Evolver social movement & the Hive to Thrive speaker series hosted Harvard University director of astronomy Avi Loeb for a wide ranging discussion. From the nature of scientific discovery to possible origins of FRBs (Fast Radio Bursts)...

"An Earth-sized planet next door: that was the startling announcement last August. Astronomers had found an exoplanet orbiting the sun’s closest stellar neigh- bor, a cool red dwarf star called Proxima Centauri (1). Even better, the nearby world orbited within its parent star’s habitable zone, meaning liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface, which raised the prospects for its harboring life."

Read More:

• All eyes on Proxima Centauri b: http://www.pnas.org/content/114/26/6646.full.pdf
• Is there life around the nearest stars?: ...

Press coverage of a new paper in Scientific American: A new study sheds light on how damaging black holes can be to the habitability of planets throughout the Milky Way and the universe.

Link: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ravenous-supermassive-black-holes-may-sterilize-nearby-planets/

Astrobites: https://astrobites.org/2017/05/30/blown-away-by-black-holes-losing-planetary-atmospheres-to-quasar-radiation/

Image: This artist’s conception of a distant quasar shows how luminous they can be—an effect...

Listen to Hannah Devlin interview with Avi Loeb. 

https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2017/apr/20/breakthrough-starshot-getting-to-proxima-centauri-b-science-weekly-podcast

Read an interview with Dava Sobel about her book the Glass Universe about the Harvard College Observatory. 

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/star-analysts-of-harvard-college-observatory-inspired-new-book-by-dava-sobel/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=04.12.2017%20(1)

Local public radio station WBUR recently broadcast a segment about the Watertown play Silent Sky  about the Harvard College Observatory "computers:" Meredith Hughes (PhD 2010) is interviewed at the end of the segment about her great-grandmother, a  former head computer at Lockheed Martin. ...

"As the Faculty of Arts and Sciences works to address a “concerning” lack of diversity in the body, some have turned to astronomy professor John A. Johnson’s efforts as an example of creating opportunities for historically underrepresented minorities.

"Johnson...

Harvard Graduate student Marion Dierickx recent paper featured:

"The 11 farthest known stars in our galaxy are located about 300,000 light-years from Earth, well outside the Milky Way's spiral disk. New research by Harvard astronomers shows that half of those stars might have been ripped from another galaxy: the Sagittarius dwarf. Moreover, they are members of a lengthy stream of stars extending one million light-years across space, or 10 times the width of our galaxy."

Read more at: ...

Watch White House Fellow and Harvard Astronomy Graduate Student Anjali Tripathi's featured TED talk entitled "Why Earth May Someday Look like Mars"

http://www.ted.com/talks/anjali_tripathi_why_earth_may_someday_look_like_mars

"A vibrant scientific culture encourages many interpretations of evidence, argues Avi Loeb.

Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/good-data-are-not-enough-1.20906

The Harvard Astronomy department endorses the Code of Ethics of the American Astronomical Society and abides by its guiding principles.

Harvard graduate student and astrophysicist Anjali Tripathi has been named a White House Fellow for 2016-17. She is one of 16 Fellows selected from more than 1,000 applicants.  Tripathi's biography and additional information are in the White House announcement.   CFA press release: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/fe201620

Other press coverage:...

• arXive Paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1608.07345v1.pdf
• Gizmodo: "Astronomer Avi Loeb Is Here to Talk to You About Exoplanets"
  
• NY Times: “...

"Our Earth consists of silicate rocks and an iron core with a thin veneer of water and life. But the first potentially habitable worlds to form might have been very different. New research suggests that planet formation in the early universe might have created carbon planets consisting of graphite, carbides, and diamond. Astronomers might find these diamond worlds by searching a rare class of stars.

"'This work shows that even stars with a tiny fraction of the carbon in our solar system can host planets,' says lead author and Harvard University graduate student Natalie Mashian....

Dr. Wen-fai Fong, who completed her doctoral thesis in 2014 with Prof. Edo Berger, was awarded the 2016 Outstanding Doctoral Thesis in Astrophysics Prize from the American Physical Society Division of Astrophysics.  Dr. Fong's thesis was titled "Unveiling the Progenitors of Short Gamma-ray Bursts".  Information about the award is available from: https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/dissertation/astrophysics.cfm and a short bio for Dr. Fong is available from: https://www.aps.org/programs/honors/prizes/prizerecipient.cfm?last_nm=Fong&first_nm=Wen-fai&year=2016