The Starship "Transgender?"
Neil deGrasse Tyson is by far my fave "astro physicist" if fact I had no idea of what an astro physicist was until I began to watch him and his Star Talk Show on the National Geographic Channel. Last night's show was extra special though as he featured an interview with another of my "faves" Susan Sarandon. Dr. Oppenheimer As the show wound it's way around more than a few concepts I don't pretend to totally understand-all of the sudden they were discussing one I did: it turns out Tyson's lead chair is Dr. Rebecca Oppenheimer. Dr. Oppenheimer is a comparative exoplanetary scientist: she studies planets orbiting stars other than the Sun. This nascent field is so young that much of the work involves developing the techniques needed to see these planets, so that their light can be dissected and analyzed. Her optics laboratory in the Rose Center is the birthplace of a number of new astronomical instruments designed to tackle this problem. In