Enough.

At Deerfield Academy, as long as it is not hateful or violence-inducing, we have free reign over what we say. With respect to the National School Walkout, some have claimed that our efforts are polarizing, partisan, or simply unfair to those with differing ideas of what gun violence prevention should look like. Let’s investigate this concern a bit further.

I’d like to break down exactly what a protest means. The word is defined as a statement or action expressing disapproval of or objection to something. That’s it: a demonstration of discontentment to illustrate public opinion. A protest is fundamentally a political movement, and the National School Walkout was one instance of such a movement.

The walkout was not intended for Deerfield students. In fact, our reach was well beyond students having occurred on Family Weekend, and been reported on by local news. We registered the walkout on the official site to demonstrate our participation. We submitted photos and videos to be compiled as a public demonstration of student/young voter support. We held an action event that taught kids how to contact their representatives and how to register to vote. These are all meant to amplify our voices in the national conversation.

Here on Deerfield campus, we are far too averse to people with strong opinions. We silence them at sit-down tables and whisper concernedly about them in common rooms. The fact of the matter is we will have to deal with opinionated people. There’s no question about that. The only question is whether we will be prepared to defend our own opinions and be competent enough to listen to theirs.

However, if you, the reader, still feel that one opinion is not being heard enough, there is plenty of room on the walls to hang your own posters. There is plenty of opportunity to plan your own events and protests. Until then, please respect everyone's individual right to freedom of speech, expression, and protest. Express yourself, start a conversation, and never shrink away from a potentially enlightening conversation.

Published in Deerfield Academy political magazine The View

Don’t Panic! A Ridiculously Nerdy Test Launch of the World’s Most Powerful Rocket

February 6, 2018 marked the day Stephen Colbert renounced his title as “King Nerd”. What sparked this egregious announcement, you might ask? Just the world’s most powerful rocket launching a cherry-red Tesla Roadster into space. Welcome to the future, everybody.

It all began with Elon Musk, the guy behind several familiar innovations including paypal and Tesla Motors. On that Tuesday, Musk’s company SpaceX launched the most powerful rocket in operation: the Falcon Heavy.

To put this in perspective, the Falcon Heavy produced about 5 million pounds of thrust, making it the most powerful rocket in the world since the Saturn V, the rocket that sent US astronauts to the moon.

Committed to his dream of human presence on Mars, Musk founded SpaceX and began work on building rockets at competitive prices, raising public interest and spurring on a kind of modern space race. The company’s latest project is the Falcon Heavy whose design is a huge step forward to interplanetary travel. However, a test launch is always necessary to assess the rocket’s functions. This test launch is what caused the commotion on February 6th.

Photo credit: John Kraus

One of the goals of this mission was to safely land two detachable boosters (that propel the spaceship upwards) such that they can be reused. This major development provides hope for the reusability and cost-efficiency of rocketship production. By far the most spectacular facet of the Falcon Heavy is its potential to catapult humanity into what some are terming the “era of post-scarcity heavy lift launch” (caseyexaustralia). In short, this means we are one huge step closer to creating vehicles that are cost-efficient and fuel-efficient enough to get humans to Mars.

The other goal was to launch a payload into a calculated orbit. In order to test the Falcon’s capabilities, a test launch was required. However, in order to test this second goal, the project required a dummy payload; that is, an object used to determine whether the rocket can successfully launch something into outer space. In this case, Musk chose one of his own cherry-red Tesla Roadsters. The savvy car came fully equipped with a dummy astronaut driver (nicknamed Starman, after David Bowie’s famous song) and a message on the dashboard reading “Don’t Panic,” a reference to Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

But wait, there’s more. It turns out Musk’s flamboyant payload was not nearly as pointlessly vain as we’d previously thought. While the car itself will possibly disintegrate within a year due to massive solar radiation, the capsule actually contains a small, 3.75-inch disk called the Arch (pronounced “arc”). This “data crystal” has a maximum storage capacity of 360 terabytes of data and is rumoured to contain simply a massive accumulation of human knowledge.

As of February 11th, Starman seemed to be heading toward Mars. The disk’s life capacity is in the range of several billion years due to some aspect of its complicated internal structure. Who knows who will pick it up next.

The new designs have passed their tests and will undoubtedly revolutionize space travel and many other fields. The frequency and affordability of launching satellites could pave the way for expanding the boundaries of ocean exploration, implementing global high-speed internet, and perhaps even touching down on Mars.

Sources:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/916138/Space-X-Falcon-Heavy-live-update-Elon-Musk-starman-watch-Tesla-roadster-asteroid-belt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO-RSPLdpPg

http://www.newsweek.com/elon-musk-tesla-spacex-falcon-heavy-disintegrate-800610

https://www.space.com/18422-apollo-saturn-v-moon-rocket-nasa-infographic.html

http://www.spacex.com/falcon-heavy

http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/06/technology/future/biggest-rockets-falcon-heavy-comparison/index.html

https://caseyexaustralia.blogspot.com/2018/02/falcon-heavy-and-era-of-post-scarcity.html

https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/09/the-special-data-device-spacexs-falcon-heavy-sent-to-orbit-is-just-the-start/

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2018/0208-how-the-falcon-heavy-could-revolutionize-exploration-of-ocean-worlds-1.html

Deerfield Academy Meets LIGO

What would it be like to “hear” the universe? The detection of gravitational waves by Project LIGO provides the answer.

In February of 2016, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) used a series of lasers to detect microscopic fluctuations in space. The detection provided scientists a whole new way to view the universe: rather than receiving radiation (light), LIGO detects physical vibrations in space. Recently, LIGO scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physics for the theory behind and detection of gravitational waves. (See our article about this in Issue 2!)

Focal Point was lucky enough to get the chance to speak with Amber Strunk, the outreach coordinator for LIGO Hanford in Washington, who provided some excellent insight on science in our current social climate. She said, of a broad-based survey, “A very low number of people said they know a scientist.” She explained that this is troubling because it implies that most people don’t notice the scientists around them. She also noted that “when you say you’re a scientist, the reaction is ‘I was bored by that class in high school!’ or ‘oh, you must be really smart.’ We have to change this.” She stressed that we, as a society, desperately need to dismantle the stereotype of scientists being separate from the layperson. Scientists are, after all, people like everyone else. Creating an understanding of and trust in science is key to not only scientific, but also societal progress.

According to Strunk, this can only be achieved through outreach, which involves a combined effort of disavowing falsehoods, promoting facts, and specifically, relaying why the facts are important. Scientists in general need to become better at communicating, as speaking to the public is “different from speaking at a conference.” For instance, a group of non-scientists isn’t going to listen to a bunch of technobabble, especially if it is boringly presented and/or incomprehensible to them. Focal Point is another step toward bridging this communication barrier on campus (and would love feedback on how to better accomplish this goal!)

“We should always be learning, [and] always changing our minds based on evidence.”

Amber Strunk

Ms. Strunk kindly offered to host a video tour of the LIGO facilities and have a short panel with several LIGO scientists. This event will be scheduled for sometime this month.

Published in Deerfield Academy's science journalism magazine, Focal Point.