I PASSED WITH ONLY ONE ERROR

A History of Black Futures

This week I gave an invited talk at NASA Goddard and took a day to visit the Afrofuturism exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. I picked up the book inspired by this exhibit a year ago during an NYC trip and have been itching to go since.

This specific display in the photo made me tear up. From left to right it shows the flight suit of Trayvon Martin, the flight suit of Lieutenant Uhura from Star Trek, and the flight suit of astronaut and former administrator of NASA Charles Bolden. Three scenarios: A future taken away, a future imagined, and a future that has been realized. When Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman, he also took away his ability to be creative, curious, and explore the world around him.

“Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope”

Top: Cathedral of St. Augustine

Bottom: Piece from Juan Obando and Yoshua Okón: DEMO

Lake Kennedy (fishing spot) in Tucson, Arizona. When I went to check it out there was a fishing competition going on so everyone was quiet and focused. It was lovely seeing turtles, ducks, birds and dragonflies.

Last week I attended the joint meeting of the National Society of Black Physicists and National Society of Hispanic Physicists in Houston, Texas. I enjoyed seeing friendly colleagues and meeting new researchers. It was an honor to give an invited talk in the astronomy session and I'm happy I could convey the importance of brown dwarfs to folks outside of my subfield.

The first photo is everyone from the University of Arizona (minus Carlos Vargas) who attended. Graduate students Jasmin Washington (Steward Observatory, center) and Kiana McFadden (Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, left) presented their work as well. I had fun walking around an exploring downtown Houston in the evenings. I absolutely adored the POST, which had an open plan plant store with a stage for jazz.

The Importance of Deuterium

Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen with one extra proton. The ratio of deuterium to hydrogen (D/H) is an indicator of mass in isolated substellar objects. Brown dwarfs that have more than 12 times the mass of Jupiter are theoretically warm enough to fuse deuterium, causing smaller atmospheric D/H ratios. In Solar System objects the D/H ratio can be altered by temperature, material transport, or atmospheric escape. In Rowland+ 2024 (accepted ApJL), we were able to detect deuterium for the first time outside of our solar system in WISE 0855, the coldest known brown dwarf.

The overall D/H ratio is inferred by detecting both deuterated methane (CH3D) and normal methane (CH4) in the atmosphere of WISE 0855. From the data we also estimate that WISE 0855 has two times more mass than Jupiter. Both the deueterium abundance and mass are consistent with theoretical expectations. Deuterium is not exclusive to gravitationally bound companions and can be used to infer mass in both brown dwarfs and exoplanets. I was super excited to be apart of this paper and also previous work demonstrating we could detect CH3D is most cold brown dwarfs.