Episode 121
Today we are joined by Dr. Chris Impey to talk about exoplanets, the search for life in space, and the search for meaning on Earth.
Dr Impey is a University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 220 refereed publications on observational cosmology, galaxies, and quasars, and his research has been supported by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He has won eleven teaching awards and has taught two online classes with over 300,000 enrolled and 4 million minutes of video lectures watched. He is a past Vice President of the American Astronomical Society, won its Education Prize, has been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Carnegie Council’s Arizona Professor of the Year, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. He has written 70 popular articles on cosmology, astrobiology and education, two textbooks, a novel called Shadow World, and eight popular science books: The Living Cosmos, How It Ends, Talking About Life, How It Began, Dreams of Other Worlds, Humble Before the Void, Beyond: The Future of Space Travel, and Einstein’s Monsters: The Life and Times of Black Holes.
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produced by Zack Jacksonmusic by Zack Jackson and Barton Willis
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Transcript (AI Generated)
ian (01:16.703)Our guest today is a university distinguished professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona. He has over 220 refereed publications on observational cosmology, galaxies, and quasars, and his research has been supported by $20 million in NASA and NSF grants. He's won 11 teaching awards and has taught two online classes with over 300,000 enrolled and 4 million minutes of video lectures watched. He's a past vice president of the American Astronomical Society,
has been an NSF Distinguished Teaching Scholar, Carnegie Council's Arizona Professor of the Year, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute professor. He has written 70 popular articles on cosmology, astrobiology, and education, two textbooks, a novel called Shadow World and eight popular science books. I'm very excited to welcome Dr. Chris Impey to the podcast today.
chris_impey (02:07.898)Yeah, delighted to be with you.
zack_jackson (02:09.75)Welcome. That's quite an introduction. Ha ha ha. Thanks for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. I'll see you in the next one. Bye.
ian (02:12.983)Yeah. Obviously, I shortened down what you sent us, and it was tough for me to do that, Chris, because you've done a lot. You know, obviously, I was at fellow academic. I understand the need to do peer-reviewed research and those types of things in our field, but I was really impressed with how much writing you've done for the general public, both articles and also your books. You've written a novel. You've been on several podcasts.
Can you kind of tell us a little bit about your background, what is you do, and then how you also got into that part of your profession of making sure you communicate with the general public as well?
chris_impey (02:53.298)Sure, you won't hear it in my voice, my accent, but I was born into Edinburgh, I'm a Scott. I had a little transatlantic childhood that sort of wiped out the Scottish borough, but if you feed me single malt whiskey it would come back. And of course, I'm sure you noticed if you've gone to Britain that you look up and there are not many stars visible there. So once I decided to do astronomy I knew I was going to leave, so I did my undergrad work in London.
zack_jackson (03:04.15)Thank you. Bye.
Ha ha ha!
chris_impey (03:22.938)and never look back and I'm a dual citizen now. So astronomy is big in Arizona. I've not looked elsewhere. The grass is never greener anywhere else. We're building the biggest telescopes in the world and we have five observatories within an hour's drive. So this is the perfect place to do observational astronomy. S
