{"id":283,"date":"2011-01-04T09:29:56","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T16:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=283"},"modified":"2011-01-04T10:15:31","modified_gmt":"2011-01-04T17:15:31","slug":"backyard-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/?p=283","title":{"rendered":"Backyard Science"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found a news story this morning which intrigued me.\u00a0 A ten-year-old girl in Canada, Kathryn Aurora Gray, discovered a supernova<\/a>.\u00a0 This is significant to me in several ways.\u00a0 First, there’s the fact that it’s a girl making the discovery.\u00a0 It’s a reasonably well-known fact that women are often discouraged from scientific pursuits, but this girl was helped by her father.\u00a0 Second, not only did this girl, obviously not a professional astronomer (yet) make this find, but the supernova was confirmed by two amateur<\/em> astronomers.<\/p>\n

Think about that for a moment.\u00a0 One amateur scientist makes a discovery and two other amateurs confirm it.\u00a0 How many fields of science are there where that can happen?\u00a0 Once upon a time, amateur scientists were found in nearly every field.\u00a0 Sure, many of them were quacks and had insane, unsupportable ideas, but every now and then somebody with very little formal training would make interesting discoveries.\u00a0 Now, “backyard” science is still only found in a couple of areas, astronomy being one of them.<\/p>\n

I think this is great.\u00a0 One important aspect of science is an open mind.\u00a0 There’s been some banter here and there about how the science community at large rejects new ideas and even works to suppress any evidence which contradicts established theories.\u00a0 While I am certain this negativity happens to some degree, the very nature of the scientific process is to accept evidence which contradicts or otherwise changes a known theory.\u00a0 The girl’s discovery doesn’t contradict or change anything, but the acceptance of her discovery is a demonstration of the willingness of astronomers to accept valid, confirmed discoveries from anyone who makes an observation.\u00a0 That’s the way science is supposed to work.<\/p>\n

I don’t know if amateur science is trending up or down, but it’s good to know it’s still alive.\u00a0 I am something less than an amateur astronomer myself.\u00a0 If I had the equipment and the time, I would love to make the kind of discovery Ms. Gray made.\u00a0 She did it with the perseverance required for this kind of thing:\u00a0 She pored over photographs of the night sky and noticed a difference between two images.\u00a0 This may not seem like much, but with billions of stars out there, noticing a little change like this is a big deal.\u00a0 Look at the image in the press release.\u00a0 The tiny white dot that’s the supernova she found is…well, it’s tiny<\/em>.\u00a0 Something easily missed or passed over.\u00a0 But Ms. Gray noticed it and checked what she was seeing.\u00a0 Her colleagues (interesting a 10-year-old should have “colleagues,” eh?) helped her and confirmed what she was seeing and then put it out there for confirmation from other observatories.<\/p>\n

So to Ms. Gray I say, Bravo!\u00a0 May you continue your discoveries, and may the spirit of backyard science continue to be alive and well thanks to you and those like you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found a news story this morning which intrigued me.\u00a0 A ten-year-old girl in Canada, Kathryn Aurora Gray, discovered a supernova.\u00a0 This is significant to me in several ways.\u00a0 First, there’s the fact that it’s a girl making the discovery.\u00a0 It’s a reasonably well-known fact that women are often discouraged from scientific pursuits, but this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=283"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283\/revisions\/284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.shadowkatmandu.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}