Life On Other Planets
A Memoir of Finding My Place In the Universe
Aomawa Shields 2023 - Bvtn Lib 520.92 SHI
NO INDEX
https://faculty.sites.uci.edu/shields/ \ UC Irvine professional site
variablestargirl.com older
Thesis The Effect of Star-Planet Interactions on Planetary Climate
graduated Exeter 1993 18yo hence born ~1975
- Sc.B. Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences from MIT in 1997
- MFA Acting UCLA in 2001
- Ph.D. Astronomy and Astrobiology from the University of Washington in 2014
- U Cal Irvine in 2017
- Husband Steven
- 007 looked up at stars. 8yo, wanted to be a white Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader, then secretary
- 008 Mother PhD music theory prof at Amherst, estranged from envious family
- 009 Father also musician, parents invented name Aomawa Lalahie out of vowel sounds
- 010 parents divorced when Aomawa 2yo / then remarried: brother 10 years younger / remarried again: sister 21 years younger / toured Europe in 2010 and 2019
- 012 Mother professor, spent salary on expensive clothes, cosmetics, toys, not end-of-month food or trips
- 013 Grandmother Delphine 1930s math major at Tennessee State U. historically Black college
- 015 worked with numbers at Miramar Naval Air Station
016 Top Gun film, astrophysicist PhD teacher inspires young A.S.
- 018 World Book Encyclopedia at home
022 astronomy at Exeter, instructor Chris Harper
030 Exeter chamber orchestra violin, played Truvy in Exeter school play Steel Magnolias
033 parents met at Antioch, band Pyramids?? Idris Ackamoor??
- 034 A.S. disliked uncertainty ... and jazz
- 037 Challenger explosion during Exeter Junior year
040 understudy Barbara Morgan Teacher in Space, NSF women and minorities in science and engineering, leading to grants for Dr. Shields
- 042 graduation, won Perry cup
- 047 admitted early decision MIT
- 049 MIT course numbers 8 Physics, 12 EAPS Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
052 trouble with statistical mechanics partition function
052 Advisor Jim Elliot Uranus rings, Pluto atmosphere
053 Mass Ave Bridge 364.4 smoots Oliver Smoot 5 foot 7 inch
057 Jan MIT astronomy field camp to Lowell Observatory, Deidre Hunter
062 Five hour to bottom of Grand Canyon, Phantom Ranch
064 Summer internship at JPL (1994?) Observational Systems Group Mike Shao
- 064 Apollo anorthosite rocks dated Moon's age as 4.46GY (Earth 4.54GY), ejecta from Mars-sized impactor into Earth
065 Following summer (1995) w/ MIT Ron Remillard classifying hard X-ray sources
065 Following summer (1996) w/ Arecibo Mike Nolan, prep for Hurricane Bertha
068 Burchard Scholar, one of 35 students, yearlong humanities enrichment
069 Acapella group, pi to 15(?) decimal places
- 070 read plays, "air of pretension",
071 Senior thesis, paper with Bruce Elmegreen The relationship between gas, stars, and star formation in irregular galaxies: A test of simple models Accepted 1997, APJ 1998 Feb 1
072 late summer 1997 Eric Wilcots Linda Sparke U Wis Madison
- 075 two bedroom bug-infested top floor of house, $600/mo. out of $1000/mo stipend age 22
076 daydreamed of Zora Neale Hurston biopic acting, aced atomic physics, poor astrophysics grades
- 079 applied to acting graduate schools, failed audition in Denver . 082 invited to (underfunded) UCLA acting program
- 083 "reached out to Deidre for support" ... Deidre Hunter pp 57-60
- 084 "pots and pans sent by Nancy" from Madison ... Nancy who? Astronomy grad student at Madison. Why mention name? There are 2.2 MILLION Nancy's in the US.
- 086 "In graduate school for acting, I came alive" . 87 dept.chair Mel Shapiro 088 screechy violin "concerto"
088 One Song Glory
- 089 Learned accents and postures and movement .
- 090 Yearly faculty review, wore blazer instead of sweatpants, admonished, got mad, cry-yelled at instructors
- 091 showcase before agents
- 091 one person show for master's thesis project: chalkboard astronomy with famous lines from movies, as if Tourettes
- 092 Meets Steven ( Last ?) from Nebraska .94 Marry six years after first date .95 smoker, father's emphysema, stopped
- 098 no work, arguments with Steve, penny pinching and splurges
- 100 temp jobs, data entry, scanning documents
101 Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg
102 with Kara Literati Cafe . Urth Caffe . Bodhi Tree
103 Natalie retreat Taos Mabel Dodge Luhan House
- 106 assistant at cultural center in LA
106 needed Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) card for minor role in Nine Lives
- 108 Premiere at Sundance Film Festival ... .109 looked up at bright star, .110 "silent shockwave"
111 Deidre Hunter suggests jobs posted at IPAC website
111 new job, desk operator for Spitzer Space Telescope
112 pilot episode for Wired Science, 10 more episodes by others, boo hiss
- 113 Scientist astronaut candidate? Physical trainer Mike, LASIK (no more contact lenses), no PhD, no callback
- 115 feeling age at 32
116 Dwarf Planets! Eris
116 "... something else was found -- another object, called Ceres ... about 500km diameter"
WFT??? Ceres is in the asteroid belt, discovered in 1801 by Piazzi. Which ANOTHER object?
118 Shields says none of this dwarf business Tara Mohr Playing Big
- yahbut - how many of these small bodies do we expect school children to memorize? 7 moons (including Luna) are larger than Pluto. Eris is 98% as large, and there may be a crapton of larger objects far beyond the Kuiper belt. Pluto had it coming.
- 119 promoted from help desk to scheduler for Observation Planning and Scheduling Team for Spitzer
- 120 Neil deGrasse Tyson said PhD was the missing ingredient for street cred
- 122 Long conversation with Neil at AAS meeting, had already written a letter of introduction for Shields
- 123 called by UW astronomy department chair, gotten in.
125 used to get Jheri curl, many hours and hard to maintain
- 127 tired of the Wave Nouveaus, hair stylist recovered "original" hair
- 131 fall 2009 age 34 returned to grad school (at UW) after 11 year absence, "no end of work" compared to undergrad
- 132 13 courses in 2 years, dual astrobiology and astronomy, focus on small planets, perhaps with life
- 133 followed by 6 hour exam
134 asked 'Kartic' for suggestions, who said
- "Research Teaching Coursework", one may fail, put weight on the other two, reinforce with personal life
- 134 Kepler telescope. after 2 of 4 reaction wheels failed, mission K2 centered on ecliptic plane, from 2013 to 2018
- 137 flustered by question about Iapetus rotation during journal club talk
- 140 officemates Amy and Jillian praised her delivery
141 prof Eric Agol suggested taking a few seconds to respond
- 141 Support systems: Process Group Therapy, mentorships, theater background as superpower
144 Mary Oliver Don't wait forever, because forever isn't that long.
- 145 600 to 800 MYA, snowball Earth .146 perhaps too much land at equator, plants sequestering CO₂
- 146 until subduction and volcanos returned CO₂ to atmosphere
- 147 but why not ice-albedo feedback? mystery
- 148-150 Seattle settling in .151-152 Taos retreat
- 151 "Nefertiti with a Calculator" in UW lit. mag. "Bricolage", not available online
- 153-160 End of second year, disciplined practice for qualifying exams
Advisors Victoria Meadows Cecilia Blitz
Dissertation: The Effect of Star-Planet Interactions on Planetary Climate
- 170 Nichelle Nichols considered leaving Star Trek, Martin Luther King asked her to stay
172 Climate of earth-sized exoplanets .173 A Pail of Air Fritz Leiber
- 175 3D GCM Global Climate Models
176 Glaciologist Steven Warren published albedo models for every kind of ice
- 177 simulated Earth model with different stellar spectra
- 178 "cooler" stars (more infrared) heat model Earth more than Sol does
178 Most cited first author paper 2016 The habitability of planets orbiting M-dwarf stars
180 Eric Agol Kepler-62f 1.4x earth size habitable zone
183 John Asher Johnson Harvard exoplanets
185 Thesis The Effect of Star-Planet Interactions on Planetary Climate
187 Hike to Little Si Peak 47.49864N -121.75608W
193 mentor Sarah Ballard
- 195-198 astronomy workshop for "brown" teen girls
- 200 2014, 15th black woman to earn astro PhD, 160th including physics related
- 205 M-dwarf stars tidelock habitable zone planets, perhaps life around terminator
- 206 M-dwarf stars spew XUV . .209 TED Fellow . .215 decide to have kids
217 Geoffrey Marcy sexual harassment judgement (not named in book)
- 225 After TED fellow, hired a 5h/wk assistant to field requests.
230 2016 M-dwarf TRAPPIST-1 at least seven planets
- 233 her first postdoc publishes paper about possible climates
- 234-246 Pregnancy p247 2017/11/16 daughter Garland-Rose Delphine Shields
250 Hydrohalite makes exoplanets colder
- 251-253 balancing motherhood and academics .254 "Mommy will be done soon"
256-261 child bedtime, then brief binocular view of Comet NEOWISE
- 271 "I don't believe I will truly accept or understand how big the universe is until I know that other lifeforms share it."
271 ʻOumuamua
- 281 early tenure, imposter syndrome
- 283 2020/09 COVID, quarantine, classes via Zoom
- 286 student exercise, naive calculated mean temperature 255K, actual 288K, difference greenhouse effect
292-302 God musings, 297 Ann Druyan wants to meet
- .. -315 more musings