Read Online Launch Pad by Jody Lynn Nye, Mike Brotherton - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jody Lynn Nye, Mike Brotherton
Ads: Link
for someone to give it some attention. It should lead to a nice little paper.”
Bev herself had started on binary stars first and knew how interesting they were. She hoped she was projecting that enthusiasm.
Dino stared back at her, seeming to want her to have said something else. After an uncomfortable silence, he said, “I really would prefer to work on exoplanets. I was told that you as an Argus team member have advanced data access.…”
“Yes!” Bev replied. “It’s going to be so great! But the mission is pushing limits and has some unique idiosyncrasies. After you get the basics down on the star spots, you’ll be in a much better position to tackle something more challenging like Argus data and the weaker signals from exoplanets. You need to really understand the analysis and how to troubleshoot problems first.”
“I see,” he said, looking down at his shoes. He didn’t seem to share her enthusiasm. She pushed a little further.
“There’s no reason you couldn’t get a paper done by this time next year. You’re second-year, right?”
“That’s right.”
“You’d be well positioned to start a PhD on Argus data at that point.”
“But not right away?”
Bev felt a little twinge of impatience with him.
“No, but there’s a lot to learn first with the code and techniques. A lot of literature to master, too. But it’ll be really great.”
“I see,” he said.
Her sales pitch wasn’t working. Bev sighed.
“Tell you what. Come see me next week and we’ll get started. Get you some papers to read to get the background.” She thought about her schedule and decided it made sense to put her interruptions together. “There’s a faculty meeting next Wednesday afternoon. We could meet just after that, okay?”
“Okay,” he said thoughtfully.
Bev nodded and smiled at him as he turned to go. She scooped up a handful of the smelly cookies in a napkin—calories were calories—and felt energized for the second shift.
Even though it would add to her workload, she was excited because she was going to have her first grad student.
O O O
Bev stared at the blonde-haired undergrad, in his university sweatshirt and matching baseball cap that seemed to be the uniform of male students here, struggle to articulate his thoughts. She resisted the nearly overpowering urge to just give him the answer. Her official office hours were nearly over as indicated by the scribble on her dinosaur calendar (now featuring an Allosaurus), but she’d promised her students that as long as they waited, she’d see them, and she knew there were at least three more in the hallway.
She had jumped at teaching astrobiology. It was one of her favorite subjects even though no extraterrestrial life had been yet confirmed so the whole topic was literally theoretical, but there was a lot to teach nonetheless: astronomy, biology, geology, philosophy, some engineering. She had not appreciated how exhausting it was to teach to 300 in a giant lecture hall, nor how stringent the requirements were for freshman science seminars. D or lower meant university probation and the loss of a scholarship. That stricture stressed out a lot of students for whom math and conceptual reasoning were not their strongest skills. Moreover she was not being a pushover with the grades, which was keeping her office full.
Bev kept up her stare and her silence, forcing him to answer.
“Six point five?” he finally said, gazing at the calculator app on his phone as if it were an exotic alien life form.
“Six point five what?”
“Alien civilizations we can communicate with.”
“Where?” she pressed.
“In the galaxy?”
Close enough. Sometimes it was like pulling teeth, but she nodded encouragingly at him.
“Correct! Drake’s equation is just a way of formalizing our uncertainties so we can attack the problem somewhat more quantitatively and with real data. It’s probably not really six, since many of the input probabilities are not well
Bev herself had started on binary stars first and knew how interesting they were. She hoped she was projecting that enthusiasm.
Dino stared back at her, seeming to want her to have said something else. After an uncomfortable silence, he said, “I really would prefer to work on exoplanets. I was told that you as an Argus team member have advanced data access.…”
“Yes!” Bev replied. “It’s going to be so great! But the mission is pushing limits and has some unique idiosyncrasies. After you get the basics down on the star spots, you’ll be in a much better position to tackle something more challenging like Argus data and the weaker signals from exoplanets. You need to really understand the analysis and how to troubleshoot problems first.”
“I see,” he said, looking down at his shoes. He didn’t seem to share her enthusiasm. She pushed a little further.
“There’s no reason you couldn’t get a paper done by this time next year. You’re second-year, right?”
“That’s right.”
“You’d be well positioned to start a PhD on Argus data at that point.”
“But not right away?”
Bev felt a little twinge of impatience with him.
“No, but there’s a lot to learn first with the code and techniques. A lot of literature to master, too. But it’ll be really great.”
“I see,” he said.
Her sales pitch wasn’t working. Bev sighed.
“Tell you what. Come see me next week and we’ll get started. Get you some papers to read to get the background.” She thought about her schedule and decided it made sense to put her interruptions together. “There’s a faculty meeting next Wednesday afternoon. We could meet just after that, okay?”
“Okay,” he said thoughtfully.
Bev nodded and smiled at him as he turned to go. She scooped up a handful of the smelly cookies in a napkin—calories were calories—and felt energized for the second shift.
Even though it would add to her workload, she was excited because she was going to have her first grad student.
O O O
Bev stared at the blonde-haired undergrad, in his university sweatshirt and matching baseball cap that seemed to be the uniform of male students here, struggle to articulate his thoughts. She resisted the nearly overpowering urge to just give him the answer. Her official office hours were nearly over as indicated by the scribble on her dinosaur calendar (now featuring an Allosaurus), but she’d promised her students that as long as they waited, she’d see them, and she knew there were at least three more in the hallway.
She had jumped at teaching astrobiology. It was one of her favorite subjects even though no extraterrestrial life had been yet confirmed so the whole topic was literally theoretical, but there was a lot to teach nonetheless: astronomy, biology, geology, philosophy, some engineering. She had not appreciated how exhausting it was to teach to 300 in a giant lecture hall, nor how stringent the requirements were for freshman science seminars. D or lower meant university probation and the loss of a scholarship. That stricture stressed out a lot of students for whom math and conceptual reasoning were not their strongest skills. Moreover she was not being a pushover with the grades, which was keeping her office full.
Bev kept up her stare and her silence, forcing him to answer.
“Six point five?” he finally said, gazing at the calculator app on his phone as if it were an exotic alien life form.
“Six point five what?”
“Alien civilizations we can communicate with.”
“Where?” she pressed.
“In the galaxy?”
Close enough. Sometimes it was like pulling teeth, but she nodded encouragingly at him.
“Correct! Drake’s equation is just a way of formalizing our uncertainties so we can attack the problem somewhat more quantitatively and with real data. It’s probably not really six, since many of the input probabilities are not well
Similar Books
