Science
In case you haven't devoted most of your attention to following my blog and remembering everything I've ever written (and I guess I can't really blame you too much if that's the case), I spent the summer researching the exoplanet system Kepler-186. I did other things too, mostly regarding galaxies, but this project has a more concrete result, so I'll focus on it.
Kepler-186 is about 500 lightyears (\(\approx\)150pc) away. The system is made of 5 planets orbiting an M-dwarf star (about half the size and mass of our own sun, but less than 10% the brightness of our sun). The 5th planet, K-186f, is famous in the exoplanet community. Hell, it's even famous outside of the astronomer community, as evidenced by the fact that it has its own Wikipedia page. Its fame comes from the fact that it's practically Earth-sized (\(1.06 R_{Earth}\), according to my calculations) and is just the right distance away from its star that it could hold liquid water.
There are some downsides to this system being so famous. Mostly, it just means that any work I do regarding this system won't be new, but that's okay. I wasn't really looking to do completely original research this summer. I wanted to do research that could form a scientific basis for the book I want to write as my senior thesis, and that's exactly what I did.
The big question I had to ask about K-186f was, "Is it habitable?" Well, here's my answer in picture form:
Obviously, we don't have the technology yet to go and visit this planet, so we can't answer this question with certainty. All we can do is run the planet through "habitability tests" and see if it could pass. The plot above shows that it (probably) passes the first few tests we put it through.
The first is the Planet Test. The dashed line at the bottom indicates the radius of the smallest exoplanet we've ever found (just slightly larger than the moon). All of the planets are above that line. Yay.
The second is the Composition Test. There are roughly two types of planets: rocky and gaseous. Since it's pretty difficult for is to stand on gas, a planet has to be rocky for it to be habitable. The dashed line at the top of the plot shows the radius at which planets tend to stop being rocky, according to Leslie Rogers and her collaborators. All of the planets are below that line. Another yay.
The third and traditionally most important test is the Liquid Water Test. The grey box shows the range of distances from the host star where the temperature on the planet could be just right to hold liquid water. You can see that K-186f spends its entire orbit (the width of the points represents the range of distances from the star that the planet experiences throughout its orbit, because none of the orbits are perfectly circular) in this Goldilocks Zone. A third yay!
There are still other tests that we need to put K-186f through, but I'm happy with three yays for now.
Feelings
I'll admit that I was a little bit jaded at the beginning of the summer. I knew I was going to do an exoplanet project but was convinced that I hated exoplanet research. I was just as convinced that no group of people would ever be able to compare to the friends I made at NRAO last summer. And, if I'm being honest with myself and you, I wasn't too happy about being part of a program meant exclusively for Black and Brown students. It felt like I was cheating or receiving special treatment or admitting that I wasn't good enough to compete with the white kids. (None of those things were true, of course, but I can't control the thoughts that run that deep in my head.) It wasn't long before all that jade faded away.
I haven't forgotten about galaxies. I still think they're really, really cool. But I now realize that I shouldn't completely write off exoplanets as the most boring area of astronomy research. I actually think they're, dare I say it, fun to study.
The NRAO kids from last summer are still some of my best friends -- both in and out of the astronomy community -- but I got pretty damn close to the Banneker kids, too. And as much as I love my NRAO friends, I didn't need them as much as I needed my Banneker friends. That was actually the best part of this summer. Being around so many talented Black and Brown people and forming such close relationships with all of them was literally a life changing experience. It alleviated some long-held biases of mine, ended my life-long habit of not feeling "black enough" to spend time with other Black people, and opened my eyes to so so so many issues that exist, hidden, in our society.
I know this blog post wasn't the most well-written. I had a lot of thoughts and just needed a way to get them out of my head. The gist of this post, though, is that I needed this summer more than I ever could have realized.
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