[MUSIC PLAYING] NIA IMARA: I think that art and science are two different ways of looking at the world, and I think the greatest lessons of astronomy for me is that it really shows us that we're united. We all come from the stars, quite literally.

D PETERSCHMIDT: Hi. Welcome to Universe of Art, a podcast from Science Friday and WNYC Studios about artists who use science to bring their work to the next level. I'm Science Friday producer D Peterschmidt.

Do you remember when the JWST telescope put out those incredible images of space about a year ago, these huge swirling sparkly clouds filled with millions of stars bursting with color? They were so detailed that, to me, I felt like I could almost reach out and touch them. Well, today's episode features an interview with astrophysicist and visual artist Dr. Nia Amara, who is basically able to do that and brought a slice of the galaxy to the palm of her hand.

But before we go into detail about how she did that, I'm here with the producer of that segment, Rasha Aridi. What's up, Rasha?

RASHA ARIDI: Hey, how's it going?

D PETERSCHMIDT: I'm good. How are you?

RASHA ARIDI: Doing well.

D PETERSCHMIDT: So how did you come across this segment? How did it come across your radar?

RASHA ARIDI: Yeah, so I really love Quantum Magazine. It's an online magazine all about science and math. And I came across this really cool Q&A by writer Zach Savitsky, and it was an interview with Dr. Nia Amara, who's an astrophysicist. And she's holding in the lead photo this beautiful, like tennis ball-sized marble. It's all swirly, and the colors are really cool and muted.

And when I read the caption, it was her holding a stellar nursery, the place in space where stars are born in her hand. And I was like, oh man, how did she do this?

D PETERSCHMIDT: [LAUGHS] What I really love about this story and why it's such a great sci-art story is Nia's making these 3D printed models of these stellar nurseries, which she's studying, and they actually helped her understand her own field more, which I loved. Yeah, what did you make of that connection there?

RASHA ARIDI: Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of time when we talk about sci arts, we see how science has made its way into art, like a museum gallery built around fungi or the science in science fiction films and TV. But here, it was really cool to see how she was studying the art that she made using the data that she collected, and by doing that, she could understand her science a little bit better. So it was looking to the art for a new perspective, a new way to think about science that I thought was really cool instead of it kind of being a one-way flow from science into art.

D PETERSCHMIDT: I assume you saw a lot of photos of these little stellar nursery models that she made. Was there one in particular of a particular nebula or nursery that you're like, oh my God, I'd really love to have that as like decoration in my room or whatever?

RASHA ARIDI: Yeah, oh my gosh, all of them. In the interview with Quanta, she talked about the Carina Nebula. And right around that time was when JWST took those beautiful, stunning, sharp photos of the Carina Nebula. And I was like, oh man, I would love to hold that in my hand, because my beef with space, honestly, is that it makes no sense to me.

I can't wrap my mind around space ever. The time scale, the size, I just-- I don't understand it. So I feel like if I could hold this thing that is so beautiful to look at, maybe space will not seem so daunting and confusing to me.

D PETERSCHMIDT: Totally. I don't know why I'm just making this connection now, but this is totally like the end of Men in Black, where the aliens have all the marbles of the different galaxies and everything.

RASHA ARIDI: Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

D PETERSCHMIDT: Did that ever come up in the interview, the pre-interview, or anything like that?

RASHA ARIDI: No. I don't know if she picked up on this either because we never talked about it. But the way she did get this idea was actually through her art as well. She painted a self-portrait of her holding a galaxy in her hand.

And then she was like, what if I could actually do that? And then she did.

D PETERSCHMIDT: That's so cool.

RASHA ARIDI: So that's how that came about. Yeah.

D PETERSCHMIDT: Cool. Well, let's listen to the segment. Thanks, Rasha.

RASHA ARIDI: Sure. Thanks, D.

D PETERSCHMIDT: And here's Science Friday host Ira Flatow with astrophysicist and visual artist Nia Imara.

IRA FLATOW: Astronomers and astrophysicists have a bit of a tricky job, since they can't exactly get up close and personal with the stars or deep space they work with. But what if I told you they could virtually hold part of the galaxy in their hands or peer into an orb and see the birthplace of stars? By combining astrophysics and art, that's exactly what my next guest does.

Dr. Nia Imara is a visual artist and assistant professor of astronomy at UC Santa Cruz, based in Santa Cruz, California. Nia, welcome to Science Friday.

NIA IMARA: Thanks so much, Ira. I'm really glad to be here.

IRA FLATOW: So to help you answer these big questions about the universe and stars, you create spheres that hold part of the galaxy? Wow. Can you describe how they look and what they represent?

NIA IMARA: So I describe these as sort of giant marbles, or even sort of like crystal balls. These spheres are about eight centimeters in diameter, a little smaller than a softball. So you can hold them in the palm of your hand.

And they represent stellar nurseries. They represent the space between the stars, where stars are born. I am a painter, in addition to being an astronomer. And years ago, I created this self-portrait where I'm touching the stars. And it was years later where I suddenly had the idea-- why not actually try to touch the stars, or at least the birthplaces of stars to try to understand them better?

IRA FLATOW: How do you study these stellar nurseries? And how do you collect the data to know what to put into these spheres?

NIA IMARA: So many of our observations of stellar nurseries come from radio telescopes and infrared telescopes. Much of the physical information that we have about these environments comes directly from these observations and what we infer from these observations. And so we can take these ingredients and sort of put them into the computer codes that we use to ultimately create the orbs that are used to represent the stellar nurseries.

IRA FLATOW: I'd love to dive in to how you make them, but first I want to learn more about what you can learn from studying stellar nurseries.

NIA IMARA: These are where stars are born, and one of the most important questions in modern astrophysics is to understand the life cycle of stars. And that really begins in stellar nurseries, or as astronomers call them, giant molecular clouds. So these stellar nurseries or molecular clouds, they exist throughout our galaxy and throughout most other galaxies in the universe.

And so we would really like to understand how they evolve, how their evolution leads to the formation of stars, so we can have a more comprehensive view not only of star formation but how galaxies themselves evolve.

IRA FLATOW: So you take this one stellar nursery, and you make it into one sphere. Right? And it ends up being this beautiful orb with swirls of blues, and grays, and browns. And it really feels like you're peering into space.

Now, how do you use the data to make those orbs? Do you 3D print them?

NIA IMARA: Exactly. And so I had the idea that because these environments are so complex, if you look at these beautiful pictures of the Carina Nebula, for instance, that just came from the James Webb Space Telescope, you can see how intricate and complex they are. And so I had the idea that in order to visualize them in a different way and to really get a grip of these complex environments and how that relates to star formation, why not make a three-dimensional model of these environments?

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D PETERSCHMIDT: That's Science Friday host Ira Flatow talking with astrophysicist and visual artist Nia Imara. And we'll be right back.

IRA FLATOW: Does it really help to actually hold something in your hand? Does that really add new information for you?

NIA IMARA: Absolutely. We're learning quite a bit from these prints. I sort like to think of them as interactive simulations. Astronomers learn a lot about simulations because they allow us to look at all sides of a physical object. They allow us to see how time elapses and sort of witness the evolution of various phenomenon and objects in a compressed time.

And so humans are great at pattern recognition. And with a three-dimensional object in our hand, we're able to perceive certain patterns and notice connections that we don't necessarily see on a two-dimensional computer screen or a piece of paper. And so we're learning quite a bit about the complexity of these environments and how the physical structure of stellar nurseries ultimately leads to the formation of stars.

IRA FLATOW: God. That's so interesting. Can you walk me through the process of creating these orbs step by step?

NIA IMARA: The idea is we would like to visualize these objects in their full three dimensions. And so we take these ingredients that we have, all of the physics about gravity and magnetic fields, and we code that into a computer simulation. And so the simulations are representing the interstellar medium, the space between stars.

Once the simulation is finished, we take that information from the simulation, which includes basically the physical structure of the environment, how the density of the gas and dust that makes up a stellar industry-- how that material is distributed. We put that information into a form that a 3D printer can understand. And then finally, we feed that information into the 3D printer, and it prints layer by layer that information from the computer simulation. And the output is one of these 3D prints, one of these orbs that represents a vast stellar nursery that could be hundreds of light years across that we can now hold in the palm of her hand.

IRA FLATOW: Do you feel something special when you're holding one of these in your hand, like you've entered another dimension?

NIA IMARA: It does feel special. I think the wonderful thing about astronomy is that it's very humbling. And on the one hand, it really speaks to the power of human imagination and the power of the human mind to conceptualize these sorts of things.

And on the other hand, it's very humbling because we know that, as cool as these spheres are, they don't necessarily represent the absolute truth. And there's so much more for us to learn. And so they open up quite a few questions, perhaps opening more questions than we started out with.

IRA FLATOW: Do you have an example of something that you learned that you would not have noticed in a 2D image?

NIA IMARA: One of the things that we know from two-dimensional images is that stars are born within certain regions of stellar nurseries. And in particular, they're born in the densest regions where the gas and the dust is the most compact and dense. However, we can't get a full idea of what's happening into the depth of these stellar nurseries just based on these flat images.

And so for instance, we see these long, skinny, very dense structures where stars seem to prefer to be born. And they seem sort of long, skinny cigars or pieces of licorice that sort wind their way through the cloud. When we see these similar objects in a three-dimensional print, oftentimes they're actually sheets, so sort of two-dimensional flat structures, more like pancakes, let's say, that are viewed in projection.

And so this raises the tantalizing idea that perhaps filaments emerge from sheet-like structures and that the evolution from the beginning stages of a molecular cloud to a star may be more complex than we had envisioned.

IRA FLATOW: That is very interesting. If you step back a little bit and look at the larger, I guess, concept and idea of what you were doing, the intersection of art and science, it sounds like this is very important to you.

NIA IMARA: I think that art and science are two different ways of looking at the world. And we often pose very similar questions as artists and scientists. The question that unites these two fields for me is really about where we come from, where people come from.

And I think the greatest lessons of astronomy for me is that it really shows us that we're united. We all come from the stars, quite literally.

IRA FLATOW: I'm fascinated by your work, and it would be great to see you continue what you're doing.

NIA IMARA: Thank you.

IRA FLATOW: Dr. Nia Imara is a visual artist and assistant professor of astronomy at UC Santa Cruz, based in Santa Cruz, California.

D PETERSCHMIDT: You can check out the globes that Nia Imara made at sciencefriday.com/spaceglobes.

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And before we go, if you're a fan of books and book clubs, I want to tell you about our new Science Friday book club pick, The Possibility of Life-- Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos, written by Jaime Green. And it shares a lot in common with the DNA of this podcast.

It's an investigation into how science fiction has influenced our science reality and how pop culture helps us imagine life elsewhere in our universe. We'll also have a livestream Q&A with the author that you can attend for free on Wednesday, May 24th. You can find out more about both those things at sciencefriday.com/bookclub.

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Universe of Art is hosted and produced by me, D Peter-Schmidt, and I also wrote the theme music. Charles Bergquist and John Dankosky provided production assistance, and our show art is illustrated by Abelle Hayford. The segment you just heard was originally produced by Science Friday producer Rasha Aridi, with Ira Flatow hosting.

And support for Science Friday's science and arts coverage comes from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Also, if you have an idea for a future episode of Universe of Art, send us an email or a voice memo to universe@sciencefriday.com. We'll be back in two weeks. See ya.

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