Final Post

It's been about a month since this blog was opened, and I began to track Gaspar Bakos' accomplishments and interactions with others across the internet. From this I have gained an understanding of the breadth of the interconnection involved in being a successful scientist.

Beyond what I discussed here, I also found transcripts of emails, and what may have been his profile on some photography sites. I would have included those, since I felt they were correct, but, it's never good to assume that anything is exactly what they seem on the internet. Since there wasn't enough information to prove that it was in fact the astronomer Gaspar Bakos, I decided to never formally discuss it.


But the main part of this exercise was to see how scientists work, in publishing their articles, in interacting with others online, in regards to any cross-fertilization between disciplines. So what works? What serves as a good example in behavior for any up and coming undergraduates in the sciences, despite their field?

The number one thing, I think, is to get connected, and stay connected. This applies not only in real life (science clubs and organizations on campus) but also online. Check out websites where scientists share some of their published research. Find serious forums related to science. Start a blog, get connected with other bloggers starting out in the field. Join email newsletters.

The second most important thing is to not be afraid to see what people outside your field are doing, and if you're interested in some of those areas, to check them out, get involved. Bakos is an astronomer, but also a programmer and photographer. Again, the same methods apply as before, and might even be easier online. When you can easily track dozens of blogs, it becomes simpler to find out things you never would have known about otherwise.
Often, new breakthroughs come by applying knowledge from one field to a separate one.

Link Roundup

I'll admit, this may have less actual content than some of the previous entries in this blog. Think of this, maybe, as a snapshot of the last three years:

From the National Geographic News, coverage of the second "puffy planet" HATnet discovered. There's nothing here that hasn't been said before, but it does quote Bakos, and the quotes are fairly interesting.

Via the Space Telescope Science Institute, it's possible to look up in their archives when in the past Bakos has given talks for various colloquia and symposiums. They have from the previous spring's colloquia certain talks archived as videos, and Bakos' is among them.

Finally, there is another article relating to this year's discovery, through Astronomy Now. What is truly of interest, though, is at the end of the article. A new space telescope, the Kepler, is to be launched next week; its purpose is to search for extrasolar planets, particularly of Earth-like nature. One of the planets it will scrutinize will be this new discovery by HATnet, according to the article. From space, so the hope is, it will be possible to resolve more information than the currently ground-based telescope system that makes up HATnet.

Even scientists like to have a little fun

Since this blog is drawing to a close, I thought before I went through and completed one final post before the big finale, I'd link this post here, from Systemic, a blog devoted to exosolar planets.

It's in regards to an email from Gaspar Bakos, early this year. To quote it in its entirety, "A phaeton tuned fun".

For the word-play challenged, it's an anagram, intended as a sort of laconic phrase. The decrypted message is in the very title of the blog post linked in this paragraph, so as not to spoil the discovery Mr. Bakos is referring to.

Website: Research Crossroads

Another result of a late-night trawl through Google, Research Crossroads is a website that, according to their mission statement, aims to make accessible who gets public funding for their research. Their argument is that researchers are able to connect with their peers and stay up to date with the latest in research across fields, and that the funding foundations both receive access to important statistics and get publicity.

Gaspar Bakos has a profile on this website. From here, it is easy to find out how funding he has received, for what projects and organizations, as well as which organizations funded the projects. Furthermore, it lists summaries of the proposed projects.

While both of Mr. Bakos projects listed on the site currently date to 2007, the concept behind this website is quite intriguing especially for interdisciplinary interaction. It provides a good place for scientists receiving or applying for grants to not only publicize what they are investigating, but what others are receiving funding for.

Gaspar Bakos on Scientific Commons

While looking around on the web (perhaps the quickest way to find what people are up to sometimes) I ran across an interesting site called the Scientific Commons. Its mission statement claims that it aims to create a comprehensive and public compilation of scientific materials on the internet.

More importantly, I found several of Bakos' works on the website. I find this entire set-up quite interesting, as it makes it much easier for the general public, the beginning student in the sciences, and even professionals to gain quick access to certain scientific papers. It even goes so far as to list co-authors on papers and provides further links to other works they have participated in.

Another discovery

I'm not sure exactly how I missed this piece of news (in fact, I only found it by checking Harvard's news releases), but almost a month ago it seems that the HATnet team announced the discovery of another large exoplanet, HAT-P-11 b. It is apparently another large gas giant similar to their first discovery.

There's an interesting simulation of the planet orbiting its star here. As one can see, it possesses a rather eccentric orbit.

It would appear that large planets are much easier to discover, when HATnet's success is compared with other teams. Perhaps larger objects are more likely to cause a noticeable distortion (the wobble) to the star they orbit; this would fall in line with what physics would predict.

On webspace

Like any good scientist, Gaspar Bakos maintains a website. Here it is, under the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Aside from certain points of interest, such as his curriculum vitae, there is an overview of HATnet that might look familiar. Yes, I linked to that last week. I would like to point out (and this is not intended as a slight on Mr. Bakos) that some of the HTML on the HATnet page is incorrect, leading any visitors who click on those links to find that the URL goes elsewhere. The pages he intended to link to are still in existence, the coding was simply done improperly.

Of more interest, however, is the list of publications. Over the following week, I intend to briefly summarize and discuss some of them, including the one in regards to the planet HATnet discovered in 2006.