JW: This Is Your Survey Questionnaire That You Did at the Beginning, and I Just Wanted

JW: This is your survey questionnaire that you did at the beginning, and I just wanted to clarify some statements that you had.

CB: Okay.

JW: This is.. that is your original copy, so, that is what you wrote.

CB: Do I get to keep this?

JW: Just for now. I will make a transcript of this tape, and let you have a copy. Then you can say, “No, no, I didn’t mean to say it that way.” Okay. Tell me what you think astronomy is. And I want to know what you think about macro view versus some smaller scale of view.

CB: I’m kinda been thinking about this for the last past, say, 4 years. Trying to understand the and see things. More philosophical than it is scientific.

JW: Okay.

CB: Dealing with the universe, the first conception of creation, how, uhh, I guess it’s the cosmological viewpoint of everything as a whole, our universe, to try and help make sure of in our minds what our universe looks like. By looks I mean things in the whole realm of eyesight, and everything else. Our whole perception of the universe, and compare that to our whole perception of the macro universe.

JW: and how are you defining..?

CB: Macro universe is on the molecular level, maybe even smaller than that.

JW: Okay.

CB: An atom, for example, built around one nucleus, and in the nucleus you have the protons and the neutrons. That makes up most of the mass. The electrons are very, very tiny, kinda buzzing around, but the atom is made up of mostly empty space. Emptiness. So, on the macro level, we are learning about more and more sub particles, quarks and that sort of thing. It doesn’t seem to be ending. Let’s say on a macro scale, you see the outer, well there is mostly empty space. There doesn’t seem to be anything we can see. WE can, we haven’t been able to perceive it yet. I was trying to set up the dualism of different parts, where you have the macro universe and the micro universe as almost a mirror image. Not exactly, but, in some ways they are a lot alike. Or, also in the way we view them as scientists. We view the atoms..

JW: Okay. Here you say “other sciences are also based on observation, but not an entirely macro system like a universe.”

1 CB: yeah, by observation I was dealing .. I feel like astronomy is totally, if you are taking about ground-based astronomy, it’s totally dealing with human observation. We can’t go there and touch it. We can’t connect to it. We can only see it, observe it. In other sciences, you can connect. Not only can you see it, you can also touch, feel, using your other senses. So, you are limited in astronomy.

JW: Okay. Makes absolute sense. Cannot touch the stars. Cannot bring it in here and play with it.

CB: Oh yeah. Well, one day hopefully we’ll be able to do that. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

JW: That it would be.

CB: then everything would change.

JW: Okay, number two. “What does a star look like.”? Down on the third line here you say, “A star like a dot of light. A star has different colors due to its life cycle and temperature. The star also has apparent and absolute magnitudes.” I don’t know if you can expound on any of that or not. I don’t have any particular questions on it.

CB: By dot of light, this is kinda interesting what I said here, thinking back to the text book. When my students look at stars, they see dots of light. They do not distinguish that they.. except for the fact that they say, “some are blinking, and some are not.” beam of light planets., stuff like that. But, to expound on this, I think I learned that, uhm, to wrap this up , that each and every star is really different. And I did not know prior to this, is that the only way to measure the mass of a star is to use Keplars laws, and you have to have something orbiting that mass in order to measure it. I’m still not clear on some of that. I know parts of the equation. What’s interesting is even on that first and second day, when you said, “Here we have a star, this is the only way to calculate the mass of that star.” It had never dawned on me calculating mass to begin with. It never dawned on me people wanting to do that, to figure out the life cycle of the star. But then it made sense, why we do binary research. I also didn’t other stand.. I don’t want to..

JW: You’ll get another chance at the end to talk about how you’ve been changed, but, that’s fine, go ahead.

CB: I didn’t realize that we have a conception of the life cycle of a star, that you went over in class. I went over it with my students. You went over it in class for two hours, I went over it for like a week because I made them make for a week. But, there is so much more mystery than there is fact. And that is science. That’s the difference,ibn my opinion, between real science, and real scientists, and the.. how can I say this so it is politically correct…. spokes person for culture like educational system, which tries to take the knowledge that science passes down, so we can indoctrinate students with a kinds of science picture, and a not so science picture. Because in the

2 science books we go fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. There is no room for variance. There’s not. So, as teachers we do the same thing: fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. And education has become not the spokesperson of truth, but the truth of some group ..

JW: This is getting heavy.

CB: what do you think?

JW: I want to know what you think.

CB: I mean, I feel like..

JW: No, I’m just trying to find out what you are thinking about as you are writing that.

CB: And this was the fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. With no real various.

JW: Okay, you are listing the facts that you know about stars, the terminology, apperent and absolute magnitude.

CB: The life cycle.

JW: That they look like dots in the sky. Okay.

CB: And I was just listing those facts.

JW: I see .So, in my opinion we are just starting with this science, so much has been discovered since Hubble.. Do you think because of Hubble we are having some kind of paradime shift.

CB: Well, not necessarily..

JW: like, there is the astronomy before Hubble and after Hubble, is kind of what I hear you saying. That it’s new now, it’s different.

CB: I would almost say, and I’m not completely sure of all my facts, but I almost limit that to before the 90’s and after the 90’s No one likes to think that what they are involved in right now is changing rapidly, to something they never intended for it to become. I feel like, you said this in class, that there are two groups of astronomers. You said there is the group that wants to study the galaxies, the latest pictures, the latest things, then there are those who basically want to do the grunt work, the binary stars.

JW: There are stellar astronomers,, -and I mean that differently than stellar- and there are galactic astronomers, and the two groups don’t always talk to each other.

CB: And they don’t always talk to each other even though they are astronomers, because of the difference in opinion about what’s important and what’s not. I feel like there’s

3 funding for astronomy to try and discover other planets, I feel like that from reading everything in the media, that’s where that kind of came from. My perception, though, now, on that issue, is that I feel like astronomy grunt work hasn’t changed. You still do the same things. You still observe. The philosophy hasn’t changed.

JW: So, I could put down here, “basic astronomy has not changed.”

CB: You still do the same thing I believe the perception of astronomy by the culture has shifted a little bit. The perception being, we are looking at now… Last night at the , I was talking to some of my good friends physiscts. I said “I’m going to be giving a speech in astronomy.” He said “Would you need to give a speech in astronomy? A star is just a star.” Smart, highly educated person, “A star is just a star.” No it’s not just a star. My whole viewpoint on this is-

JW: Tell me why it’s not just a star.

CB: A star is not just a dot of light.

JW: What is it?

CB: It’s a.. Ball of gas.

JW: just like in the Lion King.

CB: Yeah, it sounds like Pumba, it is the lights from the kings of the past. and there going to start cursing my on this tape “Go, but you’ve learned less than..”

JW: actually, the person transcribing this tape this tape will be laughing hysterically at this point.

*actually, it was pretty funny.. heh. *

CB: Okay, look. Astronomy in itself, the grunt work, the basics, haven’t changed through time.

JW: so, what has changed?

CB: I want to say perception by the culture, and also goals of astronomers. Short term goals.. inniferometry (?) was not talked about 50 years ago. The technology has spured on the goals that you have. Somewher edone the line, astronomy and NASA will, not that they are not linked up now, but the missions, it’s starting to link up more, I feel. I may be wrong about it, but I see when I look at the NASA websites, and I do all this stuff with NASA, they seem to be more interested in astronomy. I don’t know that they’ve not always been like that, but I doubt that they were during the mercury/stone flights, and the early Apollo missions.

4 JW: Probably not. Do you think all of astronomy aught to be funded through NASA?

CB: No. I think that the government liem ost things, it ruins.. they tend to go down.. anything.. I feel like private enterprise should be allowed to get involved with astronomy.

JW: No, and that’s fine. I just don’t want you to take three hours to do this.

CB: I’m sorry.

JW: But, I like the fact that you are talking without me having to encourage you. Just press the start button and away you go, this is great.

CB: Thanks, John.

JW: Some astronomers believe the universe will expand for ever, and others believe that it will stop expanding and start contracting,” blah blah blah, “How are these different conclusions possible if astronomers are looking at the same observations?” Some key things I just underlines; “Individuals subjective views of the universe,” “theory laden” Those were some of the things you were talking about. You got the same data? How do you get different conclusions? What were you thinking when you wrote this?

CB: I was thinking when I wrote it. I basically didn’t know the verbiage, or how to use the verbiage as it relates to astronomy. That data and evidence are not the same thing. Talked about that the other day. It really became apparent on this. I’m trying to remember class out there.. you can have the same data, and come to two completely opposite conclusions, because you still have that human intuitive process, that wants to prove or disprove something. That proving or disproving process seems to be inherent in our culture, of linear based knowledge. You go to point A, to point B, to point C, what’s next? The problem is, what if you started on the wrong tract to begin with,?y You’re going out here and getting all your data, data, data, and putting it all into these little points ,you’ve started wrong. That’s something for a later book.

JW: Yeah, okay.

CB: Sorry.

JW: That’s okay, you are doing fine. “Does the development of scientific knowledge, including astronomy, require experiments?” And you said, “Yes. Scientific knowledge does require experiments in order for a current hypothesis to be excepted.” Eh.. What’s a scientific experiment?

CB: I used to know, I used to have all that scientific method jargon memorized, I don’t know..

5 JW: So, what is a scientific experiment, you want to say the scientific method?

CB: No, it’s not the same thing. Experiment takes a observation from the real world, and miniaturizes that observation so it can be done in a laboratory setting with controls. So it is redone.

JW: So, must have controls

CB: Must have controls, and variables, of course. You have an experiment that mimics or mocks a real world phenomena. That experiment which you do, you draw conclusions from that experiment. Sometimes that involves the telescope , sometimes it involves different items with which you speed up or slow done a process. An experiments can be in different avenues, but honestly the data that you find in an experiment is just bad data. Till you put it into a larger framework….

JW: Do astronomers do experiments?

CB: By looking in a telescope, you are doing an experiment. Well, by observing and conducting science.. The other day I was out there ,we photographed all of the information ,and we downloaded it, and I used the maximum DL, and I did the manual centroid. I like that, manual centroid.

JW: It’s manual because you didn’t put it over there and tell the computer to find the centroid. You did it yourself.

CB: And I counted the pixels, and I did all that. That was not following the scientific, method. I didn’t say, “What’s the problem in my mind?” and come up with a hypothesis. I didn’t start experimentation, I didn’t have a conclusion.

JW: But did you do science?

CB: but I did science. That was an experiment. If I hadn’t just sat down, and photographed that star, and observed that star, and downloaded the pictures, that still would have been an observation. So, experimentation takes on a broader scope.

JW: Okay, that’s interesting. So, “what types of activities do astronomers do to learn about the universe?” I don’t have any questions. You said what you said here, I don’t know that I, “both radio and light telescopes can be used to study the electromagnetic emissions that come from the starts. Observations are used, distances are calculated, Predictions can be made to help create a uniform viewpoint of the stars and star systems. Humans love to create uniform boxes of knowledge.”

CB: That was at the end, wasn’t it? I was having to write out

JW: Well ,this is about, this isn’t even half way through yet. Your getting tired. You quite filling up the pages, you like, “Oh okay”

JW: A couple of sentences will do here .

CB: So, what..?

JW: I don’t really have any particular questions on that. Umm…Are ther eonly radio and light telescopes? I am assuming you mean visible light.

CB: Visible light. Once again, I looked at our book, I remembered our text, I remember my student’s responses. I think by light, I mean ground based.

JW: So light telescopes = grounded based.

CB: Radio telescopes can be ground based as well. What I didn’t know was that I didn’t understand anything about the shifting, to see the motion.

JW: That’s okay, we are just talking about what you wrote, at that time.

CB: I’m just afraid that your not gonna kick me out of the class, you learned nothing

JW: Now, you see, you’ve got this attitude. We are not trying to find out what you learned in the class yet. I’m trying to find out where you were at the beginning. I should have done this a month ago, before you got into this. Because I really want to know what you were thinking at the beginning. You’re gonna get this same questioniar again, in about two weeks, and you are gonna fill it all out again, and we are gonna come back in for asecond interview.

CB: Everybody is doing it?

JW: Uh-huh. Then I’m going to sit down and compare your responses to question six, and say, “Well, when you started he started out, he was a real novice on this topic.” And give this a score of zero. Now he’s moderately informed. Give him a three, instead of a five.

CB: Well, we’ve not really covered all of astronomy.

JW: You’re not gonna, either.

CB: No,

JW: But, I’m trying to cover something about the nature of science and scientific inquiry by doing this project. That’s where I’m kinda trying to see where you change. Not your knowledge of astronomy. Although I think that aught to change.

7 CB: I think it has.

JW:I am going to look into that, that’s what the concept maps are for. Did you do a second one?

CB: yeah.

JW: Okay. When you do a concept map of binary stars, where you at now. Put a date on it, so I could put, “Four weeks in this is what he thought.” I want to know what you are thinking about binary stars, what you know about them. If you need to looks something up because you don’t quite remember a term, I don’t care.

JW: So, I need to get that from you. And you may not have been here one day or were late or something . Okay. I think we’ve already covered this. “Write a definition of a scientific astronomical observation.” “You said the big dipperr is a circumpolar constelation

CB: I don’t know what I was thinking..

JW: What.. what were you thinking at that time? What makes saying that.. what makes the big dipper is a circumpolar constellation” a scientific observation

CB: I was trying to equate looking at the big dipper.. circumpolar, you always see it through out the year.. and I was trying to say that the fact that we can see the big dipper throughout the year makes that a scientific observation when you are looking up at it. I think that’s what I was trying to say.

JW: “Give an example about something you have done or heard about astronomy that illustrates you definition.” You said, “If you observe the big dipper throughout the year, this means that it is circumpolar.” What makes that statement scientific?

CB: nothing about that statement is scientific.

JW: Nothing. Okay.

CB: Oh, mom don’t ever listen to this,. I can’t believe I said that.

JW: “explain why you consider your example to be a sciencetific astronomical observation.” We don’t even need to go through that.

CB: No.

8 JW: Okay. “An astronomer notices with their unaided eye, “ Notice I didn’t use naked eye. Not allowed. Search engines won’t find naked eye. Parental blocks will stop that. Seriously.

JW: If you tell your earth science students to look up something with naked eye astronomy. There ias a good chance they won’t find much. If they use unaided eye, you’ll find a lot, because the astronomical sites are changing it. I don’t want my 8 year old looking at any body’s naked eye.

JW: It’s the word naked that is the problem, with common.. It use to that that was the common language. Anyway, this is off the subject, let’s get back too it. “So ,they find more blue stars in the night sky than read stars.” With the unaided eye, they find more.. this is the question I’m posing you. “An astronomer notives with their unaided eye that they can see more blue stars in the night sky than red stars. Using a telescope, they also find more blue stars than red stars. This person concludes that blue stars are more common than read stars. Do you consider this person’s investigation scientific? Why or why not?”

CB: No.

JW: And you said no. “The unaided eye would cause the appearance to be different. The telescope would aid in seeing the true color, or temperature. Depends on filter. Where did you learn about filters?

CB: You mentioned filters in class. I can’t remember everything about it, but you had said that you’d said about the different colors of filters, and how they help filter out certain things.

JW: Okay. So, if you do not think this work was scientific, and you don’t, how would you change it to be scientific. You said, “Through the use of many reflecting telescopes.” What did you mean by many reflecting telescopes?

CB: The observation of many different locations. Repeating observations of the same star.

JW: observations from many different locations. Okay .That’s fine. That does help. I’m getting tired, because you’re the third person that I’ve done this too today. I’m starting to go, “I’ve seen this all before…”

CB: a bit. I’m sorry. I’ll try to hurry this up a bit.

9 JW: “Some people have claimed that all scientific investigations, including astronomy, must follow the same general set of steps or methods. Other’s have claimed there are different general methods that scientific observations can follow. What do you think and why?” Your response was, “Science may not be step by step, but more spontaneous and fluid. Astronomy is based more on math that biology, and because of that, certain steps should be followed. “ Do you believe there is a scientific method, as out lined probably in your text book.

CB: I believe that there are horses that roam our planet, and I also believe that the scietif-

JW:… What are you talking about??!

CB: Here me out. Listen to me. In the same light, I believe there is some kind of scientific method that each book publishes. Every book has it’s scientific method. There is a scientific method. But, I don’t believe everybody follows it. The rigidity of it is just too much. That makes sense.

JW: Yes, but it is not rigid.

CB: The rigidity is too much.

JW: Okay, so, you do say that those steps , there is a scientific method, it doesn’t go step 1, step 2, step 3, it’ done.

CB: No, it’s fluid. I made a mistake in that ,though ,saying astronomy is based on math. It’s not just math. There are many more elements.

JW: But, I interpret what your saying, as meaning that, because it’s math, and math does have a sequence of rules that must be followed, you might consider that there is a scientific method.

CB: I believe that there is a metho,d I’m not saying that there is not.

JW: I just interpret that use of the word math, that astronomy may be more regid because of the math, have more rigor, maybe, than biology. I want to know what you meant here.

CB: Then, I would say that what I meant there was that the mathematics makes it more of a hard science, where as other sciences

JW: math makes astronomy more difficult.

CB: uhhh.. yeah, harder..

JW: I’m trying to figure out what you mean by harder.

CB: I hard science versus soft science phycology is soft,

10 JW: hard science.. and what’s a soft science?

CB: and example would be Psychology, you can’t bring it done to numbers. It’s like quantitative versus qualitative. Astronomy is quantifying everything that you are seeing. You’re basing it on that all the times. Even the math. Imperceptable, which I wasn’t aware of. There are varying degrees of nuances there, little tiny changes.

JW: I’m not following you quite.

CB: Well, there are so many variables to observe in one star. And you look at the difference in separation and position angle. You can’t just say, “It’s in the east, right there, lets look.” There are so many different variables in effect when you measure these distances that you can easily make a mistake. You can easily do something that’s off, a bit, and skew the whole out come. I wasn’t aware of that.

JW: Can you point to an example?

CB: The star that we observed. Two things, the star we observed, when I did the manual centroid…

JW: I just made that up.

CB:… That’s not a real word? You pot licker. I put that in there.. You made up centroid?

JW: Not centriod, manual. I just stuck that qualifyer on it. Centroid is a technique that is used.

CB: But there was just a hair off when I did the manual centroid, of one of the pixels between the primary and secondary, that was just, like, just 0.0333 off. I bet it was because I didn’t line up the thing there perfectally in the middle.There was just some little..

JW: So, what you are talking about is data error.

CB: By humans.

JW: I’m not talking mistakes, now, I’m talking data error.

CB: Data error by humans, but also. The mistakes made.. observations in the winter in the summer.. you were going over the math on the board in class, and I was thinking, “you may leave a pixel out some where ,and be completely off.” The more things you add to the math base, the more errors you’re likely to get.

JW: Compounding of errors.

11 CB: So, you can’t be sure. You can be close to sure. .I guess that’s why we are doing standard deviations.

JW: Well, that just tells us how well our measurements are. It doesn’t tell us if we’re right. There is .. you could shoot a target and hit the same place fifty times in a row, and not even be hitting the bulls-eye. So, it was very precise data, but it wasn’t very accurate. That’s..

CB: That’s human error.?

JW: It can be.

CB: But it doesn’t have to be every time.

JW: Data always has error in it. I think that’s what you are talking about. That you said the math wasn’t precise.

CB: No ,there is variance there.

JW: I think what you are talking about.. okay. Math has variance in it.

CB: Yes.

JW: Okay. I’m real tempted to do some teaching here, but I don’t want to.

CB:I dunno. Am I completely off on this?

JW: Math is.. well, math is too. I would say, I think what you are trying to say is, when you took a math class, you had a equation, that game you the next dot on the line. It was very precisely drawn.

CB: Yes, because of what you put in to begin with.

JW: Right, now, what we do, in science, is backwards from that. WE don’t already have the equation. We try to create the equation, based on data, for which it hops around, because you can’t get the exact center of each pixel. Or some other little quirk happens, you sneezed. You cannot take, if you take the same measurement over and over again, you will never get the same result over again. You’ll get very similar. That’s what your standard deviation is telling you how closely each measurement to all the others. Is it very similar, or is it suddenly way different? So, the math.. so, what I think you are talking about is data error.

CB: Yeah.

JW: Being, not very..

12 CB: what you said earlier. We take a point, and we create, we create..

JW: We say, it looks like these are falling along a straight line. I could put a straight line through there, and find out that the equation that best represents that data.

CB: exactly.

JW: It represents the data

CB: but there could still be error.

JW: There is error. That’s why the points don’t lie precisely on the line. And the closer they get to being on the line, the better we think we understand it. Anyway.

CB: Okay, I’m hitting the right targets.

JW: It doesn’t matter, we are doing fine. There are no wrong answers.. I’m just trying to explore where you are coming from. Especially when you wrote these. “If astronomers working independently ask the same question, for example, what was the universe like ten billion years ago, will they necessarily come to the same conclusion?” And you said, “no way! Even Stephen Hawking has a different opinion from other cosmologists concerning origin. We cannot directally observe it.” “Does your response to A change if astronomers are working together.” “You said, except for the issues for peer preasure/no.” So ,two astronomers don’t know about each other, are working on the same.. There’s no score here.

CB: I am hoping, you’re wanting what I said there, or a paraphrase of course, and that’s not easy.

JW: Yeah, and that’s my fault, I should have given this interview in week 1, not week 4. And that’s on tape.

CB: And I’m having a hard time separating it. I’m overlapping a bit.

JW: uhm, okay. So, you basically think that they will not necessarily come to the same conclusions. That peer preasure may cause them too.

CB: Here’s what I meant by that. Hawking, as a cosmologist, use data, as I read in one of his books I’d say that Hawking is trying to create this umbrella, this theory, this umbrella of existence, and he’s.. You know, astronomers, you’re not trying to create a view of the cosmos, your not..

JW: I’m not a cosmologists.

13 CB: Right. You’re not..And he has a different view. But he’s very distant from the data points. His viewpoint is very distance, there are no bridges, but there is the stuff in his mind, from these data points to his theoretical devices, so to speak. Where take another cosmologist, who has another theory, there is also a huge difference between the data points.. where I’m going ,because of the bridges distance between the concrete and the way abstract, and the time frame, you can’t have two agree on the same thing, there is just no way.

JW: Okay.

CB: That’s what I’m trying o say.

JW: That’s fine, that’s what I’m trying to clarify, Okay. Back four weeks ago, what did the term data mean in astronomy?

CB: What’d I say?

JW: You said, “Statistics dealing with distances from our point of view, statistics dealing with absolute and apperant magnitudes, statistics dealing with appearant movement.” What were you thinking when you wrote that?

CB: At the time ,I was equating data with statistics, numbers.

JW: Okay, so, data equals stats, I could say that? Okay fine. “Is data the same or different from evidence.” “Data is statistics or math!” you’re consistent here. “Evidence is a point of view which suggests a hypothesis based upon the data, that’s evidence.” I have no questions about that. Do, you need to?

CB: No, I don’t think so.

JW: Okay, then, we’re done.

CB: Yeah, here I was really getting sketchy.

JW: “What is astronomical data analysis?” “ I would assume it is putting different data- points together to find comparable complete whole.” What is a complete whole? I’m not quite sure what that means, or what you were talking about.

CB: I was trying to say that astronomical analysis, the data-points some how helped astronomers put the whole picture together.

JW: Okay, so data helps astronomers put a whole picture together. Of the universe?

CB: Yeah, I was thinking of the universe.

14 JW: Of the universe, that’s kinda what I thought. And then, what is involved in doing data analysis? You said “pulling statistics from different sources,” and then, “Many different sources.” What does that mean?

CB: I was thinking in terms, at that point, I believe, of different ground based telescopes, observatories, ..

JW: using different.

CB: For example, the argument, that the position veered.. if I went out one night, and Gale the other night, observing the same star from different observation.. that’s what I say now.

JW: But, meaning sources, using different observational sources from different observatories?

CB: Yeah, that’s what I mean. I meant, like, in Georgia, and then one in California,

JW: Optical?

CB: I was thinking of that point of optical.

JW: So, then using many different observatories. Using many different optical. That’s fine. That’s what you were thinking. Cool beans.

Tape ends.