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In 1987, a Chilean engineer
named Oscar Duhalde

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became the only
living person on the planet

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to discover a rare astronomical event

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with the naked eye.

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Oscar was a telescope operator
at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.

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He worked with the astronomers who came
to the observatory for their research,

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running the telescopes and processing
the data that they took.

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On the night of February 24th,

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Oscar stepped outside for a break

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and looked up at the night sky
and he saw this.

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This is the Large Magellanic Cloud.

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It's a satellite galaxy very near
our own Milky Way.

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But on that February night,

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Oscar noticed that something
was different about this galaxy.

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It didn't quite look like this.

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It looked like this.

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Did you see it?

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(Laughter)

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A small point of light had appeared
in one corner of this galaxy.

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So to explain how amazing it is
that Oscar noticed this,

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we need to zoom out a bit

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and look at what the southern
sky in Chile looks like.

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The Large Magellanic Cloud
is right in the middle of that image,

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but despite its name, it's really small.

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Imagine trying to notice
one single new point of light

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appearing in that galaxy.

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Oscar was able to do this

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because he had the Large Magellanic Cloud
essentially memorized.

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He had worked on data
from this galaxy for years,

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poring over night after night
of observations

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and doing it by hand,

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because Oscar had begun
his work in astronomy

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at a time when we stored all of the data
that we observed from the universe

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on fragile sheets of glass.

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I know that today's theme is "Moonshot,"

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and as an astronomer, I figured
I could start us out nice and literally,

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so here's a shot of the Moon.

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(Laughter)

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It's a familiar sight to all of us,
but there's a couple of unusual things

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about this particular image.

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For one, I flipped the colors.

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It originally looked like this.

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And if we zoom out, we can see
how this picture was taken.

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This is a photograph
of the Moon taken in 1894

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on a glass photographic plate.

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This was the technology that astronomers
had available for decades

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to store the observations
that we took of the night sky.

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I've actually brought an example
of a glass plate to show you.

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So this looks like a real secure way
to store our data.

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These photographic plates
were incredibly difficult to work with.

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One side of them was treated
with a chemical emulsion that would darken

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when it was exposed to light.

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This is how these plates were able
to store the pictures that they took,

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but it meant that astronomers
had to work with these plates in darkness.

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The plates had to be cut
to a specific size

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so that they could fit
into the camera of a telescope.

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So astronomers would take
razor-sharp cutting tools

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and slice these tiny pieces of glass,

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all in the dark.

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Astronomers also had all kinds of tricks
that they would use

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to make the plates
respond to light a little faster.

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They would bake them or freeze them,
they would soak them in ammonia,

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or they'd coat them with lemon juice --

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all in the dark.

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Then astronomers would take
these carefully designed plates

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to the telescope

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and load them into the camera.

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They had to be loaded with that
chemically emulsified side pointed out

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so that the light would hit it.

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But in the dark, it was almost impossible
to tell which side was the right one.

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Astronomers got into the habit
of tapping a plate to their lips,

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or, like, licking it, to see
which side of the plate was sticky

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and therefore coated with the emulsion.

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And then when they actually
put it into the camera,

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there was one last challenge.

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In this picture behind me,

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you can see that the plate
the astronomer is holding

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is very slightly curved.

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Sometimes plates had to be bent
to fit into a telescope's camera,

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so you would take this carefully cut,
meticulously treated, very babied plate

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up to a telescope, and then you'd just ...

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So sometimes that would work.
Sometimes they would snap.

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But it would usually end
with the [plate] loaded into a camera

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on the back of a telescope.

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You could then point that telescope

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to whatever patch of sky
you wanted to study,

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open the camera shutter,

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and begin capturing data.

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Now, astronomers couldn't just
walk away from the camera

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once they'd done this.

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They had to stay with that camera
for as long as they were observing.

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This meant that astronomers
would get into elevators

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attached to the side
of the telescope domes.

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They would ride the elevator
high into the building

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and then climb into
the top of the telescope

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and stay there all night
shivering in the cold,

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transferring plates
in and out of the camera,

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opening and closing the shutter

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and pointing the telescope
to whatever piece of sky

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they wanted to study.

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These astronomers worked with operators
who would stay on the ground.

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And they would do things
like turn the dome itself

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and make sure the rest
of the telescope was running.

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It was a system that usually
worked pretty well,

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but once in a while,
things would go wrong.

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There was an astronomer observing
a very complicated plate

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at this observatory,
the Lick Observatory here in California.

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He was sitting at the top
of that yellow structure

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that you see in the dome
on the lower right,

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and he'd been exposing
one glass plate to the sky for hours,

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crouched down and cold

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and keeping the telescope
perfectly pointed

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so he could take this precious
picture of the universe.

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His operator wandered
into the dome at one point

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just to check on him
and see how things were going.

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And as the operator stepped through
the door of the dome,

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he brushed against the wall
and flipped the light switch in the dome.

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So the lights came blazing on
and flooding into the telescope

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and ruining the plate,

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and there was then this howl
from the top of the telescope.

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The astronomer started yelling
and cursing and saying,

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"What have you done?
You've destroyed so much hard work.

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I'm going to get down
from this telescope and kill you!"

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So he then starts moving the telescope

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about this fast --

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(Laughter)

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toward the elevator

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so that he can climb down
and make good on his threats.

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Now, as he's approaching the elevator,

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the elevator then suddenly
starts spinning away from him,

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because remember, the astronomer
can control the telescope,

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but the operator can control the dome.

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(Laughter)

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And the operator is looking up, going,

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"He seems really mad. I might not want
to let him down until he's less murdery."

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So the end is this absurd
slow-motion game of chase

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with the lights on and the dome
just spinning around and around.

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It must have looked completely ridiculous.

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When I tell people about using
photographic plates to study the universe,

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it does sound ridiculous.

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It's a little absurd

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to take what seems like a primitive tool
for studying the universe

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and say, well, we're going
to dunk this in lemon juice, lick it,

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stick it in the telescope,
shiver next to it for a few hours

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and solve the mysteries of the cosmos.

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In reality, though,
that's exactly what we did.

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I showed you this picture before

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of an astronomer perched
at the top of a telescope.

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What I didn't tell you
is who this astronomer is.

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This is Edwin Hubble,

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and Hubble used photographic plates

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to completely change
our entire understanding

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of how big the universe is
and how it works.

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This is a plate
that Hubble took back in 1923

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of an object known at the time
as the Andromeda Nebula.

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You can see in the upper
right of that image

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that Hubble has labeled a star
with this bright red word, "Var!"

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He's even put an exclamation
point next to it.

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"Var" here stands for "variable."

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Hubble had found a variable star
in the Andromeda Nebula.

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Its brightness changed,

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getting brighter and dimmer
as a function of time.

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Hubble knew that if he studied
how that star changed with time,

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he could measure the distance
to the Andromeda Nebula,

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and when he did,
the results were astonishing.

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He discovered that this was not,
in fact, a nebula.

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This was the Andromeda Galaxy,

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an entire separate galaxy
two and a half million light years

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beyond our own Milky Way.

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This was the first evidence
of other galaxies

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existing in the universe beyond our own,

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and it totally changed our understanding
of how big the universe was

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and what it contained.

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So now we can look at
what telescopes can do today.

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This is a modern-day picture
of the Andromeda Galaxy,

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and it looks just like
the telescope photos

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that we all love to enjoy and look at:

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it's colorful and detailed and beautiful.

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We now store data like this digitally,

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and we take it using
telescopes like these.

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So this is me standing underneath
a telescope with a mirror

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that's 26 feet across.

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Bigger telescope mirrors let us take
sharper and clearer images,

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and they also make it
easier for us to gather light

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from faint and faraway objects.

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So a bigger telescope literally
gives us a farther reach

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into the universe,

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looking at things that we
couldn't have seen before.

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We're also no longer strapped
to the telescope

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when we do our observations.

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This is me during
my very first observing trip

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at a telescope in Arizona.

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I'm opening the dome of the telescope,

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but I'm not on top
of the telescope to do it.

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I'm sitting in a room
off to the side of the dome,

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nice and warm and on the ground

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and running the telescope from afar.

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"Afar" can get pretty extreme.

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Sometimes we don't even need
to go to telescopes anymore.

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This is a telescope in New Mexico
that I use for my research all the time,

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but I can run it with my laptop.

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I can sit on my couch in Seattle

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and send commands from my laptop

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telling the telescope where to point,

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when to open and close the shutter,

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what pictures I want it
to take of the universe --

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all from many states away.

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So the way that we operate
telescopes has really changed,

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but the questions we're trying to answer
about the universe

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have remained the same.

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One of the big questions still focuses
on how things change in the night sky,

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and the changing sky was exactly
what Oscar Duhalde saw

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when he looked up
with the naked eye in 1987.

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This point of light that he saw appearing
in the Large Magellanic Cloud

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turned out to be a supernova.

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This was the first naked-eye supernova

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seen from Earth in more than 400 years.

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This is pretty cool,

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but a couple of you might
be looking at this image and going,

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"Really? I've heard of supernovae.

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They're supposed to be spectacular,

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and this is just like a dot
that appeared in the sky."

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It's true that when you hear
the description of what a supernova is

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it sounds really epic.

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They're these brilliant, explosive deaths
of enormous, massive stars,

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and they shoot energy
out into the universe,

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and they spew material out into space,

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and they sound, like, noticeable.

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They sound really obvious.

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The whole trick about
what a supernova looks like

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has to do with where it is.

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If a star were to die as a supernova

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right in our backyard in the Milky Way,
a few hundred light years away --

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"backyard" in astronomy terms --

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it would be incredibly bright.

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We would be able to see
that supernova at night

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as bright as the Moon.

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We would be able to read by its light.

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Everybody would wind up taking photos
of this supernova on their phone.

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It would be on headlines
all over the world.

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It would for sure get a hashtag.

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It would be impossible to miss
that a supernova had happened so nearby.

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But the supernova that Oscar observed

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didn't happen a few hundred
light years away.

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This supernova happened
170,000 light years away,

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which is why instead of an epic explosion,

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it appears as a little dot.

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This was still unbelievably exciting.

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It was still visible with the naked eye,

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and the most spectacular supernova

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that we've seen since
the invention of the telescope.

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But it gives you a better sense
of what most supernovae look like.

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We still discover and study
supernovae all the time today,

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but we do it in distant galaxies
using powerful telescopes.

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We photograph the galaxy multiple times,

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and we look for something that's changed.

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We look for that little
pinprick of light appearing

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that tells us that a star has died.

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We can learn a great deal
about the universe and about stars

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from supernovae,

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but we don't want to leave
studying them up to chance.

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We don't want to count on
happening to look up at the right time

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or pointing our telescope
at the right galaxy.

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What we ideally want is a telescope

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that can systematically
and computationally

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do what Oscar did with his mind.

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Oscar was able to discover this supernova

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because he had that galaxy memorized.

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With digital data,

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we can effectively memorize
every piece of the sky that we look at,

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compare old and new observations

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and look for anything that's changed.

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This is the Vera Rubin Observatory

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in Chile.

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Now, when I visited it back in March,
it was still under construction.

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But this telescope
will begin observations next year,

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and when it does,

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it will carry out a simple
but spectacular observing program.

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This telescope will photograph
the entire southern sky

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every few days

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over and over,

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following a preset pattern

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for 10 years.

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Computers and algorithms
affiliated with the observatory

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will then compare every pair of images
taken of the same patch of sky,

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looking for anything
that's gotten brighter or dimmer,

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like a variable star,

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or looking for anything that's appeared,

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like a supernova.

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Right now, we discover about
a thousand supernovae every year.

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The Rubin Observatory will be capable
of discovering a thousand supernovae

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every night.

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It's going to dramatically change
the face of astronomy

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and of how we study things
that change in the sky,

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and it will do all of this

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largely without much
human intervention at all.

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It will follow that preset pattern

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and computationally find
anything that's changed or appeared.

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This might sound a little sad at first,

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this idea that we're removing
people from stargazing.

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But in reality,

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our role as astronomers
isn't disappearing,

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it's just moving.

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We've already seen
how we do our jobs change.

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We've gone from perching atop telescopes

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to sitting next to them

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to not even needing to go to them
or send them commands at all.

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Where astronomers still shine

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is in asking questions
and working with the data.

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Gathering data is only the first step.

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Analyzing it is where we can really apply
what we know about the universe.

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Human curiosity is what makes us
ask questions like:

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How big is the universe?
How did it begin?

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How's it going to end? And are we alone?

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So this is the power that humans
are still able to bring to astronomy.

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So compare the capabilities
of a telescope like this

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with the observations
that we were able to take like this.

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We discovered amazing things
with glass plates,

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but discovery looks different today.

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00:14:43,064 --> 00:14:45,777
The way we do astronomy
looks different today.

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What hasn't changed
is that seed of human curiosity.

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If we can harness the power
of tomorrow's technology

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and combine it with this drive
that we all have to look up

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and to ask questions
about what we see there,

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we'll be ready to learn
some incredible new things

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about the universe.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)