This is the best of our knowledge, a presentation of national productions.
While you were vacationing last summer, there were groups of middle school students around
the country on a quest in the search for the origins of life.
When you work with Earth, it's like you're already exploring the life, it's accepted
to more complex, and so when you go beyond to the final frontier, you can have more diverse
life.
The best of our knowledge are astrobiology series returns, with the students of the Exxon
Mobile Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp, and learn about their quest to find life on
one of the moons of Saturn.
Plus we'll spend an academic minute exploring the winds and the waters of this planet.
I'm Bob Barrett, and this is the best of our knowledge.
Each year, more than 50 universities host the Exxon Mobile Bernard Harris Summer Science
Camp, which brings students together for a scientific experience that will likely stay
with them well beyond the two weeks of camp.
For the fifth year, Rensleyer Polytechnic Institute invited 48 middle school students
from New York State's Capital District to design spacesuits, build rockets, and learn
about astrobiology.
Teams of students developed proposals for missions to search for life in the solar system
that were then evaluated by scientists.
This year, the winners came up with a plan for finding life on Titan, one of the largest
moons of Saturn.
We'll hear from the students in a moment, but first the best of our knowledge is science
reporter David Gastina spent some time with Cynthia Smith, assistant dean of students,
and director of pipeline initiatives at RPI to learn about the program.
We have representatives from 11 counties in this region, and their young students going
into grade 6, 7, and 8.
And they have this interest that you're pushing them forward with.
And as we've seen in the past, and we've done reports on the science camp, this really
carries them much further in life.
That's correct.
Many of them, almost all of them, have demonstrated a keen interest already in science and technology,
and they know what they know coming in.
And they're frequently, almost to a person astonished at how much more they learn in the
program.
And they provide them with so much.
Why don't you talk about the teacher involvement, and not to mention the RPI professor at that
come in and work with the students?
What are the support systems that go with this?
Well, we hire at Rensselaer a student staff to work with the students, and the student
staff is comprised of 13 Rensselaer students and a junior counselor, a student who's been
with us before as a past camper.
And these students live in the dorm with the students, and they mentor them not only in
the dorm, but in the classrooms, they each follow a team and help the students with the
technology or perhaps some insight.
They don't lead the students, but they are there to assist in any way that they can.
In addition, this year, we hired eight local teachers to work with all of the students,
and they ranged in skills and interests from science and technology to math and history
and persuasive writing and public speaking.
And our camp really tries to help the students be prepared to not only be successful in the
camp, but to take it to the next level.
Most folks are familiar with RPI, and it's incredible reputation for excellence.
And why don't we remind people before we go any further?
Who is Bernard Harris?
Bernard Harris is the first African-American to walk in space.
He's done two missions in space.
And after leaving NASA, he went into venture capitalism, and now he works in not only supporting
NASA's missions, but also areas of health care and education.
And he comes in and talks with the students, doesn't it?
Yes, Dr. Harris joined us again this year.
He came in on a Sunday night, met us after the students returned from the American Museum
of Natural History, had dinner with us in the dorm.
That's our special pizza night in the dorm.
He was just enjoying the kids and having fun and played capture the flag with them.
So he is active.
Very active.
That's wonderful.
It's wonderful.
How about we continue with this?
Because I know there's a day-to-day schedule.
Why don't you go through the routine that the students tend to go through?
Okay, so they arrive on a Sunday and get to know one another.
And then Monday starts the week.
Dr. Witt and Dr. Delano introduced the program and the team project idea to the students.
And then they went, started right into classes.
This I think, Cynthia, you might agree, is how do I put this?
Absolutely, completely rewarding for all involved.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
I think that my experience with the pipeline programs has been the most rewarding of my
life.
I look forward to this camp in particular every single summer because I love working
with middle school kids.
I had never thought.
Never thought that this would be something that would really excite me so much.
But middle school students come in with no preconceived notions.
They are totally open to everything that comes their way, especially the younger ones
towards the older ones have a little bit more knowledge behind them.
And they tend to maybe think a little more critically than some of the younger ones.
But however, the rising sixth grade students that we have had with us generally are leaders
within their teams and within the camp.
They really rise to the challenge of everything that's put to them and are great contributors.
The Harris Foundation has been a strong believer in the fact that working together within
these groups is very, very positive because the fifth graders come eager.
The seventh graders come with knowledge and they actually help to increase the knowledge
of the whole.
So now that we've learned a little about the program, let's meet the heart and soul
of the project, the students.
My name is Liam Ann Goulis.
I go to the Bravo Mepouth Middle School.
I'm entering eighth grade and I was the team leader, the physicist and I shared the role
of mathematician.
How did you become the team leader and become the physicist?
Well, when we were signing the jobs, no one wanted physicists.
So I just took that job and then a couple of people wanted the team leader and they said
I could have it because I didn't really like my job and it worked out good.
I think all of us on the team could have been team leaders who were really strong workers.
That's good to hear you say that.
That's a very big compliment to Neil and Vincent and some of the other team members, Tatiana
and Olivia who aren't with us today.
But why don't we go over to Neil?
Neil, you introduce yourself.
My full name is Neil Tarun Devanini.
I'm going to sixth grade.
I go to Manann's middle school now and I'm the biologist.
Did you have an interest in being the biologist or were you assigned that?
Well, everyone voted on what they want.
So in the end, pretty much everyone got what they worked with.
So I got the biologist.
What were you responsible for?
Well, I was responsible for the chemical components for the atmosphere, the ground and seeing
if it's suitable for the bacteria on Earth or any life and see if there's tiny particles
of water inside or stuff like that.
Alright, we're going to go over to Vincent now.
I am Vincent Romero Scott.
I am going to seventh grade and I go to Berlin Mill School.
My role there was geologist and I shared the role of mathematician with Leah.
Well congratulations to all of you again.
Now let's turn to the actual project and what you've done.
You chose to, in the quest for life, make the journey to Titan.
Leah, how come Titan?
We all had a groups together.
There was the list of places that we were able to explore.
In most cases, the team got what they wanted most and for us that was Titan.
Is it Neil, maybe that people want to, when they do these projects, explore something outside
of the Earth?
Yeah, I would think so because it's like when you work with Earth, it's like you're
already exploring the life.
It's a bit more complex and so when you go beyond to the final frontier, you can have
more diverse life.
Sure, and I would imagine Vincent that as you're doing some of these field trips that you
were on, you went to Fatcher Park, you went down to New York to the science museum, but
I would imagine it was very helpful to go on these various trips to establish what is
life.
Yeah, go on to museums help because you could see how the other life back then acted and
how it could form and if it's like forming the same way on another planet, it's possible
with the right conditions that could happen again.
But why is Titan so interesting for an exploration in the quest for life?
Well, there's an experiment conducted by Sarah Horst where she took the atmosphere of Titan
and she did some experiments with it and she got the components for RNA.
And RNA is...
But one of the essential building blocks right along with DNA.
So this is a prime experiment that proved that we might really have a situation here on
Titan in these methane, methane lakes where we might be seeing formations of life.
Okay, so I see in your first frame up here on your poster board it says, mission go.
You've even worked it down to where you will launch from.
How about you Vincent?
Talk about what you had to do not only are you doing the science, but you have to calculate
everything from where are we going to fly this mission from to are we doing it in a
cost effective way?
Talk about that.
We kind of want everything to be perfect.
We picked where you land, wanted to land and nothing was too costly.
Did that involve a constant review of your work?
Yeah, we look back on to make sure and sometimes when we look back on it we want the changes
or nothing going on and can't be too perfect but you want to be right there.
What were some of the revisions do you remember Leah?
I don't think there were any major revision that things we did collaborate after doing
our separate work.
We would see like what other people did and how we could improve that.
Yeah, that should probably be made clear right now.
I mean, you had your teams, but you're also all working together.
Yeah, talk a little bit more about that.
What was it like on a given day at RPI?
You'd wake up in the morning around 6.30.
We would have attendance.
We would go to breakfast and then usually we'd have a lot of classes for background.
And then at the end of the day we'd be working with our teams on the request for a proposal.
And so what happened was first we had each portion get the information that we needed and
then towards the end we would like analyze it and make it a lot better, paraphrase it and
things like that and make it into our presentation.
What was it like for you living on a college campus for a couple of weeks?
It was pretty good.
Were you home sick?
A little bit.
A little bit.
What about you, Leah?
What about you, Vincent?
Get away from my family for two weeks.
Whoa.
I love you, Mom, but you've annoying me sometimes.
Now the honesty is flowing in the room.
We see why Leah has these leadership qualities.
She's not afraid to speak her mind.
And how are the college students that stayed with you?
Were they good?
They were really nice.
They were very helpful towards the projects.
So you could seek advice from them.
You could seek help from them and they were there for you, yeah?
Yeah.
Still to come, more of our visit with the students of the Exxon Mobile Bernard Harris
Summer Science Camp of Upstate New York.
That's next on the Best of Our Knowledge.
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Be sure to ask for the Best of Our Knowledge, number 1171.
This is the Best of Our Knowledge.
I'm Bob Barrett.
Our special guests today are the students from last summer's Exxon Mobile Bernard Harris
Summer Science Camp from Upstate New York.
We're talking about their experiences at the camp with the Best of Our Knowledge's
Science reporter, David Castina, as part of our Astrobiology series.
Tell us about how you came to the conclusion of how you were going to actually fly through
space and get to Titan.
Leo, why not?
We decided that we would launch, I think, mid-December.
And after seven months of journey, I think, we would eventually reach Titan's atmosphere.
We planned our flight to make the shortest mission possible to save on fuel and energy.
Tell us more, how are you getting there?
What is the, forgive me for this word, the contraption that you built to go there?
It's an arocket.
Yeah, but to describe it, I see all sorts of descriptions up here.
I see a picture of it.
I see it's going to slingshot and do all sorts of stuff.
I'm pretty sure we're going to use, forget what it's called, but go between the plants and
it's going to slingshot towards.
The idea is to gain speed as it travels, right, and use the gravitational pull to help
it slingshot and move faster to get to your location.
I think the slingshot method was actually taught in one of our classes.
And then we also saw a demonstration of it when we watched the Paldo 13 with a win-out
of action space and they slingshot around the moon to the back door.
That's correct, but of course this is an unmanned spaceship that is moving through space
and using this gravitational pull, so you were able to figure that out, did that save
on cost?
Yeah.
Explain budgeting for a minute if you would, any one of you.
Kind of like a sign to one person like budget, but in reality we all worked on it pretty
hard.
So it was difficult to decide the prices of everything because it's not like you can
just go online and say, oh, I need some Waclazoo and Nucleague Stovent things.
You have to estimate costs of things, so it's hard to get an accurate measurement.
Were there any sort of things that were provided to you to help you estimate a cost of some
of these materials?
They did help us like how much of our budget should be spent on our logo and how much
should you spend on getting there?
So how much did it cost?
We had a budget of a hundred million dollars.
What?
It's a little.
It's a little.
Yeah, that's a lot.
It's a little.
I'm glad you reacted that way because Cynthia Smith and I talked a little bit about how
you had to do budgeting and she said, are you kidding?
A hundred million dollars is not a lot of money for a project like this.
So really, you're keeping the costs way down when we're looking at something like space
travel.
ours was still way up.
We had over a hundred million.
Everything was just expensive.
Yeah.
Well, so now you're hurling through space, slingshotting with the gravity and now you're
going to enter into Titan's orbit and you're going to land on Titan, one of Saturn's
moons and how's that going to work?
Vincent.
And it's orbit until it was a good time so they have any storms there.
It's kind of like there's like a methane water cycle there.
It's a methane cycle instead.
And also, when it was the right time, we were going to go down, have 15 seconds of free
fall and then have a parachute, the oscillate down.
And what's the parachute made out of?
I'm probably using a supersonic parachute like the one used to land curiosity because it
can withstand the force of an object falling from the edge of space.
So it has a very thick atmosphere.
A supersonic parachute can slow it down to a relatively slow speed.
What's a relatively slow speed, Leah?
Well, at first we're going to be traveling like thousand miles an hour maybe and this
can slow it down to probably somewhere in the 200s.
Okay, so that's slowing it down quite a bit and then you had something that we have
in our cars now to help you prevent it from breaking when it hits the ground, right?
Airbag.
Yeah, we decided to pour airbags.
And are these special airbags?
Yeah.
What's special about them, Neil?
Well, they need to be able to withstand enough pressure and when they go out, it shouldn't
have any harmful chemicals in it.
So what happens when it lands because you have a rover that's going to now take over?
Well, basically the rover itself won't be landing, it'll be landing in a capsule.
So once the capsule is safely on the ground, it will trigger a door to open and the rover
to drive out.
Wow.
Okay, so then the rover drives out and then what's going to happen?
Neil, why don't you start?
First, we thought that it should take samples of basically everything that curiosity took
samples off because curiosity is like a very thorough mission.
So we wanted ours also to be very thorough because the last mission that made it to tighten
it lost power.
So we want ours to be very thorough.
And also we have an original idea where we use a vacuum chamber with anaerobic bacteria
to test their durability.
Tell everyone what anaerobic bacteria is.
It's a type of bacteria that only needs nitrates and sugars.
It's microscopic.
So this was something that wasn't thought of before.
Congratulations on that.
I don't think I would ever come up with something like that.
Well, how did that come to be?
Leah.
Well, one day, Cole, he was part of our team.
He thought of sending some okay up there because they can survive in very harsh conditions.
You don't generally see them.
They're found in places like volcanoes, hot springs and well, calc domics.
And we don't want to contaminate that because it is an invasive species.
So idea was to bring a vacuum chamber, put tightens atmosphere in there.
And see how that.
And see how it reacts.
And see how it reacts.
And how it reacts.
We're also going to take samples of the methane lakes because they're like an organic compound.
So if we take samples, it's good for information.
So we thought of that.
And we also wanted to drill through the ice and to see if there's water on the inside.
So how does that work?
Well, we thought of a heat drill.
It's really durable.
So yeah.
And obviously it would melt.
It would go through the ice and then you could probe deeper into the methane and methane
and grab your materials that way.
Fantastic.
So anything else, Vincent?
We're going to have like a little submarine thing attached to the bottom of it.
So when it drills down, it's going to drop in there.
Also we're going to have a disk that shoots into the methane lake, which will take samples.
Does it radio it back or what happens?
Does it come back?
I think we're going to make this, or it comes back maybe.
What about the little submarine?
Due to our relatively low budget, we're going to send it there, have it stream the data
back and then just leave it on Titan.
And there's no self-destructive button that it hits to make it disappear, huh?
No.
Unfortunately.
Too harmful.
So were you convinced in your research that this is possible, then you probably would
discover life?
We're not just going to go out and just say that there's life on Titan.
But we do think there are very high chances that life could be due or could live there to
vibe.
I also go with Leah because most of the experiments that we do here, they're towards further
discovery.
And so there's probably a very high chance.
Vincent, what about your time?
There's many factors that life could exact.
There's many factors that could not exist.
So you can't really say there's not or is life unless you make a mission there.
So the mission obviously has been successful in the sense that arguably NASA would approve
based on what you've done.
So congratulations to all of you on that.
Now let's bring in one of the parents who has sat patiently in front of the microphone
and that is Vincent's father, Ken, and you've been here, you've been taking pictures and
filming and hearing what these young people have had to say.
And certainly I'm sure you're very proud of Vincent.
Talk about the parent side of things when it comes to the program.
Yes.
So I dropped him off, went in for the interview beforehand, missed him while he was gone,
picked him up, few emails back and forth, got his stuff packed beforehand.
I tried it for the item with the guidance, but he makes pretty much all the decisions
on his own.
I just kind of let him fly and see where he'll, how far he'll go.
I've told him a million times that just getting to work with Professor Delano, some of that
would rub off on him.
Meeting Mr. Harris would be a great opportunity.
He's just being in the RPI program.
RPI is one of the schools he's talked about and looked at in his future.
Again, Vincent and Neil and Leah, I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Those were the students who participated in last summer's Exxon Mobile Bernard Harris
Summer Science Camp from upstate New York.
Speaking with the best of our knowledge, science reporter David Castina as part of our Astrobiology
series on the Origins of Life.
Our coverage is made possible by the NASA Astrobiology Institute through support from the New York
Center for Astrobiology located at Rensleyer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, in partnership
with the University at Albany, the University of Arizona, and Syracuse University.
You can learn more about all of the topics in our Astrobiology series at origins.rpi.edu.
While coming back to work, there is a connection between the highest winds and the deepest ocean
currents.
That's the topic of today's academic minute.
Welcome to the academic minute.
I'm Lynn Pascarella, president of about Holyoke College.
Other than being difficult to access, the upper atmosphere and ocean depths may seem
to have little in common.
In his Thomas Rieschler, associate professor of atmospheric science at the University of
Utah reveals, the two regions appear to be profoundly connected.
For decades, scientists have been trying to improve the accuracy of climate predictions.
One avenue of research suggests that the stratosphere, which is the layer of the atmosphere between
six and 30 miles above the Earth's surface, is an important component.
Our reason study supports this idea.
In direct observations and from computer simulations, we found that wind changes in the
stratosphere influence the ocean.
By striking a vulnerable Achilles heel in the North Atlantic, these changes are all the
mild-deep ocean circulation patterns which, in turn, affect Earth's climate.
Such a link is quite amazing because, compared to the dense ocean, the stratosphere has very
little mass, making it hard to believe that the stratosphere could cause changes to the
ocean.
But our research finds that a chain of complicated natural events is responsible for making exactly
this happen.
This is how it works.
During winter, winds in the stratosphere are usually strong and regular.
However, sometimes catastrophic circulation events happen in the stratosphere, abruptly
interrupting the normal flow.
These events can be even felt at the surface, in particular, over a region of the North Atlantic
to the south of Greenland.
This is the so-called down-well in region, which is a crucial source of deep water that
drives the circulation of the ocean.
There, small variations in temperature and thus density determine whether water is heavy
enough to sink or not.
Through its impact on surface winds, the stratosphere creates variations in evaporation and water
temperature.
Because of the sensitivity of the ocean over this region, the variations are able to accelerate
or delay the sinking of water into the abyss.
In this process, the stratosphere acts like a throttle.
Accelerating or slowing the engine drives worldwide ocean currents in our planet's climate.
That was Thomas Rieschler of the University of Utah.
You can find this, other segments, and more information about the professors on our website
academicminute.org.
Production support for the Academic Minute comes from Newman's own foundation in partnership
with Mount Holyoke College.
Also the time we have for this week's program, if you'd like to listen again, join us online.
At our flagship stations website, go to wamc.org and click on the program's link.
And if you have any questions or comments about the program, send them in.
Our email address is knowledge at wamc.org.
I'm Bob Barrett.
Be sure to join us next time for another edition of The Best of Our Knowledge.
Bob Barrett is producer of The Best of Our Knowledge.
Dr. Alan Shartock is executive producer.
The Best of Our Knowledge is a production of WAMC Radio's National Productions, which
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Hear more at wamc.org.
