Natasha Hurley-Walker: How radio telescopes show us unseen galaxies
Natasha Hurley-Walker: Como os radiotelescópios nos mostram galáxias nunca vistas
Natasha Hurley-Walker uses novel radio telescopes to explore the universe at some of the longest wavelengths of light. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
when I was just six years old,
tinha apenas seis anos,
that the universe had to offer.
tinha para oferecer.
they took me on a journey,
levaram-me numa viagem,
to become a professional astronomer.
e finalmente tornar-me astrónoma.
a starship anytime soon.
num futuro próximo.
is strange, wonderful and vast,
é estranho, maravilhoso e vasto,
to be explored by spaceship.
para ser explorado numa nave espacial.
to astronomy, to using telescopes.
para a astronomia, usando telescópios.
an image of the night sky.
uma imagem do céu noturno.
of our local galaxy, the Milky Way.
da nossa galáxia local, a Via Láctea.
to a darker part of the sky,
mais escura do céu,
of our Milky Way galaxy
o centro da nossa galáxia
hundreds of billions of stars.
de milhares de milhões de estrelas.
a local corner of our universe.
um cantinho local do nosso universo.
a sort of strange dark dust across it.
de estranha poeira escura que o atravessa.
our little corner of the universe.
explorar o nosso cantinho do universo.
like the Hubble Space Telescope.
como o telescópio Hubble Space.
have put together this image.
observing just a tiny patch of the sky
observando apenas um fragmento do céu
com o braço estendido.
held at arm's length.
milhares de galáxias,
de milhões, milhares de milhões de galáxias
hundreds of millions, billions of galaxies
e outras muito diferentes.
I can continue this journey.
posso continuar esta viagem.
use a very powerful telescope
um telescópio muito poderoso
if we just do that.
se fizermos só isso
everything I've talked about so far
sobre o que falei até aqui
just the thing that your eyes can see,
apenas o que os olhos conseguem ver,
of what the universe has to offer us.
do que o universo tem para nos oferecer.
problems with using visible light.
problemas com o uso da luz visível.
on all the other processes
todos os outros processos
that I mentioned earlier.
que eu mencionei antes.
from getting to us.
de chegar a nós.
into the universe, we see less light.
mais profundamente, vemos menos luz.
with using visible light
com o uso da luz visível
a busy street corner.
numa esquina movimentada.
de intensidade
e se afasta de nós.
the siren just to mess with you.
a sirene só para nos confundir.
as the ambulance approached,
à medida que a ambulância se aproxima,
the sound waves were stretched,
as ondas sonoras esticam,
and they appear bluer.
e parecem mais azuis.
and they appear redder.
parecendo mais vermelhas.
blueshift and redshift.
desvio para o azul ou para o vermelho.
from everything else,
de tudo o resto,
everything appears to be red.
tudo parece ser vermelho.
more deeply into the universe,
olhando mais profundamente
are moving away further and faster,
a afastar-se cada vez mais depressa,
ao Campo Profundo do Hubble,
to peer deeply into the universe
profundamente o universo
uma certa distância,
you know, before the redshift kicks in.
antes do desvio para o vermelho.
using this for decades.
affectionately known as "The Dish."
designado afetuosamente por "Prato".
de modo muito mais profundo.
deixa de ser um problema
that receive across a large band.
que recebem em banda larga.
to the center of the Milky Way?
o apontamos para o centro da Via Láctea?
straight through dust, so not a problem.
por isso não há problema.
of the Milky Way is aglow,
da Via Láctea está incandescente,
synchrotron radiation,
radiação sincrotrónica,
spiraling around cosmic magnetic fields.
em torno de campos magnéticos cósmicos.
com esta luz.
strange tufts coming off of it,
estranhos tufos a sair dela,
with our own eyes.
interpret this image,
it's very low resolution.
é de muito baixa resolução.
um comprimento longo,
what is the color of everything in here.
qual é a cor de tudo aqui.
que podem ultrapassar estes problemas.
of the Murchison Radio Observatory,
do Observatório Rádio Murchison,
to build radio telescopes.
para construir radiotelescópios.
não tem interferências de rádio:
to build a radio telescope.
para montar um radiotelescópio.
working on for a few years
vindo a trabalhar há uns anos
a little time lapse of it being built.
temporal da sua montagem.
and postgraduate students
pré-licenciados e licenciados
to build a radio telescope.
para montar um radiotelescópio.
these radio dipoles.
a bit like your FM radio or your TV.
do tipo do vosso rádio FM ou TV.
across the desert.
pelo deserto.
covers 10 square kilometers
10 quilómetros quadrados
there's no moving parts.
não há partes móveis.
estas pequenas antenas
a partir das antenas
to central processing units.
de processamento central.
over the entire desert
por todo o deserto
resolution than Parkes.
que o Parkes.
bring them to a unit
levam esses sinais até uma unidade
to a supercomputer here in Perth,
aqui em Perth,
very interesting data
muito interessantes
observado antes.
on supercomputers
em supercomputadores
of the entire southern sky,
de todo o céu a sul,
All-sky MWA Survey,
and Extragalactic All-sky MWA,
but it hasn't been shown yet,
a ser publicada, mas ainda não foi,
of the entire sky.
some images from this survey.
convosco algumas imagens dela.
com a nossa pesquisa.
is no longer dark with dust.
já não está escuro com a poeira.
com a radiação sincrotrónica,
our nearest galactic neighbor,
a nossa galáctica vizinha mais próxima,
of its more familiar blue-white.
azul-esbranquiçado mais familiar.
Let's take a closer look.
Vamos olhar mais de perto.
towards the galactic center,
para o centro da galáxia,
that I showed you earlier,
a imagem Parkes, que vos mostrei antes,
has gone up by a factor of a hundred.
aumentou num fator de cem.
the lowest frequencies red
mais baixas a vermelho
tell us about the physical processes
falam-nos dos processos físicos
along the plane of the galaxy,
ao longo do plano da galáxia,
we see little blue dots.
vemos pequenos pontos azuis.
is that they block the red light,
elas bloqueiam a luz vermelha,
about these star-forming regions
estas regiões de formação estelar
and the color tells us that they're there.
e a cor diz-nos que estão lá.
around the galactic plane,
em torno do plano galáctico,
gathering up material,
mystery to astronomers
para os astrónomos
of high-energy electrons in the plane
muitos eletrões de alta energia no plano
radiation that we see,
que nós vemos,
by supernova remnants,
por restos de supernova,
good at detecting supernova remnants,
em detetar esses resquícios,
a new paper out on that soon.
sobre isso, em breve.
I wanted to go further.
quis ir mais longe.
interesting object in the top right,
bem interessante em cima do lado direito,
two huge plumes going out into space.
libertando-se para o espaço.
between those two plumes,
entre essas duas plumas,
are only visible in the radio.
só são visíveis no rádio.
we wouldn't even know they were there,
nem saberíamos que lá estavam,
than the host galaxy.
do que a galáxia que nos hospeda.
What's producing these jets?
O que produz estes jatos?
that we know about
que conhecemos,
That's why they're called that.
É por isso que se chamam assim.
of the light around them,
é a defleção da luz à sua volta
or a cloud of gas comes into their orbit,
ou uma nuvem de gás entra na sua órbita,
glows brightly in the x-rays,
brilha vivamente nos Raios X,
can launch the material into space
podem lançar o material para o espaço
na nossa pesquisa.
one radio galaxy. That's nice.
uma radiogaláxia. Muito giro.
at the top of that image,
para o topo da imagem,
and that's just because it's further away.
e isso é apenas porque está mais longe.
de anos-luz de distância
black hole at its center
no seu centro
at nearly the speed of light.
quase à velocidade da luz.
than what I've shown here.
do que o que vos mostrámos aqui.
the full extent of the survey,
até à totalidade da pesquisa,
of these radio galaxies.
destas radiogaláxias.
supermassive black holes.
buracos negros supermaciços.
and it will be published next week.
e será publicado para a semana.
of the galaxy with this survey,
da galáxia com esta pesquisa,
even more in this image.
to the dawn of time.
ao início dos tempos
it was a big bang,
foi uma grande explosão
as a sea of hydrogen,
como um mar de hidrogénio,
and galaxies switched on,
e galáxias se incendiaram,
from neutral to ionized.
de neutro a ionizado.
a toda a nossa volta.
is at very low frequencies.
tem frequências muito baixas.
que a minha pesquisa,
of any of the objects in my survey.
de qualquer objeto na minha pesquisa.
sensitive enough to pick up this signal.
sensível o suficiente para captar o sinal.
radiotelescópios do mundo.
radio telescopes in the world.
a new radio telescope,
um novo radiotelescópio,
times bigger than the MWA,
and have an even better resolution.
e ter ainda melhor resolução.
tens of millions of galaxies.
de milhões de galáxias.
stars and galaxies switching on,
e galáxias a incendiarem-se,
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Natasha Hurley-Walker - AstronomerNatasha Hurley-Walker uses novel radio telescopes to explore the universe at some of the longest wavelengths of light.
Why you should listen
Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker recently completed an astronomical survey of the entire southern sky, revealing the radio glow of our own Milky Way galaxy as well as hundreds of thousands of distant galaxies: the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array (GLEAM) survey. Unlike previous work, GLEAM is the first "radio color" survey, observed across such a wide range of frequencies that the unique spectrum of every object can be used to understand its underlying physics.
An Early-Career Research Fellow based at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, in Perth, Western Australia, Hurley-Walker is part of the international Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) collaboration, spanning thirteen institutes across six countries. At her fingertips are tens of petabytes of data collected by the MWA since 2013, which she processes using powerful supercomputers at the nearby Pawsey Centre. Hurley-Walker earned a PhD in Radio Astronomy at the University of Cambridge by commissioning and using a new radio telescope to perform its first science observations. The experience directly transferred to the MWA, which she also helped to commission.
The MWA is a precursor to the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), what will be the largest radio telescope in the world, set to come online in the 2020s. By developing software and techniques to deal with data from the MWA, creating pathfinding maps of the sky and training a new generation of astronomers in cutting-edge techniques, Hurley-Walker is working to lay the scientific groundwork for the commissioning of the SKA. In 2016 Hurley-Walker was awarded an Australian SKA Fellowship in order to visit the SKA headquarters and transfer lessons from her commissioning experiences as well as develop her survey into a useful calibration model for the SKA.
Hurley-Walker is passionate about scientific outreach and keynoted talks in 2013 and 2017 at Astrofest, Australia's largest public astronomy festival. So that anyone in the world can see the sky with the same radio eyes as her, she created the GLEAMoscope , an interactive online viewer that shows the universe at radio wavelengths compared to other frequencies, including the more familiar "optical" spectrum. It being the 21st century, there's also an app: check out GLEAM on the Google Play store. In 2017 Natasha won the "Best Timelapse" category in the Astofest astrophotography competition with her colleague John Goldsmith for their creation of a composite video showing both the optical and radio sky. For more detail on Hurley-Walker's work, check out her article on TheConversation.
Working with cutting-edge data is tough, but sometimes hides serendipitous gems which Hurley-Walker has unearthed, like the faintest dying radio galaxy ever discovered, whistling plasma ducts in the Earth's ionosphere and some of the youngest and weirdest radio galaxies ever found. View a complete list of Hurley-Walker's publications.
Natasha Hurley-Walker | Speaker | TED.com