Finding Your Place in Space with Sadie Coffin

Who are the “Redshift Wranglers” and what can they tell us about the evolution of our universe? To find out, Dr. Charles Liu and co-host Allen Liu welcome back astrophysics PhD candidate Sadie Coffin from the Rochester Institute of Technology whose focus is galactic evolution, and in particular, the spectroscopy of galaxies and their lights.

As always, though, we start off with the day’s joyfully cool cosmic thing: the Lucy spacecraft fly-by of asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, which was named after the American paleoanthropologist who discovered the Australopithecus afarensis “Lucy” fossil the spacecraft was named after.

Then it’s time to learn a little about Sadie, who explains how questioning the unknown is what drove her to study astronomy. Chuck, Allen and Sadie talk about the awe embodied in the study of the universe and the universe itself. Like Chuck, Sadie studies galaxy evolution, but Sadie focuses on a galaxy’s light, spread into spectra, and dissecting different features in that light.

You’ll hear about the citizen science project called “Red Shift Wranglers” that helps Sadie sift through all the spectroscopic data, and get an awesome explanation of the doppler effect and the way red shift, which measures speed, can be used to help build better maps of galactic evolution.

Find out how you can get involved with the project and join the ranks of the 3,500 Redshift Wranglers who’ve participated so far in “Wrangling galaxies and the universe together.” (See below for links.) You’ll also hear about other citizen science projects on Zooniverse like Galaxy Zoo. Sadie talks about the value of non-experts engaging with experts in a community, and the surprising number of people who want to get involved.

For our first audience question, Nina asks, “If nothing can go faster than the speed of light, why can galaxies have Z greater than 1?” Sadie’s explanation gets pretty technical, so we’ll let her do it in the episode.

Our next question comes from Jerry, who asks, “Will we someday no longer need scientists and have AI do all our research?” Sadie, who gets similar questions all the time relative to citizen science, believes these two things can be complimentary, and that in the name of improving science we can’t forgo either for the other.

We finish with a discussion about what defines an act of science and a work of art, the process of questioning, and the roles of humans and machines in these processes. Plus, Sadie tells us about the science-themed travel posters by Dr. Tyler Nordgren on her walls. Chuck also gets Sadie to talk about rowing and the lessons she’s taken from the sport into other aspects of her life and journey as a scientist.

If you’d like to know more about the Redshift Wrangler project on The Zooniverse and get involved, or to reach Sadie, visit https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/jeyhansk/redshift-wrangler or find Redshift Wrangler on Facebook and X (Twitter).

Listen to the COSMOS project episode referenced in this show with Dr. Jeyhan Kartaltepe, an astronomer and professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Watch Sadie’s previous appearance in this short video shot at the COSMOS Team Meeting 2023.

We hope you enjoy this episode of The LIUniverse, and, if you do, please support us on Patreon.

Credits for Images Used in this Episode:

• The inner Solar System, with the Jupiter Trojan asteroids shown in green. – Credit: Mdf at Wikipedia/Public Domain.
• Lucy skeleton (AL 288-1) Australopithecus afarensis, cast from Museum national d'histoire naturelle, Paris. – Credit: Creative Commons.
• Absorption lines in the optical spectrum of a supercluster of distant galaxies (BAS11) (right), as compared to those in the optical spectrum of the Sun (left). Arrows indicating Redshift. – Credit: Creative Commons / Georg Wiora (Dr. Schorsch) created this image from the original JPG. Derivative work:Kes47.
• Color composite JWST NIRCam image of distant galaxy JADES-GS-z13-0. – Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), L. Hustak (STScI). Science: B. Robertson (UCSC), S. Tacchella (Cambridge), E. Curtis-Lake (Hertfordshire), S. Carniani (Scuola Normale Superiore), and the JADES Collaboration.
• Dr Tyler Nordgren’s VLA NRAO travel poster – Credit: NRAO/Tyler Nordgren.

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