TAEM- As  the Science Section ofour publication, The Arts and Entertainment Magazine, leaps forward we have been contacting many scientists and space programs from around the world to give our student readers the best available information toward their education. Germany’s DLR Space Administration, a member of the European Space Agency, was high on our list. Our magazine received a supportive ‘Yes’ from Germany, and Klaus Steinberg quickly responded to our request.

Klaus, you are responsible for the German part in the General Support Technology Program (GSTP). Tell us about your role in that and what the program’s aims are.

KS- Thank you for the opportunity to tell your readers a little bit about my work. To start, I would like to shortly comment on how Space research is organized at DLR. In principle, the German Aerospace Center DLR is organized like other space agencies as NASA, but there is one specialty. There are about 7,300 people working for DLR, but only about 200 of them are part of the space Agency, formally known as Space Administration. (more…)

TAEM- The Arts and Entertainment Magazine is thrilled to interview Dr. Karen O’Neil of the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (or GBT). Our publisher had visited the facilities several years ago, and he posted his visit in another segment of the Science section of TAEM. The observatory is a much recommended site for those interested in astronomy and radio astronomy. Dr. O’Neil is the site Director and we are very excited to be able to tell her story.

Dr. O’Neil, Please tell our readers about your educational background and your interest in astronomy.

KO- I have always been fascinated with the why and how of most everything.  I was initially drawn to working in physics and mathematics as these subjects are the primary foundation for all scientific phenomena.  Yet the more I studied these two fields the more I realized my fascination was not with the details of how things work as the broader question of why the Universe looks, and behaves, as it does.  Telescope images of the planets and other galaxies are both beautiful and fascinating to me, leading me to wonder why. Why do galaxies have swirls and bubbles in their gas and dust?  How doe stars go supernovae?  Why does the sun flare?  And the more I learned about galaxies and stars the more the field of astrophysics fascinated me, drawing me in until I finally moved all my studies and subsequent research into the field of astrophysics. (more…)

TAEM- The Arts and Entertainment Magazine recently expanded our coverage of subjects that would interest the many college students who read our publication. We have added a Science section for the interest of our readership and first embarked on this by posting exciting interviews with astronomers David Levy and David Brin. We then began posting interviews with distinguished professors from George Mason University in Virginia, and USC and UCLA universities in California. We plan many new and exciting science articles and interviews in the near future.

 We would now like to turn our attention to what has spiked such interest in science. In the past few years the study and findings in the realm of Astronomy began with the discovery of new worlds outside of our own solar system. These are referred to as Exoplanets. We also have discovered so many new findings in our own solar system that interest in this subject have far surpassed our quests for knowledge since man first landed on the surface of the moon.

 Many amateur and professional astronomers began to group together to share their knowledge and findings. There is no greater group than the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club (or NOVAC) for these gatherings. The club boasts of over 1,100 members, the largest club of it’s size in the world. A California based club comes in at a distant second place with just over 800 members. Leading NOVAC is the new club president Phil Wherry. Phil, how did the club begin ?

PW- The Northern Virginia Astronomy Club was organized in 1980, and it went through incorporation formalities in 1991. (more…)

TAEM- This past month our publisher, Joseph J. O’Donnell, has offered a challenge to science professionals and enthusiasts to offer advice and guidance to NASA. This came about when we discovered a statement in another media source that stated that the agency seemed to be ‘Lost in Space’. Apparently NASA stated that there were no set programs for future space exploration. George Mason University in Northern Virginia was the first college to rise to the occasion to offer those needed boosts to the space agency.

On the staff of the university we found Dr. Bob Weigel of the Department of Computational and Data Sciences. Dr. Weigel, please tell our readers about your educational training and how this led to the courses that you teach.

NB: I am with the School of Physics, Astronomy, and Computational Sciences (SPACS; [http://spacs.gmu.edu/]).  The Department of Computational and Data Sciences combined with the Department of Physics and Astronomy to form SPACS. (more…)

TAEM- The Arts and Entertainment Magazine has the pleasure of introducing Professor Steven Furlanetto of UCLA to all of our student readers. Since the beginning of adding the ‘Science section’ to our magazine, we have been able to tap into the minds of the best experts for those science students who use our publication as a learning tool for their careers.

Steven, you presently teach both astronomy and Physics at UCLA. Please tell our student readers about your formal education.

SF- I received my undergraduate degree from Carleton College, a small liberal arts school in Northfield, MN. I majored in physics there, though I took the opportunity to take a broad range of courses. After that, I won a Churchill Scholarship to study theoretical physics at the University of Cambridge for one year, where I studied the “Part III Tripos” in mathematics. Then I moved to Harvard, where I received my Ph.D. (more…)