very often on earth. But they’re very, very common. So they’re actually the most common form of matter in the universe, which is pretty cool. Because stars are made up of plasmas, so all stars are made of plasmas. Yeah. So that’s what a plasma is.
Victoria:
Cool. So when people say a plasma screen TV, is that actual plasma or is that just a nickname?
Dr. Hughes:
That’s a marketing name. Whenever people hear plasma, they think it’s something that’s just really, really cool. So I think that’s just a marketing name.
Victoria:
(Brody – Is it cold in space?)
Okay. All right, this next question is from Brody. It’s about space, and Brody wants to know, is it cold in space?
Dr. Hughes:
That’s a really good question. And that’s a lot of people wonder about that. And it really depends where in space: some places in space are really cool, and some places are actually really hot.
So on earth, we have an atmosphere, we have this gas all around us, so everything is about the same temperature. But even you’ll notice that in the sun it’s hotter than the shade. And that’s pretty true most of the time. And at night it’s colder than it is during the day. And so, the sun makes a big difference.
But in space, there’s no atmosphere to equalize that temperature. So those differences are way more dramatic. So there are some times that a spacecraft will come out from the earth shadow and will all of a sudden hit the sun or heat up really, really, really fast. And that can be bad for it. So the temperature of the spacecraft in space can be somewhere between room temperature, sometimes it can be even hotter than room temperature, and sometimes they can be like freezing, freezing cold. And that’s around earth.
But if you go farther out in space, like Pluto, something like that, it’s crazy to think of the sun, so bright here on earth, it’s really just the brightest star in the sky. It’s almost as if it’s night all the time. And the sun is nothing more than the brightest star in the sky, and it’s cold all the time. Really, really cold.
Victoria:
Whoa. So when you think about building a spacecraft, do you have to think about that it might accidentally get in the sun and then heat up too fast?
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah, definitely. So one thing that you might have experienced is if you let’s say you’re baking something in the oven, you’ve got an oven tray, maybe it’s potatoes or something, and you heat up your oven, and all of a sudden you’ll hear like a big thunk, and all of a sudden, you know, that pan has kind of warped and it’s like, it’s not snapped, but it’s kind of shifted to be bent in a different way as it heated up.
Well, spacecraft can do that too. And so they’ll all of a sudden kind of like it’s called like a thermal jolt is the name. And that if you have like a camera, that’s taking a long exposure that can make the images blurry, and it can just mess up a bunch of other stuff. But that’s one example of the spacecraft heating up too fast and causing problems.
Victoria:
(Shantelle – What is the weather like in space?)
Well, all right. This next question is from Shantelle. What is the weather like in space?
Dr. Hughes:
It’s a great question. So there are lots of dominant weather patterns in space, but for space, the biggest driver is the sun. So when you think about the earth and you think about space, you can normally think of those sort of two sides to it. There’s the day side and the night side. And the day side is whichever part of the earth is currently in the sun and night side is whichever part is currently not in the sun.
And so the sun pumps a lot of energy into the day side, and it creates a ton of this plasma. So we talk about our steam example where we’re adding heat to that steam in order to turn it the plasma and break those bonds. Well, the sun just does that by shining on it. There’s energy, the light from the sun. So there’s a lot of plasma that gets built on a day side, and then all that plasmas that kind of goes away on the night side, although some of it sticks around. And then around sunrise and sunset, those two plasmas mix. So if you kind of imagine maybe really hot water mixing this really cold water and you get all these weird effects. Which is pretty cool. But the dominant thing is the sun that creates the weather.
And of course, if you’re a spacecraft you’re going around and you know, orbit might be 90 minutes, which means that you’ll go through sunrise and sunset, you know, once every 45 minutes, which is very different than the life down here. And that’s something that’s experienced by the astronauts on the ISS (International Space Station) too. Cause they have, you know, sunrise or sunset every 45 minutes or so.
Victoria:
Oh, wow. That must be crazy.
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah, it’s really cool. And a sense of time is very different because you know, here it gets dark and you kind of get sleepy, we go inside; and then in the morning, and it’s bright, and you kind of wake up. Well, that happens every 45 minutes. It’s a little different.
Victoria:
That must mess up their circadian rhythms.
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah, it definitely does. They have to sleep in very dark spaces too, to keep from getting messed up like that.
Victoria:
(Sebastian – Are there clouds in space?)
Yeah. All right. Speaking of weather in space, Sebastian wants to know, are there clouds in space?
Dr. Hughes:
It’s a really good question. So there’s nothing like clouds on earth: clouds on earth are made of vaporized water. So it’s not actually made of vaporized water. And as you go higher up in the atmosphere, there’s none of that left. There are regions of higher electron density, and they kind of move around like clouds, and they can kind of form clumps. And so that higher electron density is a denser plasma. So certain areas, even though the sun is shining on everywhere, basically the same, there’s sort of lumps in gradients. So they also have specific altitudes. They like to hang out at something technically called the F2 peak, the reading of highest density there. But it’s just an area where there’s sort of like a very high, it was just an extra, a lot of plasma. That’s pretty fun. It’s not exact, but it’s kind of like cloud.
Victoria:
Does it look like a cloud? Like, can you see?
Dr. Hughes:
You can’t really see it with your eye. We use, there’s all sorts of different measurement techniques that you can use to study the ionosphere. But you can sort of think that if you see like radar maps on like the weather channel or something like that, when you have all these bright colors that show clouds coming in or something like that. You can make visuals that look a lot like that too, to visualize where they are, and where they’re moving to, what’s happening.
Victoria
(Kellan – Why is it so stormy on the sun?)
Okay. This is a good kind of follow-up question. Like how you track storms and stuff with the radar. Kallan wants to know why is it so stormy on the sun?
Dr. Hughes:
That’s an excellent question. And if anyone knew the answer to that, full stop then would be very, very smart. I have a lot less work to do so. Why it’s stormy on the sun is a huge, like open question in research. People are building spaceships and defining missions and taking a lot of data to try and answer this. So there’s a lot of reasons that are really complicated that people kind of know, and sometimes know.
Probably the biggest one is that, so the sun has a magnetic field just like earth. And you know, for earth, our magnetic field is not perfectly aligned with our geographic pole: the magnetic North pole is actually somewhere in Canada, not actually on the North pole. And the sun has something like that too, but the sun is way more weird than the earth because it flips. Every 11 years, it flips. So every 22 years it’s actually North, and then every 22 years itself, but it flips North to South every 11 years.
And so this flipping causes all sorts of changes and moves all the plasma around. Magnetic fields are actually super important for plasma, and the sun is made of plasma. So everything gets really turbulent in that time. And when you have something called solar max, which is, you have the most number of sunspots, that’s when it’s the magnetic field is switching. You get a lot more weather on the sun than when it doesn’t. So right now, we’re actually in a solar minimum, which means that the pole is, I forget which way it is right now, but it’s not moving. And so there’s not as much space for that happening right now because we are in a solar minimum.
Victoria:
Wow. Oh, that’s so interesting. So is that similar to how Earth’s magnetic pole flip?
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah, I’m not sure about the mechanism, but Earth’s magnetic poles do flip on a much slower timescale.
Victoria:
(Nia – Why does weather in space cause bad things to happen on Earth?)
Another weather-related question. Nia wants to know why does weather in space cause bad things to happen on Earth?
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah, it’s another big question. If we knew all the answers to that, I would be a lot more bored, to be honest.
So the dominant source of space weather is the sun. And sometimes the sun will get upset, and it will throw out a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection, which we sometimes call a CME. And the CMEs have some magnetic field, it’s kind of stored up in them. And this sort of, you can think of it as like a cloud of steam comes hurdling towards earth. These steam clouds can be much bigger than earth, much, much bigger. And this cloud has a magnetic field kind of built into it. And that magnetic field can crash into Earth’s magnetic field. And that can cause earth magnetic fields to change and ripple. And the changing magnetic field, it’s called, induces a changing electric field. And that can actually cause current to flow really, really fast in our power line. And it can melt electrical equipment.
So the most recent example of this was back in 1989, and Quebec lost power for 12 hours because a CME hit earth and hit first magnetic field and induced all these currents. And they actually melted a bunch of power transformers, and it left a city, a major city in Canada, you know, not very well developed with good infrastructure, without power for 12 hours because of space weather. So that’s one example of something that happened very recently.
Victoria:
Oh, my gosh. Is it possible can we prevent that from happening in our infrastructure? Like the way that we build things?
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah. So that’s actually one of my projects right now, is sort of a consortium between a bunch of space weather researchers and a bunch of power company grid operators.
And what you do basically is you disconnect a lot of the lines that have local stuff. So rather than having these really long open lines, you go to a bunch of short little lines, and so stuff isn’t as connected, but you can keep it power on, and you never have as long an uninterrupted conductor, that can stop the problem.
And obviously you have to have a grid that’s resilient and you can have a bunch of other stuff. It goes to it, but what we’re working on right now, I’m actually literally was doing some of it. But that’s what my computer is spinning up doing right now is some work to try and tell power grid operators, which signs the space weather are the most important to pay attention to, because there is so much data in space coming down to earth. And it’s impossible, I’m trying to make it more possible, to know which numbers to pay attention to, and which warning signs to pay attention to, so that you never sort of turn off the power to take all these measures when it’s not necessary, but you never have something big happened that you don’t know about.
Victoria:
Oh, that’s so cool.
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s quite fun.
Victoria:
(Haidar – If the weather is bad in space, does that make my Internet go out?)
Speaking of problems from the weather and space, Haidar wants to know if the weather is bad in space, does that make my Internet go out?
Dr. Hughes:
If it’s bad enough, it could. So once again, if it takes out your power, and it takes out enough power in an area, then you wouldn’t be able to access the Internet. But it’s pretty unlikely for the entire Internet to go down. And that’s just because of the way the Internet is built. And if there’s a space weather that’s big enough to take down the Internet grand scale, then that’s definitely not the worst problem that we have.
Victoria:
Oh man.
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah. Yeah. So that’s pretty unheard of.
Victoria:
(Amira – How does a GPS work with satellites?)
All right. Let’s switch gears a little bit and get into some other kind of space related technology questions. This first one is from Amira. How does the GPS work with satellites?
Dr. Hughes:
That’s another really good question. GPS is super cool, and it’s super important, and it’s really hard to imagine what the world would be like without GPS.
So to make it, more sort of to try to make it as simple as it can be, a GPS satellite, basically is out in space. And it’s just yelling what time it is and where it is. So if I’m a GPS satellite, and I’m out in space, I would just yell it’s 8:20. That signal would go, and it would take some time before it gets to you on the ground. And when you get that signal, maybe it’s 8:22, and you say, okay, this signal took two minutes to get to me. And then you know where that spacecraft is. And so you say, well, I knew that I’m sort of in a bubble that is whatever the speed of light is times the travel time away from that satellite. And so you kind of know that you’re on the surface of this bubble. And then you listen to a different satellite, and maybe that sidelight says, it’s 8:19. And then you know, that was since it’s 8:22 for now, it took three minutes. So now you’ve got a bigger bubble around that satellite. And then when those two bubbles intersect, you have to be at one of those intersections. And what we actually do is you take four GPS satellites, and you find the distance to all of them using this time delay thing. And then you have all these four intersecting bubbles, and then you have to be at the intersection of all those bubbles. So that’s how GPS works. It’s kinda complicated, but visually I think it’s a relatively simple system. So that’s the basic algorithm to figure out how GPS works. And that works for your car, for your phone, for so many different things on earth right now, everyone uses GPS.
Also kind of a fun fact. So GPS is the United States global navigation satellites stone, and it’s been around since the 80s, but there’s another one around by the European space agency called Galileo. And there’s one called Glonass that’s run by the Russians. And there’s also one run by the Japanese space agency called QZSS. But there are a lot of them out there. And GPS is the oldest one, it’s the most common one that people use, but there’s a lot out there now and those other ones that are much more recent.
Victoria:
That’s good to know. Cause I use GPS all the time.
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah. It’s really hard. And one thing that’s crazy is that GPS is also for, like it’s most commonly used for things like Google maps or something like that, so you can find your way to where you’re going, but it’s also the world’s clock. Because it is this whole thing of a satellite having a broadcast the time. It has to know the time, very, very precisely. And they kind of made that really just the one of the best clocks in the world. And it’s the most common one because everyone can listen to it, hear it, which is really important.
And that timestamping is actually really important for a lot of things. So one really common example is, you know, how we did last time you went and got gas. You didn’t go into the store, you put your card in outside, and it just charged it without any person, without any signature. It was, you know, it was really easy. Well, that happens because of the GPS time clock. So if GPS just disappeared right now, you would not be able to buy gasoline without going into the register. And a lot of gas stations don’t have a place that you go, or maybe it’s closed at night or something like that. So sort of something that you take almost everything about GPS for granted, but if it went away, life would change dramatically very quickly.
Victoria:
Wow. Yeah. I had no idea that GPS was a part of the gas station.
Dr. Hughes:
Gas station is one example, but I mean, stock market, like so much financial transactions are verified because of GPS time.
Victoria:
(Hannah – Is there a way to make something to go into a t.v. so a person could go into a show? Would you be the same size and as old as you would be now? Would the people in the show also have the same relative sizes?)
Wow. The next question is from Hannah, and Hannah wants to know, is there a way to make something go into a TV, so a person could go into a TV show? Would you be the same size and as old as you would be now with the people in the show also have the same relative sizes?
Dr. Hughes:
Well, it’s a fun idea to think about like, kind of going into a TV and interacting with stuff, but that’s not really something that can happen. A TV just shows you videos of things that have already happened and been taped with a video camera. So it’s kind of static. You can’t really interact with it. But a lot of people are using a software called Zoom, which lets people talk to each other in real time, which is pretty cool. And so that’s, it’s kind of like a phone call, but it’s also kind of like a TV and that you can interact and see each other. So, I think that’s about as close as you’re going to get to going into a TV show and interacting with people on it, is to just call the people, you know, on Zoom.
Victoria:
Maybe connect a computer to the TV, and then you can have Zoom on your TV.
Dr. Hughes:
There we go. That’s the way to do it.
Victoria:
(Liala – is there bacteria in space?)
Okay. Back to some more space questions. Liala wants to know, is there bacteria in space?
Dr. Hughes:
That’s a really good question. And so far as we know, the only bacteria in space is what we have brought with us. So, but there are lots of people that are working to try and find evidence of bacteria or some other form of life in space. Most of this work has been done on Mars simply because it’s the closest planet to us and the easiest to study, and it likely to have water in its past. And because it’s so close it’s easiest study. But we have not found any conclusive proof of bacteria or anything living in space other than what we’ve been with us.
Victoria:
Is it possible that the bacteria that we bring with us can survive in space without us?
Dr. Hughes:
That’s a really good question. And that’s something that we actually worry about a lot. So when we send probes that are near places that could harbor life, so Mars is a prime example, one thing we do is those ones have special requirements on how clean they have to be.
Because let’s imagine that we had a spacecraft that was going to Mars, and we touched it and it had our finger prints maybe we seized on it and had some of our germs. And then that satellite went down and landed and then maybe that bacteria have survived. And maybe Rover measure and it would find that bacteria, and it would think that there was life on Mars, but in reality, it’s just life on earth that we moved over to it. So we have to be really extra careful about cleaning the spacecraft that actually can get close to other planets that we think are likely, or are candidates for life.
Another risk for that is that what if there was some life on Mars that was like very weak, and what if we accidentally like sent some of our bacteria over it, which were stronger, better adapted to life on Mars and they overtook them Martian life, and then we’d never find it ever.
So there’s the whole field is called planetary protection. And we do this for the rovers and a bunch of other appointments that are very likely to have life. And for some of them, even if they’re in space, we put them into orbits where they will never, ever, ever could possibly land on, you know, like crashing to planet that could harbor life after we’re done with the mission. So it’s a whole field, and it’s something a lot of people worry about. So it’s an excellent question.
Victoria:
(Oksana – have you ever found a fossil in space?)
Wow. Okay. Another life related question. Oksana wants to know, have you ever found a fossil in space?
Dr. Hughes:
Nope. So same intro as the one before, you haven’t found any life in space for evidence, but if we did find a fossil in space that would change everything about modern society forever. I think the philosophical implications alone would be huge. It will be the proof of aliens. And I think that would change everyone’s outlook on everything. So if we ever find a fossil in space, a lot of people will know, headline news for, it’ll be the biggest thing that, I don’t know if one of the biggest things that’s ever happened.
Victoria:
(Nadia – Do you see asteroids like the one that killed the dinosaurs?)
Yeah. Okay. Another fossil related question. Nadia wants to know, do you see asteroids, like the one that killed the dinosaurs?
Dr. Hughes:
I don’t research asteroids, but a few of my friends do. Asteroids are really cool, and they’re actually quite common.
Recently there was, I think two close, quote, unquote close, encounters with asteroids in the space of a week. And when I say close encounters, I mean, if they’re within the orbit of the moon, it actually happens incredibly far away. So they were not very close, you know, no risk of hitting Earth.But there are 15 close flybys per year. They’re actually fairly common.
And then back in 2013, we actually got hit with a big one, and it did burn up over Russia. You might’ve seen the video of that. It injured a lot of people, but I don’t think he killed anyone. And it burned up before hitting the ground. And then there was a really big meteor that hit the ground in 1908, in Russia as well, just by happenstance. And that was huge, like knock over trees and everything else. There was a crater. And of course there’s the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs too. So. I don’t actually study asteroids, but yeah.
Victoria:
(Eli – Does the weather in space affect climate change? / Rachel – Is the climate changing in space like on Earth?)
Alright. Our next questions are actually a pair of questions that go together about changing climate. Eli wants to know, does the weather in space affect climate change? And Rachel wants to know, is the climate changing in space, like it is on earth.
Dr. Hughes:
Those are really good questions, and I’ll be honest I actually had to Google those because I wasn’t sure. It were really good and interesting questions. So I’m glad that I got a chance to do that.
So the climate changes is all us. It’s not from space. Climate change is happening because we humans are releasing too much greenhouse gas. And what that greenhouse gas does is it traps energy from the sun. So the energy from the sun comes in, and then it hits earth, and earth warms up and radiates different types of energy out, and that one gets caught. But all those greenhouse gases stay really low in the atmosphere. So when we talked about clouds, we talked about how that water vapor just doesn’t go that high in the atmosphere. Well, all the greenhouse gases don’t go that high either. So, so far there’s nothing on terrestrial climate change that has affected the space.
Victoria:
(Yusef – What is the most unique space weather you’ve ever seen?)
All right. Another space weather question. Yusef wants to know what is the most unique space weather you’ve ever seen.
Dr. Hughes:
So, as it happens, we’re in a time of very low solar activity and solar minimum right now. And I haven’t really gotten a chance to see too much intense space weather since I’ve been here. And I’m actually right now that is in general, a good thing. It says intense space, whether it was kind of cool to look at, but much like a hurricane or tsunami or something like that, it’s actually really bad for a lot of people and people on earth. I’m actually quite fortunate to have not seen any really big or catastrophic space weather events.
Victoria:
(Asher – What does the 200-foot camera take pictures of?)
Asher wants to know what does the 200-foot camera take pictures of?
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah. So just a little bit of background on that one. One of the spacecrafts I’m helping design right now uses these two tethers that spin out and they kind of wind out. And they they’re held taught by this centripetal- and you notice much like sort of a ball on a string going around and around and around it. It doesn’t need anything to keep it out there. And that kind of makes a really, if you put sensors on the edge of that, you can do something called synthetic aperture radar which is a neat technique. And that allows you to do all sorts of really cool science.
And this one is tuned towards measuring soil moisture from space, so that can help us and other scientists study rainfall and desertification, which is the process by which deserts are growing and overtaking places. It should, and also sort of on a business or industry site, it can help farmers know exactly how much to water and where to water. So if you have a big field and maybe you say, oh, well, I’ll run the water here where it’s dryer, so that can help us have more efficient farms, which is important for feeding our growing population.
Victoria:
(Tatum – What is your favorite planet?)
That’s cool. Tatum wants to know what is your favorite planet?
Dr. Hughes:
Well, my favorite planet, I have to be honest, is the Earth. The Earth is all the coolest people, all the coolest stuff, and definitely the best place to live out of all of all the plants. So.
Victoria:
(Karina – Do you study the weather on other planets too?)
That’s a good answer. Karina wants to know, speaking of other planets, do you study the weather on other planets too?
Dr. Hughes:
I don’t. So that’s a really cool field and just sort of studying other planets, but it’s not one that I’m in, unfortunately.
Victoria:
(Cody – Have you been to space? / Anna – Are you going to go to space?)
All right. Let’s get into some more questions about you. This next pair of questions. Cody wants to know, have you been to space, and Anna wants to know, are you going to go to space?
Dr. Hughes:
Well, I have not been to space, sadly.
Getting selected to be an astronaut, which is the only way to go to space right now, is incredibly unlikely. And it’s a hard job. You’ve got better odds of winning the lottery or something like that. And even if you win it, even if you do get selected and say incredibly hard job, and you have to live in a very special place and do a lot of special stuff. And it’s a whole, it’s not a job that you can just go home from and be done with. It’s kind of a lifetime thing too. And so, I think even if I wanted to, like, even if I could be an astronaut, I’m not sure I’d want to be.
But, there are a lot of companies that want to build a system for people to go to space as tourists. And so you can go there on vacation, which I think would be really cool. So I’m holding out for, in my old age to have enough money to go to space as the tourist. I think that would be really fun.
Victoria:
Yeah. I would definitely sign up to go as a tourist.
Dr. Hughes:
Does that sound cool?
Victoria:
Yeah. I just finished reading the Martian and thinking about the crew that was on the spacecraft that was on its way back to Earth. And then went back to Mars to pick them up. Just thinking how long they were in that small spacecraft would be crazy.
Dr. Hughes:
Especially right now, with a pandemic, and everyone’s staying home. Like I’m working from home, and it’s kind of getting me and my wife sort of stir crazy, and you know, you want to be out interacting with more people. But I think about being, if we leave our house, you can’t leave a spacecraft, that’s it. So we need different thoughts. So I don’t don’t envy, especially those characters that had an extra year and a half or whatever it was.
Victoria:
(Ellsworth – Is this the career you dreamed of as a kid?)
Yeah. I can’t even imagine.
All right back to the questions. Ellsworth wants to know, is this the career you dreamed of as a kid?
Dr. Hughes:
It’s not. When I was a little kid, I wanted more than anything else to be a fighter pilot, and I wanted to fly fighter jets and all that. And then I found out that I had bad eyesight, and I needed glasses. And at that point that was it. Like, you just couldn’t be a fighter pilot unless you have naturally 20, 20 vision. They changed it now and you can be a fighter pilot if you have LASIK. And well, by that point, I didn’t really want to be a fighter pilot anymore.
And it was in high school that I actually took a physics class in high school, and I really liked it and I thought it was cool and fun. And I just sort of followed on that track. And that kind of took me into where I am.
Victoria:
Yeah, I couldn’t be a fighter pilot either. I don’t have 20, 20 vision.
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah. Yeah.
Victoria:
(Peyton – Why did you choose this job?)
Alright. Peyton wants to know, speaking of your career, why did you choose this job?
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah, so in high school I had that really cool science class and I really liked it and I was kind of good at it and I thought it was kind of fun and interesting.
And then in college, I took another physics class, and I liked that one enough that I decided to add a physics major to my engineering degree, which was hard. So I decided I like physics and engineering and I kind of liked doing both of them. And then I applied to a few grad schools and I got into the one I ended up going to was at CU Boulder’s aerospace engineering.
And obviously that was, you know, so go to grad school in aerospace engineering, probably gonna end up being an aerospace engineer, got a really good job offer after I graduated and just been here since. So that’s kind of wound up here, wasn’t, loosely plan, but sort of trying to do science and trying to do something sort of science and engineering at the same time. But that’s, definitely not the laser focus.
Victoria:
(Wyatt – if you could have one superpower what would it be?)
This is a fun question from Wyatt. If you could have one super power, what would it be?
Dr. Hughes:
I actually thought about this a lot. And I think obviously there’s some really fun ones like flying or like x-ray vision or something like that. But I think for me, the power that I think would be the coolest, would it be to see way more of the electromagnetic spectrums.
Right now, we can see from red to violet. Wow. But there’s actually, there’s something that’s a little lower frequency than red called infrared. There’s something a little higher than violet called ultraviolet, very creative names for these. But there’s tons more colors out there that we’ll never see because our eyes just biological can’t, and there’s other animals that can, and the one that is kind of surprising, the one that can see the most colors of all is a mantis shrimp, which is very strange. But butterflies can see in the UV, I think some sparrows can too, and I think bees can. And because of that, flowers have like secret markings that are in a frequency that we as humans can’t see, but the bees can. So to me, I think it would just be the coolest thing in the world to be able to see like the whole spectrum, because there’s so many colors and so many things that are missing out on. And I think that would be really, really cool.
Victoria:
Oh, wow. That is a really good answer.
Dr. Hughes:
Thanks.
Victoria:
(Sydney – what is your favorite discovery?)
Sydney wants to know what is your favorite discovery?
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah, so field of science that I think is one of the coolest is electromagnetism. And there was a time period where all of this stuff was getting set down. And there were a few people that were doing some really cool experiments where they knew nothing, and other people that were trying to synthesize these experiments into a coherent mathematical law. And I think it wouldn’t just be the coolest thing in the world to be friends with them and gotten to kind of hang out with them and do all those experiments together. I think that would’ve been a really cool time to be alive in a really neat time. It was a lot of stuff. People were learning a lot of things about a lot of different scientific fields. Yeah.
Victoria:
(George – What do you like about your job? / Amanda – Is it fun to study space?)
Alright, let’s see. This is another set of questions that go together. The first one is from George. What do you like about your job? And the second one is from Amanda. Is it fun to study space?
Dr. Hughes:
Yeah, so I do like a lot of things about my job. I liked the challenge of time trying to figure out what’s going on in the system.
And I think kind of the second part, which I really like and is really, really hard is how to best communicate that to people. And usually that can only be done with, if you could try and do it effectively with just one or two pots or images. And so, I really liked trying to make complex things simple and to try and take a lot of really complicated data, and trying to like use it all to make some one output project or one output image that sort of shows exactly what’s going on or allows you to pinpoint something. So I think that’s my favorite thing about it, is trying to creatively show data.
Victoria:
(Annabel – What is the hardest part of designing spacecrafts? / Isabella – what are some challenges you face as a scientist?)
All right, we’ve got another two parter. First question is from Annabel. What is the hardest part of designing spacecrafts? And the second one is from Isabella. What are some challenges you face as a scientist?
Dr. Hughes:
Very good questions. I think the hardest part about designing spacecrafts or being a scientist at all is the amount of school you have to go through. So, you know, high school, I went to 12th grade; and then I took five years in college because I did two majors and a minor, which was ambitious; and then I did four and a half years in grad school, which means, I was in 22nd grade before I got this job. So that was just like, it’s a long time to go to school, and that’s a long time to do anything. And so, I think now that I am here, I’m really glad that it did all this stuff, but definitely doing all that education, it definitely takes some effort and some motivation.
Victoria:
(Jason – Are spacecrafts in movies real? Like would they actually work in space?)
Yeah. That’s a lot of years,
Jason wants to know are spacecrafts in movies real, like would they actually work in space?
Dr. Hughes:
That’s a good question. It depends on the movie. Some movies are more accurate than others, but a lot of them are not very accurate. It’s a few tells when you think about stuff.
So whenever you see a spacecraft in a movie and it’s got wings, well, you know, that one is not very real because wings work by interacting with the air in our atmosphere. There’s no air in space. So wings are usually just for decoration. But of course there are some exceptions. And since the space shuttle, if you ever seen that, that had wings, and the reason it had wings was so that it could leave space in the fly all the way down and land on the runway, just like a jet that you would take to go on vacation or something like that. So that one was a very special spacecraft that needed to work both in the atmosphere and in space. But most spacecraft that we built just go to space and they only have hold there. So that’s like one easy tell, when you think about spacecraft being accurate or not accurate.
And another one you think about movies that happen in space is sound. So sound, if you don’t know, is happens when you have sort of waves that pass through the air. So they’ll have regions of very dense and very empty air, and those can hit your ear and cause you vibrating. That’s how you hear. I mean, if there’s no air, there’s nothing for that wave traveling. So when you see Star Wars or any other movie like that, when you have all the cool blaster noises and the explosions and everything else, that’s all junk. There is like, because it would be completely and utterly silent in space. And if you were in, let’s say like a, you know, an X Wing or something in a space battle, and Star Wars, all you would hear is your own breathing, maybe your racing heartbeat, and maybe some noises that your own system was making. But if you like shot something and it blew up, you went here, I think.
Victoria:
(Will – If you found a new planet what would you name it?)
Oh, wow. I’ll have to be more skeptical next time I watched Star Wars.
This is another fun question. Will wants to know if you found a new planet, what would you name it?
Dr. Hughes:
I don’t know. I have not really thought about it. And I think it’s pretty sure we’re not going to find any new planets, at least around the sun. Okay. I haven’t spent a ton of time thinking about that, but I should probably have a good answer.
Victoria:
(Scarlett – Have you ever make a spacecraft that scientist use a lot now?)
Scarlett wants to know, have you ever made a spacecraft that a scientist uses a lot now?
Dr. Hughes:
I have not. Two reasons, one that I have not been working for very long. So it takes a lot of time to design and build a spacecraft. Some of the people work next to me, work on spacecraft that are scientific and bringing back good data already, which is pretty exciting, but I don’t know more coming directly.
Victoria:
(Kelly – where do you buy your materials for spacecrafts from?)
Speaking of spacecrafts, Kelly wants to know where do you buy your materials for spacecrafts from?
Dr. Hughes:
It’s a great question. So we typically buy a lot of our components from other space companies. Who in turn buy it from other space companies, but eventually pretty much everything gets made out of aluminum or circuit boards. So, and that can come from all sorts of places.
Victoria:
(Zoe – Do you like BBQ?)
Cool. All right now a totally unrelated question. Zoe wants to know, do you like BBQ?
Dr. Hughes:
Yes, I do indeed like BBQ. It is very, very good. I haven’t had it for a while because myself and restaurants aren’t exactly the place to be right now.
Victoria:
(Laura – What do you do in your everyday life?)
Yep. Laura wants to know what do you do in your everyday life?
Dr. Hughes:
So when I’m not working, somewhere right now, I’m spending a lot of my free time either running or mountain biking, which is really, really fun. But in the winter, I ski, and that’s my main thing.
Victoria:
(Hannah: Do you like Star Trek or Star Wars better?)
And this is our last question. This is a very fun question from Hannah. Do you like Star Trek or Star Wars better?
Dr. Hughes:
That is the age-old debate, especially in my field. You can lose friends over this one. So, I like them both. I think they’re both a lot of fun. I think that the original Star Trek, especially some of the older ones, they’re really good job of bringing up some philosophical issues and sort of pushing more progressive ideas and exploring more intelligent stuff; whereas Star Wars is also really cool, but it kind of stayed more on the entertainment, like just pure entertainment.
Victoria:
We had a scientist who studies Mars on the podcast a couple of months ago, and I think she also picked Star Trek. So you’re not alone.
Dr. Hughes:
Good company.
Victoria:
All right. Well, that is all of our questions. Do you have any last comments for the listeners or questions of your own to ask them?
Dr. Hughes:
I don’t.
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