Alex Filippenko: One can wonder why does astronomy, or any sort of abstract pure research for that matter, make any difference to us to the typical person in the world? Well first of all thinking about the universe and figuring out how things work is something that of all animals only humans can do, only we have the intellect, the curiosity, the opposable thumb with which to build machines to explore nature. So some of us should do it. Second of all these kinds of discoveries, discoveries about the cosmos excite kids. I like to say that astronomy is the gateway science. It gets kids interested in science and technology because they hear about all these amazing discoveries. I myself as a kid was thrilled by the lunar landings of the Apollo mission. Now most kids won't go on into astrophysics, but what they'll do is they'll study science and technology and they'll go into fields that are more immediately useful to society, such as applied physics and engineering and computer science and medical physics. But the bug that bites them is often astronomy.
And finally you never know what practical spinoffs there might be and let me give you a few examples. A century ago when quantum physicists such as Einstein and Bohr and Heisenberg and Schrodinger were developing quantum physics they had not the slightest practical application in mind. They didn't want to make a better toaster or a better bicycle or whatever. They wanted to understand the nature of light and why atoms exist, why atoms are stable, and other such questions of that sort that seem incredibly far removed from our everyday lives. Well fast forward a century, you could not imagine today's high-tech world without an understanding of the microphysics, the quantum world. Look at the silicon revolution for example. Look at lasers. Look at nearly everything it all stems from quantum physics. Who would've thought that a century ago?
Another even perhaps more abstract idea is Einstein's general theory of relativity, the theory that the presence of mass or energy curves or warps the shape of space and of time around it. So, for example, our sun forms a dimple in space and earth moves along its natural path through that dimple. So too earth forms a dimple and the moon moves along its natural path through that warped space. That's what gravity is. Newton had a formula for gravitational attraction but he didn't know what it was and Einstein came up with a theory. Well you might say who cares as long as gravity works what do we care what the exact mechanism is? Well, it turns out that Einstein's theory makes predictions that are in subtle ways different from Newton's predictions. And for things like the global positioning system, GPS, you have to take the effects of general relativity into account. The clocks in the satellites up in space, these satellites communicate with your device in your car, they run at a slightly faster speed than the clocks here on earth. And if that difference in the rate of passage of time had not been taken into account by the physicist and engineers who designed and built the GPS system, GPS wouldn't work. So here's something of incredible military and commercial value that simply would not work if we didn't understand gravity in a fundamental way according to Einstein, this idea of curved space time.
So again, who would've thought that a century ago when Einstein was developing the general theory of relativity that it would have this incredible practical application? Sure we might never get close to a black hole, which is an extreme prediction of general relativity, but it doesn't matter. The theory was developed, it's beautiful, it excites kids and it even has practical applications. So with much of astronomy we don't know what the spinoffs will be, but we do know that as humans we can accomplish these goals and we can also excite kids into pursuing areas of science and technology. And that in my opinion is really good.
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What Has Astrophysics Done For You Lately? - Big Think
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- Cosmological parameter extraction and biases from type Ia supernova magnitude evolution - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Continuous monitoring of pulse period variations in Hercules X-1 using Swift/BAT - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Constraining the ortho-to-para ratio of H{_2} with anomalous H{_2}CO absorption - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- A photometric and spectroscopic study of the new dwarf spheroidal galaxy in Hercules - Metallicity, velocities, and a clean list of RGB members - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Luminosities and mass-loss rates of SMC and LMC AGB stars and red supergiants - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Electron beam – plasma system with the return current and directivity of its X-ray emission - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The propagation of the shock wave from a strong explosion in a plane-parallel stratified medium: the Kompaneets approximation - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Analysis of hydrogen-rich magnetic white dwarfs detected in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Letter: Centaurus A as TeV \gamma-ray and possible UHE cosmic-ray source - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Young pre-low-mass X-ray binaries in the propeller phase - Nature of the 6.7-h periodic X-ray source 1E 161348-5055 in RCW 103 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
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- Solar granulation from photosphere to low chromosphere observed in Ba II 4554 Å line - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Does the HD 209458 planetary system pose a challenge to the stellar atmosphere models? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Effect of asymmetry of the radio source distribution on the apparent proper motion kinematic analysis - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Destriping CMB temperature and polarization maps - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Search for cold debris disks around M-dwarfs. II - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Precise data on Leonid fireballs from all-sky photographic records - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- An X-ray view of 82 LINERs with Chandra and XMM-Newton data - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Radio observations of ZwCl 2341.1+0000: a double radio relic cluster - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Candidate free-floating super-Jupiters in the young \sigma Orionis open cluster - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The metallicity gradient as a tracer of history and structure: the Magellanic Clouds and M33 galaxies - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- XMMSL1 J060636.2-694933: an XMM-Newton slew discovery and Swift/Magellan follow up of a new classical nova in the LMC - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The inner rim structures of protoplanetary discs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The solar Ba{\sf II} 4554 Å line as a Doppler diagnostic: NLTE analysis in 3D hydrodynamical model - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Magnetic evolution of superactive regions - Complexity and potentially unstable magnetic discontinuities - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Low-mass protostars and dense cores in different evolutionary stages in IRAS 00213+6530 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- PMAS optical integral field spectroscopy of luminous infrared galaxies - I. The atlas - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- First AGILE catalog of high-confidence gamma-ray sources - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Radiative hydrodynamics simulations of red supergiant stars - I. interpretation of interferometric observations - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs around A–F type stars - VII. \theta Cygni radial velocity variations: planets or stellar phenomenon? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Cosmic rays and the magnetic field in the nearby starburst galaxy NGC 253 - II. The magnetic field structure - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Physical structure and water line spectrum predictions of the intermediate mass protostar OMC2-FIR4 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The bright galaxy population of five medium redshift clusters - II. Quantitative galaxy morphology - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Dust in brown dwarfs and extra-solar planets - II. Cloud formation for cosmologically evolving abundances - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The quiet Sun magnetic field observed with ZIMPOL on THEMIS - I. The probability density function - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Complexity in the sunspot cycle - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Properties and nature of Be stars - 26. Long-term and orbital changes of \zeta Tauri - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The massive Wolf-Rayet binary LSS 1964 (=WR 29) - II. The V light curve - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Supernova progenitor stars in the initial range of 23 to 33 solar masses and their relation with the SNR Cassiopeia A - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram of Star Clusters - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Table of the 10 Brightest stars within 10 Parsecs of the Sun - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram of the Nearest Stars - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Magnitude and Color in Astronomy - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Stellar Types - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
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- Spotting the Minimum - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Structure and Evolution of Brown Dwarfs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- No Bang from the Big Bang Machine - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
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- An Implausible Light Thrust - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- the Masses of Degenerate Objects - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Degeneracy Pressure - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Introduction to Degenerate Objects - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Radii of Degenerate Objects - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Inevitability of Black Holes - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Scientific Pig-Out - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Neutrino Cooling of Degenerate Dwarfs - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Neutrino Cooling of Neutron Stars - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Overview of Supernovae - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
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- Thermonuclear Supernovae - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Nuclear Reactions in Thermonuclear Supernovae - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Core-Collapse Supernovae - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neutrinos and SN 1987A - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Revealing the sub-AU asymmetries of the inner dust rim in the disk around the Herbig Ae star R Coronae Austrinae - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
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- On the physical origin of the second solar spectrum of the Sc II line at 4247 Å - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- On detecting the large separation in the autocorrelation of stellar oscillation times series - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
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- The chemical composition of carbon stars. The R-type stars - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
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