How Did we Get Here? The Origin of Stars and Planets with Joan Najita

While stars and planets are thought to arise in molecular clouds, from flattened disks of interstellar matter, the transformation process is complex, spanning many orders of magnitude and involving many physical processes. From a theoretical perspective alone, it’s often unclear how the ideas fit together, a situation that leaves open many ways for things to go wrong. So how does this transformation really work? Observations with powerful space telescopes and Earth-based facilities are providing vital clues. By studying the birthplaces of planets as well as planetary systems orbiting stars beyond the Sun, we’ve gleaned new insights, while also raising new questions that challenge us. Najita will describe our current picture of the origins of stars and planets, the new insights gained, and the challenges we face. She’ll also comment on what the results say about how humans make scientific advances and the kinds of investments that are vital to sustaining discovery.

Joan R. Najita is an astronomer at NOIRLab, the National Science Foundation’s research and development center for ground-based optical and infrared astronomy. Her research is primarily aimed at understanding how stars form from interstellar clouds and how disks surrounding young stars evolve to produce planets and the chemical ingredients of life. In recent years, she has pioneered the development of innovative techniques to probe planet-formation environments, including infrared molecular spectroscopy of disks, thermal-chemical models of disk atmospheres, and the synthesis of diverse data sets.

Najita earned her B.A. in physics at Harvard University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. She is actively engaged in communicating science to the public and has a lifelong interest in the power of science to inspire and in the role of science in society. She was a 2021–2022 fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, an interdisciplinary research center in Cambridge.

This public lecture was originally recorded on Wednesday, July 17, 2024 at the Aspen Center for Physics.

[mostee]

The sound quality needs to be improved

[owlredshift]

Hey guys, I'm driving to work right now and I made an effort to pause the video and record this comment. I treasure your channel and institution. Pat, it seems there is a problem. The problem is that you have consistently had unacceptable microphone settings for your channel for very long now. I think for most people it is borderline tolerable, but for many people such as myself, it is just not listenable. I would highly advise that you consider not playing around with microphone settings, but spending an hour on the stage in the booth and in the audience with a speaker trying to figure this thing out. It shouldn't be something that takes this long to fix for when you were trying to convey abstract ideas to an audience. The Listener needs to be able to hear the words that are being said and the speaker needs to be able to say them without having to hit a hard consonant before a vowel just so that the microphone threshold will be loud enough or whatever. I'm going to be honest, I'm just dictating all of this so it might come out wrong, and it is definitely two verbose but I don't have time to edit it right now. I really hope that as science communicators you can figure out this critical communication issue. I look forward to more lectures in the future with better audio settings