The Artscience of Planet Formation: import ArtScience.PlanetFormation as AATS
Poi (cid:171)sis, Niter(cid:181)i, v.
20, n. 34, p. 63-70, jul./dez. 2019. The Artscience of Planet Formation Import ArtScience.PlanetFormation as AATS A (cid:83)(cid:85)o(cid:87)o(cid:83)lane(cid:87)a(cid:85)(cid:92) di(cid:86)k i(cid:86) defined a(cid:86) a (cid:179)(cid:85)o(cid:87)a(cid:87)- ing circumstellar disk of gas and dust sur-rounding a young newly formed star, a T Ta(cid:88)(cid:85)i (cid:86)(cid:87)a(cid:85), o(cid:85) He(cid:85)big Ae/Be (cid:86)(cid:87)a(cid:85)(cid:180). To an a(cid:86)- trophysicist, each word in this definition carries meaning, implies specific physical properties, history and, most importantly, assumptions. To anyone outside the field of astrophysics the terms involved in the defi-nition can be obscure. The assumptions which scientists had to adopt to build this otherwise precise description are difficult to unveil. Behind each assumption lies an intui-tion. An intuition which drove the scientists to explore the phenomenon in the first place, and later to characterize it using physics and math (more languages). The language, jar-gon, definitions, and assumptions are key, and sometimes unique, to a specific disci-pline. Communication between disciplines requires the translation of these languages, but most importantly, the sharing of under-lying intuitions. This is an initial step to mul-tidisciplinarity: the attempt to dialogue. Seb(cid:163)stian P(cid:171)rez , The Artscience of Planet Formation Import ArtScience.PlanetFormation as AATS. . Seven years ago, I committed to a project called AATS, which stands for art, astrono-my, technology and society . The project was led by media artist Olaf Peña Pastene in Santiago, Chile. Olaf approached the as-tronomers at a newly created research group, the Millennium ALMA Disk (MAD) nu-cleus, with the intention of building an alli-ance. I, an astrophysicist in the group, was particularly keen on exploring the art and science connection because I am also a mu-sician. AATS was aimed at translating the new discoveries and scientific knowledge using contemporary/media art as a com-munication vehicle (cid:178)(cid:87)hi(cid:86) (cid:90)a(cid:86) (cid:87)he (cid:179)a(cid:85)(cid:87)(cid:180) in AATS. The (cid:179)a(cid:86)(cid:87)(cid:85)onom(cid:92)(cid:180) (cid:90)a(cid:86) (cid:86)(cid:83)ecific to pro-toplanetary disks: the place where we think planets are formed. There was a clear (cid:179)(cid:87)echnolog(cid:92)(cid:180) com(cid:83)onen(cid:87): o(cid:88)(cid:85) g(cid:85)o(cid:88)(cid:83) (cid:90)a(cid:86) in the first row to use the newly commissioned Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Ar-ray (ALMA), the most powerful radio inter-ferometer built thus far. The funding came from an outreach grant, which allowed for the transference of the AATS experience to the public (cid:177) e(cid:85)go, a (cid:179)(cid:86)ocie(cid:87)(cid:92)(cid:180) com(cid:83)onen(cid:87). Let us go back to protoplanetary disks for a (cid:86)econd. (cid:179)Ho(cid:90) did (cid:87)he Ea(cid:85)(cid:87)h and the planets come (cid:87)o be?(cid:180) i(cid:86) one of (cid:87)he olde(cid:86)(cid:87) and a(cid:87) (cid:87)he same time one of the newest concerns of humanity. Before the 90s, there was no ev-idence of planets happening anywhere else in the Universe but in our Solar System. Along with a collection of asteroids, comets, moons, and dwarf planets, there were 8 planets orbiting the sun. Only in the early 90s, a planet which orbits a star that is not the sun (what we now cal l an (cid:179)e(cid:91)o(cid:83)lane(cid:87)(cid:180)) was discovered, changing a paradigm: there are planets outside the Solar System. Astronomers quickly invented new tech-niques and refined their methods in such a way that by min 2019 several thousand ex-oplanets are known. The statistics are mind-blowing: every star in our Galaxy hosts, on average, at least one planet. Nature must be very efficient at making planets, yet we still lack crucial information to tell the story of how these planets are born. And this is why we study protoplanetary disks, to understand how planets form. In 2013 we published a paper reporting new aspects of protoplanetary disk phe-nomena. The disk we were reporting on (HD142527) had a massive hole in the middle (Fig. 1, left ). The cavity was com-
Poi (cid:171)sis, Niter(cid:181)i, v.
20, n. 34, p. 63-70, jul./dez. 2019. pletely empty of solid particles (dust) but had copious amounts of gas in it. The gas was denser in two streamers that joined the outer parts of the disk with the vicinity of the central star. We interpreted these streamers as being channeled by two form-ing giant planets (Fig. 1, right ). These new data gave us the possibility to model these young protoplanetary systems with hydro-dynamics, the formalism that allows for the description of fluids. This discovery, and the approach of modelling it with hydrodynam-ics, fueled the first version of AATS in 2013. AATS 2013 consisted of an immersive instal-lation about the Origins of the Solar System ( Origen del Sistema Solar ). The experience involved entering an area under a dome (5m in diameter). Both unpublished ALMA obser-vations and hydrodynamic simulations were projected onto the dome (see Fig. 2). The immersive area was surrounded by a quad-raphonic sound system through which the data (observations and simulations) were being translated into sounds (sonification). The immersive experience was accompanied by several monitors showing a 10min video summarizing our knowledge of protoplane-tary disks for the public.
AATS con(cid:87)in(cid:88)ed in 2014 a(cid:86) a da(cid:92) of (cid:179)A(cid:85)(cid:87) and A(cid:86)(cid:87)(cid:85)onom(cid:92)(cid:180) (cid:90)hich (cid:86)e(cid:85)(cid:89)ed a(cid:86) an ini(cid:87)ial framework for an incubator of artscience projects. Four projects were born, including data visualization experiments, two interac-tive installations exploring the discovery of exoplanets, and an exploration of ancient astronomical petroglyphs in the context of modern astrophysics via audiovisual im-provisation. In 2017, Olaf Peña performed several concerts sharing the artscience ma-terial from AATS in an audiovisual format. AATS still exist today. The artscience convergence in AATS was not straightforward. At first, it was difficult to find a common language. The media art (cid:88)(cid:86)age of (cid:179)(cid:86)cien(cid:87)ific(cid:180) (cid:87)e(cid:85)m(cid:86) and (cid:87)he a(cid:86)(cid:87)(cid:85)o- physical jargons probed to be ideal for lost in translation type situations. The words data , observation , and theory , amongst many other words, seem to have signifi-cantly different connotations. Dialogues between scientists and artists are no simple endeavors, even if the people involved have a mix of art and science backgrounds. Figure 1 -
Left:
Observation of the protoplanetary disk HD142527 (Casassus et al. 2013, Nature, 493, 191). The star is near the center, the red and orange colors show cold dust particles and the green and blue show gas.
Right:
Artist impression of the data in the right, showing two protoplanets channeling streamers from the outer to the inner parts of the disk. Credit: Beatriz Buttazzoni.
Poi (cid:171)sis, Niter(cid:181)i, v.
20, n. 34, p. 63-70, jul./dez. 2019. Figure 2 - Hydrodynamic simulation (numerical calculation) of how multiple protoplanets interact with the gas in a protoplanetary disk. This realization was not self-evident: it took years of reflection and several artscience projects. In particular, recent collabora-tions with improvised movement and mu-sic composition have contributed greatly to understanding the complexity of artscience interactions. During the composition and recording of a Charango concerto based on the fundamental laws of the Universe, the composer Anya Yermakova and I agreed that, part of our artscience process must be building shared basic blocks of intuition about planet and stellar formation. In fact, (cid:87)he (cid:90)hole collabo(cid:85)a(cid:87)ion became abo(cid:88)(cid:87) (cid:179)f(cid:88)n-damen(cid:87)al la(cid:90)(cid:86)(cid:180) e(cid:91)ac(cid:87)l(cid:92) fo(cid:85) (cid:87)hi(cid:86) (cid:85)ea(cid:86)on, and (cid:177) further experi-ments await future versions of AATS. Acknowledgements:
The author is grateful to Anya Yermakova for insightful comments on the manuscript, Olaf Peña Pastene for the initial motivation to join AATS and Luiz Guilherme Vergara for the encouragement to write this work.
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